I know I should probably write my thoughts on both Greg's and Chuch's thoughts pertaining to "Saints and the Prosperity Gospel" below, but this something that I've been angry about all day.
It started last night while I was watching the Colbert Report on Comedy Central. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, it's basically like the Daily Show, a half hour show of witty satire that takes shameless jabs at the political right and the news media. I must preface this by saying that I'm not one to take offense at much, in fact I love it when people tell religious jokes that make fun of the flaws in the church. I love to watch the Simpsons, read Larknews.com, and browse through to shipoffools.com. All of these things poke much fun at the church, and to be honest they make good points and if the church was truly following Christ and not allowing our own agenda's to get in the way they wouldn't have anything to make fun of us for.
Now I'm not angry about any religious joke that they told or anything like that. What I'm angry about is what the guest on the show said. The guest was an astrophysicist who attended an Ivy League school. I missed his name because I was flipping back and forth between this and the world series, however when I found out the guest was an astrophysicist I stayed on comedy central, because astrophysics is interesting.
Ok on to the anger. During the interview the host, Stephen Colbert, asked a few questions and then brought up the topic of intelligent design. After a bit of talking the guest made the statement that intelligent design was "intillectual laziness."
It didn't really bother me last night, but as I thought about it today I kept getting angry, hence the need to vent - and what better place to vent than a blog!
Intellectual laziness?! I'm fine with people disagreeing with intelligent design, and I really don't care if Christians posit theistic evolution or creationism, but to call intelligent design intellectual laziness, just makes me angry.
I don't care how many stinking letters this guy has after his name (PhD...etc) or where he went to school, I would love to see him or any scholar (including Stephen Hawking) go up against the great minds of Christian History (ie: the saints of the Church - to relate to the last post). I would certainly not call Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine, on top of many others intellectually lazy.
Maybe I'm just upset because I'm striving to be an academic right now and to be told that one of my views is completely unintellectual is no fun, but I don't think that's at the heart of it. I mean, shoot, I hold a lot of ideas that many people (even some Christians) think are intellectually absurd. To name some examples: I don't believe in the source hyposthesis for the Penteteuch, I don't hold to the Q source as a development for the gospel theory, I believe in a literal Adam, I believe that all of the charism are still to be used in the church today, and the list could continue. So I don't think that I'm taking this as a personal attack. Rather it's almost as if this man has attacked all of the Christian thinkers throughout the ages and declared them to be morons. I take offense to this, the Christian thinkers through the ages were certainly no slouches and I doubt that one could hardly describe them as intellectually lazy.
So enough with the ranting. I really didn't formulate a coherent defense, so maybe I am intellectually lazy, but the great thinkers of church history such as Aquinas, Augustine, Lewis, Anselm, Abelard, Calvin, et al. were certainly not intellectually inferior to the secular minds of their day, or of any day for that matter.
Thursday, October 27, 2005
Sunday, October 23, 2005
Saints and the Prosperity Gospel
I just got back from attending St. Athanasias Orthodox Church today and while I was there I had a few thoughts that I thought I'd write about. Yes, I haven't been as committed to posting as I should be, I do have some thoughts that I've been meaning to post, but they'll have to wait for now. On to the issue at hand.
After the first hour or so of the liturgy the Priest (who is married, by the way) gave the sermon from the parable of Lazarus and the rich man. As he spoke about this he talked about joy in giving and blessing, specifically stating that he is not proclaiming to us some health and prosperity/name it claim it gospel. A little while later the priest mentioned something about a saint and my friend Nathaniel leaned over to me and told me about a saint of the Orthodox Church that lived in Siberia, who would go walk through the towns and as he saw beggars in need he would give his shoes and coat to the beggars and walk back to his home without shoes and a coat (remember Siberia is mostly cold, very cold).
With that as the foundation let me share my thoughts. I have lamented the lack of recognition of Church history and lack of saints in the Protestant Church for some while now. I'm not necessarily arguing that we need to pray to saints, but our neglect of those who have gone before us in the Protestant tradition is absolutly dreadful, if not in fact sinful (and I do believe one could make a case for that). We as protestants like to recognize a select few (like an occasional missionary or Billy Graham) but primarily they are individuals who lived in relatively recently (or are still alive) and will soon be forgotten. Most of protestantism today barely knows who Wesley, Asbury, Calvin etc are, let alone Ignatius, Irenaus, Athanasias, etc are. We tend to exalt those in the Protestant tradition who do great things, rather than those who live lives of sainthood.
As I was thinking about all this I began to wonder what would have happened if the Protestant Church had maintained the use of saints? Could the prosperity gospel exist? It seems to me that I have to allow that it could exist; but that it would be considerably hard for it to exist in as wide spread state as it does. Why is this you may ask. Well it seems to me that only those who live saintly lives are canonized as saints. I don't know of any saints who are lifted up because of the life of affluence they lived. Saints are canonized because they model Christ's teachings, they give completely of themselves, they are an example to all believers. With a strong tradition of recognizing this life of sacrifice in men and women throughout church history, I would say that it would be hard for a teaching that proclaims something completely contrary to this (and Christ's teachings) to take root and become widespread.
The problem with the protestant church is that people who live these lives of sacrifice often fall through the cracks. We don't remember them becuase we view them as insignificant in our individualized self/purpose driven world. We don't look at ourselves as living in a tradition that starts at creation, proceeds through the Old Testament, to the New, through the church of the ages and finally to us. This is who we are and it is good to remember those who came before us (cf: Hebrews 11).
We also have a skewed view of the incarnation. We have allowed dualism to tarnish our worldview. We view the incarnation as a past event. As John Madden would say: "Boom!" it happened. We tend to view life as something that means little except for a time where we made decisions that affect where we go in the end. We don't view all of life as a being an incarnation of Christ to the world. I get so frustrated every time I see the stupid (and dare I say heretical) bumper sticker: "I'm not a physical being having a spiritual experience, I"m a spiritual being having a physical experience." It is this garbage theology that has allowed the Protestant Church to neglect the poor, to abuse the helpless and live in some bastardized state between orthodoxy and gnosticism. We think that we only need to worship God with our minds and our hearts, how much more should we engage all that God gave us, our mind, heart, and body (including all the sense)!
All that to say that we should be lifting up examples of men and women who have gone before us in the faith and have lived lives that are true incarnations of Christ. They teach us that it's not enough to think right, but to act and live right as well. Live and act, not in my own personal/individualistic sphere, but with in a community, within the whole world.
Why should we not celebrate the saints of the Church? Why should we not have aids to remember them and allow our hearts to be drawn closer to the Trinity through the example of their lives? Should we not allow their example to point us toward Christ and to the life that he commanded and lived himself?
To get back to the point, it seems to me that this strong emphasis would have helped the Protestant Church to see the health and wealth/prosperity gospel for what it truly is, namely a heresy that is not in line with what the church has believed and taught throughout the ages. That's what we are, we are bearers of the faith that has been handed to us. How dare we think that this is something new we are a part of! How dare we believe that we're starting something original! As A. W. Tozer says: "if the reader should discover here anythign really new he is conscience bound to reject it, for whatever in religion is new is by the same token false." (Pursuit of God, xiii). Or as C. S. Lewis (held as a 'saint' by some protestants) states: "if any parts of the book are 'original', in the sense of being novel...they are so against my will...I have tried to assume nothing that is not professed by all baptised and communicating Christians" (The Problem of Pain, xii)
I guess my ranting has started again and my point is now lost in the plethora of words. To summarize, it seems to me that if we, as protestants, hadn't rejected all church history prior to the reformation, and had continued to hold up examples of those who lived incarnationally in line with the words of Jesus, we would be having less of a problem now with false doctrines such as the prosperity gospel and the like. We desperately need to recapture our roots (not of protestantism, but of Christianity) and learn from our Orthodox and Catholic brothers and sisters. We dont' have to assimilate everthing they do (although it would be great to see the church whole again) but we do have to accept them as sharing our baptism in the name of the Trinity, and thus they are by nature Christians - our brothers and sisters.
After the first hour or so of the liturgy the Priest (who is married, by the way) gave the sermon from the parable of Lazarus and the rich man. As he spoke about this he talked about joy in giving and blessing, specifically stating that he is not proclaiming to us some health and prosperity/name it claim it gospel. A little while later the priest mentioned something about a saint and my friend Nathaniel leaned over to me and told me about a saint of the Orthodox Church that lived in Siberia, who would go walk through the towns and as he saw beggars in need he would give his shoes and coat to the beggars and walk back to his home without shoes and a coat (remember Siberia is mostly cold, very cold).
With that as the foundation let me share my thoughts. I have lamented the lack of recognition of Church history and lack of saints in the Protestant Church for some while now. I'm not necessarily arguing that we need to pray to saints, but our neglect of those who have gone before us in the Protestant tradition is absolutly dreadful, if not in fact sinful (and I do believe one could make a case for that). We as protestants like to recognize a select few (like an occasional missionary or Billy Graham) but primarily they are individuals who lived in relatively recently (or are still alive) and will soon be forgotten. Most of protestantism today barely knows who Wesley, Asbury, Calvin etc are, let alone Ignatius, Irenaus, Athanasias, etc are. We tend to exalt those in the Protestant tradition who do great things, rather than those who live lives of sainthood.
As I was thinking about all this I began to wonder what would have happened if the Protestant Church had maintained the use of saints? Could the prosperity gospel exist? It seems to me that I have to allow that it could exist; but that it would be considerably hard for it to exist in as wide spread state as it does. Why is this you may ask. Well it seems to me that only those who live saintly lives are canonized as saints. I don't know of any saints who are lifted up because of the life of affluence they lived. Saints are canonized because they model Christ's teachings, they give completely of themselves, they are an example to all believers. With a strong tradition of recognizing this life of sacrifice in men and women throughout church history, I would say that it would be hard for a teaching that proclaims something completely contrary to this (and Christ's teachings) to take root and become widespread.
The problem with the protestant church is that people who live these lives of sacrifice often fall through the cracks. We don't remember them becuase we view them as insignificant in our individualized self/purpose driven world. We don't look at ourselves as living in a tradition that starts at creation, proceeds through the Old Testament, to the New, through the church of the ages and finally to us. This is who we are and it is good to remember those who came before us (cf: Hebrews 11).
We also have a skewed view of the incarnation. We have allowed dualism to tarnish our worldview. We view the incarnation as a past event. As John Madden would say: "Boom!" it happened. We tend to view life as something that means little except for a time where we made decisions that affect where we go in the end. We don't view all of life as a being an incarnation of Christ to the world. I get so frustrated every time I see the stupid (and dare I say heretical) bumper sticker: "I'm not a physical being having a spiritual experience, I"m a spiritual being having a physical experience." It is this garbage theology that has allowed the Protestant Church to neglect the poor, to abuse the helpless and live in some bastardized state between orthodoxy and gnosticism. We think that we only need to worship God with our minds and our hearts, how much more should we engage all that God gave us, our mind, heart, and body (including all the sense)!
All that to say that we should be lifting up examples of men and women who have gone before us in the faith and have lived lives that are true incarnations of Christ. They teach us that it's not enough to think right, but to act and live right as well. Live and act, not in my own personal/individualistic sphere, but with in a community, within the whole world.
Why should we not celebrate the saints of the Church? Why should we not have aids to remember them and allow our hearts to be drawn closer to the Trinity through the example of their lives? Should we not allow their example to point us toward Christ and to the life that he commanded and lived himself?
To get back to the point, it seems to me that this strong emphasis would have helped the Protestant Church to see the health and wealth/prosperity gospel for what it truly is, namely a heresy that is not in line with what the church has believed and taught throughout the ages. That's what we are, we are bearers of the faith that has been handed to us. How dare we think that this is something new we are a part of! How dare we believe that we're starting something original! As A. W. Tozer says: "if the reader should discover here anythign really new he is conscience bound to reject it, for whatever in religion is new is by the same token false." (Pursuit of God, xiii). Or as C. S. Lewis (held as a 'saint' by some protestants) states: "if any parts of the book are 'original', in the sense of being novel...they are so against my will...I have tried to assume nothing that is not professed by all baptised and communicating Christians" (The Problem of Pain, xii)
I guess my ranting has started again and my point is now lost in the plethora of words. To summarize, it seems to me that if we, as protestants, hadn't rejected all church history prior to the reformation, and had continued to hold up examples of those who lived incarnationally in line with the words of Jesus, we would be having less of a problem now with false doctrines such as the prosperity gospel and the like. We desperately need to recapture our roots (not of protestantism, but of Christianity) and learn from our Orthodox and Catholic brothers and sisters. We dont' have to assimilate everthing they do (although it would be great to see the church whole again) but we do have to accept them as sharing our baptism in the name of the Trinity, and thus they are by nature Christians - our brothers and sisters.
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
Ramadan Begins
Tomorrow (Oct. 5) marks the start of the 30 day Muslim holy month known as Ramadan. During Ramadan, millions of Muslims all over the world will dedicate themselves to prayer and fasting with the intent of drawing closer Allah. From what I understand they will fast everyday until dusk and then will meet at their mosques and have special meals.
The reason I mention all this is because I also understand that this is a time of year that many Muslims experience dramatic dreams and visions that God uses to draw them to himself through Christ and thus into the Christian faith.
I plan on participating in the fast of Ramadan, fasting breakfast and lunch everyday during this 30 day period, with special emphasis on praying for the Muslim world that is lost and does not know the glorious person of Christ. I pray that they will receive visions, dreams, and revelation of the person of Jesus. That they will come to know him intimately, not as a prophet who was corrupt, but as the Living God, coeternal with the Father and the Holy Spirit from all eternity.
I don't say this to make myself sound awesomely holy, but to encourage you to pray intently during this time. To fast if God so leads you and to pour your heart out to God on behalf of the millions of Muslims world-wide.
I'm not an Islamic studies expert, nor do I claim to be the originator of this idea, but I do know that these people are lost and that the heart of God burns for their salvation. They are dedicating a whole month of fasting to draw closer to their god, can we not also dedicate a month of prayer to the only true, living Triune God, for the sake of these lost souls?
I'm sure it won't be easy, intercession rarely is. Especially interceding for a group of people that are held in such bondage by the evil one. So I implore you to pray, to fast if led, and to let your heart be broken for these people who are truly seeking.
May the harvest during this season of Ramadan be bountiful for the Kingdom of the Holy Triune God! Amen and Amen!
The reason I mention all this is because I also understand that this is a time of year that many Muslims experience dramatic dreams and visions that God uses to draw them to himself through Christ and thus into the Christian faith.
I plan on participating in the fast of Ramadan, fasting breakfast and lunch everyday during this 30 day period, with special emphasis on praying for the Muslim world that is lost and does not know the glorious person of Christ. I pray that they will receive visions, dreams, and revelation of the person of Jesus. That they will come to know him intimately, not as a prophet who was corrupt, but as the Living God, coeternal with the Father and the Holy Spirit from all eternity.
I don't say this to make myself sound awesomely holy, but to encourage you to pray intently during this time. To fast if God so leads you and to pour your heart out to God on behalf of the millions of Muslims world-wide.
I'm not an Islamic studies expert, nor do I claim to be the originator of this idea, but I do know that these people are lost and that the heart of God burns for their salvation. They are dedicating a whole month of fasting to draw closer to their god, can we not also dedicate a month of prayer to the only true, living Triune God, for the sake of these lost souls?
I'm sure it won't be easy, intercession rarely is. Especially interceding for a group of people that are held in such bondage by the evil one. So I implore you to pray, to fast if led, and to let your heart be broken for these people who are truly seeking.
May the harvest during this season of Ramadan be bountiful for the Kingdom of the Holy Triune God! Amen and Amen!
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