.religion killed me… Jesus gave me life.

So there probably is a pithy cool way of starting this story.

However I won’t.

I grew up in Christianity that was legalistic. There were a certain set of rules that were supposed to be followed. When I started college I went to a public college, were I was a part of Young Life and attend some campus ministries events and was a part of the college group at church. I was a even part of a Bible study that some friends and I started. It was during that time that I thought if I read enough and prayed enough Jesus would love me. I even timed my prayers, at night I made sure that I at least prayed for 15 minutes. Somehow I thought that this would save me or fulfill me. If I had enough verses memorized, knew enough theology, did enough church stuff, if I had the right morals then somehow I would be a better person.

Then I moved on to the emergent style of Christianity.  This happened after I started to go to Cornerstone.  It was a movement that was seemed freeing.  I attended a emergent church in Grand Rapids for a while thinking wow this is a place where I can be free from religion.  The problem is that it was freeing, in fact it was just another religion.  It is amazing looking back on it how the children of legalism just created another religion where there were rules to follow.  In order to be a good Christian you had to be concerned about social justice.  If you aren’t green, feeding the poor. if you aren’t politically liberal, if you aren’t overly tolerant, if you don’t say this is absolute truth then you are a good Christian.

The problem is that these both are religions, they both are moralistic.  They killed me, they had a set of rules that I had to follow to measure up.

Then through a series of events the I experienced the grace of Jesus, the healing of Jesus, the power of Jesus.  Jesus gave me life, I now can live free from the bounds of religion and live to glorify Him alone.  The ironic thing is that I now am free to do the things that used to bind me.  I am free to read the Bible, to pray, to be concerned about justice, it is just that now I don’t have to do these things to please God.  I get to do them because Jesus has set me free to do them.  I can find joy in them because I can do them to glorify Jesus.

Now I get to tell others about Jesus and about the freedom and life that is found in Him alone.  So that is where I have been, I hope that you see the Jesus alone in my story.

.back from Colorado.

So I just got back tonight from Colorado where I was a camp speaker for 5th and 6th graders.  It was a great week.  The weather was great and the scenery was great.  I was happy with how the lessons went.  It was amazing to see how God worked in the lives of the campers.  I hope to blog this a little more when I have time.

.john owen.

“To suppose that whatever God requireth of us that we have power of ourselves to do, is to make the cross and grace of Jesus Christ of none effect.” (Works of John Owen: volume 3 pg. 433)

.the grace that wins.

Here is a quote that a friend of mine named Don wrote.

“We could have done nothing to save ourselves and there is nothing that we can do to stop God from loving is us. God is bigger than any sin we have ever committed or ever will commit. Grace Won.”

It is a quote that is so true.

.our trajectory is right into humanism.

So there is this idea about how to interpret the Bible through the lens of a trajectory hermeneutic.

You may be asking what this hermeneutic is all about, I am so glad that you asked, here is a brief definition of what it is.

In brief, Webb says that the ancient world in which the Bible was written
had gravely deficient moral standards. God in his wisdom knew that it would
be best to work gradually to lead his people from the moral practices of the
surrounding cultures to much higher standards of moral conduct. Therefore
in the OT God gave moral commands that were a great improvement over
the standards of the surrounding culture, but were not yet his highest ideal.
In the NT, God gave even higher moral standards, making further improvement
over what was taught in the OT. But even these NT moral commands
were not God’s “ultimate ethic.” Our task today is to try to understand the
direction in which God was gradually leading his people, so that by observing
that trajectory we can discover God’s “ultimate ethic” on various topics,
an “ultimate ethic” that we should seek to teach and obey today.1

Wow, does this sound like something that really makes sense. Think about the implications that this has on the authority of the Bible. In reality this way of interpreting the Bible has said that the Bible has no authority.

Now the Christians that hold to this view may object to my saying that their hermeneutic of the Bible denies Biblical authority. They will have fancy side stepping answers about how they love the Bible and how it has authority about living.

However if we cut through the haze of their arguments, we are left with the fact that the TH does not value what scripture says. They say that the biblical morals were correct for the society that they were written to, however now we have moved beyond that, our society they would claim is more advanced than theirs, therefore those moral/ethical commands do not apply.

Can I call it how I see it, doesn’t that sound arrogant, really doesn’t it? They are implying that though God gave ethical commands, however they are smarter than God and can decide what really needs to be done.

So in reality we are left with choosing between God or man.

Thats not a hard choice for me. I chose Sovereign God. Not some human that is brilliant and deceiving.

Also does the TH glorify God, may I suggest that it doesn’t and in reality it makes humans little gods. We will worship ourselves when we fall into this trap, like somehow we know better than God.

Give me a break.

It shouldn’t even be a hard choice.

To Jesus alone be the glory.

_____________________________________

1 https://www.cbmw.org

.you can’t just try harder.

So I have a tendency to critique the baptist fundamentalist and emergents on this blog.  Now I will attempt to critique both on the same issue.  So get ready to be offended by me.

You can’t live out a certain set of morals and be saved by them, it is by the grace of Jesus that we are.

Now some of you are going yeah go get them, for you there is this.

You can’t just live a certain way and earn your salvation either.  Translation you can’t live the “way” of Jesus and be saved without the grace and power of the cross.  Just because you are kosher and care for the poor doesn’t mean that you have life.

Now most of the rest of you are mad.

I find it ironic that the emergent church which has been a huge critique of fundamentalism has fallen into the same trap that they did.  Just because you changed the “works” that have to be done to be Christian doesn’t mean that you aren’t doing the same thing.

Now don’t take me the wrong way on this.  I believe that most of the things that these two groups do are correct, however their motivation is false.  We can make ourselves righteous by that which we do, we are righteous only by the grace of God.  See I believe that not sleeping around, not stealing, giving to the poor and the such are good things, however these need to be a reaction to the grace of God, not what I have to do to please God, when we try to please God through our works and making ourselves righteous we are saying “Jesus your death on the cross was not enough for me.”  In reality we try to make ourselves god.

See the only way to live is under the grace of God and in the power of the cross.

.a new type of fundamentalism.

So, this is hard to say… overall fundamentalism was good for Christianity. There I said it.

You may be asking “Mike are you okay, are you sick?” This would be a valid concern considering how I have and will continue to confront modern fundamentalism, really baptist fundamentalism.

The fundamentalism that I am talking about is the one the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, the one’s that stood up against the liberal “Christians” of their day. I challenge you to look into the history of the fundamental movement to grasp a deeper understanding. However the short of it is that the belief of what it meant to be Christian came to a point at Princeton and they started Westminster Seminary.

The legacy of these guys is that they defended Christianity from apostates, they stood up for Truth, you see they believed that the Gospel was worth fighting for. If they hadn’t the reality would be that the state of Christianity in America would be that like Europe. So now while we have problems in the Church of America we still have a viable church. So these men are true heroes.

So in their tradition, in their love for Jesus I declare the fundamentals or the essentials of the Christianity to be true

• The inspiration of the Bible by the Holy Spirit and the inerrancy of Scripture as a result of this.
• The virgin birth of Christ.
• The belief that Christ’s death was an atonement for sin.
• The bodily resurrection of Christ
• The historical reality of Christ’s miracles

These are things that I am willing to fight for. Are you? Do you believe these things?

So while the new liberalism that is running through Christianity especially in academic settings. Threatening to bring down the Church in America. A sect that is disputing the Truth of their “faith”. While they are denying the basic believes of Christianity and still trying to call themselves Christians. Seems absurd to me too.

So I chose to stand up and voice what I believe, I love Jesus and His bride (the church). I will defend His honor. The truth is important. You see the early fundamentalist fought modern liberals and now the fight is against postmodern liberals.

Now I am different than the original fundamentalists. I believe in engaging culture, we do not need to build a separate subculture. Things are not wrong just because culture believes them. You see, my hair is a little long, I wear the scruffy look a lot, I don’t wear suits and ties ever, especially not to church. I may say a bad word or two, I don’t think that drinking in moderation is wrong, smoking a cigar now and then won’t send you to hell, playing some cards isn’t a horrible sin. I have a tattoo and want to get another one. I want to engage culture not go fall away from it.

I am a the new type of fundamentalist. I hold the fundamental beliefs to be true and believe that I am to engage culture within the frame of those beliefs being true. See my blog name Emerging Reformer really fits in with this. The Reformer part, I am always trying to reform back to the truth of the Bible. There are some out there that would lie and tell you that you are to reform away from the Bible, they are liars and deceivers. We are to always reform back to the Bible. The Emerging part, is that we are always to be changing the way that we engage culture, culture is not sacred. Culture is not to be fought, Truth is to be fought for. Jesus is to be fought for.

So where are you on this? Are you willing to stand up for truth? The truth about Jesus has been attacked by the postmodern liberals (the emergent church)? So are you a new type of fundamentalist?

.sermon.

So I preached last Sunday if you want to listen to my sermon and go to May 25.  I hope you enjoy.

.without Jesus.

Without Jesus there is nothing.

There seems to be this breed of “Christians” that are out there that think that the ideas of Jesus can be disconnected from Jesus.  They talk about forgiveness and love, however they don’t mention Jesus or disconnect the being able to do these from Jesus.  They act like Jesus was a good teacher and that was it.  They think that Jesus leads them to a higher spiritual place.

The reality is that Jesus leads us to him, the reason is because Jesus is ultimate.  So I want to call out the emergent leaders, stop acting like Jesus is one way to a higher spiritual plane (doesn’t that sound like another religion) and realize that the point is Jesus.

.preaching.

So today I preached.  It was an amazing thing to do, I think that it went well.  Let me tell you that it is the thing that I love to do, the thing that I was made to do.  It is amazing to be able to teach the Word of God to people and apply it to our lives.  As I told Natalie it is a different type of experience, I was noticing things that were going on while still preaching.  Anyways it was amazing to see God work through me this morning.