The Rape of Agape, Part 2

This blog is the tenth in a series, "The Top Ten Questions People Ask Pastors." Over the last year or two, these have been the queries which have most frequently made their way to my desk in one form or another.

Top Question #2: "How can a loving God justify sending people he created to Hell?" Last week, we mentioned that whenever God seems unloving by our standards, our standards are likely the problem. On the topic of genuine love, for example,people in our generation are not experts. To the contrary, our "highly evolved" concept of love allows us to neglect our children, break our marriage vows, treat our spouses as inferiors, avoid commitment, and leave churches when we can't get along with other Christians we love. As I mentioned last time, we're not only ignorant about the love of God, but we're ignorant about the Word of God as well.

Then there's another problem with our conclusion that the God of the Bible is "unloving." Our objections to the concept of Hell vividly illustrate how we have completely discounted the significance of the decision to worship Jesus Christ and follow him. The commitment to repent and trust Christ has been devalued from the ultimate choice in all of life to a private, consumer preference which has no connection to absolute truth or the teachings of Scripture. Rather like my choice to purchase Charmin bathroom tissue over Scott, my spiritual inclinations are made and practiced in private.

Last week, I read that the Marine Corps will institute "gay sensitivity"training to prepare their recruits for the new policy permitting gays to serve openly in the military. The report indicated that the training will explain how individuals must respond to situations like seeing two male Marines kissing at the mall. It occurred to me that only twenty years ago, homosexuality was discouraged and restricted to private behavior while Christianity was encouraged and practiced publicly. Two decades later, homosexuality is encouraged and practiced publicly while Christianity is discouraged and restricted to private behavior. What happened?

If choosing or rejecting Jesus Christ is merely a private lifestyle preference, it must surely seem cruel to send anyone to Hell on the basis of that! Why would anyone with a brain, much less a heart, condemn someone else to an eternity in darkness and fire for choosing Coke Zero over Pepsi, or Charmin over Scott Tissue, or NBC News over the Fox News Channel? This is America and we are accustomed to consumer decisions in a free market! Once again, the problem here is "according to our standards."

In fact, God has never discounted the urgency of living by faith. In his mind, the decision to trust his Son as Lord and Savior is the only decision in life that ultimately matters. What's more, the decision to reject Jesus is not a mere indiscretion: it requires a lifetime of saying "No" to the Son of God again and again and again. Dying without Jesus Christ is not a freak accident. Rather, it involves fifty to eighty years of rejecting the Gospel, ignoring the evidence, shutting out the truth, and defying the Creator of the Universe.

Skeptics point to the "multitudes" who have never heard. Must people face judgment when they never got to hear the Gospel? Read Romans 1:18-20. Whenever an isolated Hindu or Buddhist or agnostic anywhere on the planet recognizes the magnificence of the Creation and concludes, "I want to worship the God who made this," God is on the hook. He has obligated himself to send a missionary or a New Testament or a Gospel tract or a shipwrecked Christian who can tell that seeking soul about Jesus Christ. If they take the first step, God has committed himself to provide them with the means to confess Christ.

That's because the Gospel is ultimate truth of greatest importance. And deciding to repent and follow the Prince of Peace is the ultimate decision in all of life. If you devote your life to your own selfish whims and manage to shut out Christ entirely, you are accountable. Somebody died for you, but you were busy worshiping yourself. Next week, we'll wrap this up with what the New Testament actually teaches about Hell. Leave your comments below.

Selah.

The Rape of Agape

This blog in ninth in a series entitled "The Top Ten Questions People Ask Pastors." Over the last year or two, these are the queries which have most frequently reached my desk in one form or another.

The 3rd most frequent question is this: "How can a loving God justify sending people he created to a place like Hell?" This hot topic has become particulary searing over the last two decades as Americans have become so averse to discomfort that even animals like pigeons and mice are commonly granted civil rights status. In his recent book Love Wins, emergent author Rob Bell acknowledges the tension and, tragically, manages to abandon biblical truth and completely surrender to 21st Century emotionalism and prejudice.

Nevertheless, even serious Christians who affirm everything in the Bible will admit this is a prickly subject. At first blush, sending men and women to a place of eternal suffering doesn't sound very loving by our standards, does it? And therein lies the rub: by our standards.

Although Christians have understood the doctrine of eternal judgment for 2,000 years, it has only been in recent memory that the notion has become so abhorrent. In fact, judgment does not seem to mesh with the idea of "love" for us because we have oversimplified the ideal of love to something Scripture does not recognize. According to the standards of 21st Century love, loving parents cannot discipline their children. Love can coddle boys and girls, indulge them, spoil them, leave them unattended, or entrust their care and upbringing to strangers, but love cannot cause a child to suffer discomfort, experience frustration, or eat spinach! Modern day love cannot compel a child to do his homework, but it can call his teacher irresponsible and lazy.

Likewise, this generation has a different notion of marital love. Married love can make all kinds of demands, but married love cannot be expected to endure discomfort, undergo sacrifice, surrender personal rights, or offer unconditional commitment. Love wants everything to be smooth and easy, and when things become rough and demanding, 21st Century love wants out. In all honesty, what passes for love today doesn't actually want to get "in" in the first place unless we are talking about somebody else's bed for a couple of hours. "In love" is not the compelling concept it once was.

In religious life, contemporary love is such a flimsy ideal that people have trouble staying in churches where people they love don't share the same opinions. We find it almost impossible to tolerate people we love when they are immature or insensitive to us. We find it exceedingly difficult to forgive Christians we love even when they offend us unintentionally. In fact, we can actually enjoy savaging the reputations of other church members we love as long as we invoke the spiritual exception clause of "Bless her heart,...!"

That's the kind of love we have in mind when we wonder if a God of Love could also be a God of Judgment. On the basis of that highly evolved love, we reject God's concept of personal accountability. But in his eternal wisdom and truth, God rejects now and forever the rotting corpse we call love. In fact, not only God but most of the saints throughout the history of his church rise to denounce the form of self indulgence that we have recently labeled "love." Like the people of Laodecea who thought they were rich when they were in fact poor, our blind generation has failed to recognize that we know little about love; that we have confused "agape" with "apathy."

It's sad but true that most church people in our age are not qualified to take a position on Hell. Not only have we abandoned that biblical ideal, the Love of God. We are mostly ignorant of the Word of God as well.

My time is up for this week. Let's continue this discussion next week.

Selah!

Going Under

This blog is the 8th in a series, "The Top Ten Questions People Ask Pastors." Over the last year or two, these have been the queries that have most frequently reached my desk in one way or another.

The 4th most frequently asked question is this: "Why should I be baptized by immersion if I have already been christened as a child in a Christian church?" Last week, I shared the biblical basis for believer's baptism. This week, allow me to respond to the question, "Fine, but why must I be immersed? Isn't sprinkling acceptable?"

Surely most people know by now that our English word baptism comes from the Greek term baptidzo which literally means "to immerse" or "to submerge." Nevertheless, skeptics occasionally point to Acts 3: 41, "So those who accepted his message were baptized, and that day about 3,000 were added to them." I've actually read calculations of how many people Peter would needed to have dunked every minute to achieve this number. "It's physically impossible," deniers insist. "It couldn't have been done!"

I always laugh. A few years ago in Africa, another team leader and I baptized over 200 people in a slippery, slimy elephant watering hole. Even with all the difficulties of slipping and sliding on the banks of the pond, we accomplished the feat in only one hour. This would suggest that 12 apostles could immerse 1200 new believers in one hour. Three thousand new converts would have required slightly less than three hours. And for all we know, other church leaders were baptizing as well. What's more, just because 3,000 were added to the church in one day does not require that all of them were baptized in one day. Perhaps they were baptized in the Jordan River over several days. When you know what the word baptism literally means, it seems rather lame to appeal to strange calculations based on details that aren't recorded.

The biblical priority of immersion is also reflected in texts like these:

• Romans 6:4 compares baptism to being buried; dying to the old life and being raised to walk in a new life. Being buried and then raised indicates that Paul had immersion- not sprinkling- in his mind as he wrote.
• Acts 8:38 describes the baptism of a eunuch from Ethiopia by Philip. "Then he ordered the chariot to stop, and both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water, and he baptized him."
• Matthew 3:16 describes the baptism of Jesus Christ by John the Baptist. "And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water..."
• John 3:23 explains that John the Baptist tended to baptize in an area named Aenon, because there was lots of water there. Had sprinkling been the custom, the amount of water would never have been a consideration.

Churches that practice baptism by sprinkling commonly equate the symbol with the coming of the Holy Spirit. Hence, they suggest, sprinkling is more fitting. It's a nice thought, but the New Testament actually has a specific word for sprinkling. That word, rhantizo, is never employed in relationship to the Spirit. Think about it: we are filled with the Spirit, saturated with the Spirit, inhabited by the Spirit. No doubt, that's why the word for immersion is used to explain how the Spirit comes into our lives- baptidzo. On Pentecost, the believers were baptized in the Spirit!

In a church and a culture where so much has changed over the last 2,000 years, I find it especially meaningful when we can do something exactly like the apostles did it. Our preaching looks and sounds different. Our singing is accompanied by instruments that did not exist in the first century. Our Bibles aren't scrolls any longer; they are produced in the codex form. And at least in my church, our language is English rather than Greek or Aramaic. But when it comes to baptism, it thrills me to do it just like the apostles did it. We are buried with Christ in baptism that we may be raised to walk in newness of life.

Selah.

Don't Mess up My Hair!

This blog is the 7th in a series "The Top Ten Questions People Ask Pastors." Over the last year or two, these have been the questions that most frequently make their way to my office.

It is often said that people here in the Northeast are much too private to publicly identify with a personal religious tradition. In fact, that's simply not true. Every week during football season, vast numbers of my friends and neighbors wear color combinations they would never wear under any other circumstances in order to carry the cross of the Washington Redskins. And it is a cross! The Skins have enjoyed only one winning season in the last decade or so. Our team has elevated defeat to an art. Nevertheless, Redskins bumper stickers, jerseys, workout clothing, caps, mailboxes, etc., etc., are everywhere.

We're not ashamed to announce our allegiance to the Redskins or the Packers or the Crimson Tide or the Longhorns. And we're not ashamed to identify with Gucci or Christian Dior or the Outer Banks or a leading political candidate. Why does privacy become such a priority when it comes to Jesus Christ?

That brings us to my 4th most frequently asked question. "Why should I be immersed as an adult if I've already been christened as a child in some other Christian church?" Apparently, I'm not the only pastor who gets that question a lot. Studies show that baptism is declining all across the USA as people are more reluctant to experience immersion and churches are more reluctant to require it. Are Christians really the most private of all private citizens?

When I explain that baptism is not essential for salvation, but is simply a very important symbol, I am sometimes challenged: "If it's just a symbol, why is it so important?" In fact, the flag of the United States is nothing more than a symbol, but large numbers of men and women die defending that symbol. And while burning a flag in public is quite legal, it can also get you pummeled and kicked to the dirt pretty quickly in America. The wedding ring is nothing more than a symbol of marital faith and fidelity, but don't tell millions of married men and women that ring isn't important.

In 1 Peter 3:21,22 scripture teaches that the floodwater in the story of Noah "symbolizes baptism which now saves you also, not by the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a good conscience toward God." Neither buoyant water nor floating boat actually saved Noah and his family. God saved them all. But the the boat and the water were tools in his hands. Likewise, baptism is a tool in the hands of Almighty God. It expresses our allegiance to his kingdom based on the mystery of faith. Like a wedding band, it doesn't make me a Christian but it does reflect the truth that I am one. So why are most football fans willing to look ridiculous for hours on end, while many Christians are not willing to look wet for a moment?

Of course, someone will ask, "But I don't object to baptism. I object to being baptized by immersion! Why must I be soaked in front of a crowd? Why do you insist that I be immersed?" I'll answer that next week with three texts from scripture that make it perfectly clear.

Selah!