The Fulfillment of the Law

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If a church has been teaching heresy for awhile, how should it correct itself? How can a church community reorganize and repair in a situation like this?

One of the best ways to do this is to look to Jesus, the person at the center of the Christian faith, and to value the scriptures he taught about. Jesus taught many things about the Old Testament, and that’s why it’s still important today. The New Testament doesn’t cancel out the Old Testament, but rather, it gives it more meaning. The Old Testament contains the seeds of the Christian faith.

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”

Jesus in Matthew 5:17

Below are some reasons why the Old Testament is still important today.

• The Old Testament includes themes of how God repairs the cyclical nature of sin and wants to dwell with people. God’s forgiveness is present with people and He cleanses guilt.
• God closes the gap between sinful and messy people and His mercy seat is present.
• We learn that we should come to God in a simple, humble and sacred way.

Power in Weakness

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As Jesus went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.”

John 9:1-3

During the time of the gospel of John, common thought was that if someone had a disability, that it was because of sin. Jesus turned this view upside down, by saying that a disability existed in someone’s life, so that God could show His power.

Two accounts in scripture that show the works of God on display for someone who experienced a disability, are the healing at the pool in John 5:1-15 and when Jesus heals a man let down through the roof of a house in Luke 5:17-26 (I mention more about the Luke 5 passage below).

I have the great privilege of journeying with people who experience disabilities and seeing the power of God in their lives.

I’ve noticed that sometimes a person can see their disability as a source of trauma and that the little voices inside them can put them down.

For people who do not experience a physical disability, there are other things that they experience that can hold them back in life.

The apostle Paul had some sort of thorn in his flesh and Jesus met him where he was weak. The way Paul responded to the thorn is described below.

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.

2 Corinthians 12:9

This verse can be applied today by helping someone who experiences a disability see the strength that comes with it.

Many people have an area where they have reached the end of themselves and cannot fix a problem. For people who do not experience a physical disability but that do experience some sort of “thorn in the flesh”, the thorn can be seen as a gift. Perhaps it will make a person more compassionate to others who have the same type of thorn or form of suffering.

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.”

2 Corinthians 1:3-4

One of my fears is that we are losing the ability as a society to help someone who experiences a disability or is suffering in some way, because we are afraid of doing or saying the wrong thing. 

The men who were carrying a paralyzed man on a mat (in Luke 5:17-26) could not find a way to carry him into the house to lay him before Jesus, because of the crowd. So they went up on the roof and lowered him on his mat through the tiles into the middle of the crowd, right in front of Jesus. This is an example of faith in action and effort put in to help someone in need, that must have looked awkward.

This scripture can be applied in our world today, in that, if we notice someone suffering, or another person struggling with a disability, we can ask with compassion, if we can help. We can do this even if we feel awkward about it, or don’t know exactly how to ask or what to do.

Some of the thoughts in this blog post were inspired by the Accessibility Conversations at Fight4Freedom.

Friendship with God

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Then the Lord said, “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know.” (Genesis 18:20-21)

Experiential knowledge is different than intellectual knowledge. The above verse shows this. God knew about the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah, but He still said that he would go down and see it for Himself.

If intellect is different than experience, it should impact the way we read the bible.

In Radical Christians and the Word of God: Authority, Bruxy Cavey states:

Jesus says (in John 5:37-40) that it is possible to follow the Bible, love the Bible, study the Bible – and never hear the voice of God. Furthermore, it is possible to memorize and meditate on the Bible, and never have God’s “word dwell in you”. Let this sink in. Unless we use the Bible as a pointer to Jesus, and then come to JESUS for our life, we are misusing the Bible.

 

Having said this, below are some ways that we can gain experiential knowledge of and a friendship with God, rather than only intellectual knowledge.

• Become other-centred. Invest in others and simply do the good that we can.

In Soul Keeping, John Ortberg states:

“Despite the rise of the mental health profession, people are becoming increasingly vulnerable to depression. Why? Martin Seligman, a brilliant psychologist with no religious ax to grind, has a theory that it’s because we have replaced church, faith, and community with a tiny little unit that cannot bear the weight of meaning. That’s the self. We’re all about the self. We revolve our lives around ourselves.” 

Moreover, Ezekiel 3:18-21 shows how we have a responsibility to share the truth of God, when we know it.

When I (the word of the LORD) say to a wicked person, ‘You will surely die,’ and you do not warn them or speak out to dissuade them from their evil ways in order to save their life, that wicked person will die for their sin, and I will hold you accountable for their blood. But if you do warn the wicked person and they do not turn from their wickedness or from their evil ways, they will die for their sin; but you will have saved yourself.

“Again, when a righteous person turns from their righteousness and does evil, and I put a stumbling block before them, they will die. Since you did not warn them, they will die for their sin. The righteous things that person did will not be remembered, and I will hold you accountable for their blood. But if you do warn the righteous person not to sin and they do not sin, they will surely live because they took warning, and you will have saved yourself.”

• Discern the heart behind the words that someone is saying, rather than being legalistic about the technical meaning of the words; or hear what the person actually meant, and not just what they said. 

In Discernment, Henri Nouwen stated:

Reading often means gathering information, acquiring new insight and knowledge, and mastering a new field. It can lead to degrees, diplomas, and certificates. Spiritual reading, however, is different. It means not simply reading about spiritual things but also reading about spiritual things in a spiritual way. That requires a willingness not just to read but to be read, not just to master but to be mastered by words. As long as we read the Bible or a spiritual book simply to acquire knowledge, our reading does not help us in our spiritual life. 

Moreover, Brene Brown said:

The good news is that a growing number of researchers believe that curiosity and knowledge-building grow together- the more we know, the more we want to know. The bad news is that many of us are raised believing that emotions aren’t worthy of our attention. In other words, we don’t know enough and/or we aren’t sufficiently aware of the power of our emotions and how they’re connected to our thoughts and behaviours, so we fail to get curious.

• Notice how what we know about how God works in the bible, impacts what we see. Because of the important concept of “sola scriptura”, there can be a tendency to make other elements that guide the Christian life like: reason, experience, and tradition; constantly line up with a specific systematic theological understanding of the bible. When we do this, we can inadvertently “throw out the baby with the bath water” and miss something important God may be trying to show us. Instead of doing this, we can also look for how God’s character that is seen in the bible, changes our own lives, the lives of others, the community we are in, and the world at large.

One example is seen in Romans 1:20:

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. 

What are some other ways that we can gain experiential knowledge of God, rather than only intellectual knowledge?

Pneumatology

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“The Spirit of God is like our breath. God’s Spirit is more intimate to us than we are to ourselves.” (Henri Nouwen)

Because the Holy Spirit knows us better than we know ourselves, it is impossible for any human being to fully understand it. And yet, at the same time, we don’t have to fully understand something or someone, in order to know and experience the reality of it/them.

In Christianity, there is a certain degree of orthodoxy that we subscribe to in our beliefs. For example, we believe that Jesus Christ died and rose again. We believe that we should love our neighbours as ourselves. Even though we must be orthodox when it comes to instructions like the ones just mentioned, I believe that some of the other concepts (like women in leadership or how to organise a church) are open to the Spirit’s leading on a church by church basis.

At times, the Holy Spirit will use “grey areas” like the ones mentioned above to test a church or ministry. The Holy Spirit may include and show love to people in situations, that do not fit into a neat and tidy category.

In regards to issues like women in leadership, for example, it is more important to read the bible with the guidance of the Holy Spirit and not with the mind already influenced by one specific systematic theology.

The Holy Spirit was present in the New Testament church, long before elaborate systematic theologies were.

A.W. Tozer once said:

“If the Holy Spirit was withdrawn from the church today, 95 percent of what we do would go on and no one would know the difference. If the Holy Spirit had been withdrawn from the New Testament church, 95 percent of what they did would stop, and everybody would know the difference.”

Below are some of the ways that we can allow the Holy Spirit to guide us. 

• Recognise that having a systematic theology that reads the bible through only one theological understanding of it, may lead to the quenching of the Holy Spirit. Systematic theology can categorise people into different denominations. Unfortunately, once Christians are labelled by how their denomination is seen by others, they can be viewed by people from other denominations as being their stereotypes only (ex: all Pentecostals speak in tongues). If Christians stereotype other Christians who are in the family of God, it is no wonder that walls can be put up in churches to protect Christians from non-Christians, that we don’t fully understand or relate to.
• Don’t use the Holy Spirit as an excuse to be overly intellectual. Understanding Christian theology on an intellectual level is a challenge, yet living it out in a practical way is straightforward most of the time. Psalm 119:11 expresses how scripture is to be stored up in order to be obeyed, not rationalised about:

“I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.”

Moreover, Deuteronomy 11:8 talks about how observing the commands leads to strength.

“Observe therefore all the commands I am giving you today, so that you may have the strength to go in and take over the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess.”

Furthermore, Henri Nouwen once said:

“Quite often people with handicaps, whatever their handicaps, are considered marginal in our society. They don’t make money; they are not productive and all of that, but they are the real poor. Jesus said, ‘Blessed are the poor.’ Jesus doesn’t say, ‘Blessed are those who care for the poor.’ Jesus doesn’t say, ‘Blessed are those who help the poor.’ He says, ‘Blessed are the poor.’ That means the blessing of God is right there in their vulnerability, in their weakness, and that is what I experience. God gives enormous gifts to people who come to our community through those who are most weak and handicapped.”

• Don’t use the Holy Spirit as an excuse to be anti-intellectual.

The bible tells us in Luke 10:27 that we are to “Love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind.” It can be easy for Christians like myself, who would rather be with people, than with books; to criticise Christians who do enjoy reading in theological libraries, and debating what they have learned in coffee shops and pubs. For people who are wired like I am, it is best to make friends with the Christians who do love reading theological books, and learn from them. This is killing two birds with one stone: spending time with people and learning the material that is in the books, without having to read the books myself! It should be noted that I do enjoy reading, but would not describe myself as a “theological book geek”.

• Recognise that the Holy Spirit works in the lives of people who don’t fully understand it.

In Transforming Discipleship, Greg Ogden stated:

“After the descent of the promised Holy Spirit at Pentecost, a group of frightened, cowardly disciples was transformed into a fearless megaphone for the resurrected Christ.”

What are some others ways that we can allow the Holy Spirit to guide us?

Jesus is Greater Than Moses

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Because of this oath, Jesus has become the guarantor of a better covenant. (Hebrews 7:22)

The New Covenant effects our lives in a few ways.

• It effects how we worship. Worship becomes more about our internal life rather than just our outward expression. It becomes a response to grace and not outward duty or “religion”. In Soul Keeping, John Ortberg stated:

“Gordon MacDonald once wrote about how what he called the “sinkhole syndrome” happens in a human life. It may be triggered by a failure at work, a severed relationship, a harsh criticism from a parent, or for no apparent reason at all. But it feels like the earth has given way. It turns out, MacDonald wrote, that in a sense we have two worlds to manage: an outer world of career and possessions and social networks; and an inner world that is more spiritual in nature, where values are selected and character is formed- a place where worship and confession and humility can be practised.”

• It effects how we make decisions. The love ethic of Jesus challenges us to fight against the corrosive force of sin, to go the extra mile, to love our enemies, and to give radically. The New Covenant leads us to go beyond the bare minimum of what we are expected to do, and into a limitless type of love (which comes from God) that is not about keeping track of someone else’s mistakes, or the blame/shame game. Relationships in the New Covenant are more like “love leading to more love”, rather than a pie being gone, once all of the pieces are eaten.

In Reunion, Bruxy Cavey stated:

“Grace means that we Christians are those peculiar people who gather together every Sunday morning to celebrate the fact that we don’t have to gather together every Sunday morning to be saved. We read the Bible regularly to be reminded of the good news that we don’t have to read the Bible regularly to be right with God. We sing songs of worship to express our adoration for the One who says we don’t have to sing, or pray, or meditate, or participate in any liturgy in order to be on God’s good side. Grace frees us up to celebrate God’s love because we are done trying to earn it.”

• It effects how we read our own Bibles. We notice more in Scripture about how God is gracious when we mess up. We can see more clearly about how God doesn’t show up to condemn but rather, to correct and bless.

In Discernment, Henri Nouwen states:

“Reading often means gathering information, acquiring new insight and knowledge, and mastering a new field. It can lead to degrees, diplomas, and certificates. Spiritual reading, however, is different. It means not simply reading about spiritual things but also reading about spiritual things in a spiritual way. That requires a willingness not just to read but to be read, not just to master but to be mastered by words. As long as we read the Bible or a spiritual book simply to acquire knowledge, our reading does not help us in our spiritual life.”

The New Covenant leads to relational Bible study that happens across different genders, income levels, ages/life stages, and races/cultures. These studies may take place outside, and not just in church buildings.

In Jesus Feminist, Sarah Bessey states:

“Let’s try to lay down our ideas, our neatly organized Bible verses, our carefully crafted arguments. Let’s take a break from sitting across from each other in this stuffy room. Let’s head outside. I want to sit around a fire pit ringed with stones and watch the moon move over the Pacific. I want us to drink good red wine, dig our toes into the cool sand, and wrap up in cozy sweaters. We’ll feel the cold of the evening steel across the water soon, and the mountains are resting with their hands folded.”

• It effects how we see other people, when it comes to the church. All people are equal in Christ, despite their race, gender, and financial situation. Galatians 3:28 states:

“There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

What are some other ways that the New Covenant effects our lives?

Flow of Grace

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“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” (Lamentations 3:22-23 ESV)

Religion makes people do good things because they feel like they have to, not because they want to.

 

Good qualities like: faith, goodness, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, mutual affection, and love, which are mentioned in 2 Peter 1:5-7; can feel fake, when they do not come from a relationship with Jesus.

A parent or teacher can yell at their teenage child and force them to follow the rules, and they will only obey because of fear.

God’s grace gives us the good qualities mentioned above and helps us to practice them. Practising them are one experience of God’s grace in our lives.

Below are some of things that God’s grace does in our lives.

• Grace can take us into a type of “spiritual flow” that helps us love people (even our enemies) unconditionally. As we worship God, we treat others as He would. We never fully arrive at being a perfect Christ follower and we can continue to grow. Our human thoughts do not stop us and we do not “get in the way of ourselves” as we do good. This is different than the emotion of excitement, although spiritual flow is exciting.

Leighton Ford states that: “In perpetual motion I can mistake the flow of my adrenaline for the moving of the Holy Spirit.”

• Grace helps us get out of our own heads, when we can’t answer the difficult questions about our lives, such as: “why am I suffering in this way?”. Spiritual growth is not merely intellectual and our pain and weakness can heal others.

The apostle Paul stated: Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. (2 Corinthians 12:8-9)

• Because of grace, God uses our weaknesses and vulnerability for something beautiful. In Jesus and Buddha: Ask a Buddhist Sunday, Bruxy Cavey, said that strength is not better than weakness. To illustrate this point, he used the example about how adults are not better than children.

In No Man Is An Island, Thomas Merton states: It is therefore of supreme importance that we consent to live not for ourselves but for others. When we do this we will be able first of all to face and accept our own limitations. As long as we secretly adore ourselves, our own deficiencies will remain to torture us with an apparent defilement. But if we live for others, we will gradually discover that no one expects us to be “as gods.” We will see that we are human, like everyone else, that we all have weaknesses and deficiencies, and that these limitations of ours play a most important part in all our lives. It is because of them that we need others and others need us. We are not all weak in the same spots, and so we supplement and complete one another, each one making up in himself for the lack in another.

• God’s grace impacts how we read the bible. Instead of just reading one or two chapters of the bible a day and checking that off of our task list, we start to want to read as much as we can. We do this because the bible is about the God we have a relationship with and who gives us grace.

In Reunion, Bruxy Cavey states: “We read the Bible because it is the best God-given window through which we get a clear view of Jesus- who is God’s ultimate self-disclosure. The Bible is not a painting to be looked at, but a window to be looked though, and through that window we see Jesus. Christ-followers believe in the inerrant, infallible, and authoritative Word of God- and his name is Jesus. In other words, Christ-followers are not actually “People of the Book,” as the Qur’an calls Christians. We are people of the Person. We don’t follow the Bible- we read the Bible so we can follow Jesus. There is a difference.”

• Grace impacts how we understand righteousness. Righteousness is not what we achieve by trying our best to be moral and separate from people. Righteousness is what God gives to us. This helps us to stay humble and not look down on others. Jesus tells a parable to illustrate this in Luke 18:9-14.

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

“I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

• God’s grace satisfies us with what we are given in life. We no longer have to feel restless and anxious, as we grasp for the next “shiny object.” We can be content with what we have and don’t have to seek the thrill of getting something new.

Ecclesiastes 3:22 states: “So I saw that there is nothing better for a person than to enjoy their work, because that is their lot.”

What are some other things that God’s grace does in our lives?

Limitless Grace

God has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end (Ecclesiastes 3:11).

One of the reasons that human beings constantly crave more in life, is because of the space in our life that only God can fill. The list of things we use to attempt to fill this gap are endless. Because we long for eternity, we can easily get frustrated when limits are put upon us. Two examples are: when a teenager yells at their parents when they don’t have money to buy a new phone and when an adult pouts if dinner is not prepared for them by the time they get home from work.

Human beings have limits, but God has no limits.

Even though God can do anything that He wants, He chose to restrict Himself by becoming a human being, in the form of Jesus, at a specific place and time.

Jesus stated: “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” (John 14:12). 

One of the interpretations of the above verse is that greater things will be done, because there are now more Christ followers on earth, than when there was one Jesus in human form on the planet. Jesus is all powerful and could have chosen to multiply his physical body while he was on earth if he wanted to. Yet God limited Himself and put His fullness into the one body of Jesus.

One of the aspects of God’s character is that He is a God of grace. Grace is one of the ways we can experience eternity as human beings, while we are on earth. It can be difficult to understand and accept grace, because it goes far beyond our conception of what is fair.

Below are some things that I have noticed about grace.

• Human beings have boundaries. For us, there may not be an endless supply of money or emotional resources. For God, there is an endless amount of grace. Grace may be expressed through relational and/or spiritual means.

The apostle Paul states: “The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more.” (Romans 5:20)

Sometimes God shows grace through financial means. Below are two examples.

• For every animal of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills. (Psalm 50:10)
• But so that we may not cause offence, go to the lake and throw out your line. Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth and you will find a four-drachma coin. Take it and give it to them for my tax and yours. (Matthew 17:27)

• Because we don’t know how to respond to or categorise grace, human beings often react to it by adding rules and structure. Below are two examples.
  • Don’t try to force them on, as though you could be today what time (that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will) will make of you tomorrow. Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be. (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin)
  • When they looked at Jesus’ life, they saw a pattern to it, different from the pattern of the lives of the missionaries Frank Lake saw burning out. All human beings face challenge and pain and demands. Jesus, however, lived in a divine rhythm where grace was constantly flowing into him and then flowing out from him (John Ortberg, Soul Keeping)
• When grace is not responded to with loving structure, people take the joy out of the responsive actions and turn them into a religious duty. One way that human beings respond to love is through marriage. Tragically, marriages can become things that people stop caring for and tending to. When this happens, they can turn into more of a chore list.

R.C. Sproul stated: “In Christian marriage, love is not an option. It is a duty.”

I don’t think that Sproul sees Christian marriage as something boring where people are forced to love each other, but the tone of his quote sounds like this.

Any Christian marriage or relationship that is based on duty and not on the selfless love, which only Jesus can bring, will fail.  One writer stated that following Jesus is not about “have to’s” but “want to’s.”

Moreover, John Ortberg asks: “The test of a sustaining spiritual practice is: Does it fill you with grace for life?”

• Grace is different than religious duty. At church, we are contrasting the differences between Jesus and Buddha. Some of the differences are listed below.
  • Jesus: Grace (gift), New self, Priesthood of all Laity,  “Follow Me”.
  • Buddha: Karma (cause & effect), No self (an-atman), Monks & Nuns, “Follow the teaching”.

What are some other things that you have noticed about grace?

Is The Bible Tracking Our Every Move?

“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:16-17)

Wisdom can be found in all parts of scripture and every bible verse is part of God’s big story. I’ve had times in my life when I’ve read a specific verse and not given it a second thought, and other times when the very same verse changed my life, because it spoke into a situation that I was dealing with at the time.

It can be eerie when bible reading does this! Anyone who has read scripture as the Holy Spirit impacted the reading, will tell you that the bible is no ordinary book. God speaks through the words of the bible to human beings about their specific situations. In a sense, God “reads our mail” before we open it. At times, when we read the bible, it is like God is saying: “I know what is going on in your life“. This is similar to the concept of “cookies”.

Internet or web cookies are a type of message that is given to a Web browser by a Web server. The main purpose of a cookie is to identify users and possibly prepare customised Web pages or to save site login information for you.

Two examples to help illustrate the metaphor of the web cookies comes from my life and bible reading.

• One night I had trouble sleeping because I was worrying about the future and couldn’t think of a solution to help me fall asleep. The next day, I read Esther 6:1, and learned about what the king did when he could not sleep. He ordered the record of his reign, to be brought in and read to him. In this moment, it was if God was saying that when I have trouble sleeping, I can reflect on the events of my life and have hope that interesting things will also happen in the future.
• Another time I was feeling guilty about about sin in my life. I thought that being more religious would make me feel better. Then I read Hebrews 10:1-2: “The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming—not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. Otherwise, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshippers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins.” It was if God was saying that I had tried to be a perfectly moral person through religion before, and that it didn’t work. In this moment, he was calling me to an authentic relationship with Him. 

Mohandas Gandhi said: “You Christians look after a document containing enough dynamite to blow all civilization to pieces, turn the world upside down, and bring peace to a battle-torn planet. But you treat it as though it is nothing more than a piece of literature.”

There are so many human situations in the bible, that God speaks into. Hope and encouragement can be given to anyone, no matter how difficult the situation they are in is. This is good news!

Yet, as Osheta Moore said in her message called “No More Shame“, it can be so easy to respond to a tragedy in someone’s life by saying: “get up, so we can talk some theology about this situation!” This reaction does not allow for someone to grieve the pain they are feeling.

Because all Scripture is God-breathed, presenting the gospel does not need to entail saying the same “cookie cutter” answer across the board in every situation. Scripture can provide healing words in any situation and there may be specific verses that we don’t always notice, which can be useful in a particular scenario.

Below are some quotes that express the importance of understanding that every part of the bible is part of God’s big story.

• “We read the Bible because it is the best God-given window through which we get a clear view of Jesus- who is God’s ultimate self-disclosure. The Bible is not a painting to be looked at, but a window to be looked though, and through that window we see Jesus. Christ-followers believe in the inerrant, infallible, and authoritative Word of God- and his name is Jesus. In other words, Christ-followers are not actually “People of the Book,” as the Qur’an calls Christians. We are people of the Person. We don’t follow the Bible- we read the Bible so we can follow Jesus. There is a difference.”(Bruxy Cavey, Reunion)
• “It’s possible, then, to be quoting the Bible out of the conviction that you’re defending God’s way when in fact you’re in that exact moment working against how God wants to continue drawing and pulling and calling humanity forward.” (Rob Bell)
• “All this justice seeking, all this subversion, all this advocating and activism, all this battling to eradicate human trafficking happens despite the fact that there is actually no specific verse in Scripture that prohibits the buying and selling of human beings. Some verses even affirm proper treatment and behaviors of slaves. And yet we accept and understand that slavery is evil precisely because of the Bible and because we understand God’s created purpose for humanity. We hunger for justice for the oppressed precisely because of our deep love for God and our commitment to Scripture.” (Sarah Bessey, Jesus Feminist)
• “Reading often means gathering information, acquiring new insight and knowledge, and mastering a new field. It can lead to degrees, diplomas, and certificates. Spiritual reading, however, is different. It means not simply reading about spiritual things but also reading about spiritual things in a spiritual way. That requires a willingness not just to read but to be read, not just to master but to be mastered by words. As long as we read the Bible or a spiritual book simply to acquire knowledge, our reading does not help us in our spiritual life.” (Henri Nouwen, Discernment)
• “There is a simplicity to the gospel, so that even (and especially) a child can comprehend it. There is also a depth and infinite richness to the gospel, which means that we can all spend the rest of our lives learning, discussing, and applying its truths…it’s like the slogan for the board game Othello says: “A minute to learn, a lifetime to master.” (Bruxy Cavey, Reunion)
• “The Bible is concerned with time’s fullness, the time for an event to happen, the time for an emotion to be felt, the time for a harvest or for the celebration of a harvest.” (Thomas Merton)

What are some other quotes that express the importance of understanding that every part of the bible is part of God’s big story?

Identity and Inheritance

If the only “minister” there is in a church is the pastor, the growth of Christianity will be stunted. One of the pastors in a previous church that I worked at, used to regularly ask this question: “how many ministers are there in our church?” At first, people would answer “3” and then he would correct them and say “300”! Not everyone has been called to be a pastor who is paid by a church, but every Christian is called to be a minister in the world. When Christians are led by the spirit, the pastor has “teammates” to help share the message of Jesus. The ministry is not for only the pastor to do (which will decrease the pressure and anxiety they may feel) and the people in the congregation are not passive consumers.

I think that a problem with the modern day Canadian church, is that we have placed so much stress on looking to the bible, to make sure that we “do church” exactly correctly. The emphasis seems to be on looking at the “ingredients” mentioned in the bible for what will successfully form a church (that primarily on Sundays), without teaching people how to be ministers in their world during the rest of the week . Let me be clear: reading the bible to figure out how to “do church” is so important! But we also need to look at the bible to figure out how to live as Christians in the world.

Below are some of the problems that can happen when we think that the “paid professional holy people” are the only ministers.

• People who can reach communities more effectively than a pastor who spends most of their time at the church will not be equipped for ministry.  Nowadays, the stereotypical pastor is a clean cut married man who has kids, who comes from a good Christian family, who has graduated from Bible College or Seminary, and who has never smoke, drank, or sworn in their entire life! There can be pressure to keep up a perfect image as a pastor and continue to fit into the stereotype. But who is better to reach a drug dealer, than a recovering drug addict? Who is better to reach someone who is separated, than someone who is healing from divorce? Who is better to reach a egocentric boss, than a Christlike CEO? The labels that cause people pain in their lives and the failures that we have gone through are not easily shared, when we don’t seen them as ministry opportunities that can comfort others (see 2 Corinthians 1:3-4). We can easily see our identity as our scars, instead of our identity being in Christ.
• We can forget that God can speak through unlikely messengers. I believe that God speaks through the messengers that we don’t expect, because it catches our attention more than it would, if it was someone we expected to speak about God. For example, In Jesus’ day, women were not highly valued. I believe this was one of the reasons that after the burial of Jesus, that he appeared first to women at the empty tomb (John 20:1-18). Below are two examples of God using unlikely messengers to speak.
  • One of the non-Christian students that I worked with in the past who had a rough upbringing was once playing his angry rap music in my car. All of sudden, he changed the song to one of my favourite songs by my favourite Christian bands. At that point in my life, the words in the song were exactly what I needed to hear! If I had thought that God would not speak to me through this young person and tuned him out, I would not have seen this as a “God moment”.
  • God spoke through a donkey in Numbers 22:21-41.
• Influential Christian leaders may discourage others from being in ministry, in order to hold more power for themselves. These leaders, who at times can be authoritarian, may interpret the bible in a particular way that excludes certain types of people from ministry and keeps them on the sidelines. One example is the current discussion about if women can be pastors or not. Please note: there are many books interpreting what the bible says about this topic, that have been written about both sides. I know gifted women pastors who have the call of God on their ministry, yet they are constantly questioned publicly by Christian men, who read certain verses of the bible in a certain light. Should the way these men interpret these scriptures about women, trump the call of God, that a woman has experienced and knows that she has? Yes, we need to make sure that the bible is being interpreted correctly! But it is dangerous to use that interpretation about women in leadership (which could be incorrect), to question the call of God which could be on so many people’s lives (women make up roughly half the population of the world!) I would not want to risk using what could be a misinformed understanding of a few verses of scripture to challenge God.
• We stop listening to Christians who hold other theological positions or non-Christians who have different worldviews. There are two reasons that we will not be able to effectively engage with other people’s opinions, when our own views are challenged: we don’t understand the heart behind different theological positions and/or we don’t have friends with other worldviews. A 2014 Relevant Magazine article called “What The Continued Crucifying of Rob Bell Says About Modern Christianity” states: “There are two religious menu options when it comes to orthodoxy: Totality or Heresy. The moment that anyone, however prayerful or thoughtful or earnest they may be, comes to a conclusion other than what has been defined as acceptable, they get kicked to the curb. As some Christian leaders cling tighter and tighter to one, narrow narrow faith tradition, they expel anyone who doesn’t check all the right boxes, who doesn’t say all the right words in all the right ways using all the right Bible verses.”

What are some of the other problems that can happen when we think that the “paid professional holy people” are the only ministers?