Pragmatic Religion
Source: James Emery White, You Can Experience an Authentic Life,
pp. 33-34.

Years ago in Germany, there was a young Jewish boy who had a profound sense of admiration for his father. His family's life centered on the acts of piety and devotion prescribed by their religion. The father was zealous in attending worship and religious instruction, and he demanded the same from his children.

While the boy was a teenager, the family was forced to move to another town in Germany. There was no synagogue in the new town, and the pillars of the community all belonged to the Lutheran church. Suddenly the father announced to the family that they were going to abandon their Jewish traditions and join the Lutheran church. When the stunned family asked why, the father explained that changing religions was necessary to help his business.

The youngster was bewildered and confused. His deep disappointment soon gave way to anger and a kind of intense bitterness that plagued him throughout his life. That disappointed son, disillusioned by his father's lack of integrity, eventually left Germany and went to England to study. He sat daily at the British Museum, formulating various ideas and writing a book. In that work, he introduced an entirely new world-view, envisioning a movement that would change the social and political systems of the world. Drawing from past experiences with his father, he described religion as an "opiate for the masses" that could be explained totally in terms of economics and personal gain.

Today, millions of people still live under the system invented by this embittered man, and millions more suffered under previous regimes that incorporated its values. His name, of course, was Karl Marx, and his idea was communism. And it all began with his father's misuse of the name of God for the sake of profit.

And four more illustrations after the jump

Do all the good you can, in all the ways you can, to all the souls you can, in every place you can, at all the times you can, with all the zeal you can, as long as you ever can.

- John Wesley

On the train this morning I was listening to a lecture by Pastor Mark Driscoll about Spiritual Warfare. It's a touchy subject for most people. I have met those who have come from a church torn apart by it (the church subsequently closed it's doors) and were burned heavily by it.

There seems to be two types of responses to spiritual warfare, either we deny it's real (taking the cessationist route) or we see demons behind every action, misstep and misdeed that confronts our lives.

Both seem to be equally dangerous to people, when we deny the reality of the supernatural we begin to cut out the heart of God and His ability to change hearts and lives. When we embrace it too fully we begin to abdicate our response to the all of the natural struggles of life to the work of Satan.

I met one of the latter people early on in my Christian walk. A friend produced a Book of Mormon in a bible study as a discussion point, the persons first reaction was to get the book out of the house because "familiar spirits were attached to it". If only it were that easy to tie us Satan and his followers.

Let's look at some facts:

• The bible says that when Satan fell 1/3 of the angels rebelled with him, it also says that the heavenly creatures do not marry or are given in marriage (and consequently reproduce) so there are a fixed number of them out there.
• When these angels became demons they did not gain omnipotence, omnipresence or any other aspects of God. They are not everywhere and can not see everything you do but they have been studying mankind for a long time and have a pretty good bead on people.
• God and Satan are not equals. God created Satan as an angel. The bible suggests he had a pride of place in heaven which eventually led to his downfall but to use a boxing term, he doesn't have the reach to land a blow on God.

Let's get past this stuff in our churches and start to look at the real effects of spiritual warfare in the lives of people. The real consequence of all of this is that are hearts are not renewed by Holy Spirit, that we accept a false teaching of Christ or follow our hearts elsewhere. Satan battles to have us turn our hearts from God and he doesn't do that by camping in books.

I can't go into specifics because of confidentiality but a recent situation that comes partially under my authority has me contemplating the line between the public and private life of the pastor and whether such a division actually exists.

It has always been my belief that leaders in the church are to be held much more accountable for their actions because of their position. It's certainly a Scriptural concept and one that makes me shudder a little. How that will work in heaven I'm not sure but it's something that God keeps placing in my head, especially as I grapple with sin in my own life.

The pastor will never be perfect, will have their failings. The Apostle Paul had a thorn in his side that continually bugged him and God deliberately didn't remove it. I may exegete that this is because it kept Paul humble but that is speculation.

In my own life I deal with sin, with patterns from the past that keep raising up to try and grab me back into their bondage once more and as much and has hard as I've prayed and as much and as hard as I've fasted and as fervent and as honest and as real I have been with myself God has refused so far to take it away from me.

What are we to surmise from this, how do we reconcile God leaving us vulnerable to temptation while holding us to a higher standard? Is he just mean or is there a higher reason for it?

Someone once said that "Character is who you are in the dark". The real you is the version of yourself who no one meets, no one sees, no one witnesses. If this is the real me, the one in the dark place, then my vulnerability to certain sin is my check and balance and the method of God to help me grow and overcome.

That is the private life of the pastor, the place where we struggle.

The post is really a short treatment of the issue, I can see that it needs more fleshing out over the next few weeks. What are your thoughts about it?

This was a rather large weekend for me. I started off on Friday night where I spoke to a local youth group about, well me. It's been a while since I've just given a flat out testimony of God's work in my life and I found myself sketching out the time from my conversion in my late teens to now and once again marveling at just how good God has been to me.

The results were good, I lifted a little bit of material from my Sunday sermon and challenged them about where they were heading in life (I guess that's standard fare for teenage talks) and specifically challenged them in their Spiritual ambition.

Afterwards I was talking one on one with some of the kids. One girl pulled me aside and asked me the question "How do you hear from God". It was great to be streched by the question. She didn't want a prepacked answer but a reflection of my life with God based on what she heard in the talk. Who said kids today dont listen :)

The questions continued on Sunday when one of the youth leaders passed on questions from their Sunday morning get together. Things like "Why is my school Calvanist, they keep saying everybody has a choice to be saved" which I thought was quite insightful!

I preached Sunday morning and even used some illustrations that I blogged about last week :) I spoke about identity theft and based it loosely around 1 Peter 2:4-10. It was well recieved and made people think which is my number 2 goal in preaching (number 1 being that what I say are words of hope).

The big idea I was trying to hammer home is that are Spiritual Identities are in being God's holy priest. We have been created with a plan in mind and work to do in the world.

I'm going to post the full text later in the week after I format it up.

These thoughts have been circling my head for a little while, it's about our ambition.

I consider myself a very ambitious person, I look for opportunities to develop, grow, excel and climb higher in my corporate position. I've had to do a lot of thinking about how ambition reconciles with ministry because the drivers are not the same.

Sure if I was (still) a Catholic I could seek opportunities to become a bishop (although being able to only move diagonally doesn't really appeal to me) or a cardinal. But as a run of the mill protestant there are not many opportunities to climb the ladder.

There is a school of thought that suggests that we subliminate (push down, bury) our thoughts and feelings such as ambition in the context of ministry but I don't really like that idea much. I feel that God has made me this way for a reason and it can be used for his kingdom if only I could figure out how.

Sublimination also seems to be a counterproductive exercise because that suppressed ambition may express itself in a more unhelpful way down the road.

I've thought that I could apply my ambition to a goal such as winning as many souls as possible but on the face it that always seems so contrived an answer. We should all showing the gospel to people but if I base my ambition on it I will be falsely disappointed if someone does not come into God's family. It's a dangerous thing to base your ambition on something out of your control, after all it is the Holy Spirit that convicts.

The working draft of my thinking lately places ambition as motivation towards effectiveness in the broader sense.

Being effective in ministry to paraphrase Paul (2 Timothy 2ff) is to be a soldier of Christ, to be an athlete striving and to be a farmer working hard each day.

If my ambition is to be redeemed it has to be towards these goals, to be an effective soldier of Christ by listening to my commanding officer at all times, not being distracted by fleeting fads and thoughts. To be an effective athlete I need to be in training each day and to be an effective farmer I need to get up each day and do what needs to be done, not putting off the planting, sowing or reaping until another day.

And three more after the jump 

Today I'm thinking about what constitutes a spiritual retreat.

I'm (trying) to write this Sunday mornings sermon and I keep coming up with the same nothing that the last 20 revisions came up with. I think that I really need to get my physical and spiritual batteries recharged and quickly or I am going to continue to slide into trouble.

The problem is every time I've attempted such a venture in the past I either get distracted by something and chase that down or I force the issue so hard that God can not meet me. It's a bit like writers block, the more you push it the harder it is to get the words out.

One of my favorite movies is "Stranger than Fiction". Right now I can identify with the author (sans chain smoking and queen latifa as my personal assistant). I know that there is something there, it is just around the corner. I can feel it's presence just beyond my perception but the harder I reach, the more slippery it becomes.

How do you turn that around? Fasting has worked in the past but my wife doesn't like me doing it. I have a tendency to go to extremes. The last time I fasted I went about 4 days with only a little water and I was a wreck physically. I did however get the answer from God that I was seeking (that is he answered, not he gave me the answer I wanted).

In my sermon I'm going into the area that we can have our spiritual identities stolen if we do not use them, that is, if we are not being the ministers of reconciliation that God calls us to be we will start filling our lives with other things. I feel I've started to fill mine with business and I want it back!