In Christ Alone

We sang this song in worship this morning. It has to be one of the most powerfully written songs that's out there. Take a moment to read it. The lyrics communicate the hope and power of the Christian faith.

In Christ alone my hope is found;
He is my light, my strength, my song;
This cornerstone, this solid ground,
Firm through the fiercest drought and storm.
What heights of love, what depths of peace,
When fears are stilled, when strivings cease!
My comforter, my all in all—
Here in the love of Christ I stand.

In Christ alone, Who took on flesh,
Fullness of God in helpless babe!
This gift of love and righteousness,
Scorned by the ones He came to save.
Till on that cross as Jesus died,
The wrath of God was satisfied;
For ev'ry sin on Him was laid—
Here in the death of Christ I live.

There in the ground His body lay,
Light of the world by darkness slain;
Then bursting forth in glorious day,
Up from the grave He rose again!
And as He stands in victory,
Sin's curse has lost its grip on me;
For I am His and He is mine—
Bought with the precious blood of Christ.

No guilt in life, no fear in death—
This is the pow'r of Christ in me;
From life's first cry to final breath,
Jesus commands my destiny.
No pow'r of hell, no scheme of man,
Can ever pluck me from His hand;
Till He returns or calls me home—
Here in the pow'r of Christ I'll stand.

Hear it here...

Another Take on the Christian Difference

A rare third post this week. Primarily because I ran across this article from Saritha Prabhu that relates to our topic. Here's what she had to say...

Christians' compassion for the needy can inspire other faiths (The Tennessean, March 24th)

With Easter just over, some thoughts on the faith from a non-Christian perspective:

I've written a few times against proselytizing, and also commented on the angry, judgmental nature of a small percentage of present-day Christians, but my argument has never been against the founder of the Christian faith, for whom I have only the highest awe, respect and admiration.

What can one say about Jesus? He lived in a barbarous time but preached love for one's enemies. He urged followers to be their brother's keeper and, as a result, 2,000 years later you have Christian do-gooders in far-flung areas of the world doing his bidding.

My brush with the Christian faith started early. My schooling was mostly in different Catholic schools in India, for that was the norm then — when middle-class Hindu parents wanted a good education for their children, they sent them to these schools, where we started the day with Christian prayers, and where prim nuns drilled discipline, grammar and history into us.

As I grew older, I read about Gandhi and his avowed respect for other religions. Though a devout Hindu, he was open to the influence of other faiths, culled wisdom from diverse sources, and was deeply influenced by the Sermon on the Mount.

Years later, I find myself in the Bible Belt, living and raising a family, and observing from close quarters the many faces — good and bad — of a great faith.

One of these faces has influenced me, and it is the extent to which many Christian followers walk the talk when it comes to taking care of the unfortunate, both here and abroad. It is a quite unique trait and has led me to consider the differences among faiths.

Read the rest here.

The Christian Difference

So what sets Christianity apart from other religions?

It's an interesting question because the 3 major faiths (Christianity, Islam, Judaism) share some common roots. All trace their history back to God's covenant with Abraham, all accept the first part of the Old Testament as sacred text, and all worship one God (Muslims call him Allah, Jews call him Yahweh, and Christians usually just call him God). The difference is Jesus. Jews believe that he was a good teacher and maybe a prophet, but just a man. Muslims claim he was a true prophet from God, but so was Muhammad and he was the last and greatest prophet. Christians claim that Jesus was not just a teacher or a prophet, but he was actually the Son of God.

On what basis does Christianity make such a claim? The resurrection! That one event is the thing that sets Christianity apart. It's the cornerstone of the Christian faith. If true, than Jesus was the Son of God. If not, he was just a man. If true, then Christians are right to call Jesus Lord. If not, then Christians don't have a Lord. I believe that the resurrection is true, therefore I believe that Jesus is the Son of God. In history there have been many good teachers, many good prophets, and many dying a martyr's death but only one was raised from the dead. That's what sets Christianity apart.

Here's the way Paul (a former skeptic himself) explained it...

If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead...And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins...If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead.

The tomb was found empty. Christ still lives. That's the Christian difference!

Go See Horton!

The family and I capped off Easter weekend tonight with the movie Horton Hears a Who. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It had a great story and was packed with spiritual metaphors (although I tend to find spiritual metaphors in most movies). My favorite one was about faith. Horton, an elephant, hears a noise coming from a tiny speck of dust. As it turns out the speck is the village of Whoville, home to thousands of tiny Whos. Horton vows to save their town. Only no one will believe in him because as Kangroo confidently explains, "If you can't see it, hear it or feel it then it can't be real."

Christianity and Other Faiths

"What sets Christianity apart from other religions?"

That's a question someone recently emailed me. They were wrestling with some of the rather exclusive claims of Christianity. Things like Jesus is the only way to salvation or all other religions are false. They'd met some people from those other religions (Judaism, Hindu, etc.) and found them to be good-hearted people who were just as serious about their faith as we are. So how could those religions have such strong followings if they aren't real? And what right do we have to say our faith is the only way to the truth?

Those are the kind of questions I love to wrestle with because most of the time we debate things that don't really matter (see church traditions or fellowship issues). Rarely do we get to discuss the big questions. Things like is Jesus really who he claimed to be and if that's true, then what difference does it make? I think Satan purposefully does this to distract us. If he can keep us sidetracked with the smaller issues of faith then we won't have time for the bigger issues of faith. So while the world debates Jesus, the church is busy debating music or some other issue. Consequently, our voice is silenced and we allow the media or popular culture to provide the answers to people's questions. But I digress...

So how would you answer my friend? What is it that sets Christianity apart from other religions?

Easter Bunny PSAs

The New Restoration

From Greg Taylor, senior editor of New Wineskins...

The community was surprised when rough and tumble “Spike” Walker converted to Christ at a brush arbor meeting. Spike—my great grandfather—my grandparents and parents were all baptized in Oklahoma and Kansas Churches of Christ.

But in the seventies, about the time I was baptized, a scandal broke out in my family. My uncle and aunt, Rudy and Kathy Taylor, transferred from a Church of Christ to a Christian Church—a painful move because many family members viewed them as leaving The Church.

Rudy’s father—my grandfather—then resigned as elder of the church. “He and my mother truly believed I had ‘left the truth,’” Rudy said. “And they moved from the community where we all lived because of what they perceived as humiliation. My father was disappointed in me, and I in him for his response. He gave up the greatest responsibility in life because he thought he was no longer qualified as having ‘believing children.’”

But something a woman in the Christian Church said to Rudy has always stuck with him: that he ought to be thankful his parents and family cared enough that they would take a stand, even if it was wrongly handled. Rudy says he holds no grudges—just grief for what was lost. “My parents didn’t see me baptize our children. It was so sad for me to listen to my children tell their grandparents about being baptized, obviously thinking that would bring a smile and congratulations. Their news was greeted by silence. It always took some parental explaining when we left Grandma’s and Grandpa’s house,” Rudy said.

And many of our families and churches have some explaining to do.

The worldview that Churches of Christ have a privileged place above denominations, insider knowledge of scripture, and a unique place in history is flawed. These notions cause or at least contribute to rifts in families and churches like mine. Leaving one Christian church for another Christian church is not the same as leaving Christ or the truth. My uncle and his family were seeking Christ and truth at least as much as my relatives staying in Churches of Christ.

The worldview of my “church upbringing” taught me to suspect and debate the Methodist and Catholic alike, to reject forms of worship unlike ours and in most extreme cases to view anyone outside Churches of Christ as not truly Christian. At times in our history the idea of making converts shifted away from reaching people who did not know Christ to those who worshiped in ways different from us. And we believed convicting others of our views was tantamount to converting them to Christianity.

In spite of this, the stubborn autonomous streak in us has allowed some communities within Churches of Christ to break free from this conceit and become learners again. And though I’m proud of my family and Stone-Campbell heritage, I want to see our movement grow into a new future faith—one that drinks from wells dug by our faithful fathers and mothers, digs new wells, and questions stagnant thinking of the past and today.

Read the rest of the article

Christianity's Dangerous Idea

The Christian Chronicle recently did a review of Alister McGrath's book, Christianity's Dangerous Idea. It's about the Protestant Reformation's ideal of individual interpretation of Scripture. An ideal shared and perhaps strengthened by the Restoration Movement. The principle is that every individual believer has the right to read and interpret the Bible on their own. We don't need religious authorities or church tradition to decipher it for us. It's a great idea. Although, as McGrath points out, it's also a dangerous one.

He writes, "Since every Protestant has the right to interpret the Bible a wide range of interpretations cannot be avoided. And since there is no centralized authority within Protestantism, this proliferation of options cannot be controlled. Who has the right to decide what is orthodox and what is heretical?"

That's at the heart of many of the debates taking place in my fellowship. With no denominational headquarters and no written creed, who is to decide what is orthodox and what is heretical? Our longstanding answer has been "the Bible alone." An answer I appreciate and agree with. However, I also understand that the potential outcome of such an answer involves a lot of diversity. As each generation takes a fresh look at the Bible, apart from their tradition or expected interpretations, they naturally come away with some different conclusions. That's dangerous because their conclusions may shake the foundations of what is already accepted and practiced as orthodox. And yet, it's genius because it constantly forces us to return to God's Word and hear it with fresh ears and open hearts.

Sounds Familiar

I was surfing the Internet tonight and ran across these paragraphs from a church's "About Us" section. Can you guess what kind of church this is?

We are Christians only, but we're not the only Christians. We are the result of a movement to return Christ's church to its original state and purpose. After hundreds of years of the corruption of doctrines of men dividing churches of Christ into denominations, we desire to see the church restored to it's roots.

We are looking to put Christ where He belongs...He is the Cornerstone. We have no other creeds or doctrines. Our belief system is based on the foundation that Christ laid through His Apostles and Prophets. The Bible alone is the reed by which we measure our lives. Where scriptures are clear, our position is clear. Where the Bible is silent, we profess our liberty.

It's from an independent Christian Church. The exact same words could be found on the website of a traditional Church of Christ, except maybe that last sentence. :)

Is Jesus our Lord?

I don't have any original thoughts this week but I stumbled across this from Brian McClaren...

If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would write a book about how Christianity has successfully dethroned Jesus as Lord to such a degree that the "Jesus" who is preached, pasted on bumper stickers, serenaded in gooey love songs on religious radio and TV, and prayed to is an impostor. Here's how I might make that argument:

1. We retained Jesus as Savior but promoted the apostle Paul (or someone else) to Lord and Teacher. (Even as Savior though, we limited Jesus to saving us from hell, which explains why we have had comparatively little interest in his saving us from greed, gossip, prejudice, violence, isolation, carelessness about the poor or the planet, hurry, hatred, envy, anger, or pride.)

2. We did this in various ways: by assuming that the purpose of Jesus and his gospel was to get people's souls into heaven after death and therefore concluding that the only really important thing about Jesus was his death (or birth, or resurrection) to solve our guilt problem that kept us out of heaven. Or by deciding that Jesus' message was "spiritual" and therefore pertained to "eternity" and not "history," and/or by deciding that Jesus' life and teachings were completely interpreted by Paul (or a particular church hierarchy) so they deserved little attention on their own, apart from the uses which Paul (or whoever) put them.

3. We developed theological systems that taught us how to avoid many of Jesus' teachings and reinterpret those we couldn't avoid.

4. We made up for our demotion of Jesus from being our Lord and Teacher by saying or singing his name more often, and by saying "Lord, Lord" as much as possible, preferably with deep feeling and high volume. This allowed us to still feel like good Christians whether or not we did, or cared about doing, anything he said.

Preaching at Half-Speed

Sunday was a big day for our church. After months of planning we finally made the move to two services. I wanted the day to go flawless. And it did, except for one thing...our preacher was sick.

Friday afternoon I felt it coming on. A dull headache and coughing. I ignored it. Even went to the Y and ran 3 miles on the treadmill. One of those "mind over matter" moments. Three hours later I was running about 100 on the couch. I started worrying and I started praying. And God answered (at least partially).

The fever broke Saturday morning and I was able to preach through a Robitussin induced haze. It was not at all what I was hoping for on the first day of two services, but I did learn a few things...

1. Menthol cough drops and Welch's grape juice don't mix.
2. Humor should not be attempted while groggy.
3. Cold medicine and "off-the-cuff" remarks are not the best of friends.
4. Prayers for healing should be more specific (my fever returned Sunday night).
5. It's not about me (we had four responses Sunday and I assure you they weren't responding to the message).