Jesus At The Center

"...When we become believers, we can never look at anyone the same. We have to look at them through the lens of Jesus and interact with them according to our relationship with Jesus.

Bonhoeffer explains: 'Our hearts have room only for one all-embracing devotion, and we can only cleave to one Lord. Every competitor to that devotion must be hated. As Jesus says there is no alternative--either we love God or we hate him.' 

One Christian site allows you to tell potential dates where God fits in your life. The choices: It defines who I am; it has a significant place; I'm still trying to figure it out; I believe in God. I'm not knocking the site, which has a good reputation, but I look at those choices and thought, 'If you are a believer, why would you consider potential mates who don't define themselves by Jesus?'

But Bonhoeffer suggests such choices reflect the modern church. We've taught people it's okay to let Jesus have a significant place in their lives, a moderate place in their lives, or a compartmentalized place in their lives. I'm not talking about nonbelievers who are seeking, and we know discipleship involves growth, so people need to grow into 'Jesus defines my life.'

But the growth isn't happening among so many followers of Christ. Why, instead of the abundant life, do so many of us end up living lives of quiet desperation ? We go to church, we read the Bible, we try to be good people and to serve other people. Yet, for many of us, Jesus isn't central to our increasingly complex lives, where we're over-stretched and now seem to be facing a tsunami of uncertainty in many areas that for so long have seemed relatively secure, such as our finances, our jobs, our homes--even our fundamental safety. 

The core of Bonhoeffer's theology is that Jesus must be central to our lives and central to the church. Jesus was never meant to be an important part of our lives; he is our life (Colossians 3:4). If you try to find your life apart from Jesus, you will lose it; but if you lose your life in Jesus, then you will live an extraordinary life energized by the life of Christ within you. 

Bonhoeffer says we've been lulled into believing their are two tiers to discipleship--sort of like cable plans, with basic channels and a premium package for the more pious. We delude ourselves, thinking there are but a few among us--monks, missionaries, and ministers--who are called to be more saintly, while the rest of us must settle comfortably into a mediocre, part-time discipleship.

Jesus, on the other hand, will not tolerate wishy-washy disciples. Clearly, what we call radical obedience here on earth is the obedience expected in the Kingdom of Heaven. In other words, our lukewarm discipleship is actually radical dis obedience. 

Jesus has his eye on the endgame, and so Bonhoeffer says Christ intends to breakthrough every program, every ideal, and every form of legalism that keeps us from following him in total abandonment. 'No other significance is possible, since Jesus is the only significance. Besides Jesus nothing has any significance. He alone matters,' Bonhoeffer says." pgs 76-77

- Jon Walker

from: http://www.amazon.com/Breakfast-Bonhoeffer-Learned-Religious-Follow/dp/0891123407/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1356900492&sr=1-1&keywords=breakfast+with+bonhoeffer

Walker, Jon. Breakfast With Bonhoeffer: How I Learned To Stop Being Religious So I Could Follow Jesus. Abilene: Leafwood Publishers, 2012. 

The Need For Interpretation

"Every so often we meet someone who says with great feeling, 'You don't have to interpret the Bible; just read it and do what it says." Usually, such a remark reflects the layperson's protest against the 'professional' scholar, pastor, teacher, or Sunday school teacher, who by 'interpreting' seems to be taking the Bible away from the common man or woman. It is their way of saying that the Bible is not an obscure book. 'After all,' it is argued, 'any person with half a brain can read it and understand it. The problem with too many preachers and teachers is that they dig around so much they tend to muddy the waters. What was clear to us when we read it isn't so clear anymore.'

There is a lot of truth in this protest. We agree that Christians should learn to read, believe, and obey the Bible. And we especially agree that the Bible need not be an obscure book if studied and read properly. In fact we are convinced that the single most serious problem people have with the Bible is not with the lack of understanding but with the fact that they understand most things too well! For example, with such a text as 'Do everything without grumbling or arguing' (Philippians 2:14), the problem is not understanding it but obeying it--putting it into practice.

We are also agreed that the preacher or teacher is all too often prone to dig first and look later, thereby to cover up the plain meaning of the text, which often lies on the surface. Let it be said at the outset--and repeated throughout--that the aim of good interpretation is not uniqueness; one is not trying to discover what no one else has ever seen before. 

Interpretation that aims at, or thrives on, uniqueness can usually be attributed to pride (an attempt to 'outclever' the rest of the world), a false understanding of spirituality (wherein the Bible is full of deeply buried truths waiting to be mined by the spiritually sensitive person with special insight), or vested interests (the need to support a theological bias, especially in dealing with texts that seem to go against the bias). Unique interpretations are usually wrong. This is not to say that the correct understanding of a text may not often seem unique to someone who hears it for the first time. But it is to say that uniqueness is not the aim of our task.  

The aim of good interpretation is simple: to get at the 'plain meaning of the text.' And the most important ingredient one brings to this task is enlightened common sense. The test of good interpretation is that it makes good sense of the text. Correct interpretation, therefore, brings relief to the mind as well as a prick or prod to the heart. 

But if the plain meaning is what interpretation is all about, then why interpret? Whey not just read? Does not the plain meaning cover come simply from reading? In a sense, yes. But in a truer sense, such an argument is both naive and unrealistic because of two factors: the nature of the reader and the nature of Scripture. 

The Reader as an Interpreter

The first reason one needs to learn how to interpret is that, whether one likes it or not, every reader is at the same time an interpreter. That is, most of us assume as we read that we also understand what we read. We also tend to think that our understanding is the same thing as the Holy Spirit's or human author's intent. However, we invariably bring to the text all that we are, with all of our experiences, culture, and prior understandings of words and ideas. Sometimes what we bring to the text, unintentionally to be sure, leads us astray, or else causes us to read all kinds of foreign ideas into the text. 

Thus, when a person in our culture hears the word 'cross,' centuries of Christian art and symbolism cause most people automatically to think of a Roman cross, although there is little likelihood that that was the shape of Jesus' cross, which was probably shaped like a 'T.' Most Protestants, and Catholics as well, when they read texts about the church at worship, automatically envision people sitting in a building with 'pews' much like their own. When Paul says, 'Make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts' (Romans 13:14 NKJV), people in most English-speaking cultures are apt to think that 'flesh' means the 'body' and therefore that Paul is speaking of 'bodily appetites.' 

But the word 'flesh,' as Paul uses it, seldom refers to the body--and in this text it almost certainly did not--but to a spiritual malady sometimes called 'the sinful nature,' denoting totally self-centered existence. Therefore, without intending to do so, the reader is interpreting as he or she reads, and unfortunately all too often interprets incorrectly. 

This leads us to note further that in any case the reader of an English Bible is already involved in interpretation. For translation is in itself a (necessary) form of interpretation. Your Bible, whatever translation you use, which is your beginning point, is in fact the end result of much scholarly work. Translators are regularly called upon to make choices regarding meanings, and their choices are going to affect how you  understand. 

Good translators, therefore, take the problem of our language differences into consideration. But it is not an easy task. In Romans 13:14, for example, shall we translate 'flesh' (as in KJV, NRSV, NASU, ESV, etc.) because this is the word Paul used, and then leave it to an interpreter to tell us that 'flesh' here does not mean 'body'? Or shall we 'help' the reader and translate 'sinful nature' (as in the NIV, TNIV, GNB, NLT, etc.) or 'disordered natural inclinations' (NJB) because these more closely approximate what Paul's word really means ? We will take up this matter in greater detail in the next chapter. For now it is sufficient to point out how the fact  of translation in itself has already involved on in the task of interpretation. 

The need to interpret is also to be found by noting what goes on around us all the time. A simple look at the contemporary church, for example, makes it abundantly clear that not all 'plain meanings' are equally plain to all. It is of more than passing interest that most of those in today's church who argue that women should keep silent in church on the basis of 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 at the same time deny the validity of speaking in tongues and prophecy, the very context in which the 'silence' passage occurs. And those who affirm on the basis of 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 that women as well as men should pray and prophesy usually deny that women must do so with their heads covered. For some, the Bible 'plainly teaches' believers' baptism by immersion; others believe they can make a biblical case for infant baptism. Both 'eternal security' and the possibility of 'losing one's salvation' are preached in the church, but never by the same person! Yet both are affirmed as the plain meaning of biblical texts. Even the two authors of this book have some disagreements as to what certain texts 'plainly' mean. Yet all of us are reading the same Bible, and we are all trying to be obedient to what the text 'plainly' means. 

Besides these recognizable differences among Bible-believing Christians, there are also all kinds of strange things afloat. One can usually recognize the cults, for example, because they have an authority in addition to the Bible. But not all of them do; and in every case they bend the truth by the way they select texts from the Bible itself. Every imaginable heresy or practice, from the Arianism (denying Christ's deity) of Jehovah's witnesses, to baptizing for the dead among Mormons, to snake handling among Appalachian sects, claims to be 'supported' by a text. 

Even among more theologically orthodox people, however, many strange ideas manage to gain acceptance in various quarters. For example, one of the current rages among American Protestants, especially charismatics, is the so-called wealth and health gospel. The 'good news' is that God's will for you is financial and material prosperity! One of the advocates of this 'gospel' begins his book by arguing for the 'plain sense' of Scripture and claiming that he puts the Word of God first and foremost throughout his study. EH says that it is not what we think it says but what it actually  says that counts. The 'plain meaning' is what he is after. But one begins to wonder what the 'plain meaning' really is when financial prosperity is argued as the will of God from such a text as 3 John 2, 'Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth' (KJV)--a text that in fact has nothing to do at all with financial prosperity. Another example takes the plain meaning of the story of the rich young man (Mark 10:17-33) as precisely the opposite of 'what it actually says' and attributes the 'interpretation' to the Holy Spirit. One may rightly question whether the plain meaning is being sought at all; perhaps the plain meaning is simply what such a writer wants the text to mean in order some pet ideas. 

Given all this diversity, both inside and outside the church, and all the differences even among scholars, who supposedly know 'the rules,' it is no wonder that some argue for no interpretation, just reading. But as we have seen, this is a false option. The antidote to bad interpretation is not no interpretation but good interpretation, based on commonsense guidelines. 

The authors of this book labor under no illusions that by reading and following our guidelines everyone will finally agree on the 'plain meaning,' our meaning! What we do hope to achieve is to heighten the reader's sensitivity to specific problems inherent in each genre, to help the reader know why different options exist and how to make commonsense judgments, and especially to enable the reader to discern between good and not-so-good interpretations--and to know what makes them one or the other." Pgs 17-21

- Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart

from: http://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Bible-All-Worth/dp/0310246040/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1356809392&sr=1-1&keywords=how+to+read+the+bible+for+all+its+worth

Fee, Gordon D and Stuart, Douglas. How to Read the Bible for All It's Worth. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003. 

Individualism and The Church

"Paul's vision of church life in his letter to Titus includes every member encouraging and instructing the others to embody the gospel in their behavior. The older women are to teach the younger women 'to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home...kind...and to be subject to their husbands (Titus 2:4-5). Older men are to encourage the younger men to be self-controlled, to do good and show integrity and seriousness (Titus 2:6-7). When these relationships operate appropriately, the young learn to live the gospel by the examples of their Christian 'family,' and the Christian community embodies the faith in such a way that outsiders take notice and God is glorified.

This way of thinking about church is challenging to Western readers. Many of us joke that 'you can't choose your family.' But we all know full well that we can choose our church. In the West, church is considered a voluntary association. That is, people join a church freely and voluntarily, and they take on certain responsibilities--or don't--as they choose. This view of the church began to predominate in North America after the Great Awakening of the 1740's. Before then, people (in Puritan New England, at least) became part of the church not when they chose to but when they were baptized as infants. Later, they became full members when they gave an account of their personal experience of conversion. Under this system, children were regarded as children of the covenant. The congregation had a responsibility to help rear them to saving faith. As a result of the Awakening, however, many began to believe that the system of infant baptism led to an impure church that was mixed with believers and unbelievers alike. They feared people would have a false sense of security in their faith because they were baptized as infants, even though they had no personal relationship with Jesus. Many of the people who felt this way eventually left the older established churches to form new ones in which membership was based solely on believers' baptism. Adults who could give an account of saving faith and symbolized it in baptism then joined the church voluntarily (i.e., not because they were 'forced' through baptism as infants). In this new system, what legitimized the church was everyone's decision to associate with it. People entered the church on the basis of their individual experience and decision; they were free to leave on the basis of their individual decision. They became part of the group, but their identity wasn't determined by the group. 

If we're not careful, our individualistic assumptions about church can lead us to think of the church as something like a health club. We're members because we believe in the mission statement and want to be a part of the action.  As long as the church provides the services I want, I'll stick around. But when I no longer approve of the vision, or am no longer 'being fed,' I'm out the door. This is not biblical Christianity. Scripture is clear that when we become Christians, we become--permanently and spiritually--a part of the church. We become part of the family of God, with all the responsibilities and expectations that word connotes in the non-Western world. We don't choose who else is a Christian with us. But we are committed to them, bound to them by the Spirit. As we are not free to dissociate our identities from them--mainly because once we are all in Christ, our own individual identities are no longer of primary importance. Paul used the metaphor of a body to emphasize that all the parts belong to and depend on one another (1 Corinthians 12). 

But we can miss this, because a flaw in the English language works together with our love for individualism. In English, you can be both singular and plural. That is, we can't differentiate formally between you (singular) and you (plural). Most languages don't endure this ambiguity. And deep down, we don't like to either. That's why English speakers in different regions come up with colloquial terms to differentiate between the two: ya'll, you'ns, you guys, you lot, youse (Scotland), yous (Liverpool) and even yous guys (parts of New York). Biblical Greek could differentiate between you singular and you plural. But we miss this in our English translations. Paul asked the Corinthians: 'Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own' (1 Corinthians 6:19). We typically understand the singulars and plurals in this verse backwards. In the original Greek, the you is plural and temple is singular. Paul is saying, 'All of you together are a singular  temple for the Holy Spirit.' God doesn't have millions of little temples scattered around. Together we make the dwelling for the Spirit. Peter uses a beautiful metaphor for this spiritual reality. He calls believers 'living stones' who are being built together into 'a spiritual house for a holy priesthood' (1 Peter 2:5 NASB). 

Yet even in Peter's image of one temple in which we are each stones, we in the West may assume that the emphasis is on the parts. We  think, "Look, I'm this unique stone right there.' It's a little like buying a commemorative brick for a building project, one with your name on it. We're happy to be part of the collective as long as we are still individually recognizable. But what went without being said for Peter and his audience--and much of the rest of the world today-- is that the emphasis is on the whole. They would have thought, 'I'm an indistinguishable part of this whole, but a part nonetheless.' Paul was reflecting this thought in his letter to the Ephesians: 'In him [Christ] the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you [plural] too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit' (Ephesians 2:21-22). 

So why go to church? Why worship with a group? Because, in some way we may not fully understand, the Spirit indwells the group in a way the Spirit does not indwell the individual. We are all built together to become one, whole building: a single dwelling for his Spirit. Like it or not, we need each other. As Rodney Reeves noted, 'I cannot worship God by myself.'

Conclusion

In 2010, novelist Anne Rise (famous for Interview with the Vampire ) decided that she'd had enough of being a Christian. Ten years before, she had converted to the faith (or came back to the faith) and started writing a series of novels about the life of Christ. Eventually she couldn't take it anymore. She announced on Facebook that although she still believed in Jesus, she could no longer associate with his followers. Here's what she said: 'Today I quit being a Christian. I'm out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being 'Christian' or being a part of Christianity. It's simply impossible for me to 'belong' to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.'

While we certainly can resonate with her frustration, her perspective betrays a Western and individualistic view of the church that the Bible simply does not support. She wanted to distinguish her own identity from that of the church, making it clear that her identity tis not bound up in anything but her own faith. Her individual conscience provided a truer moral compass--in her opinion--than two thousand years of history. Now we're not picking on Anne Rice; she simply provides a famous example. But we see this tendency all the time among Christian college students and young adults. It has become increasingly popular in recent years for believers to call themselves Christ-followers instead of Christians . Like Rice, they don't want to be associated with the negative, nominal and cultural connotations of the word Christian. Associating with Christ but not his church is a distinction Jesus would never have made. In his final prayer to the Father before his crucifixion, Jesus prayed that his followers would recognize that they are eternally knit together and that their corporate testimony would win even more followers to the Way. 'I do not ask on the behalf of these alone,' Jesus prayed, 'but for those also who believe in Me through their word'--that's us-- 'that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe You sent Me' (John 17:20-21 NASB). Jesus viewed us--his  church--as a collectivist community. He came to establish a people of God, over which he would reign as king. It is not really 'me and Jesus.' He will reign in my heart because he will reign over all creation (Philippians 2:10). In the West, it may help if the church started thinking more in terms of we than me ." pgs 106-110

- E. Randolph Richards and Brandon J. O'Brien

from: http://www.amazon.com/Misreading-Scripture-Western-Eyes-Understand/dp/0830837825/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1356637549&sr=1-1&keywords=misreading+scripture+with+western+eyes

(O'Brien, Brandon J. and Richards, E. Randolph. Misreading Scripture With Western Eyes. Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2012.)

Race In American and In The Bible

"At the time of this writing, my wife and I (Brandon) just adopted our first child. We have learned a lot about ourselves and God and the Christian community through this journey. But one lesson that has been driven home time and again is how deeply entrenched racial prejudice is in the United States. 

This fact was reinforced in our adoption training. Because we pursued a domestic adoption (i.e., a child from the United States) and were happy to adopt a child of any ethnicity, our licensing and preparation involved learning to be a 'conspicuous' family: one that can't hide the fact that a child is adopted because he or she is ethnically different than the adoptive parents. We've taken classes on how to respond to insensitive comments from strangers and family, such as 'Is that your real baby?' or 'Does he speak English?' or 'She's so lucky to have you,' which implies that the child would be less fortunate to be raised by parents of her own ethnic background. We've even learned to anticipate the question 'Is that one of those crack babies?' which implies that the biological parents of a minority child must be drug addicts. Because our son, James, is African American, we are prepared to be on the receiving end of racial prejudice for the first time in our lives. 

Perhaps a greater outrage is the dollar amounts that are often affixed to skin color. At our agency, the placement fee is the same for children of all ethnicities. But in many places in the country, adopting a Caucasian child can cost almost twice as much as adopting a non-white or biracial child. This is because ethnic minority children are deemed 'hard to place' --fewer families are willing to adopt them--and are thus considered less desirable. Often, the lighter skinned a child is, the more expensive he or she is to adopt. This is true even among Christian adoptive parents and at Christian agencies. The Bible says all humans are created in God's image. There should be no 50-percent discounts. How, then, can Americans--even American Christians--tolerate a practice that deems some children to be 'less desirable' than others?

The issues are really more complicated. It appears to be more socially acceptable in the United States for white people to adopt non-white children from outside the U.S. than to adopt minority children from within the country. There is only anecdotal evidence for this, of course. But it suggests that white Americans, at least, make a number of gut-level assumptions about and distinctions between people of different ethnicities. 

What makes this all the more remarkable, is that, in theory at least, Americans are not supposed to make such distinctions. When Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, culture-watchers began debating whether the United States had finally become a post-racial  society. The logic runs like this: now that an African American has been elected to the nation's most powerful position, the glass ceiling is shattered. The limitations and obstacles that once held back people of color are gone. The long-awaited dream of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., that people will one day be judged 'not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,' has been realized. The United States is now officially colorblind. The wealthy and powerful hail from all ethnic backgrounds. In terms of policy, it is against the law for a company to refuse to hire an employer or for a university to refuse to enroll a student based on the color of her skin. It can be easy to believe that, at least on paper, the country has put racial discrimination in the past. 

This topic is one on which majority culture and minority readers will have very different perspectives. It's probably useful, then, that we acknowledge from the beginning that we primarily have majority culture, specifically white, readers in mind when we describe what goes without being said said about race and ethnicity in the West. In general, minority readers will be considerably more sensitive to these issues. It is the unfair privilege of majority peoples to not worry about the difference ethnicity makes; it is not an important part of our everyday lives. So in the rest of this chapter, we  will refer primarily to white male Westerners. 

A word about terminology is in order here, too, before we proceed further. We have used the terms race and ethnicity  somewhat interchangeably to this point. We've done this primarily because we suspect most readers are accustomed to discussing these issues in terms of race. We will use the word ethnicity for the remainder of this chapter, however, for a couple of reason. First, race is largely an invention of the Enlightenment, intended to categorize the natural world into groups according to type. Race was believed to account for the difference between humans of different 'kinds.' In nineteenth-century England, for example, one theorist writes, all people could be divided into 'a small number of groups, called "races," in such a way that all members of these races, shared certain fundamental, biologically heritable, moral and intellectual characteristics with each other that they did not share with members of any other race. The characteristics that each member of a race was supposed to share with every other were sometimes called the essence of that race.'

We reject this belief and the related implications--that some 'races' are morally and intellectually superior to others, for example. We believe there is only one race, the human race, made in the image of God. Second, speaking in terms of ethnicity is a more precise way to account for the differences between people groups. Blanket racial terms, such as Caucasian and black and Latino, flatten important distinctions between cultures.

So what goes without being said--especially by white Western males--about ethnicity? First of all, many white Westerners feel that the worst thing they could be called is a racist. We know deep down that we're not supposed to make value distinctions between people of different ethnicities, as if it's better  to be white or black or whatever. Because we're hesitant to make value distinctions--and rightfully so--we're often slow to make any distinctions at all. Thus it goes without being said form any that to be truly equal, everyone must be the same. This is what we mean by being colorblind : the belief that ethnic differences don't matter. Of course it would be fine if what we meant was that everyone should be treated with equal dignity or enjoy the same rights. But we suspect what is commonly meant is that everyone should be treated as if they were the same--and by same, what is frequently meant is majority culture. 

Consequently, we are trained to assume that ethnicity is unimportant and that prejudice on the basis of ethnicity is an impossible motivation for behavior. We avoid making an issue 'a race issue' unless there's no way around it, because we have convinced ourselves that ethnicity is no longer a factor in social situations. This leaves us somewhat schizophrenic, because we all know that we carry latent prejudices privately while we are trained to pretend that we don't. 

As Christians, we are firm in our convictions that all ethnicities are equal in value: 'There is no difference between Jes and Gentile' (Romans 3:22). As authors we are deeply committed to and convinced of the fundamental equality of all peoples. We also believe that to understand a culture, you must be aware of ethnicity and especially the prejudices that may exist within particular culture. To ignore them is naive and can result in serious misunderstanding.

Consider this example. Let's suppose a Korean missionary decides to move to Birmingham, Alabama to start a church. He notices that a lot of people are dark-skinned. He asks you, 'Is there a difference between blacks and whites?' 

In our piety, we might answer, 'No, everybody is the same.'

It is certainly true that all are equal, but our pious answer is misleading in several ways. First, we are likely setting our Korean missionary up for trouble. He will be blindsided by the first racist he meets, and he will surely meet one. Second, he will notice some differences among the locals in worship and dialect and perhaps even in dress and cuisine. Third, he might assume that the majority culture of is neighborhood is representative of the majority culture of North America. Just as ignorance about ethnicities can lead to misunderstanding in our daily lives, so too it can lead to misunderstanding of the Bible. 

We are conditioned culturally not to make generalizations about people based on ethnicity. We know better than to say, 'He does such-and-such because he's Latino.' We affirm that instinct. But being oblivious to ethnicities can cause us to miss things in the Bible. The biblical writers and their audiences were more than happy to make such generalizations. 'He does such-and-such because he's a Jew' was a perfectly legitimate argument for first-century Romans. Consequently, we may read the Bible ignorant of ethnic differences in the text that would have been obvious to the first audience. Or we may naively believe that those differences don't matter anyway because first-century Rome must have been post-racial, like we supposedly are. Other times our deeply ingrained racial prejudices influence our interpretation so that we assume the ancients held the same stereotypes we hold." pgs 52-56

- Brandon J. O'Brien

from: http://www.amazon.com/Misreading-Scripture-Western-Eyes-Understand/dp/0830837825/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1356302988&sr=1-1&keywords=misreading+scripture+with+western+eyeshttp://www.amazon.com/Misreading-Scripture-Western-Eyes-Understand/dp/0830837825/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1356302988&sr=1-1&keywords=misreading+scripture+with+western+eyes

Prayer in Spiritual Warfare

"Westerners tend to be mechanistic in our worldview. Angels and demons do not belong in our Newtonian universe, and there are many Christians who doubt or deny the existence of a personal devil. Their thinking is that the devil is an antiquated way of explaining phenomena that we now understand better and have different words to describe. What the ancients called demonization, we call mental illness, and so forth. In practice, Westerners sometimes update these parts of the Bible to fit their mechanistic worldview. 

Those who doubt the devil's existence might be interested in reading C. S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters . One of the devil's favorite temptations, muses Lewis, is to tempt us to disbelieve in his existence so he can go about his affairs unnoticed. Lewis chides, 'There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors, and hail a materialist and a magician with the same delight.' Allow me to suggest two cautions for any reader who might have a hard time praying 'rescue us from the evil one' to include the devil.

First, Jesus taught this prayer, and he even prays this way for his disciples: 'I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one' (John 17:15). We call him Lord and revere his teaching, as we should. So we should respect his teaching regarding evil as being personally directed by the devil. Few of the requests in the Lord's Prayer fit our natural inclinations but in each of them Jesus teaches us something essential about our walk with God and the practice of prayer. He devotes one-sixth of his compendium on prayer to the subject of spiritual warfare and the wiles of the devil. If Jesus is right, ignoring the devil's existence is foolish. Facts that we do not face squarely have a habit of stabbing us in the back!

Second, we should listen to our Christian brothers and sisters around the world who testify to the reality of spiritual warfare. Countless Christians witness to the importance of this sixth petition of the Lord's Prayer as they seek to know Christ and to make Christ known. Jesus taught us to pray 'rescue us from the evil one.' Those who obey him in this matter have found new spiritual power and solutions to problems that could not be solved in conventional ways. Their experience explains the understanding of the earliest Christians that they needed to 'put on the whole armor of God' in order to 'stand against the wiles of the devil' (Ephesians 6:11). 

    For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers

    of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so 

    that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand therefore, and fasten the

    belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you 

    ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming 

    arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Pray in the Spirit at all 

    times in every prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints. 

    (Ephesians 6:12-18)

Then and now, Christians have found spiritual warfare to be part and parcel of a walk with God. 

This is not to claim that there is a demon behind everything that goes wrong. Our increased understanding of mental illness has led to many treatments that relieve people's suffering. But there are many patients who do not respond to treatment, and their mental problems may well have a spiritual cause. As C. Peter Wagner puts it, we shouldn't think that there is a demon behind every bush, but 'demons are, in fact, behind some bushes.' If nothing else, it is wise to remain open to spiritual explanations of physical and psychological problems, as well as biological and mechanical explanations. 

Temptation is a part of the Christian life. It comes from all quarters, within and without. We are tempted to remain bitter, to hate, to fear, to gossip, to lust, to be selfish, to be self-righteous, to give up -- and the list goes on. Furthermore, we often face circumstances that test our mettle as believers. These trials subject our faith to a stress test and build character in us. We should face all trials, tests and temptations prayerfully, seeking deliverance from the circumstances and opponents we face." pgs 110-112

- Brian J. Dodd

from: http://www.amazon.com/Praying-Jesus-Way-Beginners-Veterans/dp/0830819932/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1355770168&sr=8-1&keywords=praying+jesus%27+way+brian+j.+dodd

Why Did Jesus Have To Die?

"JoAnne Terrell wrote about how her mother was murdered by her mother's boyfriend. 'I had to find a connection between my mom's story and my story and Jesus' story,' she said. She found it in understanding the Cross--namely, that Jesus did not only suffer for us but with us. He knew what it was like (literally) to be under the lash, and to refuse to be cowed by those in power, and to pay for it with his life. He voluntarily took his place beside those who were without power and suffering from injustice. As John Stott wrote, 'I could never myself believe in God if it were not for the Cross. In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it?'

Therefore the Cross, when properly understood, cannot possibly be used to encourage the oppressed to simply accept violence. When Jesus suffered for us, he was honoring justice. But when Jesus suffered with us he was identifying with the oppressed of the world, not with their oppressors. All life-changing love entails an exchange, a reversal of places, but here is the Great Reversal. God, in the place of ultimate power, reverses places with the marginalized, the poor, and the oppressed. The prophets always sang songs about God as one who has 'brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the poor' (Luke 1:52), but never could they have imagined that God himself would come down of his ultimate throne and suffer with the oppressed so that they might be lifted up. 

This pattern of the Cross means that the world's glorification of power, might, and status is exposed and defeated. On the Cross Christ wins through losing, triumphs through defeat, achieves power through weakness and service, comes to wealth via giving all away. Jesus Christ turns the values of the world upside down. As N.T. Wright says:

The real enemy after all, was not Rome but the powers of evil that stood behind human arrogance and violence....[On the cross] the kingdom of God triumphed over the kingdoms of this world by refusing to join in their spiral of violence. [On the cross, Jesus] would love his enemies, turn the other cheek, go the second mile.

This upside-down pattern so contradicts the thinking and practice of the world that it creates an 'alternate kingdom, an alternate reality, a counterculture among those who have been transformed by it. In this peaceable kingdom there is a reversal of the values of the world with regard to power, recognition, status, and wealth. In this new counterculture, Christians look at money as something to give away. They look at power as something to use strictly for service. Racial and class superiority, accrual of money and power at the expense of others, yearning for popularity and recognition, these normal marks of human life, are the opposite of the mindset of those who have understood and experienced the Cross. Christ creates a whole new order of life. Those who are shaped by the great reversal of the Cross no longer need self-justification through money, status, career, or pride of race and class. So the Cross creates a counterculture in which sex, money, and power cease to control us and are used in life-giving and community-building rather than destructive ways. 

To understand why Jesus had to die it is important to remember both the result of the Cross (costly forgiveness of sins) and the pattern of the Cross (reversal of the world's values). On the cross neither justice nor mercy loses out--both are fulfilled at once. Jesus' death was necessary if God was going to take justice seriously and still love us. This same concern for both love and justice should mark all our relationships. We should never acquiesce to injustice. Jesus identified with the oppressed. Yet we should not try to overcome evil with evil. Jesus forgave his enemies and died for them. 

Why then did Jesus have to die? Even Jesus asked that question. In the Garden of Gethsemane he asked if there was any other way. There wasn't. There isn't. On the cross, in agony, he cried out the question, 'Why?' Why was he being forsaken? Why was it all necessary? The answer of the Bible is--for us."

-Tim Keller

from: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1594483493/ref=s9_simh_gw_p14_d1_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=1VDTCWEY5CQ4WFRN5A3D&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1389517282&pf_rd_i=507846

Destroying Social Fabric

"In The Nature of True Virtue , one of the most profound treatments on social ethics ever written, Jonathan Edwards lays out how sin destroys the social fabric. He argues that human society is deeply fragmented when anything but God is our highest love. If our highest goal in life is the good of our family, then, says Edwards, we will tend to care less for other families. If our highest goal is the good of our nation, tribe, or race, then we will tend to be racist or nationalistic. If our ultimate goal in life is our own individual happiness, then we will put out own economic and power interests ahead of those of others. Edwards concludes that only if God is our summum bonum, our ultimate good and life center, will we find our heart drawn out not only to people of all families, races, and classes, but to the whole world in general. 

How does this destruction of social relationships flow from the internal effects of sin? If we get our very identity, our sense of worth, from our political position, then politics is not really about politics, it is about us. Through our cause we are getting a self, our worth. That means we must despise and demonize the opposition. If we get our identity from our ethnicity or socioeconomic status, then we have to feel superior to those of other classes and races.  If you are profoundly proud of being an open-minded, tolerant soul, you will be extremely indignant toward people you think are bigots. If you are a very moral person, you will feel superior to people you think are licentious. And so on.

There is no way out of this conundrum. The more we love and identify deeply with our family, our class, our race, our religion, the harder it is to not feel superior or even hostile to other religions, races, etc. So racism, classism, and sexism are not matters of ignorance or a lack of education. Foucault and others in our time have shown that it is far harder than we think to have a self- identity that doesn't lead to exclusion. The real culture war is taking place inside our own disordered hearts, wracked by inordinate desires for things that control, us that lead us to feel superior and exclude those without them, and that fail to satisfy us even when we get them." pgs 174-176

- Tim Keller 

from: http://www.amazon.com/The-Reason-God-Belief-Skepticism/dp/1594483493/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1355603470&sr=8-1&keywords=tim+keller+the+reason+for+god

Pray and Pray and Pray and...

"God does not always let us get things at our first effort. He would train us and make us strong men by compelling us to work hard for the best things. So also He does not always give us what we ask in answer to the first prayer; He would train us and make us strong men of prayer by compelling us to pray hard for the best things. He mays us pray through.

I am glad that this is so. there is more blessed training in prayer than that that comes through being compelled to ask again and again and again even through a long period of years before one obtains that which he seeks from God. Many people call it submission to the will of God when God does not grant them their requests at the first or second asking, and they say:

'Well, perhaps it is not God's will.'

As a rule this is not submission, but spiritual laziness. We do not call it submission to the will of God when we give up after one or two efforts to obtain things by action; we call it lack of strength of character. When the strong man of action starts out to accomplish a thing, if he does not accomplish it the first or second or one hundredth time, he keeps hammering away until he does accomplish it; and the strong man of prayer when he starts to pray for a thing keeps on praying until he prays it through, and obtains what he seeks. We should be careful about what we ask from God, but when we do begin to pray for a thing we should never give up praying for it until we get it, or until God makes it very clear and very definite to us that it is not His will to give it. 

Some would have us believe that it shows unbelief to pray twice for the same thing, that we ought to 'take it' the first time that we ask. Doubtless there are times when we are able through faith in the Word or the leading of the Holy Spirit to claim the first time that which we have asked of God; but beyond question there are other times when we must pray again and again and again for the same thing before we get our answer. Those who have gotten beyond praying twice for the same thing have gotten beyond their Master. (Matthew 26:44.) George Muller prayed for two men daily for upwards of sixty years. One of these men was converted shortly before his death, I think at the last service that George Muller held, the other was converted within a year after his death. One of the great needs of the present day is men and women who will not only start out to pray for things but pray on and on and on until they obtain that which they seek from the Lord."  pgs 62-64

- R. A. Torrey

from: http://www.amazon.com/How-Pray-R-Torrey/dp/1456569546/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1354560986&sr=1-1&keywords=how+to+pray