The Coin Email

At first when I started this blog entry, I was going to rant and rave about the idiocy of an email forward I got and how things like this were giving Christians a bad name. But God had different plans...

I think there are different types of faith. Not different levels, but different types. And God uses all of them to edify each other. They go along with the Spiritual Gifts, I think. But also, at different times in our lives we experience different types of faith. I want to talk about one of them, and maybe later I'll fill in the others.

This is what we might call "Blind Faith"
-Far from being a bad thing, this type of faith is probably best exhibited by new Christians though it occurs in other places as well. The motto for Blind Faith is "All I know is that..." Fill in the blank. They don't know much about the faith, or the basic doctrines, or the many ins and outs of Christianity, but God has done a miraculous work, and they feel they owe Him their allegiance.

These are often the people who forward those "If you love Jesus you'll send this to all your friends" emails. They act on their emotion for Christ, and sometimes they stumble, sometimes they fall, but they get back up and keep going because Jesus did something for them, and now they're going to do something for him.

Granted, we 'old' Christians often get annoyed by their tactics. Once, when I was attending a church of mostly "senior saints", as we called them, a new Christian started coming and shaking things up. A bunch of the elders were talking about her and one man, a pastor in his eighties, said, "Don't worry. Give her a few years; she'll calm down." As if her excitement for Christ was a bad thing! She had been pushing the church out of its rut, and all the older members could think about was getting things back to they way they'd always been.

Blind Faith is dynamic faith at its purest. But the danger can be ignorance. "I've already made up my mind," a friend of mine used to joke. "Don't confuse me with the facts."

An example of this is a forward that I got yesterday. It concerned the new Presidential Dollar Coin and encouraged Christians to refuse to accept the coin because "In God We Trust" was missing. The email also stated, "We have enough problems in our country without this too." So, setting aside my ideological differences with the text of the email, the first thing I did was look this up to verify it. Apparently none of the people who had forwarded it before had bothered to check the veracity of the statement. Indeed, as I thought, "In God We Trust" was printed on the coin, but on the edge. I immediately emailed a bunch of my friends clarifying this and encouraging them to check whether a fact like that is true before they send it into cyberspace.

One of my friends emailed me back. The text of his statement follows:

I for one still won’t except the coin. It looks to me like they are trying to fade it out by taking it off the front of the coin. One can hardly read the side of the coin and since when has there been writing on the side of any coin. That is how I see it. Choose for yourselves. In God I trust.

I didn't bother to point out to my friend that the Brits have been printing on the edges of their coins for years or to explain any of my disagreements with his statements.

I was impressed with his faith. I wish I could sometimes be like him.

Blind Faith has a very idealistic view of the world. Blind Faith wants all things to be restored to perfection under Christ, and doesn't care that this won't/can't happen in this world. Blind Faith is the faith of Apollos, who preached Jesus even though he didn't know much. Blind Faith says, "Lord, if it's you, call me so I can walk on water too," and doesn't care that walking on water is impossible.

And that's an admirable trait.

Humility: Another one of my redeeming qualities

How often do we Christians lie to each other? Several times a day? "How are you?" "Fine." It's the standard Kenyan greeting. Lie.

Reminds me of The Italian Job, where they tell you that "Fine" stands for Freaked out, Insecure, Neurotic, and Emotional.

Sometimes when I say "Fine" I wish someone would look me in the eye and say, "Tell me the truth." But we Christians don't do that very often, do we? We like thinking everything's wonderful. We like hearing how God is helping us to live wonderful perfect lives.

Donald Miller challenges us in Searching For God Knows What to consider what would happen if we met a fellow Christian for the first time and asked, "So what addictions do you struggle with?" or "When do you feel least loved by your wife?" We don't do that. But if we're really part of the family of God, then we need to acknowledge that we can go deeper with each other. We can be honest and true and real.

I think that one of the detriments to the faith has been the influence of Western individualism. I'm my own person. It's none of your business what I do when I'm alone in my room at night.

But it is. It is your business. Because I'm not on my own anymore. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, "The last individual thing I did was become a Christian." Nothing we do is for our own interest anymore, and everything we do creates ripples in the whole Christian community.
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But how is this conviction related to the title concerning humility? To answer, let me tell you about the world where I grew up.

It was very conservative. Missionaries from the Brethren Church. Homeschool families with denim jumpers, long hair, and eight kids. Baptists with a capital B.
They constantly made fun of pentecostals and charismatics and catholics and episcopals and anglicans and methodists and southern baptists and atheists and agnostics and doubters and questioners and evolutionists and anyone who was different from them. They introduced me to the idea that April 1 is "National Atheists Day" and quoted from Proverbs, "The fool has said in his heart that there is no God."

And heaven forbid you ever say anything good about yourself. You must be struggling with pride. You can't even tell people what Spiritual Gift you have, because if you do, you can't possibly be humble.

No, if you have the gift of leadership, you better not offer to lead, or you're a control freak. You have to wait until someone asks you to lead.

So, I don't struggle with pride. I struggle with humility. These are very different issues. I have problems acknowledging that I'm smart or capable or pretty. For some reason, if I'm secure in my abilities, I must be proud.

But that's not true. At all. It's silly for a hand to deny being a hand.

God gave us gifts to edify the body of believers. To deny the fact that we have gifts to use is to cripple the Church. We should rejoice in our talents, in the abilities that we have, because we are part of a community. And if we don't use them like we should, we're not only causing problems for the Church, but we're insulting God. We're treating Him like that strange aunt that always sends us Christmas presents that are totally useless.

God doesn't give us useless gifts.

My godmother lives in Germany and I haven't had much contact with her over the years except for Christmas and Birthdays, when she sends me presents. But every year, she managed to send me something that not only fit my age, but was undoubtedly "me". And the funny thing was, she didn't have kids for my entire childhood- her oldest is only seven or eight now. But somehow she knew.

God knows. Not only does God know, He created us with our quirks and likes and pet peeves. So the gifts He gives us are in perfect harmony with our personalities.

Why, then, are we so nervous about admitting that God has made something that is undeniably "good"?

It's not fair.

It's really not.

My director and his wife (Dwight and Dorothy) went to the States to visit their kids. Their son has been dating a girl for a little over a month and they were excited to meet her. They liked her, their friends approved, everyone was happy.

Suddenly he decided to get married. In May. So they're staying in the US an extra week in order to attend their son's wedding. He's doing it in such a hurry so that they don't have to spend so much money to come back in a few months to attend.

It's all very well and good- except that I want to get married! It's not fair, I keep hearing in my head. They've been together a month. We've been together three. We know as well as they do that we're going to get married, except they get to do it now and I have to wait a flipping year and a half! I don't want to wait.

I was always one of those people that said, "Why are you in such a hurry? It's the rest of your life..." But now the tables have turned and I'm really having a hard time being happy for him.

Especially since my director and his wife have been telling us from the start that they're not fans of long engagements. More than six months, they say, is too long. And I understand- I feel it!

But I have no choice. I have to wait. None of my family can be here. None of my friends can visit. My church would be very hurt if I didn't marry there. These are all very important reasons for me to wait. But I'm hearing all this about Josh getting married- it doesn't help that before Caleb and I were even together, Dorothy said "Dating's not really allowed- but marriage is! So just get married and get it over with."

Don't think I don't want to. I'm fairly miserable waiting. Why do I have to wait? What is God trying to teach me by allowing me to go through this? Why, God, Why?!

There's a semi-popular bumper sticker that says, "If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention."

I first saw this sometime in high school and was assured that it was some sort of ultra-liberal propaganda against Bush and his policies. But the more I think about it, the more I agree. Not about Bush, necessarily, but about culture. Christian culture.

Example: The Emerging Church
If you're not familiar with the term, I'll give you a brief summary: the emerging church is an organ of Christianity which is reacting against modernism by saying that we should incorporate postmodern views and values into our faith. The movement criticizes fundamentalism for its methodological and formulaic view of doctrine, while the so-called 'orthodox' movement condemns the emerging church as being seeker-friendly and wishy-washy when it comes to doctrine.

In fact, John MacArthur said the following;

“They [the leaders of the emergent movement] are saying, in effect, that God may have spoken, but He mumbled, and we’re not really sure what He said. Saying that Scripture is not clear is just another way to undermine biblical authority.” (AIG)

However, this is intrinsically untrue. Donald Miller, one of the supposed front-runners of the emergent movement, says in his book "Searching for God Knows What" that the Bible IS clear in what it says, but that we've lost some of its clarity with our attemps at formatting it into neat bullet points. Indeed,

"Sometimes I feel as thought the church has a kind of pity for Scripture, always having to come behind it and explain everything, put everything into actionable steps, acronyms and hidden secrets, as though the original writers, and for that matter the Holy Spirit who worked in the lives of the original writers, were a bunch of illiterate hillbillies. I don't think they were illiterate hillbillies, and I think the methodology God used to explain His truth is quite superior." (Miller,SFGKW, 217)

Both sides, however, are faulty here. Both think that they have arrived at Truth, and both criticize the other for their shortcomings. And both are wrong.

Jesus prayed "Make them one as You and I are One," and this reactionary approach to the church is not unifying at all. Peter and Paul got into an argument about the place of Gentiles in the church. There's been disagreement after ugly disagreement since the very beginning of our faith.

I'm not condoning all the beliefs of the emergent movement. Nor am I condemning it. I believe that it has some very valuable things to say about our faith and how we approach God's Word, the Gospel, and Other People. I don't agree with everything it says, though. I think that it can be a bit too all-embracing and it can forget that the Gospel of Jesus is an offence. So, to resolve this issue in my own heart, I have to quote my brilliant friend Jordan, "Moderation can solve a great many theological disputes."

P.S. Remember in History we learned about the Inquisition where anyone who disagreed with the Church was called a heretic, or the witch trials where anyone who disagreed with the leadership was accused of being a witch, or the 'Red Scare' when someone who questioned the US government was called a communist? I think a new "witch trial" is upon us in the fundamentalist Christian movement. Only instead of being a heretic or a witch or a communist, people who raise controversial issues (whether their point is good or not; whether they're right or now) are called "emergent" and discounted in everything they say. Didn't we learn our lesson?