Groucho and Paul

One of you will say to me: "Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?" Romans 9:19, NIV

I took my sister to see a Marx Brothers film festival. She laughed so hard she said she thought she would have a heart attack. The humor was sure there.

But in "A Day at the Races" Groucho told a really lame joke. People groaned. Groucho departed from the script and walked to the camera. "Look, they can't all be funny, it's just the nature of the business."

The film had a yellowish tinge. Groucho had long been dead, but it was as though he had read our minds. People grew quiet. They had just been reprimanded by a voice from the past.

Groucho understood human nature.

And long before this, the Apostle Paul anticipated our reaction to the doctrine of election. "Ooh, they got me, I think its my ego." We are wounded by this revelation in Romans. Paul knew we would be. Looks like human nature has not changed with the passage of time.

Easy Believerism

Who are you to judge someone else's servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand. Romans 14:4, NIV

My best friend told of a family gathering where someone addressed the subject of "easy believerism". Apparently he felt is a very bad ism. He makes me think of a stuffy member of a country club who complains, "Seems they are letting anyone in these days!"

The membership in the church is so varied that people often complain about who the Lord calls. By definition, everyone is born, but no one is "more born" than anyone else.

Now imagine a foot race between two contestants. Let's make it a high hurdle event. When the gun goes off one runner strides out ahead, running like a Greyhound and clearing the hurdles with ease. The other poor soul is not running well at all, and at the first hurdle he trips and stumbles. At the race's conclusion the winner tells the loser, "You were awful. Too bad you weren't born as much as I was."

This ridiculous story is how some holier than thou Christians sound when they talk of "easy believerism". They have a list of conditions that people must follow to show that they are real Christians, like they are.

If we want to criticise others, let us not make their so called easy birth the subject. That has already occurred, just as we are all in the footrace. How well we run the race is another matter. Many people have burdens and problems that we can not even imagine.

The gifts that the Holy Spirit gives are not equal in kind or amount. Can you name anyone with the gifts of Saint Paul? An olympian said, "Even if I don't run as well as others, it is an honor to be in the race at all."

He Threw His Bible Across the Room

I want to tell you about a wonderful lady and her ministry to prisoners. This is not a standard pitch for someone I have only read about. I have known her for about fifty years and I was married to her niece. So we go way back.

She is a widow now, and in her widowhood began, very slowly at first, a ministry to prison inmates. Her name is Minerva Lee Buckmaster, and her ministry is called F.I.S.S. She has sent 1,000 Bibles to inmates in seven states.

She told me the story of one of these men who was trying to read a King James Bible. Trouble was, he could not understand it. In frustration, he threw it across the room. There are, of course, many reasons he had trouble reading it.

Many prisoners have a low educational level and cannot understand a Bible translated in 1611. Some are not very competent in English. But the hunger is there and there is help for them in the form of the New International Version or NIV.

Purists may decry the NIV, and they have their reasons. I, myself was raised on the King James. But I figure an NIV that is held and read is much better than a KJV that cannot be read.

Lee told me about a letter she had received from an inmate requesting a Bible. "Could your organization please send me a Bible?" "My organization," she said, "I do it all from my kitchen table."

Sand in My Shoes

When I was a boy I played in a sand and gravel yard. I climbed over piles of sand and dived into them. When it was time to go home for supper I was loaded with sand and all tired out.

My horrified mother could not believe how dirty and sandy I was. My shoes, loaded with sand, made it hard to walk right. I even had sand in my hair. I was a candidate for the Grubbiest Kid in America Award.

I brought home slabs of tar to melt in the hot sunlight of summer. It fascinated me.

My patient mother would spread newspapers on the floor for me to undress on. "Look at you, how do you get so dirty?" she would say. But she loved me anyway.

Now I want to talk about my beloved church that has become grubby too. How can I not love it, despite the dirt it has collected, and some tar too? It happens to churches and governments. They forget their beginnings, and like snowballs rolling downhill, pick up what they roll in.

I imagine some people scolding me for being so critical all the time. "It won't make heaven any prettier" is a common remark concerning things I wish would be gotten rid of. But a bride, going to her wedding, would not stop to play a game of touch football, lest she get grass stains on her beautiful dress.

I had to unload all the sand and really wash up before supper as a kid. We're headed for a wedding and a supper too. Let us be as nice as we can before that blessed day.

The Partial Fall

Though man fell and is dead in sins and tresspasses (Eph. 2:1), his will is free and if he wants, he may choose God and be saved. This is the partial fall belief. Fallen man is not completely fallen. He still has an attribute that can say yes to God and thus please Him.

Oh, how powerful we have become, and how marginalized God has become! God waits, hopefully, while man decides.

I would like to take the very opposite view--that God has decided, before the world was made, who He is to save. We weren't around at that time. I was going to say "in those days," but that would be incorrect, as days did not exist then.

How this kills the ego! People find it intolerable that the decision process did not involve them. Yet is it not sweet to think of being chosen before the world was made? Like newlyweds preparing a baby's room as soon as they are married.

The Appeal of the Orthodox

Those of us who are familiar with Brother Nathaniel know that he is a Jew who converted to Christ. That puts him in the same category as the Apostle Paul. Nathaniel adopted the Orthodox branch of the church. I am not knowledgeable of much of their theology. I know them mostly by their art, which I find very appealing.

Two days ago, on Easter, I heard Brother Nathaniel speak on the different view his church has on the mission of Jesus. His confession of faith is the same as you would find in a Protestant church. No surprises there.

But then he said that his church emphasizes the victory of Jesus over death, a victorious Christ, Christ winning over death and evil. People of the Western church can rightly claim the same of course, but I know of no church I have been to that has his emphasis on Jesus winning over evil, like an all-powerful general, brighter than the noon day sun, as in Orthodox art.

I needed to hear this, expressed in a few words, as it was. I am going to confess something that may at first seem heretical. I am weary of being told of my sin and need of redemption.

There, I said it! I agree with all the Bible tells me on this subject. I confessed my fallen state over fifty years ago and ask God to forgive my sins each time I pray. But as a child who lived through World War II, I knew the weariness of war talk, and the longing for a happy life. I know how sweet the news of victory can be. Please, preacher, stop talking about my sin, and let me hear of God's great victory.

Confessions of a Dead Robot

Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. John 1:13

I used to take two little brothers on outings each Saturday. This time it was to a conservatory. Traffic was slow so we played a little game. We made up words from the letters on license plates. I saw "DR" on a plate and asked what it could stand for. The littlest boy said "dead robot" and we all laughed.

Now I am going to confess. I used to be one--a dead robot. I once was dead in sins and trespasses, unable to do anything that pleased God. I could walk, talk, and think. But in the eyes of God I had no more free will than an unborn baby.

Now this viewpoint can get you into trouble, especially in Free Will territory. You will meet people who say that they believe in the sovereignty of God, then say that you have the final say so and can negate God's desire of God to save everyone. Imagine a sovereign God overruled by a human. Kind of like a baby who doesn't want to be born, or even conceived.

I have found that man's free will to decide or not to decide in favor of God is very important to a great many people. It turns out that, to these people, God's free will must bow to that of man's.

Here is the confession part. I once believed this idea. I read and was preached out of it though. I discovered a wonderful truth. God planned my birth. I had nothing to do with my birth.

John Calvin did not make this up. The Gospel of John was not named after Calvin. But this writer explained it so well that people think he did. They call this doctrine Calvinism, and most often in a very hateful way. I saw an article on the internet entitled "Is Calvin in Hell?" See what I mean?

For me to give up my former belief and give God all the credit for my birth made me a new man, not a dead robot.