10 Ways to Become a Plastic Church
6. Care more about your agenda than about honoring and loving people. Push, push, push your church-centric agenda. Don’t respect and honor the role your people have in the community, in their neighborhoods, in their workplace, and in their families. Make it all about the four church walls. This has Plastic Church written all over it!
Not to mention their roles within the church. Ouch.
Strong words from Andrew Root, author of The Theological Turn in Youth Ministry:
Almost since its inception youth ministry has been trying to make a case for why fickle people should come to church.
In today’s Wall Street Journal, Feisal Abdul Rauf (of Cordoba Initiative fame) begins his column “A Call to All Religion Moderates” by writing:
Fox News host Bill O’Reilly was right when he insisted that Abders Behring Breivik [sic], who committed mass murders in Norway in July, is not a Christian. Even though Breivik referred to himself often as a Christian, Mr. O’Reilly noted, no one who slaughters innocents can be a follower of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace. (emphasis added)
First of all, you should never get theological opinions from Bill O’Reilly.
Second, I agree that Breivik was not a Christian, but it has nothing to do with the murders he committed. It has everything to do with how he defined his own identity. Here’s how Breivik himself described his “Christianity”:
A majority of so called agnostics and atheists in Europe are cultural conservative Christians without even knowing it. So what is the difference between cultural Christians and religious Christians? If you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God then you are a religious Christian. Myself and many more like me do not necessarily have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God. We do however believe in Christianity as a cultural, social, identity and moral platform. This makes us Christian. (emphases added; via GetReligion)
Christianity as a “cultural, social, identity and moral platform” is meaningless without a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. In fact, I would argue that “Christianity” as a “cultural, social, identity and moral platform” – without the accompanying relationship with Jesus – is responsible for many of the greatest crimes against humanity of the past two thousand years. Christianity is, first and foremost, about the person of Jesus Christ. If you exclude him, then all you have left is one more godless ideology.
Rauf goes on to say that no murderer can be a “true Christian” (or a “true Muslim,” for that matter). I disagree strongly with this idea. As I wrote above, Christianity is, first and foremost, about the person of Jesus Christ. It’s not about how righteous, holy, or moral we can be, or whether we can simply avoid (through care or luck) making terrible decisions.
Could someone have a personal relationship with Jesus and still commit horrific crimes? Tragically, I believe the answer is yes.
I see two important implications of this sobering idea:
1) We should not be quick to reject someone as a brother or sister in Christ. Whether a historical figure or one of our contemporaries, we shouldn’t base our opinion of them or their faith on their misdeeds.
2) We should never assume that our own actions are right, simply because we’re Christians. Perhaps our descendants will judge us as harshly as we judge our misguided ancestors, for some blind spot or crime that never even occurred to us to be wrong.
Why You and I Could Not Write the Book of Revelation
The book of revelation has about 400 verses, and scholars say those verses contain around 550 allusions to Old Testament passages.
But here’s the thing, John doesn’t include a single quotation of the Old Testament. He only uses allusions. This means that his writing, his thoughts, his spirituality literally bleeds with an deep, abiding knowledge of the Scriptures.
via John Dyer
As recently reported in the Cincinnati Enquirer, Northern Kentucky will soon be home to its first mosque. Here are some brief thoughts:
Freedom of religion applies to all Americans of all religions. I have often heard Christians thank God for the freedom to worship in the United States. Like freedom of speech, freedom of religion doesn’t apply only to popular, inoffensive ideas. In parts of the US, evangelical Christianity is viewed as offensive and dangerous. Should those regions be allowed to ban new church buildings?
Few Muslim countries allow freedom of religion. We should shame them by our example. Yes, it is indeed unfair that Muslims are allowed to build mosques in the US, while Christians are not allowed to build churches in Saudi Arabia, even though more than one million Catholic Filipinos live and work in Saudi Arabia. In fact, the laws of Saudi Arabia (and many other Muslim nations) directly contradict the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights – which is binding on Saudi Arabia as a UN member[*]. What would we gain by lowering ourselves to the hypocrisy of Saudi Arabia?
The Gospel spreads through relationships and truth, not government enforcement. In Rodney Stark’s book Cities of God: The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban Movement and Conquered Rome, the Baylor historian and sociologist demonstrates that the early church grew from 150 Jesus followers to more than 30 million through ordinary relationships: family members, coworkers, neighbors. Elsewhere, Stark has suggested that gaining its status as the state religion of the Roman Empire actually slowed the growth of Christianity. If we want to share the love of Christ with Muslims, we can do so only by building relationships with them, not by isolating them from our community.
Muslims already live in Northern Kentucky. This mosque would not be built if there were not already a community of Muslims in Northern Kentucky. By opposing the mosque, I’m not sure what we gain other than antagonizing our neighbors. Opponents of the mosque cite fears of terrorism. But is there a faster way to turn a Muslim youth against the US than by making him feel hated and unwanted?
What should we do then?
Today, a major problem in Muslim countries is the perception that Christians are uncaring, immoral, and hypocritical. We may not be able to do much to shape the views of Muslims overseas, but shouldn’t we ensure that American Muslims see a better side of Christianity?
[*]Tellingly, the Saudis abstained from the original adoption.
MikeHickerson.com 