Mikey V.D.’s Blog

So I guess that post title is not completely accurate- it should in fact read the ‘the best way’… or better yet ‘the only way’.  One might be thinking “The only way, for what…?”  Well let me tell you.  The only way to live.

For the past 50 years many in Christianity have told and believed many things about the way to live- from the staunch fundamental and legalistic Christians to the Emergent Christians and the ones in between them.  For the most part they have all lied and really are founded in moralism.  Now the good news is that there are some churches out there that get the ‘only way’.  There have many people who have covered this topic and I have talked about this in previous posts.  My point here is not to belabor the wrong message that has been proclaimed, rather it is to say there is a better way and really there is only one way.

Are you ready for it?

It is to live for the glory of God in all things.  How can we do this one may ask?  My the life, death and resurrection of Christ Jesus.  We will never truly have life unless we life for the glory of Jesus- our sole purpose in life is to glorify Jesus with every aspect of our lives.  The thing is we can not do this on our own.  By our own accord we are completely separated from God and therefore can not live to glorify Him.  It is only when we are reconciled to Jesus by His grace that we are able to truly live.

This message is for everyone, myself included.  If you are not a Christian this message is for you.  If you grew up in a fundamental legalistic church, an emergent church, a pentecostal church, a baptist church, a reformed church, or some other religion this message is for you.

The only way to live is to live for the glory of God and we can only do that through Jesus.

So as one beggar to another… I found the source of life, come and see Christ Jesus.

If your ‘Christian” message does not include Jesus and the cross then it is weak and impotent.  How can we spread a message that does not include Jesus and the cross.  If we only talk about the hippie Jesus and leave out King Jesus then we have forgotten the message of Jesus, we have forgotten the gospel.  The power of our message does not lie in us, it is in the power of Jesus, the real Jesus.  See we need to proclaim the real Jesus, not just a get out of hell Jesus and not just the hippie Jesus.

A lot of people my age have fallen for this hippie Jesus, I just have to ask have we not learned from the past?  Have we not learned from the past liberal sects of Christianity that have since been made irrelevant?  I ask those of you who are my age and older… and well younger also to search the Scriptures and try to tell me that this social gospel that you have repackaged is the true Gospel that the Bible talks about.

So is your gospel impotent?

Oh Christians why don’t we stand up?

Why don’t we stand up and proclaim the truth?

What has happened to our message?

Why have we let it be perverted?

What is to be done?

Why haven’t we kept the gospel good news?

What have we done?

When will we stand up?

Oh church in America what will become of you?

It is sad however the church in America has become a perverted form of Christianity and while we are not the worst place that the Church exists we are not far away.  We have allowed legalists and liberals to take the gospel and pervert it.  I wonder if we even know and grasp what the gospel really is.  If we did would we let these people pervert such a beautiful message that all need to hear.

When will we stand up and fight, do we have to wait till we are like most of Europe.  Do our churches need to be empty on Sundays, like a ghost town for us to do anything about it.  Is there any good men and women left who will stand up for truth, who will stand up for the Gospel? Is there?  I hope and pray that there are some.

Oh people of Jesus stand up and proclaim the Good News, which is Jesus.  Stand up oh men and fight like the men of the past did, stand up oh women and defend the truth, stand up oh children do not let them take the truth from you.  STAND UP.

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.

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

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.

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?

There has been much written about the mission of God.  The question is what are we as Christians to do?  Some say that we are to make the world a better place.  That is correct but not the whole truth.  Is it converts?  Well that is true but not the whole truth.

So what is the mission of God… well to bring glory to God.  That is what we are to do in our lives and we are also to bring more worshipers to God.  If we look at what has been labeled the great commission we are make disciples.  So while we are to make the world better, we are to make disciples of Jesus.

Now how are we to do this?  By being Jesus incarnate.   You see the emergent church has taken this idea of incarnational ministry and twisted it to mean that we are nice to people yet never are Jesus to them.  They forget the message of Jesus.

I am part of a community that believes this and therefore lives it out.  We believe that we are to be Jesus incarnate in two ways.  We are to be the hands and feet of Jesus, by being in people’s lives and meeting their needs.  Also we are to be Jesus incarnate by being his voice and proclaiming the message of Jesus.

If we do not have both of these we are left with a hollow view of the mission of God, we are not being followers of Jesus unless we are his hands and feet and his voice.  The mission of God is so much greater than making the world better and it is so much greater than making converts.  It is about bringing more glory to God and we do that by making more disciples of Him.

So what is the mission of God to you?

So I believe that God is completly sovereign in everything.  I have no problem with believing that the God is in control of everything in the world.

Yet now as my world has been shaken, as that which I have held dearly has been put in disarray, I have been challenged to live as though that is true.  From career decisions, to money, to family, I have been forced to truly live as though Jesus is really in control.

You see it is really easy to believe that God is in control when life is going good or at least not bad.  However when life crashes around you, as you are forced to deal with the fact that the worst possible situation might occur.  As your family might be torn apart one is forced to say either “God is in control and no matter what happens it is for His glory.”  Or one is forced to say “God is not in control and this is one big mistake.”

So for me I have been brought to a point where I say “Some way Jesus is going to take this horrible situation and use is for His glory.”  This is where my comfort lies.  The fact that no matter what my wife and I go through God is in control.  You see the true and living God has control over everything, it will all work out for His glory.

The true God is not suprised when things happen.  He does not sit around as the trinity and go “Oops I did not see that coming, what am I to do.”  That weak god is not true, that weak Jesus that you have been taught about is a fraud.

The true living God; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is sovereign over everything.  Even when life seems like Hell we can be comforted that in His holy and perfect plan that the horrible things we are going though will  all be worked out for His glory and are a part of His perfect and sovereign plan.  To God alone be the glory.

This does no mean that I don’t suffer when things happen.  This does not mean that I do not mourn, that my heart does not cry out to the Lord.  I still say “God why is this happening.”  However in the midst of my pain and tears, in my fears I am able to say God is in control of all of this.

Do you believe God is sovereign?

Do you live as though this is true?

In the midst of living hell do we find comfort in that God is in control?

In reality we have two choices either Jesus is in control or things happen for no reason.  Which one do you choose to believe?

I am so saddened that two of most well known “Christian” pastors went to a interfaith conference and did not utter the name of Jesus. We are not the same as other religion we do not have the same God, we believe in the Trinitarian God, Yahweh.

When we lose Jesus, we lose everything. There is no Christianity without Jesus. There is no there is no true forgiveness, there is no bearing pain, hurt, or shame without Jesus. There is no life without Jesus. So my question is when are we as Christians going to stand up for the truth, for the real gospel. Not just some social gospel, but Jesus. How long must we play this game of humanism that is disguised as Christianity. When are we going to stand up and say Jesus is the only way. Jesus is the ultimate. He is the ultimate truth and yes there is ultimate truth. To deny this would be to reject the central message of the whole Bible.

The Bible is not about us, we are proud arrogant people that think that God would write a book about us. The Bible is about Jesus, life is only found in Jesus, pleasure is only found in Jesus. So my question is why are we letting these heresies permeate the church. Is it because we are afraid? Or do we believe the lies of the devil that we are the ultimate?

If we lose Jesus then we lose everything. Plain and simple.

So what are you going to do? Sit there and believe this humanist pluralism. Or contend for the gospel, which is Jesus?