Wants, Needs, and Witchcraft

So here I am at 2:00AM thinking about some of the things Ben said last night, and I figure a lot of the stuff he said was dead on point. Him talking about Wants vs. Needs really hit the nail on the head in my life, because that's something that I struggle with on a daily basis. I thought that maybe I should write down the things I was thinking. Who knows? It may help somebody else.

I think the best thing Ben did tonight in terms of an illustration was bringing up relationships. I'll even submit that I think that's one of the biggest struggles around here. Personally, I've wondered for a long time what the hold-up is. I've even said some very impatient, very disrespectful things to God about it. I've asked Him how He can see how much I fight to try and live the way He wants me to and not give me a partner to fight that fight with. I've told Him more than a few times that I don't think that's fair. Of course, that's usually in the heat of the moment and I regret it later, but I truly feel that way at those times nonetheless. What I've come to realize lately that that line of thinking is very legalistic and at times I could even classify it as witchcraft or sorcery.

Does that really sound that strange to just say? Maybe just because we have some crazy stereotypes. What is witchcraft anyway? Witchcraft is performing rituals, saying specific words, or doing certain things in order to get the powers that be, or in the case of reality, God to do something specific for us. In the world of pagans, that may mean weird things with candles and strange words. In the world of “organized Christianity” that may mean praying with certain words, only renting movies of a certain rating, only wearing certain clothes and going certain places, and then expecting that because of everything that YOU'VE done God will pay you back out of His obligation to be “just.” That's a warped definition of “just” and it's trying to control God. That's the essence of witchcraft.

That being said, does God reward believers, His kids? Absolutely. Hebrews 11:6 says that “without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him.” Notice though: what is the believer seeking? Is he seeking a wife? Money? Power? Social Status? Ease of Living? Absence of Sickness? No. He's seeking God Himself. If you're seeking God, none of those other things would really be a reward, would they? It's not what you're looking for. The reward for seeking God is God. Those other things aren't necessarily guaranteed. If You or I ever find ourselves living a lifestyle of doing things in order to get God to reciprocate and give us the things we want, we're living a life of idolatry by worshipping something other than God. Sometimes we even have the nerve to ask God to help us worship this other god. Does this sound familiar: “God, I'd do anything to get her back. Just tell me what You want!” Or how about this: “God, he's the one I want, so just tell me what to do and I'll do it if You'll let me have him! I know you can do it!” I'm definitely guilty of the first one of those two (You won't find me asking God for a guy). That's some witchcrafty type stuff right there, believing that because of some things we do that God is obligated to do things for us or believing that God is someone to be bargained with, like He actually needs anything we could possibly give Him. He made the universe by speaking! What could we possibly do for Him that He couldn't do Himself? We live lives of purity not because we're trying to earn good things from God, but because we love Him.

But even with all of that, there's nothing wrong with desiring a partner. God said in Genesis that it's not good for man to be alone; we weren't designed for life on an island, destined to live in solitude for forever. There is a deep desire in every human being for companionship. What we have done as a culture is idealize and deify this search for companionship. All of our stories are “love” stories. Even the action/adventure type movies always have the guy-gets-girl or girl-gets-guy subplot going on. Heck, horror movies even fit the bill. They're way off the mark because nine times out of ten they show sex without any semblance of intimacy and oneness through marriage, but they're still appealing to that primal desire to not be alone. We go wrong when we believe these idealized stories. We've been raised to believe that when we find this girl (guys) or this guy (girls), everything will fall into place. If things don't click, that means they must not be “the one” so we drop them and move on to the next prospect, hoping that things will be more instantaneous, more perfect. Sometimes the opposite is true. Sometimes things don't work out and we degrade ourselves, convincing ourselves with every word that they were perfect and the reason it didn't work out was completely our fault. We look for completion in a heart that is just as twisted, mangled, and carnal as our own instead of looking for completion through the Author and Finisher of our faith, Jesus.

To the guys (I'm also having to remind myself of EVERY SINGLE POINT in this list): Treat girls with respect. Treat them like the daughters of God that they are. At the same time though, remember that they are only human. They make mistakes just like you and me. If you seek fulfillment in these girls, they're going to let you down. Don't put them on a pedestal that defines your manhood, because if you do you're only ever going to feel inadequate, or at best, trapped in a cycle of performance and proving yourself to her. You are made in the image of God and can find fulfillment in Jesus alone. Ask yourself this: If you were to live your life forever as a single guy, never marrying a girl, would you feel like God had slighted you? Would you be angry at Him? If so, it's good for us to remember that these are HIS daughters anyway, not our wives/girlfriends/prizes for the taking. Why do you live the way you do? Is it because you want God to give you someone in return for your goodness? That's idolatry and witchcraft. You're worshipping something other than God, and God shares His worship with no one. He's probably not going to help you worship an idol. Our God is not a weak, passive God. He's a warrior. Spend the time NOT in a relationship to learn and grow in Christ. Let Jesus show you what being a man really means. Learn how to pursue something wholeheartedly and without fear; let Jesus show you what perfect love really means, because perfect love drives out all fear (1 John 4:18). Only then will you be prepared to love a woman the way God would have you do. If you're letting the girls pursue you, something is wrong. The man is supposed to be the initiator; we love them enough as our sister in Christ first, so we give them the right to accept us or reject us. It's pretty cowardly to fear rejection so much that we allow them to make the first move. That's not being a man. That's being a joke. No real woman wants a joke.

To the girls: I'd tell you what I told the guys: don't let the love of a man define your worth and beauty as a woman. If a guy isn't chasing you at the moment, take the time to love Jesus even more and get to know Him even more. Let Jesus make you wise. Get spoiled by His love. Get used to that kind of love, so that way when a less-than-desirable guy comes along and tries to sweep you off your feet with a few sly words, you'll see right through his two-bit sham. No man can love you like God can, but if God has it in His plan for you to marry, then you better believe that He is training up one of His sons to be able to treat you like you deserve to be treated: as a daughter of the King. Wait for that guy. In the meantime, there are lots of your brothers in Christ who are in the process of growing and getting to know their Dad. These guys, not of their own choosing, are hardwired very physically. Because of that, sometimes when you think you dress “cute,” you make these guys who are trying to live for Jesus stumble. Now I'm not saying I think it's inappropriate for a girl to try to look nice...I'm just saying that sometimes one needs to think if it's really necessary to own a shirt that is that low-cut. Or that tight. The “too-tight” thing goes for pants as well. What's the goal of those clothes? What image do you want for yourself? What kind of guys do you think that will attract? We live in a world where guys are bombarded with sex everyday. According to lightedcandle.org, more than 70% of men ages 18-34 visit a pornographic website at least once monthly and the internet is a significant factor in 2 out of 3 divorces. Think about that when you go through your closet. Of the ten guys that will see you in that outfit, seven of them have seen porn at least once that month. Do you want to make yourself look anything remotely like the sex objects they've had stuck in front of them?

I've said some pretty blunt and to-the-point stuff on here, but I'm not trying to sound condemning. Heck, I'll admit that I could smack myself in the face and yell “hypocrite” really loud just for writing this, because at times I am. But we're human. If we are in Christ, we are new creations, but we still inhabit fallen bodies with a tendency to do fallen things. I love my Christian family and I know relationships and sex cause a whole lot of pain, and I don't want that for anyone. I'm not trying to condemn. I thank God every day that I have Christian friends and a church that I can discuss things like this with. Relationships, Sex...some would keep from talking about this in church because it's “inappropriate.” I think the Church is the most appropriate place in all of creation to talk about these things, because where the Church is silent, other voices will speak. It's all in love.

Emerging Stuff: The Revised Edition

If.
Then.

These two words make up one of the stronger tools in the English language (as well as many other languages, as a matter of fact) and are used to create what's called a “conditional sentence,” implying that the occurrence of the second half of the sentence is contingent on whether or not the first half takes place.

• “You will often run in, in religious communities, in faith communities, to the idea “if you would just repent, then God would...”
• “For the first Christians, repentance was never 'if you would just do these things, then God would do these things'. It was 'do you understand what God has done?'”
• “Repentance was never trying to get God to do something because God has already made peace with all things.”

On the surface level, all of that stuff sounds fantastic. If you look at it closer though, it's pretty far off base.

The man's name in the video is Rob Bell. He is seen here in a clip from his recent tour “The Gods Aren't Angry.” He's gotten pretty popular lately through his Nooma videos and his Zondervan-sponsored “Everything is Spiritual” tour. Although he doesn't actually call himself an emergent, Rob Bell's doctrinal viewpoints are very similar to the those of Brian McLaren, one of the members of the board of directors for the organization “Emergent Village.” The emergent village is the large umbrella organization for what has become known as the “emergent church.”

I'll go ahead and say it...the emerging church looks pretty enticing to my generation. It's edgy. It's different, nonconformist. Andy Crouch said it best in Christianity Today when he wrote the article “The Emergent Mystique”:

"Gentlemen, start your hair dryers--not since the Jesus Movement of the early 1970s has a Christian phenomenon been so closely entangled with the self-conscious cutting edge of U.S. culture. Frequently urban, disproportionately young, overwhelmingly white, and very new--few have been in existence for more than five years--a growing number of churches are joining the ranks of the 'emerging church.'"

Like the video clip, emergent theology sounds pretty good on the surface. If you quickly listen to the short segment above, it sounds a lot like the grace preaching that we know and love. Listen a little bit closer though and you find a drastically different view on what the death of Jesus really means. Here are some more statements from nationally prominent emergent leaders Brian McLaren and Rob Bell:

"I don’t believe making disciples must equal making adherents to the Christian religion. It may be advisable in many (not all!) circumstances to help people become followers of Jesus and remain within their Buddhist, Hindu or Jewish contexts … rather than resolving the paradox via pronouncements on the eternal destiny of people more convinced by or loyal to other religions than ours, we simply move on … To help Buddhists, Muslims, Christians, and everyone else experience life to the full in the way of Jesus (while learning it better myself), I would gladly become one of them (whoever they are), to whatever degree I can, to embrace them, to join them, to enter into their world without judgment but with saving love as mine has been entered by the Lord (A Generous Orthodoxy, 260, 262, 264)."

-Brian McLaren, More Ready Than You Realize

When I hear this, I feel like I'm being told that it's ok to put Jesus in a pantheon. I feel like I'm being told that the differences of eternal destiny between Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam don't really need resolution; all they need is to add a little bit of Jesus in and everything will be fine. Now, this is just one guys opinion, but I don't really think the messages of Jesus, Gautama, Muhammad, and the Vedas are very compatible. If the Jesus that you worship fits in with these guys, chances are you're not really worshipping the Jesus of the Bible.

"What if tomorrow someone digs up definitive proof that Jesus had a real, earthly, biological father named Larry, and archaeologists find Larry's tomb and do DNA samples and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the virgin birth was really just a bit of mythologizing the Gospel writers threw in to appeal to the followers of the Mithra and Dionysian religious cults that were hugely popular at the time of Jesus, whose gods had virgin births?...

What if that spring were seriously questioned? Could a person keep on jumping? Could a person still love God? Could you still be a Christian? Is the way of Jesus still the best possible way to live? Or does the whole thing fall apart?”

-Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis

Rob has a reason for asking if we can keep jumping. In fact, there's a whole chapter in his book called “Jump.” Rob makes an analogy. If Christianity were a trampoline, we could imagine our doctrinal points, our theology as the springs. These springs are orthodoxy. Our ability to actually live out the faith is the membrane, the springy part. The bouncy part is orthopraxy. According to this analogy, it's possible to insinuate (which Bell does) that a couple of springs can be removed and the trampoline will still function.

I love Mark Driscoll. He's one of my favorite pastors. I heard him say something in a sermon the other day that went something like this. There have been lots of great, brilliant, theologians throughout history. You've got your Martin Luthers, your John Pipers, your Jonathan Edwards. And then you've got the random guy who walks into church on a Sunday morning in 2009 and announces that he's figured out some great theological conundrum. We'd probably laugh at him. Mark's absolutely right. There are just some things that we don't understand. It's because of these things that we don't understand, these passages that we interpret to mean different things, that we have different denominations. We may disagree on the small things, but to be a Christian, you have to agree on the big points. The big points are things like the sinfulness of humanity, the atoning sacrifice of Jesus, the grace of the Father in sending Jesus, the Resurrection. Things like that.

Some things just aren't worth arguing over and it's just more productive to not fight with each other over them. The big points don't fit into that category. Do you have communion every time you meet, or do you do it in intervals, or do you just do it every so often? Not a big deal. What if the virgin birth never really happened and it was just made up to make the story more appealing to the current audience? That is something worth fighting over. If Jesus wasn't born of a virgin, then Jesus is a descendant of Adam and is still under the curse. If Jesus is still under the curse, then he is still subject to human sin nature. If Jesus is still subject to fleshly sin nature, then he would have sinned. If he sinned, then he is no longer an acceptable sacrifice for our sin and our faith is in vain.

"I believe people are saved not by objective truth, but by Jesus. Their faith isn’t in their knowledge, but in God."

-Brian McLaren

This is another big idea in emergent theology—Postmodernism, the idea of relative truth. Basically, truth that isn't even really truth at all, truth that isn't absolute. What may be true for one person isn't necessarily true for another. Everything is relative. The problems with this point of view are pretty obvious when you put Postmodernism up against scripture:

• Scripture is the Word of God.
• Jesus is the living embodiment of the Word of God: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.” John 1:1-5
• The Word contains all the prophecies about messiah, including the prophecies about the virgin birth: “Therefore the Lord Himself with give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” Isaiah 7:14
• Jesus said that God's Word is truth: “Sanctify them by Your truth. You word is truth.” John 17:17
• If Scripture is the Word of God, Jesus is the living Word, and the Word is the truth, then Jesus is Himself the truth: “Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.'” John 14:6
• Jesus is THE truth.

Saying that we aren't saved by truth means that we aren't saved by Jesus, because Jesus is truth. Our faith depends on us knowing the reality of who Jesus really is: the Son of God, the Living Word, Immanuel, the Truth, the Sinless Messiah, born of a virgin and fulfillment of all the prophecies concerning Him. If He were to not fulfill even one of them, then He is no longer messiah and is no longer capable of saving us from our sins. Our faith would be in vain. Saying that being a Christian is possible in the absence of the virgin birth just doesn't work. It destroys who Jesus is and therefore destroys the Gospel. On several occasions Jesus asked people who they said He was. Knowing who He is, knowing His identity, is crucial to our salvation.

The general idea behind Bell's speech “The Gods Aren't Angry” is this: for thousands of years mankind has given sacrifices to various gods because they feared retribution. God sent Jesus to show the people that He was never mad at them in the first place. Now, armed with this new knowledge, mankind can go back to the peaceful relationship they should have had with Him all along. This view unduly elevates fallen man to a state of holiness and acceptability to God and brings God down to the level of tolerating and glossing over sin, making Him unjust and no longer holy.

God has no tolerance of sin. He's never glossed over sin. Sin has always required the spilling of blood, from the very beginning. When Adam and Eve sinned and were hiding in their nakedness, what did God clothe them with? Animal skin. That death of those animals is the first death of a sacrifice for sin. Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin (Hebrews 9:22). God demands it.

“You will often run in...to the idea 'if you would just repent, then God would...”

There's a reason that that idea seems to pop up a lot. It's in the Bible. And it's pretty much verbatim in John 1:8-10: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.” There's the If/Then statement. Also, in Romans 10:9: “that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” There are several take home points here:

• We have to confess our sins, meaning that prior to salvation through the grace of Jesus' death on the cross, we are in a state of sinfulness, unacceptable to be in the presence of God.
• To say that we don't have any sin makes God the Father a liar, and the Word isn't in is. Remember, Jesus is the living embodiment of the Word.
• Confessing the Lordship of Jesus is a requirement. Believing God raised Him from the dead is a requirement.

With these facts straight, we can be sure of this: Jesus didn't come to let us know we were fine with Him in the first place. We are saved by the Truth: Jesus and His grace toward us. Believing that God only sent Jesus to show us we should have been relating to Him peacefully all along says that we had no sin, which calls the Father a liar. It just doesn't work to see the death of Jesus this way.

“For the first Christians, repentance was never 'if you would just do these things, then God would do these things'. It was 'do you understand what God has done?'”

At first glance, this looks like the doctrine of grace. This looks like endorsement of the belief that we can't do it (salvation) ourselves. In reality, taken in the context of the entire message, Bell isn't saying that we can't do it ourselves. He's saying that the point of the cross is that we never needed to because God didn't see anything wrong with us in the first place. This view of what happened on the cross sees Jesus as no more a gesture of goodwill so that mankind would understand that a lamb didn't need to be killed every time we did something wrong.

Scripture contradicts this as well. Romans says very clearly that we've all sinned, and it also very clearly defines the reason for Jesus sacrifice and what His death on the cross means to us:

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus." Romans 3:23-26

Jesus was propitiation for our sins, not just a show that God put on to make us feel good about ourselves. Sin has a price, and it's death: “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23). Jesus died so that God would be able to justify us. Contrary to popular belief, there are a few things God can't do:

• God Cannot Sin.
• “This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.” 1 John 1:%
• God Cannot Tempt.
• “Let no one say when he is tempted, 'I am tempted by God'; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone.” James 1:13
• God Cannot Tolerate Sin.
• “Behold, the LORD's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; Nor His ear heavy that it cannot hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God; and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear. For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; Your lips have spoken lies, your tongue has muttered perversity.” Isaiah 59:1-3

God the Father, showing us His grace and mercy, sent Jesus to pay our price so that He could clothe us in righteousness and justify us before Him. If we believe that Jesus died just to show us that God was never mad at the sin in our lives, then we leave ourselves with two options. Either God is not truly holy because He can tolerate sin (which makes Scripture a lie, blasphemes God, and invalidates the bible), or God is truly holy, we had no sin in the first place, and God sent Jesus to prove our own holiness to us (according to John 1:8-10, if we say we have no sin then we make God a liar, which again invalidates His holiness and blasphemes Him). Neither of these approaches work. The only conclusion we can reach about Jesus death from these verses is this: that we were, in fact, sinners before God, in need of a savior because God despised our sin. In His grace, He loved us and sent us Jesus. Jesus was required as payment for our sins, the price of the debt that we could never pay. Through the grace of God by the death of Jesus on the cross, the Father now sees us as righteous when we believe on Jesus because of the shedding of His blood. A transaction occurred on the cross. Our freedom was bought. It was more than just a show.

“Repentance was never trying to get God to do something because God has already made peace with all things.”

This is what Jesus had to say about the effect his coming to earth would have in regards to temporal peace: “Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. For I have come to 'set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law' and 'a man's enemies will be those of his own household'” (Matthew 10:34-36). Jesus said that His presence would cause families to divide of the controversy He would cause. This is true. It happens every day around the world. In some countries, if you accept Christ as Lord, then your family has a funeral for you.

Also in James 4:4-5: “Adulterers and Adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, 'The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously'?”. Our culture, our world today, loves to assimilate things into itself. America itself is built on inclusion. Sometimes, the Christian faith just doesn't mix with the world, and when we concede key points like the virgin birth or the sinfulness of mankind to make our faith seem more plausible or friendly to the world, God is not at peace with that. To befriend the world is to make an enemy of God. Some things are just not flexible. Some things are absolute.

“He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.” John 3:36

Think back to an earlier mentioned verse: Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. When you believe in Jesus, you have the Life; you have Him now. Our soul is redeemed already and we just wait for the redemption of our bodies when He returns. Our corrupted bodies may die, but our soul already has the eternal life that God promised us if we believe in Jesus. We presently possess that. Inversely, if you don't believe in Jesus, the present tense still applies; the wrath of God currently abides on you. Think back to the passage from Isaiah. Sin has caused God to hide His face from us, to turn away because of the blood and iniquity on our hands. The wrath of God is the absence of God's help and intervention, the turning away of His face from us. Jesus pays for our sins when we believe and, through His grace, closes the gap of separation between God and us that our sin created.

Truth is important. Knowing who Jesus really is, why He really died, and what really happened when He did is important. It's so important that it determines the validity of what we call “Gospel.” The views put out by the emerging church don't always line up with what scripture says about who Jesus is and what He did, and that's why I've written this.