Jonathan's blog

What bewilders me about Republicans is the coalition of the corporate Bourbon wing of the party and the Bible wing, two groups with little in common, but the Bible wing supplies the votes and the Bourbons take most of the booty. The Bourbons get tax cuts and deregulation and the Bibleists get a few vague gestures on symbolic issues such as gay marriage and school prayer. Like the Pharisees, the Bibleists enjoy public displays of religion. A roomful of movers and shakers gathered for a prayer breakfast that is all about bonding, backslapping, hobnobbing, and the prayers are read off 3X5 index cards, and there is a complete lack of heartfelt witnessing as you'd find among people of faith. At the prayer break fast, if the Holy Spirit speaks, it is always in favor of tax cuts and less government regulation and preemptive military action. The Holy Spirit never comes out in favor of anything without clearing it with the Republican Party. The Bibleists vow to put God back in the public schools, as if He were a small plaster icon and not the Creator of the universe. Evidently, when they hear public prayer, they sense the Spirit's presence. I don't. The public invocation (0 Thou Who didst turn water into wine, bless, we beseech Thee, this conference of the Water Sanitation Engineers of the North Central District. . .) is a piece of sanctimonious boilerplate with the spiritual weight of a postage stamp. It has no connection to true prayer, the throwing of myself down in the presence of the Creator: Lord have mercy, Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world have mercy upon us. Our Father Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name. Saying the names of loved ones, putting myself wordlessly under God's wing. That is true prayer. Pharisee prayer is simply a political speech that is addressed to God, as if He needed instruction, Why are the Pharisees so willing to exploit the Christian faith for political mileage? They will have to answer that; I can't. But God is not mocked and does not find political cynicism appealing in any way. Faith is private. It demonstrates itself in good works and love of neighbors but it doesn't need to puff up and blow a horn and bang on kitchen pans. Everyone must look in his own heart and ask, Do I really believe or do I not? Jews do this in the fall and Christians in early spring, during Lent. Most people do not believe. They have tried to believe and they wish they did believe and are sorry they don't, because they like to be around people who do, so they come to church, and enjoy the music and decor and the hallowedness of it all, but the faith is not in them. They don't need to tell me about it - they only need to answer to God on this matter. He will understand if the answer is no. He already knew that. The tragedy is when people who don't believe are so tortured by their unbelief that they set out to scourge their fellow unbelievers. When you try to find the love of Christ at work in the Republican Party, it may take you awhile. The Christian Coalition was a Republican front with about as much to do with the Christian faith as the Elks Club has to do with large hoofed animals."

That's a quote from p. 207-209 of Homegrown Democrat: A Few Plain Thoughts From the Heart of America by Garrison Keillor.  I read it during our get-away trip to the UP.  Get yourself a copy or ask to borrow mine.

gracEmail (THE CHURCH'S PATTERN - 2)
Edward Fudge
Sep 20, 2005

Someone recently admonished: "The New Testament provides the pattern which the true church must follow. We learn that by commands, examples and necessary inferences. The church revealed in the New Testament is the one we must imitate if we respect Bible authority."

* * *

The New Testament nowhere tells us to follow some interpretative system of commands, examples and necessary inferences. Those terms and that approach spring from Scottish philosophy and the English common law. They might be useful at some time, but the Bible does not teach them or require them. Instead, it assumes that a person with a true heart set on pleasing God will be able, with the Spirit's aid, to read the Scriptures prayerfully and to discern God's leading day by day and moment by moment (Rom. 12:2; Eph. 1:16-17; Col. 1:9-12; 2 Tim. 2:7; Heb. 13:20-21; 1 John 2:27).

Devotion to the system of "command, example and necessary inference" simply is not necessary in order to show respect for Bible authority. That system of interpretation is not found anywhere in the sacred Scriptures. It was invented by uninspired man and became a grid through which some people have read the Bible -- which then conformed to the shapes and categories of the human grid itself. Not only is that system lacking in biblical support, but, as history makes plain, it is legalistic when used as a standard of righteousness and divisive when made a basis for unity. As commonly applied, this system of interpretation binds what Scripture leaves loose and ignores what Scripture seems to bind.

The New Testament Scriptures (which the early church did not even have for several decades) never claim to be a constitution or detailed pattern for all areas of church life. Those who wrote them do purport to read and understand the Old Testament Scriptures as illuminated by the Jesus event (his incarnation, life, death, resurrection and ascension). They also set out, based on the Jesus event and assisted by the Holy Spirit, to describe the moral and relational life appropriate for those who believe in Jesus as God's Son and Savior and to describe at least in broad terms the mission of Christian communities and those individuals who constitute them within a watching world. The earliest church's pattern was Jesus himself. It did not somehow replace Jesus as the pattern for the church during successive generations. ___________________

© 2005 by Edward Fudge. Unlimited permission to copy without altering text or profiteering is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice. For encouragement and spiritual food any time, visit our multimedia website at www.EdwardFudge.com .

gracEmail (THE CHURCH'S PATTERN - 1)
Edward Fudge
Sep 18, 2005

A correspondent recently admonished: "The New Testament provides the pattern which the true church must follow. We learn that by commands, examples and necessary inferences. The church revealed in the New Testament is the one we must imitate if we respect Bible authority."

* * *

Indeed, the New Testament provides the pattern for each of us as Christians, and that pattern is Jesus Christ himself (Matt. 16:24; Phil. 2:5; 1 Pet. 2:21). We may also safely follow others who follow Jesus, insofar as they do that (1 Cor. 4:16; Phil. 3:17; Heb. 13:7). However, the New Testament never suggests that it is intended to provide us with a detailed pattern of ecclesiastical details concerning a precise church organization, a formal name of the church, complete data about worship, or all the minutia of institutional budgets, buildings or programs for Christian life together in all future times and places.

The New Testament does not show us a uniform picture of church life, organization, worship, steps of salvation or names of the church, as some suppose. It presents us instead with a variety of expressions of community life in the Spirit. Some texts reveal Jewish believers who continue to practice Jewish religion and piety -- although now trusting in Jesus as Messiah (Acts 3:1; 21:20-24). Other passages picture a charismatic fellowship characterized by great spontaneity (1 Cor. 11-14). Still others present us with an institutional model of Gentile church organization involving bishops, deacons and deaconesses (1 Tim. 3; Titus 1). The notion that the first-century Christians were all alike in these external details is a fiction from a much later date.

Most importantly of all, the Bible never suggests or even hints that our salvation or right standing with God come through our own efforts and ability to decipher some "pattern" of the "true church," and then to measure up to these theoretical details. Scripture always points us to Jesus Christ, who has already done all that will ever be necessary to set us right with God, and it always urges us to rely wholly and exclusively on that saving work. All our obedience and all our service is in response to God's mercies, who saved us in Christ before we were ever born.

to be continued ___________________

© 2005 by Edward Fudge. Unlimited permission to copy without altering text or profiteering is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice. For encouragement and spiritual food any time, visit our multimedia website at www.EdwardFudge.com .

I recommend the opinion columns of Kathleen Parker of the Orlando Sentinel.  She seems to be an island voice of reason and common sense in a sea of partisanship.