Apologetics from an Anabaptist perspective
At the beginning of Creation, God separated earth and sky from the primordial sea. The sea remains as a constant threat to the earth and those that dwell upon it. The sea is chaos, unpredictable, ever changing, ever threatening to overflow the boundaries that God set for it.
The Bible depicts the multitudes of mankind who do not put their trust in God as the sea. There is the same disorder and tumult in the masses of mankind where ideas of right and wrong are built upon the changeable fashions of human reasoning, where the ebb and flow of quests for wealth and power create continuous instability.
Here are some examples of what the Bible says about that sea:
Ephesians 4:14 That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive;
James 1:6 But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.
Jude 1:13 Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever.
Revelation 17:1 And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither; I will shew unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters:
Revelation 17:15 And he saith unto me, The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues.
Christians who think that they, or other well-meaning people, are capable of bringing order to the sea, are not seeing things as they really are. The shipwrecks of previous attempts to set the sea in order now make the sea an even more dangerous place.
When Jesus stilled the storm on Galilee, He demonstrated his authority over the raging of the sea, both the natural sea and the primordial sea that is driven by winds from the realm of darkness. Christians must cease to entertain dreams of creating a refuge in the chaotic sea of this world and build our refuge on the rock, Jesus Himself.
Psalm 65:7 Which stilleth the noise of the seas, the noise of their waves, and the tumult of the people.
James 1:17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.
Luke 6:48 He is like a man which built an house, and digged deep, and laid the foundation on a rock: and when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently upon that house, and could not shake it: for it was founded upon a rock.
Malachi 3:6 For I am the LORD, I change not.
Hebrews 13:8 Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.
Image by Jeff Jacobs from Pixabay
The Bible begins with the earth in total darkness and covered with water and ends with a new earth which has no sea and no night. (Genesis 1:2; Revelation 21:1 and 22:5) Everything that comes between is there to tell us how to get from the first place to the last.
Darkness is where the devil and his angels lurk, to capture the souls of men and women and lead them away from God. It is where evil works are done, hidden from the light of day. The sea symbolizes continual change, tumult and confusion.
On the first day of creation, God created light and separated light from darkness, day from night. This was not the natural light of the sun, moon and stars; God did not create them until the fourth day. This first light was the light of God that permits us to discern between good and evil.
The second day God lifted the fog that hid the surface of the earth, dividing the waters in the clouds above the surface of the earth from the waters that covered the earth’s surface. The space between He called heaven, or sky.
On the third day, God caused the dry land to appear out of the waters and called the dry land Earth and the waters he called Sea. Then He caused plants and trees to appear upon the dry land.
The fourth day God created the sun, moon and stars; the fifth day he populated the sea, the earth and the sky with living things and the sixth day He created the first man and woman.
The account in the first chapter of Genesis tells us that God called the light good, the dry land good and everything He created subsequently He called good. The first verses of Genesis 1 do not record God called darkness or the sea good. Yet verse 31, at the end of the sixth day, says that God saw everything that He had made and it was very good.
Adam and Eve lived in the best of all possible worlds. It was a place of surpassing beauty, abundance and peace. Yet very soon Eve encounters the serpent who tempts her to question God’s wisdom and benevolence. How could such a thing happen?
The spiritual realm where God and the angels dwell existed before the events in Genesis. We gather from scattered bits of information in the Bible that a terrible thing happened before the beginning of time. Lucifer, one of the greatest of the angels, challenged God for leadership. One third of the angels supported Lucifer. The Bible says there was war in heaven.
We do not know just when this happened, but it resulted in a division in the spiritual realm, Lucifer and his angels were cast out of heaven. Now there are two spiritual realms, the realm of light where God dwells and the realm of darkness where Satan and his angels dwell.
After Creation Satan moved the battleground between the powers of light and darkness to the earth. He tempted Eve, she and Adam disobeyed God, and He made them leave the earthly paradise. Ever since that time mankind have longed to regain their home in Paradise, and Satan has continually sown confusion about how they can do that.
But members sometimes do and say inappropriate things
Several weeks ago the French news magazine Le Point carried an interview with a man who had come to France in his youth from Togo. The title of the article was France is not racist, a point of view staunchly upheld by the man being interviewed, although he did talk of incidents when the colour of his skin had caused difficulties.
This man had come to France to attend university, then stayed and made himself at home. He applied for citizenship and in due time received a brown envelope in the mail with a paper inside that told him, “You are now a Frenchman.” He wondered about the impersonal nature of that notice. Many years later he became Minister of Citizenship in the government of François Mitterand and used the opportunity to establish a public ceremony for welcoming new citizens.
Being born in France, or born elsewhere to French parents, is not the only way to become French. France has always welcomed people from all parts of the world, believing that anyone can become French. But that means that you must become French, become at home with the language, the culture and the French values of liberty, equality and brotherhood.
Within this framework there is room for a great deal of diversity. One example is that education has been compulsory in France for 140 years, but the law has never made school attendance compulsory. Home schooling is legal, as long as it includes the essential subjects, which includes achieving fluency in French and one other language.
In the same way, the Church of God is not racist, even if there are sometimes misunderstandings between people of different ethnic backgrounds. Membership is never by birth, but only by choice, in choosing to answer the call of God to salvation and sanctification. Anyone can become a member, on those conditions.
We can be united in faith, yet not think and act in identical ways. That is perfectly all right, we can all learn from the ways that people of a different ethnic background see things.
However, when most members of a congregation are of the same ethnic background it is easy to assume that we do things in a certain way because that is the way that a Christian should do things. Some of those things are deeply rooted ethnic traditions. They are not wrong, but we cannot expect that people of other ethnic backgrounds will conform to those things that are passed on through our culture.
Problems arise when ethnic traditions harden into a belief that there is only one right way to think or act. This is being carnally minded, not spiritually minded. Another way to describe such an attitude is ethnocentrism. Such an attitude hinders us from seeing the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of people with different cultural values. It may hinder Christians of other backgrounds from feeling at home among us.
That is not racism. There is nothing deliberate about ethnocentrism, it is learned in childhood and one is unaware of even having such an attitude. I believe the time has come for us to name it as a problem. That does not mean we need to change our culture, such a thing is pretty much impossible. All we need to do is learn to value and love people of other cultures just the way they are.
I was afraid of a lot of things as a boy, the two main ones being girls and dogs. Girls were different, mysterious; they didn’t look, talk or act like boys. The thought of actually speaking to one crippled my mind and my tongue.
Yet there was always a girl or two that I could talk to without stammering like an imbecile. For some reason most of them were named Joan. Thinking back, it might have been because Joan was the most common girl’s name for that era, just like Robert was for boys. There were two grades to a classroom in our school and three Roberts in my class. In order to distinguish between us we were known as Bob Dixon, Bobby Adamus and I had to be Robert Goodnough.
There were two girls with whom I never had a problem visiting and they weren’t even named Joan. But they were cousins and that was even better. By now I think I have pretty much gotten over my fear of girls, of any age. I finally plucked up enough courage to ask one to marry me. Then we had a daughter to raise and by now we have two teenage granddaughters.
Dogs were even worse than girls. Not all dogs, but any big dog that barked was surely some kin of the Hound of the Baskervilles. I had a half mile to walk to school, straight down the west side of town. Halfway between home and school there was a house set well back from the street with a dog chained up outside.
Every day, when I walked by that house, the dog would bark. It was a big, dark coloured dog. My friends said it was half wolf. I was terrified. This went on for a couple years as I passed from nine to ten to eleven. I didn’t pray much in those days, but every time that dog barked I prayed that God would protect me from that evil wolf dog and give me the courage to keep on walking.
There was a wide coulee several miles east of ton with a little creek running along the bottom called the Arm River. At most places the river was ankle deep. But there was one spot that was wider and deep enough for children to swim in. It was an old-fashioned swimming hole, completely unsupervised, the nearest house a half mile away.
I didn’t go there often, it was too far and I couldn’t swim. I was afraid of water, too. But I knew that I was in no danger of drowning in that swimming hole; if I stood up in the deepest place my head was well above the water.
One day as I was walking home from school I saw that evil wolf dog trotting down the road toward me. I took to the opposite side of the road and he went by without paying me any attention. I noticed two things as he passed – he was dripping wet, and the pupils of his eyes were rectangular horizontal slits, not like the eyes of any dog I’d ever seen before. He was a wolf dog for sure.
The next day I heard that he had been down at the swimming hole. A young boy who couldn’t swim had gotten into the deep part where the water was over his head. He was floundering, gasping for air and calling for help. The dog had jumped in, the boy had grabbed his long fur and the dog had towed him up and out of the water. Apparently the dog was quicker thinking than the boys.
Thus ended my fear of the evil wolf dog. What had I been afraid of anyway? It wasn’t the dog, it was the overheated thoughts in my own mind.
Isn’t that how it is most times? Often, the things we fear the most have no existence outside of our own minds. Those thoughts can paralyze us. I wonder if, in our present circumstances, fears like that might not be doing more harm than the virus. I don’t mean to suggest that we should act as though the virus is not dangerous; let’s take all necessary precautions. But at the same time, let’s pray to God to be set free from irrational fears that hinder us from reaching out to those who are lonely, or in any kind of distress.
A touchy subject, introduced kindly. Why is it touchy? Wouldn’t most of us say we long for closer relationships within our church family? But the idea that someone might get close enough to notice a nit or two frightens us.
The following essay was written as an assignment for a college course I took. My teacher was disturbed by the analogy (as I expect you will be) but appreciated the essay.After having lice twice (I share one incident here.) and benefiting from the patient nit picking of others, I have begun to see it as a positive thing. When one of our pastors encouraged accountability the other Sunday, I decided to post this as an echo.
In Cambodia, women perch together in doorways. One sits patiently watching the world go past, while the other pulls her fingers through the hair of the sitting woman, occasionally pulling on a shiny dark lock, nit-picking. They are relaxed and enjoying each other.
Unfortunately, Western culture has distorted the helpfulness of nit-picking into a negative unloving act. What changed nit-picking to something negative? Perhaps one person, being too proud to admit…
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The techniques for evangelism known as the Church Growth Movement, were first introduced to North America in 1961. I use the word techniques deliberately, as the movement sought to use sociological research to select social groups that could be reached through the use of modern marketing methods. The key assumption of the movement was that people are most likely to feel comfortable with and trust people like themselves.
Does this sound like an opportunity to share the gospel more effectively?
Or does it sound like a description of the problem that we should expect the gospel to overcome?
Why are churches still the most segregated places in North America?
Has the Church Growth Movement done anything to heal tensions between ethnic groups?
How many close friends do you or I have who are of a different skin colour or different ethnic origin?
How open are we to changing that?
This is where we need to accept that the best way to change the world is to start with ourselves. We need to allow ourselves to be vulnerable. If we are to make any lasting friendships with people who are not just like us, we are going to learn that we have not always been such nice people as we thought we were. That might be painful, but it can be liberating, too.
Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all. Colossians 3:11 (Substitute the peoples in your city for the underlined words.)
Throughout Christian history, there has always been a united, visible body of believers who professed much the same faith regarding conversion and a personal relationship with God but who refused to conform to the state enforced form of worship of their day. The Martyrs’ Mirror catalogues the faith, and the persecution of these people because of their faith, from the time of the apostles up to the time the book was published in 1660.
Other people decided to live their faith in a way that would not bring persecution. They conformed to the outward practices of the state church, Reformed, Lutheran or Roman Catholic, but professed an inward piety and heartfelt devotion to God
The label of pietism first appeared in the seventeenth century. Some members of the Lutheran Church professed to have received forgiveness of sins through a conversion experience that warmed their hearts and led them to a deeper communion with God. They remained in outward fellowship with the Lutheran Church, attending worship services regularly, receiving communion, and baptizing their babies, but sought fellowship in private gatherings with like-minded people to testify of what God had done for them.
Sometimes the pietists called themselves “the quiet in the land”, from Psalm 35:20. That term, and pietism itself, appealed to large groups of Mennonites who had grown weary of persecution, and may even have forgotten why they had been persecuted. When Mennonites from Prussia settled on colonies in Ukraine 200 years ago they agreed not to proselytize the Russian people. Around them were other German colonies, Roman Catholic and Lutheran. The Mennonites absorbed pietist teachings from Lutheran pietists and called themselves “The Quiet in the Land.”
That term is not part of our Mennonite heritage. Indeed, I feel it marks the abandonment of that heritage. Menno Simons wrote a lengthy article in 1539 entitled Why I do not Cease Teaching and Writing. In other articles he wrote:
“This is my only joy and the desire of my heart, that I may extend the borders of the kingdom of God, make known the truth, reprove sin, teach righteousness, feed the hungry souls with the Word of the Lord, lead the stray sheep to the right path, and so win many souls for the Lord, through His Spirit, power and grace,” and
“ We preach, therefore, as much as is in our power, both day and night, in houses and in the open air, in forests and in wildernesses, hither and thither, in this and in foreign lands, in prisons and in dungeons, in water and in fire, on the scaffold and on the wheel, before lords and princes, orally and by writings at the risk of possessions and blood, life and death; as we have done these many years.”
The reluctance of the pietists to unite with the persecuted church may have saved them much physical suffering. The result of this individualistic approach is the tendency to interpret the Bible in the light of one’s own experience, rather than subjecting one’s experiences to the light of Scripture. They are convinced that they have attained to a level of spiritually and communion with God that is not shared by the common run of professing Christians. Such a person may conform to the outward practices of a church for the sake of avoiding censure or persecution, but does not feel bound to give account of his faith and life to other Christians.
Image by Jan Steiner from Pixabay
For lo!, the days are hastening on,
By prophet bards foretold,
When with the ever-circling years
Comes round the age of gold
When peace shall over all the earth
Its ancient splendours fling,
And the whole world give back the song
Which now the angels sing.
This is the fifth and final verse of It Came Upon the Midnight Clear, the Christmas carol written in 1849 by Edmund Hamilton Sears, pastor of the Unitarian Church in Wayland, Massachusetts.
This verse is an expression of the prevailing view of that day that the gospel would permeate all nations and all levels of society, eliminating strife and injustice, in preparation for the return of the Lord Jesus Christ. That view is called postmillennialism. There are still preachers, writers and churches that hold to that view.
The proponents of postmillennialism believed they had a duty to hasten the coming of the golden age which would lead to the return of the Lord. They engaged in many praiseworthy activities to help the poor and oppressed; they were the prime movers behind the movement to abolish slavery.
After the abolition of slavery in the USA, the movement move on to other targets. By now they had infiltrated political parties and began to influence them to use governments to achieve their objectives. They advocated for better working conditions for labourers, the right to vote for women, and the prohibition of the sale of alcoholic beverages.
In the 1890’s postmillennialism morphed into the social gospel. Leading writers of the movement saw the private ownership of business as a roadblock in the way of making the golden age a reality. The social gospel movement succeeded in attaining many of its goals, yet the golden age still seemed as far away as ever.
Strife between nations, strife between social and ethnic groups, has not diminished. By now the movement has become disconnected from its Christian roots, though many churches still want to believe that it is going to lead to a better world. There are new targets today, climate change, gender choice and so on.
Some Christians today think the best way to counter this movement is to strive for influence in political parties. But this whole problem was caused by Christians trying to use political means to make the world a better place. Satan is a cunning enemy, he encourages such tactics, then turns them against us.
The best choice for Christians today is to renounce politics and get back to being Christians. People, politicians and governments are not our enemies, attacking them is another of Satan’s ruses to keep us from seeing who our real enemy is.
People around us are dying for lack of a drink from the well of salvation. Most of them may not be aware that is what they need; we can’t force them to drink, but we can tell them about the soul refreshing water and offer it to them.
While eating breakfast this morning, I worked at deciphering a page of cryptograms. It seemed to me that the these short thoughts were worth sharing. So, without further comment, here they are.
History will see advertising as one of the real evil things of our time. It is stimulating people constantly to want things, want this, want that.
-Malcolm Muggeridge
Liberty will not descend to a people; a people must raise themselves to liberty. It is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed.
-Charles Colson
One of the annoying things about believing in free will and individual responsibility is the difficulty of finding somebody to blame your problems on.
-P. J. O.Rourke
If you are a deist, you believe:
– that there must be a higher power because this complex world could not just have happened;
– that there are moral lessons in the Bible that will help us to find happiness;
– that the Bible as a whole is mysterious and confusing and better left alone;
– that it is good to pray when in need, because the higher power might hear and help.
If you are a theist, you believe:
– that God is not an explanation, He is a revelation;
– that the God who created all things reveals himself personally to us;
– that the whole Bible is an introduction to God;
– that we need to read the whole Bible to recognize how God speaks to us;
– that God is near, hears our prayers and answers them;
– that true happiness can only be found by making God the Lord of our life.
