2. I agree. Anyone who suggests that Christians can claim to be Christians without being committed to a local church is way off beam.

3. Parachurch absolutely has to exist for the good of the local church – at it’s best it really really does that, and it’s worst it’s as bad as bad local churches..

Parachurch should never be an alternative to being in a church – a student involved in one should be fully a part of a local church… parachurch leadership has to be there to serve local churches – with some form of accountability though the specifics of this would vary massively.

The issue of a student transitioning between them shouldn’t even be a question – a student should always be in the local church and can then also engage in the parachurch/partnership ministry. In the case of a student missions partnership that mission would have as its goal to bring new believers into the local churches in that partnership….

At least that’s how the student mission ministry i’m involved in is working :)

I wanted to thank you for the time you put into these replies. I sent you an email via your church website. I think I’m beyond the seemingly teenage-type-angst struggle and I would rather carry on an honest conversation not written for all to read. Let me know if you got my email, if not I’ll try again.

Jonathan

This isn’t my “official” response to your last comment, I just wanted to say a few things.

I wish I would’ve found your community/ministry a few years ago. Without trying to contribute to the abuse Christians have emposed on this one adjective, it’s awesome. What you’re doing and all the things you are focused on are exactly what I was all about a few years ago. Even though I’m not in the same place I was then, I can still appreciate what you’re doing. Good job, man.

I’m not in So. Cal or even near it. If I ever am I’ll definitely hit you up for coffee or a beer. Thanks for the invite.

I’ll be taking my time with this response in order to do it justice, but in the mean time Happy Thanksgiving.

Jonathan

Been crazy busy…but I really do care about this conversation.

So, yes, as you say, you are not alone in your thinking by far. I think one of the biggest challenges we face today is the overload of information and experts. I think our tendency is just to dismiss everything because it is too hard, too difficult, and/or takes too much time to really attempt at sorting out. It’s one of the reasons I like you..because you are taking the time. But what do you do when two scholars reach different conclusions, how do you decide, can one position be correct? I actually wrote a little piece on this called “Controversy” (you can read it here: http://www.duanesmets.com/2008/10/02/controversy ).

I think your observation, ““What if I’m wrong and I have to face judgment, is this really worth it?” is very keen. In fact it is a question a great mathemetician and philosopher named Blaise Pascal asked in a work of his called Pensées. In it he argues, that God’s existence is unprovable by reason (which may or may not be true, personally as you have discovered I think the question of God’s existence presupposes his existence…and I’m open to evidence, though not proof). Then he moves to say that either our reason or our happiness is at stake in the wager of whether or not God is so. He ends up saying it is wiser to wager that God exists, since “If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing.”

I too grew up in a Pentecostal upbringing and departed from it, so I completely understand and sympathize with your experience probably more than you know. It was almost as if you didn’t speak in tongues you weren’t Christian and the Bible meant whatever the preacher felt like it meant…which is merely authoritarianism. Pentecostals tend to be very fundamentalistic, legalistic, and have a religion based purely upon human experience and works which epistemologically really does not separate them from any of the eastern religions. Anyway, I feel honored that you’d share that with me and share with me your list.

As far as the Genesis story is concerned. Of course I have a viewpoint on it, but I think there is room for varying perspectives. The main point of the book named “beginning” (Genesis in Hebrew) is that God is the creator. No matter what view of Genesis you take, even if it is ancient mesopatamian myth like the epic of Gilgamesh, the Atrahasis epic, or if it is an account of evolution with time gaps, or a literal 7 day account…the point of Genesis remains in its’ intent to say that God is the creator (and I would add “redeemer”). There may be differences in how he created, but even the most fundamentalistic athiests cannot account for the cosmological question of beginnings (the problem of infinite regression).

On morality…I’m not so sure we are talking about a God who is “being that is way more moral and loving than I could ever dream of being.” But rather a God who is the ground and source of morality and has a plan and a way to transform us into his very love and pure morality. I think it is important to distinguish between the essence/source of morality, the act(s) of immorality, and the motives of immorality. I like your analogy of the prison…But I guess I would ask if being able to recognize morality equates goodness? But all this is sort of a side note, I’ll get to the real issue and question.

Your last question (the “sum up”) is perhaps the best question you have asked yet in our entire exchange. It is at least the most difficult to answer, not in my estimation because of whether it is a solid answer or not, but in terms of the difficulty of swallowing the answer. What you ask essentially what is known as “the problem of evil.” I have spent a lot of time on this one…so rather than try and give a pithy response here let me direct you to two places:
1. A piece I wrote called “The So Called ‘Problem of Evil’” http://theresolved.com/downloads/evil.pdf
2. A sermon addressing this very issue from Romans 9:19-29 http://www.theresolved.com/?p=323

As a sidenote, as I understand election in the Bible, it has nothing to do with being born into a “Christian home.” Rather no one knows who is elect, except God. The elect are those he has determined beforehand to have mercy at a specific time. How he determined who was going to be elect is an utter mystery (Deut 29:29).

Well I think I hit most the stuff you brought up. I don’t want to bag on your upgringing, you know…but is it possible that you may have never really ben taught or really heard the gospel? It sounds like you may have been part of a teaching which was just Christianized Phariseeism all over again…where Christianity was just an offer to work harder, get more religious, and then feel extra guilty when you didn’t measure up. As I understand the gospel of Jesus it is a message not of guilt, but freedom from guilt. Not a message of fear but a message of forgiveness. Not a message of nothingness but a message of deep meaning.

Hey Jonathan…if there were at least plausible answers to your questions, do you think it could actually have the effect of getting you to reconsider Jesus once again. Not a hippie, feminine, lovey dovey feel good Jesus, but the Jesus who people were both amazed by his teaching and overwhelmed with his acceptance? If there were at least somewhat sufficient answers to your questions, would it be enough for you or is there something deeper? Maybe you’ve just needed to actually talk to a level headed Christian? I’m not saying that because I think there is something deeper, maybe there is, I’m just saying that in talking to you, it doesn’t sound like your asking for certainty…just a worldview where you can conceive that maybe it is true and no one has actually been able to show you one. Just wondering.

Where you at? If you’re in So. Cal lets get together for coffee or a beer.

Duane

I’m glad this conversation is helping you get ready for your sermons. Speaking of sermons, nice closing marks at the end of your last comment. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I would actually be disappointed if you weren’t trying to “save my soul” (I know Jesus is the actual savior, just humor me).

Thank you for taking the time to thoughtfully consider each reply. This is a deeply personal topic for the two of us, yet we seem to be getting nicer as this conversation continues. I don’t think that is typical, but more of a testament to our desire to really know the truth (if such a thing can be known).

As for your answer to my dilemma with modern day miracles I can honestly say I haven’t thought of it or heard it worded exactly like that (the idea of diminishing the significance of the work and life of Jesus). This is something that definitely deserves some further consideration away from the keyboard and monitor.

I know for certain that I am not alone in my thinking. I have come across several other “Apostates” that have come to the shocking conclusion (opinion) that:

A) The bible is not infallible or even inspired.
B) If a god does exist there is a great chance it’s not the one we read about.

The problem some apostates (me) have with this revelation is the almost innate fear of eternal damnation and the echoing nothingness that follows a divorce from faith. I still find myself wondering, “What if I’m wrong and I have to face judgment, is this really worth it?” Then there’s the idea that there isn’t a divine purpose at all, that nothingness I was referring to. To put it mildly, it sucks. It sucks to think that there’s no caring creator that is listening to your concerns and planning ways to intervene on your behalf. It sucks to think that attraction, love, fear, anger and any other emotion is just a response to a chemical that floods your system and that’s it.

So, you might find several agnostics, atheists and other apostates creating an “Even-if-God-is-real-I-wouldn’t-serve-him-because-of-this-trait-or-that” list when they run out of things to disprove. That is almost a knee jerk response to this monumental change. It’s easier to say what you hate about God than what you loved when you get to this point. The reason I say all of this is because I’m about to share my own list with you, but let me do the hard part first and tell you what part of Christianity was most attractive to me.

It was actually all the focus on the relationship.

I try to step away from things and view them as an outsider looking in when they get difficult and then spot the best parts that have become second nature and easy to overlook (like when my wife and I fight, when my son is bothering me, when my team loses). I did this with Christianity more times than I can count and the one thing that brought me back was the relationship. I imagine when I die the most important part of my life won’t be how much money I had or how many things I owned, but how many people did I really know and how many really knew me. How many people did I love and how many loved me. Thinking like that made me think that relationships are quite possibly the most important function of human existence, and everything else is just a system to support them. Therefore if there’s a religion whose sole purpose is a relationship, well that just plain makes sense.

It all changed over the course of a few years though.

Growing up in a Pentecostal church I never put much stock into the security of salvation, often returning to the altar week after week to ask for salvation all over again. Eventually I was lead through a few scriptures to discover that this was not necessary at all and soon started putting more faith in the eternal security of salvation. Then I started to think that if the Pentecostals had been wrong about salvation, maybe they got a few other things wrong as well. Out went being baptized with the Holy Spirit after salvation as a separate act.

Years later I was confronted with honest questions about Genesis and whether or not I believed it. After a long period of research, prayer and thoughtful conversations like this one I came to the conclusion that there is simply not enough evidence to confirm Genesis’ account of creation to be accurate if taken literally.

Well, sadly enough several things snowballed into me thinking the same way I thought about the Pentecostals, “If one thing is wrong then maybe more is wrong.” One thing seemed to contradict another thing (in the bible) and the more I looked for reasons to not believe the more I found them. The final straw was the idea of original sin. I can not, in good conscience, think that original sin makes any sense at all.

I know I am challenging theories and ideas that were put into motion (supposedly) by a being that is way more moral and loving than I could ever dream of being. So who am I to question it, right?

But then I considered that as well.

What kind of morality are we talking about here if me in my supposed corrupt state finds it completely offensive? What does that say? That I’m too corrupt to understand it? How does that make sense? We wouldn’t use that same logic if we were telling a good person that even a criminal finds his actions reprehensible. “Jim, when you killed your wife and kids for no reason at all the inmates at Folsom were disgusted and wanted your head on a platter. That’s how terrible your actions were Jim. Inmates were enraged.” Or, let me just use the most common story like this we have all heard at one time or another: “Inmates kill rapist and child molesters all the time because even they know that that is just wrong. Rape and child abuse is too much even for a murderer or a thief.” (Side note: I can’t say I disagree with the inmates.) No one would dare say, “Yeah, but those are inmates! What do they know? I, not being an inmate, posses a morality they can only dream of.”

But we use this idea of a superior morality and goodness to justify God. His morality and love is so far outside our corrupted conscience that it is actually turning evil (sending massive amounts of people to eternal damnation just for being born) into good.

To sum it up: I do not consider him good, just, loving or merciful just because I was born in a Christian home with religious parents and therefore considered “elect”. This system of justice and mercy is so terribly corrupt that I can’t get my own corrupt conscience to buy into it any longer. So, even if I did find out that God is real I can’t say that I would actually serve him. That idea of a few making it and the rest burning in hell is so awful to me that I don’t want any part of it. Having a problem with that idea of original sin makes it pretty easy to say when I wonder if this is worth it while thinking about hell, “Absolutely.” The deep discomfort I get from the original sin message helps me through the nothingness, guilt and fear my specific upbringing has afforded me.

That’s how I got to where I am. Sorry if this was wordy or self-indulgent. I guarantee that I rambled on more than one occasion, sorry about that as well. And lastly, if I offended you in anyway please know that it wasn’t intentional.

Thanks for doing this, and good luck preaching. I would say knock em’ dead, but as Paul was one of the few that could (supposedly) knock em’ dead and bring em’ back to life maybe I’ll just stick with good luck.

Jonathan