Rappin’ With Rick

One of the greatest blessings of group Bible study is gaining insight from one another. And I was surely blessed last Wednesday.

We were studying in the 14th chapter of Romans, which begins: “Now accept the one who is weak in faith, but not for the purpose of passing judgment on his opinions.” At first the general feeling was that Paul was talking about someone who is new to Christianity, and whose faith is therefore immature. One who perhaps might not understand there is no longer a need to observe some of the restrictions found in the Old Testament.

Eventually we broadened it a bit, and focused on the fact it had to do with opinions, and that perhaps the point had less to do with the immaturity of one’s faith, and more on the matter of personal convictions. Those convictions might come from a lack of understanding of what the Bible has to say, or they may simply come from a feeling that something might not be pleasing to God. Either way we are to accept the brother or sister without passing judgement on their opinion, or looking on them with contempt for refusing to eat something or observing a day differently than we do. And vice versa. Bottom line is that we’re not to sit in judgment over how someone chooses to honor the Lord.

That seemed to answer most of the questions that arose from the first 12 verses, but I still had a question about verses 7-9. Sure, it is true that if we live, we live for the Lord, or if we die, we die for the Lord, but why did Paul insert that in the midst of a passage about accepting a brother whose opinions differ from our own? I had tentatively decided that perhaps he was simply indicating that these weren’t matters of life and death, and we shouldn’t make such a big deal about them. But before I could share my thoughts, Rich asked Caroline to share something she had gone through with a friend.

Caroline proceeded to tell about the death of good friend who refused blood transfusions because of her Jehovah’s Witness beliefs. Caroline had done her best to convince her friend that a transfusion was not a violation of God’s will, but she couldn’t change her mind, and she died.

Wow! Now I understood that Paul may very well have been saying that even if someone held to an opinion that led to his or her death, if it was done to honor the Lord, it’s not our place to stand in judgement of their conviction.

If that’s the case, it should be obvious that differing opinions on eating, drinking, and the way we might choose to celebrate a day should never divide us.

God Bless, Rick

You never know where it’s going to lead, especially when exploring the internet.

I was recently looking through articles in USA Today, and a picture of a beautiful church caught my attention. I clicked on the article, “Great Protestant Churches Around the World”, and enjoyed looking at 44 pictures of beautiful churches. Then I noted that several of them were located in the Netherlands. In fact, when I went back to see how many, I discovered that seven of the great Protestant churches were in the Netherlands.

Since my daughter-in-law’s mom is Dutch, I hate to admit that I had to double check to make sure that the Netherlands was the same place as Holland. Then my curiosity led me to explore the current status of Protestant churches in the Netherlands. I almost wish I hadn’t.

The Protestant Church in the Netherlands, the largest Protestant body there, was founded in 2004 when three Protestant denominations merged. Nearly 12% of the population, or over 2 million people, claim membership in the church. Of those members, however, 42% consider themselves to be non-theists, meaning they don’t believe in God, and one in six of the clergymen are either agnostic or atheist.

Then things got even more interesting. I discovered that while 17% of the population do claim to be theistic, 25% are atheists, 31% are agnostic, and 27% are ietsists. Obviously, I had to hit the link to “ietsism.”

Ietsism is Dutch for “somethingism.” It’s the belief that “there must be something undefined beyond the material and that which can be known or be proven.” They have not found any of the “pre-packaged” gods offered by traditional religions to be satisfactory. The term was coined in 1997, and is now more widely used in Europe than the “spiritual but not religious” that is used here.

As I pondered this, I couldn’t help but think of Paul in the midst of the idols of Athens. I could almost hear him standing in a great Protestant church, declaring, “What therefore you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you.”

Sadly, what secularization has done to the great churches of Europe, it’s doing to many of the historically great churches here as well. May we have the courage to be a Paul in the midst of unbelief.

God Bless, Rick

Why did he do it? That seems to be the question that’s asked when someone does something “out of character” or even horrific.

What led a man to kill 58 people in the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history? According to an article in this morning’s paper, investigators are working around the clock, looking for clues that would point to his motive. Authorities have resorted to putting up billboards seeking tips, and now scientists are preparing to do a microscopic study of his brain. Experts admit if disease or abnormalities are found, it would be false science to conclude they caused or even contributed to the massacre, but still they want to have an extensive look.

Looking for physical, or even psychological reasons behind sinful acts can, however, easily degenerate into excuse making, and open the door for the justification of sin. Our attempts to find reasons for sinful activity may have advanced technologically, but they actually began in the garden, and after the first act of violence in human history.

When confronted with their sin, Eve pointed to the snake, and Adam pointed both to his wife and to God Himself. Neither wanted to take personal responsibility for their sin. And when Cain killed Abel because he was angry that God had accepted his brother’s offering but not his, he refused to heed God’s instruction on how to deal with his emotions. God told him that if he would do what was right his depression would be lifted, and he would find acceptance with God. He also warned him that sin was crouching at his door, and told him that he had to master it.

Years ago, while in training to be a biblical counselor, I was warned about allowing psychological problems to be put into a medical model. That if we start looking for medical reasons for aberrant behavior we not only excuse it, we actually make the person the victim of something that is beyond their control, something they’re not responsible for, something that requires a professional to fix.

That’s not to deny that there can be contributing factors behind our behavior, and that understanding them may help us get a handle on our problems. But the bottom line is that God expects us to master sin, and He has given us the resources to do so.

God Bless, Rick

When I said in Sunday’s sermon, “For a theologian to pretend to be a scientist or a geologist is fraught with danger; and demanding that a particular view of science or geology is the only one a Christian can hold can lead to a rejection of the biblical record and stand in the way of someone accepting Christ,” I wasn’t speaking hypothetically. I know it can happen, because it actually happened here.

In the early 80s I preached a series of sermons on the first chapters of Genesis, focusing primarily on creation and the flood, and insisted that the view championed by Scientific Creationism was the only acceptable option. A gentleman who had begun attending CCC with his family had studied geology extensively, and couldn’t accept the view I was insisting to be the biblical view. I even went so far as to say that if you couldn’t accept the Genesis account literally, which was the way I was teaching it, neither could you accept the account of Jesus’ life and ministry to be literally true. Eventually he had to agree, and decided he therefore couldn’t believe in Jesus, and left the church.

I was devastated, but assured myself that I had faithfully preached the truth, and wasn’t responsible for anyone’s rejection of the truth. But then I discovered there were Bible-believing scientists who did not insist on holding to a literal six-day creation, and who felt that the earth could be as old as geologists said. After further study I took him a copy of a book that helped change my mind, and apologized with tears, but it was too late. The damage had been done.

We stayed in contact, and I was even asked to preside at his wife’s funeral six years after they left, but he expressed no desire to resume his spiritual journey. Then, twenty years after he left the church, he called me out of the blue and said he wanted to be baptized! My tears of apology became tears of joy!

I’m so thankful that we have a God who can clean up our messes, and even undo some of the damage we do. Like Paul, who was convinced he was serving God when he persecuted Christians, I thought I was being faithful to Him and His word when I created an unnecessary barrier to faith in Christ.

May God give us all the wisdom to know when we are wrong, and the grace to admit it.

God Bless, Rick

Mark and I have had the joy of meeting with missionaries both last week and this.

Last Thursday we met with Mark Fishel, who has been serving in Cambodia for the past nine years. Mark was actually a part of our fellowship for several years while attending Lincoln Christian Seminary and working at Family Christian, and we supported Mark while he worked in campus ministries in New York and the Czech Republic. While in Cambodia he has planted a church in Phnom Penh, acted as an advisor to an association of ten churches and about twenty cell groups, taught pastors and lay leaders, and helped churches find ways to become more self-sustaining. We helped him set up a mushroom farm for that purpose a couple of years ago, but haven’t supported him on a regular basis as a congregation since going to Cambodia. We were, however, recently made aware of a need for additional support, and invited him to meet with us.

On Monday Mark and I met with Tom Moss, the chairman of the board for Haitian Christian Ministries, and two pastors from Haiti, Pastor Bob who pastors a church of 650 adults in Pillatre and oversees the ministry in Haiti which includes a school of nearly 1500 students and a medical clinic, and Pastor Jacques who leads a congregation of 350 adults.

Mark Zimmerman, who is on staff at Eastview Christian Church in Bloomington and also on the board of Haitian Christian Ministries, brought HCM to our attention back in 2012, and we started supporting the ministry in 2013. Many in the church also started sponsoring students in the school at the same time. The report Mark and I heard told of many exciting developments in the ministry in Haiti, and opportunities for direct involvement in the work there.

Missions is very important to the life of our church, and God has used us to accomplish some pretty amazing things throughout the world. Please pray for the elders as they consider how to administer the tithes and offerings you will be entrusting to us in 2018.

God Bless, Rick