Reblog: The Consequences Of Spiritual Abuse

I came across the following post today: The Consequences Of Spiritual Abuse

[Excerpt]
“It was like having the door slammed shut in my face. They wouldn’t listen to me. They wouldn’t try to understand or see things any other way. There was no reasoning with them. There was no compromise possible. They were right, the arbiters and gate-keepers of Truth,and I was wrong.”

If you’ve ever been on the receiving end, even if the details differ, I’m sure you will identify.

For the rest of you, particularly if you are in any kind of position where you have some kind of authority or control over another church member, please read and make sure you don’t fall into abusing someone.

Reblog: Another review of “The Bible”, week 2

Lest you think my two reviews of “The Bible” miniseries have been unnecessarily critical and harsh, I invite you to read the following review posted at Patheos:

Dear Lord, Please Make the ChristianMingle.com Commercials Stop (or, my thoughts on week 2 of “The Bible” on The History Channel)

On IMDb I gave week 2 a rating of 2 out of 10. The above reviewer does the same. In my review I asked what kind of picture of God the series is painting to the viewer. The above reviewer asks a similar question. I’m not alone in finding the series off the mark and tedious.

When communicating with someone who has experienced spiritual abuse…

Many people never experience anything truly horrific in their spiritual lives. But some do. They are spiritually abused by those who, according to some kind of religious hierarchy, enshrined in laws, regulations, and policies, exert power over them. When communicating with those who have been spiritually abused, here are some pointers:

What Not to Say to Someone Who Has Suffered Spiritual Abuse

My worldview might be Orthodox

I just read a post by Frank Schaeffer over at Patheos, titled, Why Evangelical Bible Idolatry Sucks and Why I Go to a Greek Orthodox Church Even Though It’s A Mess Too. The way he describes his theology and worldview, as formed by the Greek Orthodox church, many aspects are very close to how I’ve come to see things. Does that make me more Orthodox in comparison to other branches of Christianity?

What are some of the examples of Orthodoxy that resonate with me? Here are a few examples, in order.

“Love Trumping Theology”

I find the above phrasing a tad confounding. It means, “The practice of love takes priority over theological correctness.” Schaeffer writes,

This loving “swooping up” also changes brains by producing a sense of benign tribal belonging, in this case to a mostly benevolent tribe. It isn’t about correct belief, let alone if the Bible is “true” (whatever that means) but about the brain-changing effect of community and the humbling mystery of unconditional love experienced in the “ordinary” in a sacramental context.

Absolute Certainty is Unattainable

Religious belief is a personal conviction based on available knowledge, personal experience, and ultimately, personal choice as to what to believe.

To believe something – rather than just stumbling into a malleable opinion — you’d have to have considered all the options. And that’s impossible.

Perfection is Found Only In Jesus

The Bible is not perfect. Is it not inerrant or infallible. It is a record of human thought describing God.

If Jesus is God then Jesus has the right to contradict the very imperfect book in which he has the misfortune to have his biography trapped. Jesus transcends the book he’s trapped in. He does this because he is the perfect fulfillment of an imperfect human tradition.

Jesus is more important than the Bible.

Jesus does not “fit” any “biblical interpretation,” which makes the text less important than him.

Christus Victor

Legal, forensic, penal-substitution models of the atonement are rejected as false and harmful ways of representing Christ’s work on the cross.

Jesus introduces the transforming possibility of nonviolence and forgiveness to our retributive primate way of being human that ensnares the rest of the Bible.

Until Jesus, the Bible is the story of retributive sacrifice to an angry “god” modeled on a pagan paradigm. Jesus ends sacrifice. Jesus is the opposite of a “substitutionary atonement.” He is the contradiction of human conceptions of justice projected on a “god” created by pagans and Jews in our own retributive image. This is where Jesus smashes “atonement theory.” Jesus’ death is an act of grace not the violent continuation sacrifice. Jesus’ death stops the sacrificial principle — the dark side of religion – forever.

Value of Uncertainty and Relationships

Modernism and the Western European influence place great value on certainty. Salvation does not require certainty. Rather, it requires community.

Some of the earliest Church Fathers — who themselves were partially responsible for the formation of the canon of the New Testament portion of what would (400 years later) become “The Bible” — believed that portions of “Old Testament” scriptures pointed to this apophatic anti-certainty anti-theology approach…

The more mystery-orientated Orthodox Church is less split than the more theologically inclined Western Church with its Reformation and all that followed…

The more you read about the Word the less you know the Word because the Word does not live in a book but is an actuality to be experienced. Truth is not to be found in writings about The Truth but only in The Truth within a living, not academic relationship…

In Jesus’ day, holiness codes of “correct belief” kept Jews from experiencing the full rich human community. They lived in separation from the “other” and the “unclean.” Likewise virtually every church today — including the more juridical and right wing and evangelical-influenced parts of the Orthodox Church — has some form of holiness code… And Jesus courted disaster because of the way he showed extraordinary mercy to those who had been deemed “outside” the grace of God…

According to the humble apophatic tradition the goal of discipleship is not about making sure we behave so that God will accept us. It is rather about maintaining strong relationships with other people and through that action, through this “spiritual kiss,” as St. Maximos says, the soul comes to the Word of God, because it gathers to itself the words of salvation—in other words mercy and love.

New Blog to discuss Revelation

Our church group recently finished a year-long trip through the Epistle of Romans.

Beginning this week we begin our next journey: this time in the book of Revelation. I started a new blog, Revelation Road Trip, where our discussion outlines and a few highlights from each week can be found.

Plug: Thoughtless Faith

I think that perhaps a thoughtful atheist is closer to the Kingdom than a thoughtless Christian.

Full article at http://www.battlefortruth.org/ArticlesDetail.asp?id=389

"Too often, I encounter thoughtless Christians who, frankly, know little or nothing about what they believe and why they believe it and, worse, have little interest in changing their condition. I am not sure they ever even give these larger questions a second thought. Instead their faith, it seems, is often based on a common set of popular assumptions that fall under the banner of Christianity with which they agree. In other words, they believe in God, Jesus, the Bible, conservative values, and so on, but they scarcely know or demonstrate how these beliefs should impact their lives...

"I respect this friend because he takes seriously the ultimate questions of life and he is endeavoring to make sense of the world... While I disagree with my friend’s worldview, I cannot condemn it as being thoughtless. He has invested tremendous energy and effort into trying to understand and work out his perspective of life and the world. More so, I fear, than many professing Christians."

ATdoay: State of Adventist Church in Japan

http://www.atoday.com/content/adventist-sun-setting-land-rising-sun

Dennis Hokama writes the above article in which he relates the decline of Adventism in Japan and how that may be a portent - a "canary in the mine" - of Adventism in other developed nations.

Against Fundamentalism

Here are a couple of links responding to a resurgence of fundamentalism. The first is a sermon, and the second uses the first as a launching point for further comments on the topic.

1. Answering Fundamentalists from Adventist Today
2. The Adventist Myth of the Bible Only

Plug: Time to take back the Adventist Church

In light of some of the events that transpired at the General Conference session last week, I found a blog post that is particularly relevant: Time to take back the Adventist Church. It begins --

A while ago the following article was submitted to Adventist Today who appear to have rejected the article for publication so in fairness I thought I would publish it here as it almost seems prophetic when we consider the events of the recent General Conference selection of President and his sermon this last week.

Other comments, editorials, and perspectives regarding the session from non-official sources can be found at

• Spectrum Magazine blog
• Adventist Today web site

Official reporting can be found in the Adventist Review online archives.

Law of Unintended Consequences

Over at the Spectrum blog an article was recently posted, Citing Apostasy, Michigan Conference Removes La Sierra University From Employee Subsidy.

I am not going to debate or opine whether or not they have or don’t have the right to do that, nor whether they were right or wrong in doing so. I am going to discuss a possible unintended consequence of the action.

For probably as long as the denomination has existed in an organized fashion, I’m sure people have questioned actions of its organizations and leaders. One of the few ways in which ordinary, individual members have any say is through tithes. Of course any church member knows the official position on the giving of tithe: The Conference is the “storehouse” and it is mandatory for members to give tithe to the Conference. All of us know that this has been disregarded throughout history, in greater or lesser numbers; perhaps greater in more recent years.

What the action of the Michigan Conference does is grant official legitimacy to withholding promised funds in order to express displeasure towards and to attempt to coerce change from an official denominational entity. It sets an official precedent that monetary means may be used by one church entity against another. It provides justification for all the members and churches in the past, present, and future who don’t approve of official policies and actions to withhold tithes and offerings.

Plug: Did God Really Say All That?

James Coffin, senior pastor of the Markham Woods Church of Seventh-day Adventists in Longwood, Florida, writes over at Spectrum, Divining the Voice in My Head.

I often hear the expression (used rather glibly, I must say): “God told me.” The words are typically the preamble to a description of some strongly held conviction. But the expression leaves me uncomfortable…

Anyway, as I read the scriptures, I wonder if maybe the people in Bible times weren’t given to the use and misuse of the “God told me” expression just as we are now. Maybe even more so. “God told” people a lot of things back then, it seems. And judging just from the context and the ethics of the advice given, I think it possible that there may have been times when God gets the credit for something that came from other sources…

I find it fascinating that we attribute actions to God that, if they were engaged in by any human, would call down the strongest of denunciations. Yet we commend God for them. If, for example, any humans had caused another to suffer as Hagar was suffering there in the desert, we would find their role despicable. But we never even blink when suggesting that God told Abraham to take steps that were going to bring such pain to another human. Why…?

Could it be that it was because Abraham [in justifying sending away Hagar and Ishmael] too willingly attributed his own thoughts to God? Could it be that if Abraham had removed the “God told me” phrase from his vocabulary, he would have been forced to ponder more deeply and more critically the thoughts that were running through his mind? Could it be that he would have behaved in a more moral, more ethical, more loving manner if he knew that he personally had to accept responsibility for his actions and couldn’t hang the blame on God?

And could it be that we today need to face up to that same reality?

[Click for article.]

Plugging a couple more posts

Both are from the reinventing the adventist wheel blog.

The first: Egocentric mission or inclusivist gospel?

“… [If] bringing people into a saving faith in Jesus Christ is equivalent to bringing them into membership within Adventism. If this is the case, then there are a number of consequences… An inordinate burden in saving the whole world… Leads to an exclusivist mentality… Prevents authentic learning from others…”

The second: Exporting Adventism

“Can we as Seventh-day Adventists celebrate people’s rescue from sin (its current destruction & future consequences), even if they do not come to be a part of the Adventist denomination/movement?”

I’m not the only one…

The following linked post, Saving Jesus from Adventism, echoes many of my sentiments.

Every movement wrestles with the human inclination to makes saints out of it's originating leader-sinners. We all too soon forget that those we celebrate were considered, in the eyes of their contemporaries, miserably unruly heretics.

There is a predictable entropic shift from dynamic to static when a 'faith that works' becomes a success-bandwagon filled to overcapacity with those who don't 'get it'. What soon remains is that which doesn't work because it is not of faith. The proverbial 'tail inevitably wags the dog' in silly, yet spiritually fatal efforts to make Kodak moments of the previous, rather than persistently and continually grasping heavenward for the Precious. Wonder in heavenly wideness, lapses hopelessly into narrow and meaningless wander in humdrum wilderness.

Click for rest of article at Re-inventing the Adventist Wheel.

Getting rain

We’ve had rain off and on for the last three days now – back to “normal” Petersburg weather. It does help reduce the dust that’s been flying about, so I guess that’s good. It’s also cooler, and I’m happy about that.

For some reason I’ve been feeling rather tired and run down the last few days as well. Sleep patterns have been somewhat erratic. I got up at around 4:15 a.m. today after getting to bed around 9 p.m. last night. One of my lower eyelids has been twitching for two days now…

On a rather different topic, why is fruit so expensive in Japan? Take the case of cherries. I found a blog that discussed the effort that goes into growing cherries. In order to be marketable, the final result must be free of blemish, have the right colors and proper taste. In order to accomplish this the cherries are grown under shelter (to keep out the rain), with heaters during the winter, proper ventilation to control temperature, rental honeybees to pollinate, and branches bundled in threes to make sure each fruit gets the necessary exposure to sunlight. Elise purchased a bag of cherries yesterday. I looked at its contents, and I’m pretty sure 90%+ of the fruit in there wouldn’t make it to a Japanese market.

Plug: Comment on Sabbath Keeping

On Adventist Perspective, Andy Hanson writes in part, responding to the current issue of Adventist World,

Why is it then that Adventist students are made to feel that they are in some way desecrating the Sabbath if they attend a class and take an examination? When I read about a student who has to give up a career because he or she has been taught that to take a final examination on Sabbath is an unpardonable sin, I want to scream…

For the rest of the blog post, go here.

Plug: John Ortberg's Lessons from the Election

“The seven deadly sins of evangelicals in politics.”

I am a political junkie. During a presidential campaign, I will often buy a couple of newspapers a day just to keep up. But it strikes me that presidential campaigns can often bring out the worst as well as the best in us.So I want to propose the “Seven Deadly Sins of Evangelicals and Politics.” You may have a few of your own to add. But the spirit of such lists in the past was not to add to our store of information but to contrition. So feel free to confess while you read.

See the rest at http://blog.christianitytoday.com/outofur/archives/2008/11/john_ortbergs_l.html

Some thoughts on "evangelism"

What is "evangelism?" Is it preaching the gospel, disseminating knowledge about the gospel, convincing people to believe in the gospel, or demonstrating the gospel in action?

This brings up another question: What is the "gospel?" Is it Christian teachings, a set of Christian facts and knowledge, a Christian worldview, or God's ultimate desire restore all things to perfection and how we can become partner and friends (i.e., disciples...?) with God's in his desire for the world?

For some ten to fifteen years now, I've become increasingly uncomfortable with the definitions for both "evangelism" and "gospel" that I've too frequently heard. Evangelism is too often limited to "preaching the gospel." The gospel is nearly always defined to be something like "a set of doctrines." In other words, we evangelize because we believe that if people don't know and believe a set of doctrines, they will be lost and doomed to punishment. After all, isn't this what Matthew 28:19-20 says?

If indeed the ultimate goal is to make sure people listen to and accept doctrines, then any means used to maximize the ends are acceptable, right? It doesn't matter if the means employ some "white lie" deceptions, or a bit of bribing, or coercion, or manipulation -- as long as people can be placed in a position to hear (because the message content is primary), then we've done our part in evangelism, right? No, because I believe the means is the message. How we live and how we relate to others says more about what we really believe than any seminar or sermon will.

I refer you to two external blog entries. Both reflect my reservations and strong discomfort with evangelism as frequently practiced. Both are authored by Seventh-day Adventist pastors and raise issues regarding the current state of evangelism within the church. The second (as the title suggests) proposes some solutions to the crisis.

• Loren Seibold, Truthful Evangelism on Spectrum Blog
• Ryan Bell, Missional Church: Recovering Evangelism as Authentic, Credible Witness (click PDF link in the post)

This is why I am rather uncomfortable with evangelism initiatives coming from "up high" in the church hierarchy. Most of these administrative initiatives assume the only really valid form of evangelism is meetings and preaching, or that any personal evangelism must eventually lead to mass evangelism. It puts unnecessary pressure on local churches and their leaders to outwardly do something and to employ godless measures to make their reports look good.

I intend to do what I can to resist both the pressures and temptations to employ any means other than genuine love and honesty in genuine evangelism. To do otherwise would be to give into, employ, and support the methods of the devil (c.f., Desire of Ages, pp. 22, 678, 759).

How many paths to eternal life?

Monte Sahlin comments on a recent Pew Research Center survey where the following was asked:

As I read a pair of statements, tell me whether the first statement or the second statement comes closer to your own views even if neither is exactly right: My religion is the one true faith leading to eternal life, or Many religions can lead to eternal life.

How would you answer? What did the survey find in the American population? Read on to find out.

Make sure to go to the end of the post where Sahlin provides some of his observations and commentary regarding religion and spirituality in the postmodern context. I think Sahlin's post is quite relevant to the current set of Sabbath School studies on missionaries as agents of hope.

Discipline of "I don't know"

I came across a blog entry today with which I identify. The more knowledge I acquire, the more I realize how much I don't know. At times I might appear to be speaking or writing with confidence, but really, in my mind, they are more often than not beliefs that I hope are true.

I think I've whittled my basis (pillars) of faith and belief to three points: 1) That God is love. 2) That this love is at least partly expressed by God in giving everyone, including me, freedom to explore the vastness of the universe of matter, ideas, and the unseen in ways that are both beneficial and harmful. 3) That God desires everyone, though not everyone will, through experimentations in freedom, to come to know and accept that his ways are best.

Everything else, for me, is pretty much hypothesis and theory -- I think they're true at this point in my experience, but I may change my perspective or belief if any turn out to not fit the three points above. For me, all of the other details of theology (salvation, justification, grace, Jesus, sanctification, etc.) are derived from and are further explanations of those points. I hold (or at least I like to think I do) most of my beliefs loosely.

The Beauty of Ambiguity

I found a blog post elsewhere by the title, The Beauty of Ambiguity. It's an entry by the author of the book The Shack. The entry itself uses elements from the book, so if you've read it, the entry makes much more sense because you'd understand the context. But regardless, I think you will get the main themes.

What the blog entry discusses resonates with me because in my search for God and in my growing relationship with him, I've had people ask similar questions of me. Some of the thoughts that I am experimenting with, trying to wrestle with, are indeed quite different from traditional orthodoxy.

By the way, I do recommend The Shack. It has the potential to do what C. S. Lewis wrote about images of God: "My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself." (From A Grief Observed as quoted by The Good Word for April 5, 2008.)