Basketball and Spirituality

I’ve been thinking about what makes a person spiritual. As Christians we talk a lot about being spiritual as opposed to carnal or worldly. So what does make one spiritual? What does it mean to be spiritually mature?
I think that most of us think of being spiritual as something we do. I know I have. Everyone has there own ideas of what that might be. We have our lists of dos and don’ts, of those things that are taboo and that are acceptable. But, we are wrong.
Let me illustrate my point. Let us say that I decide to challenge my friend Craig to a game of basketball. Craig is an outstanding basketball player. So let us suspend reality for a moment and say I feel suicidal enough to play him at the game. What is going to be the outcome? He is going to kill me of course.
After the game I say to him, “Craig, you’re a good ball player, how can I improve my game to compete with you?” So he responds, “I noticed that you had a hard time keeping up with me. You were breathing hard and you look like you are about to die. I think you need to lose a few pounds and get in shape.”
So I take his advice and start dieting and working out. I do this for a year. At the end of the year I challenge Craig to another game. What do you suppose will happen? He is going to kill me of course. Why?
The answer is that in that whole year I haven’t practiced basketball. To be good at basketball requires a lot more than just eating right and being in great shape. Those things may be necessary to help make practicing basketball easier but they are not the game of basketball. So it is with spirituality.
We have our list of dos and don’ts and we think that by doing them we are being spiritual. But we are wrong. The list may be necessary but they are not spirituality itself.
So what does it mean to be spiritual then? What being spiritual means is that I am living my life moment to moment trusting in and depending on Jesus Christ. Trusting in Christ is what being spiritual is about. It is the game of basketball.
I see three types of actions that relate to being spiritual (that is to say, consistently trusting Christ). The first two are prior to spirituality (in a logical sense not in a chronological sense) and the third results from spirituality.
The two actions that are prior to spirituality are lists of dos and don’ts and amount to eating right and working out from our illustration. As we said earlier, they may be necessary to help make it easier for us to trust Christ but they are not in themselves the act of trusting Christ.
Rather than just keep calling them dos and don’ts we should go further and define them. The don’ts are basically our rejection and abstinence from anything that might cause us to trust in something other than in Christ. It may also take the form of regulating something that would steal my attention away from Christ.
The dos are the things in our life that we need to help promote our trust in Christ. They are the activities, experiences, and practices that we should not only receive into our lives but also cultivate.
We could call these dos and don’ts “promoting” and “protecting” faith. The act of promoting supplies a foundation and support for faith. It creates an atmosphere of activity that will make it possible for our faith to be produced and nurtured.
The act of protecting involves those acts that shield our faith by removing or limiting activities that might prove harmful. It provides an environment that protects our faith from being damaged or killed.
Both of the acts of promoting and protecting can be broken down into two categories – biblically mandated and personally mandated. Those that are biblically mandated would be those things that we are clearly told in Scripture such as gathering with a local church, prayer, Bible study, and not participating in those acts that Scripture clearly calls sin. However, we should never believe that just because they are biblically required that we are spiritual because of the mere act of doing them. Because they are biblically mandated then they are universally required for all Christians and there is never a time or place that we would be exempt from them.
There are also some dos and don’ts that are personally mandated. These would be those things that are personal convictions. They are those things that that person believes to be best for him to counteract temptations that he maybe dealing with. They might be things like not drinking alcohol, not watching rated R movies, not celebrating certain holidays, or not participating in certain holiday customs.
However, because they are personally mandated they do not apply to everyone. If I do not struggle with the same temptation that you do then why should I be subject to the same restrictions that you have placed on yourself. I have never struggled with the temptation of drunkenness nor of trusting in wine for my happiness. So why should I place the restriction of never drinking wine on myself. To hold everyone to a personal mandate is the epitome of legalism and the heresy of the Pharisees.
The third action that is related to spirituality (Trusting Christ) is that which results from spirituality, its fruit. So what does trusting in Christ moment to moment produce? To give a general answer it produces obedience. Obedience to what? Obedience to the commands of God. To give a more specific answer, it produces righteousness. After all, righteousness is doing what God has commanded. But what has God commanded?
To give the most specific answer I can to the original question (what does trusting in Christ moment to moment produce?) and to the more immediate question (what has God commanded?) I must say that the answer is love. Trusting in Christ produces love. Every commandment of Scripture relates to love. Trusting Christ produces a supreme love for God, love of neighbor, and love for our fellow Christians. Love for God is the foundation for our love of neighbor and love for fellow Christians.
Therefore it is not the practice of dos and don’ts that give us the evidence for spirituality. It is the practice of love that demonstrates that we are spiritual.

Fortress Mentality

The church in America has been put in a cage by its acceptance of the dichotomy, the view that reality is split into two spheres of sacred and secular. This is a cage of our own making. Like Michael Goheen writes, "The barred cage that forms the prison for the gospel in contemporary western culture is [the Church's] accommodation... to the fact-value dichotomy" (quoted by Nancy Pearcey in Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity).

The fact of the matter is that we like it this way. It provides us with an illusion of safety. One way it does this, I believe, is that the dichotomy is one of the primary reasons (but not the only reason) that the persecution of the Christian Church isn't as severe in western society as it is in other parts of the world. Another way is that it convinces us that we are effectively combating worldliness.

The dichotomy has provided the opportunity for the Christian Church to grow in a relatively hostile environment without much interference. But this has come at a cost, a cost to the Gospel. The Gospel has been severely sidelined and thought irrelevant by our society. The church adds converts to its numbers but its influence in the culture continues to dwindle. The Gospel has no impact on our society because it has been put in a cage and the church is responsible for putting it there.

I call this the fortress mentality. The fortress mentality is the primary way in which the evangelical church in America has accommodated the world spirit and compromised the gospel. In John 17:13-19 Jesus prayed that his church would be in the world but not of it. Unfortunately, we are all to often of the world but not in it.

I want to give you four characteristics of the fortress mentality. I borrowed these points from a lecture given by Professor Jerram Barrs at Covenant Theological Seminary on the culture wars and adapted them for my purposes (I highly recommend you read the transcript of this lecture or download the mp3 audio). Any inconsistencies or errors in relating his points to my topic that you may find are all mine and not those of Professor Barrs.

The church's accommodation of the dichotomy has created a fortress mentality in the church that has these four resulting characteristics:

1. We are afraid and intimidated by the culture.


2. We condemn the world around us.


3. We retreat from the world into the haven of the church.


4. We personally separate from unbelievers to keep ourselves pure.
   

You may look at those things and say "I am concerned about the culture and that seems like the right coarse of action. It looks like the safest way to act." This is an illusion and it will not work. It actually works against the gospel. Let me give you five reasons why this is so.

First, even though it may look like we are keeping ourselves protected from worldliness, in reality the fortress mentality is a deceptive form of worldliness. We are buying into a worse form of corruption then what we thought we were trying to avoid.

Second, the church ends up being cut off and vulnerable like the German forces after the D-Day invasion. The Germans retreated into different towns and villages and fortified their positions, ready for a siege. The siege never came. The Allies were instructed to bypass those positions. They were happy to leave the Germans sitting in their fortresses untouched. Within three months most of these Germans had surrendered. Why? Because they were cut off and vulnerable. The Allies controlled the landscape.

When the church has a fortress mentality it retreats from the culture and gives up control of the cultural landscape to the enemy. We may feel safe inside our fortress because there is no persecution but the world knows it doesn't have to lay siege to us. All they have to do is keep us in the fortress so that we become more and more irrelevant and soon we will just give up. The World likes it when we stay in our fortress. They have the run of the place without our interference.

Third, we start looking at everything outside the walls of our "sacred fortress" as hostile and evil. We become afraid of the world seeing everything in it as something to avoid because of how it might potentially corrupt us. The problem with this is that we will end up being disobedient to passages such as 1 Timothy 4:4-5 and reject God's good creation.

Forth, evangelism becomes a raid into enemy territory where we try to take captives back to the safety of our fortress. The non-believer is looked at as the enemy. We very rarely know any non-believers personally and we pride ourselves on this fact. This sort of view limits evangelism to methods like door-to-door, street preaching, and other confrontational styles of sharing the gospel.

Fifth, our view of ministry and spirituality suffers from the dichotomy. Sacred/secular as it is viewed in relation to the ministry is clergy/laity. We are told from good preachers that all believers are in the ministry. Unfortunately, this is nothing but lip service. We don't know how to be involved in the ministry and we have never been told. The only thing we have come up with is to support our minister's ministry by throwing money at it. The reason this is is because we see the ministry as something that the pastor or the missionary does. The ministry belongs to the sphere of the clergy and we as laity can only be involved in a supportive role.

The sacred/secular split also affects our spirituality. Since in this view the sacred is the sphere of the spiritual and the secular is the sphere of the worldly and profane, we try to limit ourselves to the sphere of the sacred as much as possible. Whenever we are involved in the secular sphere we look at it as something we can't avoid and have to put up with; we see it as something of no value and we are counting the minutes until we can get back to the sphere that really matters. We desire to escape the mundane. If the spiritual resides in the sacred sphere then let us escape from the secular totally.

This view of spirituality has two outcomes: legalism and charismatic ecstaticism. Legalism is rampant and the charismatic movement is one of the fastest growing areas in the American church today. The fortress mentality is the fuel that feeds this fire.

The fortress mentality has many destructive effects. We as the church need to abandon this worldly perspective and correct our vision with the Scriptures. The fortress mentality is no protection that we can trust. I know of only one fortress that we can take refuge in, this is not it.

A mighty fortress is our GOD!

Worldview Survey

Here is a very "unscientific" survey to help you determine if you have any traces of an unbiblical worldview in your thinking. This survey is a work in progress. I have used variations of it in the past to help others do this very thing. In order to take the survey you may want to cut and paste this post into a word document and then follow the instructions below.

Instructions: Next to each subject place the number of the category you think that it best fits into (either 1 or 2).

1. Sacred - Having religious value (Meaning that you see this as holy or as useful for the kingdom of God).
2. Secular - Having no religious value (That could mean that you think of it as neutral, or that you think of it as worldly, evil, or sinful in some way).

• Football
• Beer
• Profit
• The Environment
• Politics
• Sex
• Advertising
• Church
• Halloween
• Dancing
• The Bible
• Government
• Vacations
• Family
• Farming
• Science
• Rap Music
• Technology
• Anger
• Philosophy
• Movies
• Journalism
• Banking
• Theology
• Mathematics
• Preaching
• Evangelism
• Entertainment
• Food
• Marijuana

If you would, please post a comment letting me know what your results are. You can make it easy by just grouping the subjects by the category you put them in. I will have a future post to let you know what the results indicate.

The Spirit of the Age

What worldview are you operating off of? If you are a Christian you might tell me that you operate off of a Christian worldview. Maybe you do and maybe you don't. Just because you are a Christian doesn't mean that you are acting in accordance with your professed beliefs.

Postmodernism, to use an expression of Francis Schaeffer, is like a bad London Fog. It seeps in through the cracks and permeates everything.

The point is is that you could be more postmodern in your beliefs than you are aware of. Unless we become aware of our tendencies to think in the wrong way we will never correct our thinking. This is why I spelled out a lot of this in one of my previous post, Postmodern "Split". You might be asking, "How important is this, really?"

Francis Schaeffer, in his book The God Who Is There, said:

The Christian is to resist the spirit of the world. But when we say this, we must understand that the world-spirit does not always take the same form. So the Christian must resist the spirit of the world in the form it takes in his own generation. If he does not do this, he is not resisting the spirit of the world at all. This is especially so for our generation, as the forces at work against us are of such a total nature.

He then quotes these words attributed to Martin Luther:

If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefield besides, is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.

Postmodernism is the spirit of the age that we face in our generation. The problem is that even in the most biblical and theologically accurate churches an accommodation to this world-spirit has occured. Although most of them probably are not aware of this and think that they are standing strong against the spirit of the age. The reason this is is that they have a precommitment already in place to the dichotomy, splitting reality into two different spheres.

This is a serious issue. As Nancy Pearcey writes in her book Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity (Study Guide Edition) "This dichotomy in our minds is the greates barrier to liberating the power of the gospel across the whole of culture today... it is the single most potent weopon for delegitimizing the biblical perspective in the public square today."

Because we already start from a two realm view of reality we have a hard time seeing where we are at fault. We easily slip into accepting the worlds perspective of things without ever realizing that we are doing so. We stand strong on our confession of faith, while at the same time compartmentalizing that faith. We defend the truthfullness of the Bible and then limit its application to only the "religious" area of life. Without being aware of it, we put God in a box.

Happy Halloween, No Really!

Happy Halloween! I know that many Christians do not celebrate this holiday because of its pagan associations . I used to be one of them. Every year my wife and I would be in the store and we would walk down the Halloween costume and decor aisles and she would ask me, "Now why don't we celebrate Halloween again?" And I would always look at her and say, "Because it's a wicked, wicked holiday." Well, maybe I was wrong.

The fact of the matter is that there is no such thing as a Christian holiday in the literal sense. No where in the New Testament are we commanded to celebrate the birthday of Jesus or the anniversary of His death and resurrection. In fact we aren't commanded to keep any holidays at all. That is the interesting thing about the Christian religion, it never instituted any specific holy days. Christmas and Easter are just as pagan as Halloween in their historical roots.

Don't misunderstand me. I am not saying we should stop celebrating Christmas and Easter. What I am saying is that we should celebrate Halloween. (Here is a link to help you seperate the facts from the hype.)

Why would I say such a thing when so many Christians believe that it is such a wicked, wicked holiday? It goes back to the fact that Christ never instituted any specific holidays. Why didn't He do this? Was He against celebrating holidays? No, He celebrated many holidays himself. He never instituted holidays because Christianity isn't meant to have a specific culture like Judaism. Instead it is meant to transform the culture that it finds itself in from within the culture. That means we take over already existing creational structures (like holidays) within those cultures.

Someone will object and say "But Halloween isn't like Christmas and Easter, Halloween celebrates Satan and the powers of darkness." I have two responses to that objection. First, it isn't true. Christmas and Easter have roots that are just as pagan and satanic as Halloween. The only reason we as Christians don't have the problems with Christmas and Easter, like we do with Halloween, is because we have had partial success with transforming those holidays.

My second response is... so what. Are we just going to let Satan continue having his day? Are we going to allow rebellion against our God to go unchallenged?... just look the other way, refuse trick-or-treaters by turning our porch lights off. Do you really think we will transform the world by such a feeble silent protest. This is a fortress mentality. This is how you lose a war.

Let me illustrate my point with an example from a favorite hobby of mine, astronomy. There is a star that reaches its zenith near the time of Halloween, this star is a variable star named Algol. This name comes from its Arabic name Ra's al Ghul, the Demon's Head. Our English word ghoul comes from this name. Algol means the Demon. It is the Demon Star. The Hebrews knew this star as Rosh ha Satan, Satan's Head. (This information is taken from the book Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning (Dover Books on Astronomy) by Richard Hinckley Allen)

Someone may say, "How does this illustrate your point? It looks like it contradicts it." "After all", they may say, "it just goes to show that the powers of evil and darkness are on the rise at Halloween."

The reason this illustrates my point is because Algol is in the severed head of Medusa in the constellation Perseus, the Champion or Rescuer as he is sometimes called. The point I am trying to make is at the height of its supposed power the enemy is defeated by the Champion. The kingdom of darkness has already been destroyed. Satan's power has been severed.

So, if the world wants to celebrate the darkness then we should not just role over and let them have their day. No, we instead celebrate the light and its victory over the darkness. We announce to the world that they celebrate in defeat.

We don't do this by offering a Christian alternative to Halloween but by redeeming the holiday and declaring the antithesis. We don't need a Christian substitute for Halloween. What we need is a Christian Halloween. Many of the same elements that are used in the holiday can still be used such as trick or treat, costumes, pumpkins, and even jack-o-lanterns. Since our Champion has conquered Satan, we should use the spoils of the enemy to announce the victory of our King.

So, I say again, Happy Halloween!

Postmodern "Split"

The way our culture thinks and sees the world affects everyone in our culture, including you and me. The way we start to correct our thinking is to first become aware that we do think the way our culture does and to realize that it is wrong. This is the part where you buckle your seat belts because in the past when I have pointed out to people where there thinking is wrong I've gotten a mixed bag of reactions, anger and hostility being one of my least favorites. We'll explore this over the next few post.

We live in the postmodern era because our cultures thinking is postmodern. Within the postmodern cultural landscape there is a wide and varied range of beliefs. This is referred to as pluralism (our generations own version of polytheism). In such a diverse environment of beliefs what is it that unifies these beliefs under the heading postmodernism? What exactly is postmodernism?

Postmodernism is complex, to be sure, but its basic principle is pretty simple. Postmodernism's starting point is a dichotomy. It splits reality into two separate spheres. This was inherited from Greek philosophy. This "split" can be traced down through the history of the church and western civilization. You could diagram it like this...

Plato: Form/Matter = Perfect/Imperfect
Gnosticism: Spirit/Body = Good/Evil
Thomas Aquinas: Grace/Nature = Supernatural add on/Built in goal or purpose
Emanuel Kant: Freedom/Nature = Man has meaning/Man is a machine
Postmodernism: Sacred/Secular, Value/Fact, Faith/Reason = Non-rational/Rational
Note: Look at the "/" symbol as meaning "verses" or "opposite of" or maybe even "in opposition too".

In the past philosophers and theologians tried unsuccessfully to reconcile the tension created by this "split" through reason. These men truly believed that there was a rational answer to the tension. Postmodernism's solution to the tension wasn't to reconcile them or bring them together but to separate them even further.

Classic philosophy viewed the world in terms of true and false (antithesis). That is, they believed that if one thing was true then its opposite was false. This formed the basics of logic and reason. For example, the law of non-contradiction says that something can not be A and Non-A at the same time and in the same relationship. (God can't both exist and not exist.)

Francis Schaeffer in his book Escape from Reason said that since the time of the Greeks until Hegel philosophy had three characteristics. The first was what he called rationalism, they believed that man had the ability to come to know truth all on his own without any outside help. The second was rationality, that is they believed reason was the proper tool to be used to come to the truth. The third was hope because these men believed that there was truth out there and their questions would be answered.

Postmodernism has given up hope of ever coming to the answers by reason. There is no absolute truth. Therefore, reason can't bring us to the answer. The only characteristic that postmodernism retains is rationalism, man is still viewed as the autonomous determiner of what is true.

Postmodernism no longer views things in terms of antithesis but rather they believe that what was looked at before as being true and its opposite false can be brought together to form a new "truth". The result being all things are relative. This new truth is not arrived at by reason (since that was rejected in rejecting antithesis) but by a "leap of faith".

The "leap of faith" is the hallmark of postmodernism. It attempts to solve the problem of the "split" by this "leap of faith". Postmodernism doesn't believe that there are rational answers to be found, no absolute truth to provide meaning to life. Instead, we are to jump to the conclusion that life has meaning inspite of the fact that there is no rational basis for that conclusion. Reason gives us facts but they do not lead to meaning.

As you can see, the solution postmodernism provides is no solution at all. You maybe asking, "what does this have to do with me?" I'll answer that in my next post.

First Post

This is my first post. Coming out of the starting gate I just want to set the tone of what I want this blog to be. My purpose is to examine ways that we as Christians can develop a Biblical worldview and influence the mainstream culture, becoming conformed more to the cross of Christ in every area of life, for the advancement of His Kingdom. I hope this blog will create some very interesting discussion.

I believe that one of the greatest problems that the church in America faces is that we do not know how to apply the Bible to our daily lives. This is why we are losing ground. We don't know how or even if it does relate to our "secular" lives. After all, doesn't it just tell us about "religious" things.

Our thinking is all wrong. I know because I speak from experience. I have prided myself on my biblical knowledge and theological accuracy. Yet, I have always struggled with how to apply the Bible. After completing my very first hermeneutics course I asked the teacher, "Now that I've been taught the art and science of interpreting the Bible what is the art and science of applying the Bible?" His answer didn't satisfy me at all.

Over the years and through much study and searching I have discovered that Biblical application isn't so complicated. Don't misunderstand me. I didn't say it was easy but it is not complicated. The problem is not with the Bible. The problem is with us, with the way we think and with the way we see the world. Our problem is with our starting point in our thinking. If we start at the wrong place then is it any wonder that, no matter how good the directions are, we will end up in the wrong place.

This is why we don't know how to apply the Bible to all of life. This is the reason we do not know how to live as Christians in this fallen and broken reality. Most all we know how to do is work on our personal piety and maybe do some occasional evangelism. But isn't being a Christian more than this? As a servant of the King shouldn't we do more to advance His kingdom than tidy up our prayer closet?

What happened to being salt and light? What happened to being a city set on a hill? What happened to having your good works seen by men so that they glorify your Father in heaven? I've got news for you, the world doesn't care that you are faithful to your spouse, or that you don't curse, or that you read your Bible or pray or any host of a number of things that we think of when we hear those words. The only type of good work that the world will glorify God upon seeing is something that is going to impact or in some way be beneficial to them.

That is what I want to explore in this blog. We will talk about correcting our thinking, applying the Bible, and doing good works that make this rebellious unbelieving world stop, think, and perhaps glorify God.

To God Be The Glory.