The Prophet of Convenience

One of my (many) heroes of the faith is a Saint by the name of John who lived in Damascus. Now he was the last saint that was accepted by both the Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox before the Great Schism (which properly refers to the split between east and west and not the protestant reformation). His writings leaned towards the east defending the use and veneration of icons, but he actually lived in a Muslim controlled area. There's a great story about how he gets accused of trying to convince the church to send troops to oust the Muslims, they cut off his hand, he grabs it, prays for it be reattached and goes right on writing.

He writes a book called Heresy in which he outlines bad and outdated theology of various groups but the one that I think is relevant for today is about what he calls the Ishmaelites which if you are interested you can read here. The real point being that voracity of the Koran is much to doubted.

It seems that Mohamed was into what ever was convenient.

He wrote an "edict from Allah" that allowed him to marry another man's wife.

He wrote an "edict from Allah" that allowed for the inclusion of a pagan site of worship to be included in Islam so as to help transition those already accustomed to worshiping there.

At points in the Koran he has "edicts from Allah" some times extolling Jews and Christians as "people of the book" when he needed to find refuge among them from his enemies and other times calls them infidels that need to be converted or killed.

Most of what he knew of Christianity came from heretical exiles of the church - Arians mostly - who believed that Jesus was a created being and therefore separate from God. (If you want an historical treatment of why this is important to Christianity you can check out my post called "Only God Can Save Us"

All this to say that St John of Damascus considered Islam not to be its own religion but a heresy of Christianity, seeped in basic ignorance of key Christian beliefs (he thought the Trinity consisted of God, Jesus and Mary and that Mary and Moses were brother and sister) and in the idea of his own convenience.

But this post isn't about Muslims, the Koran or Islam. Its about the fact that all to often, we as Christians become our own prophets, seeped in ignorance, giving preference to our own convenience.

We ignore doctrines and practices that seem hard. We become satisfied with easy answers (the Trinity is like an Egg...) and turn away from God himself to the things of God because they seem more tangible. Church is easy - we can ignore the hard things sometimes spoken from the pulpit as meant for another and avoid those certain people that stir up wild emotions in us. We can suit our study of the word to avoid those difficult passages like Matthew 25 where it seems that we will be judged not for right beliefs but for right action, or for passages that call out our particular pet sins like Anger, Lust, and Covetousness. Even Christian service can be manipulated into making us feel good, or keeping us so busy that there is no time for true reflection.

Convenience is the opposite of change.

And prayer is the agent of change. By sitting down, stopping, and embracing who God is, what he has done for us and seeking him for guidance and direction we are really looking for change. We don't like when we are confronted with our need to change things about ourselves.

At some level we all like ourselves or at least our habits. That's why we still do them. We feed what ever wisp of desire and appetite comes our way because we are not sure that any one else will. And we fill that desire with junk, what ever happens to be lying around because it may not be there if we wait to fill it. CS Lewis says its "not that our appetites are too strong, but rather that they are too easily pleased" and that "if it seems that nothing in this world can satisfy us, perhaps we were not meant for this world".

Even as I write this, I feel convicted of my own relationship with Him. It has fallen off as of late. I'm afraid of change. I want a plan, I want to see the end of the road before I start something, and seeking Him about what He wants and not about what I want seems a little beyond my faith right now. I see the hungry people and cant figure out how these few scraps of food are supposed to feed so many. I'm afraid of Him asking me to do something crazy, to step out onto the sea. I'm afraid to even seek sometimes because I know he can and does speak.

So in the old testament if a prophet was not of God, the people would throw stones at him till he died. So I'm picking up a stone for my own prophet of convenience. And it may take time, and there might be times when we shrink back, feel overwhelmed and are alone. But take heart for He is with us.

"The truth is, anyone who believes in me will do the same works I have done, and even greater works, because I am going to be with the Father. You can ask for anything in my name, and I will do it, because the work of the Son brings glory to the Father. Yes, ask anything in my name, and I will do it! - John 14:12-14

Jesus is God, right?

Jesus is God, right?

I say this slightly in jest because for most Christians, its something we say we believe pretty readily but after an conversation I had at church with a guy, I went away wondering about the effectiveness of the message.

Here's how the conversation went down. I met this guy at church (actually one of the pastors brought him to me cause he had "deep philosophical" type questions and his normal go to guy wasn't there) He was taking a course on Islam taught by a Muslim and was wondering about the "First Miracle" of Jesus. Now most people have heard some allegorical teaching on the miracles of Jesus out of the book of John at some point in their lives, and when they do this they often say that Jesus changing water into wine is his "First Miracle". Now while I'm not sure that description is correct, the professor of this particular class was claiming Jesus' first miracle was that he spoke to the wise men that came to see him at his birth. (This is what the Qur'an claims Qur'an 3:46)

Now his original question had to do with how old Jesus was when the wise men came and weather or not his speaking to them would be a miracle (It wouldn't be a miracle if Jesus was say 4 or 5 but it would be if he was 1 or 2) But I was more concerned with the actual content of Jesus' supposed words from the Qur'an (though in my quick search I could not find as a quotation from Jesus; it was only stated about Jesus). His supposed statement to the wise men was "I am the messenger whom Allah has sent."

Now when I was talking to him, I took objection to that phrase. Jesus of the bible never claims to be a "messenger", John does as do the angels when they appear (which is actually the word used to describe angel - angelos in Greek just means messenger) But Jesus claims to be the Son of God, and to be of the same nature of God, and in some way actually God Himself (John 14:7-10, John 10:30, John 14:11, John, 10:37-38, John 17:11- I know these are all from John, John just has the clearest statements about the deity of Christ without needing a whole lot of explanation)

Now had Jesus appeared to the Romans or Buddhists or African Animists, there would have been much less opposition to his claim of being God. They had a plethora of gods, and one more wasn't going to make that much of an uproar. But the Jews had been uniquely prepared by divine revelation to believe only in ONE God. "Hear oh Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is ONE!" So for Jesus to show up and claim he was God... well lets just say there were those who did not receive him as such. So this was an issue that the early Church had to deal with, answering the question that Jesus posed even to his own disciples; "Who do you say that I am?" And they didn't work it all out at once but over many years, through meeting together as a whole much like the apostles did in Acts 15, through prayer, through scripture and through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

So when all the church leaders got together to discuss the answer to the question "Who do you say that I am" they came up with a simple logical argument. "Jesus saved us. Only God can save. Therefore Jesus must have been God." Later councils also confirmed the humanity of Jesus, but without him actually being God, our "salvation" is a moot point and we should all revert back to the Jewish practices of sin management on a national scale.

But this man visibly flinched every time I said Jesus was God. After noticing it the first time I said it, I slipped in a comment about his deity a couple of times to seek if it was a fluke or not, but he had a visible bodily reaction every time. Now here was a guy who seemed moderately educated in the faith and enthusiastic about defending that faith in this class on Islam that he was taking and yet, it finally came out in conversation that he didn't think Jesus was actually God, but that he was just an example for us, and the "Son of God" was more of a title given to him for his righteousness.

Where did we fail this guy? It was obvious he was caught up in some sort of works based theology after talking to him, I think because if Jesus was just an example, then Christianity then becomes about trying (and failing) to live up to that standard, and there's no room for grace. There's no freedom for him, just a different sort of bondage.

Do we focus on the wrong sorts of things in our teaching and our discipleship, telling people to be like Christ and live a Christian life without giving them the understanding of who God is and how that is accomplished though Him in the various roles of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?

There's three questions I always try to fall back on in writing, teaching or studying the word

-Who is God and what is He like?

-What is the Church and what is her purpose? and

-How do we fit into and have relationship with God and His Church?

And I think these are in order of importance (at least for me) that without right knowledge of who he is, the church and our relationship to God and the Church will always be skewed. Classical orthodox christian teaching, especially that which comes from the annals of church history have always seemed important to me and I'm seeing more and more the need to impart that love of the discovery of who God is more and more. People need solid food to grow into mature Christians who know who God is and reflexively know the truth from a lie.

(1025, Dang way over, sorry)