Amy said,

April 4, 2008 @ 6:01 pm

Hi there friend-

I’m gonna’ have to disagree with your belief that Communion is not divine. Jesus tells me “his blood is real food and his flesh is real drink.” Yes, we could get into a scripture interpretation battle but the bottom line is this is what Jesus tells me. And like you said, I ought to look to Jesus and not to you.

Of course I love you lots and I know you love me too– even if I am idolater :-). Actually, based on the definition –one who excessively adores a person–I rather like of the idea of being thought of as an idolater, an “idolater of Jesus.” This is exactly what I am when I’m receiving Him in Holy Communion.

Your Catholic friend,
Amy S.

David said,

April 4, 2008 @ 11:36 pm

Dearst Tina

For the benefit of your readers, our relationship goes back many years and won’t dissolve over some differing POV as far as I’m concerned. Conversation/controversy–as long as we agree to do it in the spirit of the love of Christ — is “iron sharpening sharpening iron.” Too often we’re afraid of someone questioning what we believe. The Apostle Paul said we “should ready to give an answer for the hope that lies within us.”

As to woundings, some of my own have come from other ministers, but in no greater proportion to any other vocation. I wanted to trust ministers more, and placed bigger expectations on them, some more than they could live up to. Some placed more expectations on me than I could live up to.

But woundings and scars are not necessarily bad things. They are character builders Paul talked about whereby we identify with the suffering and struggles of others. They give us tender hearts and bent knees.

Prejudice, well, certainly I faced it the second I typed on this page. It’s impossible to overcome the reader’s preconceptions of a scripture-spouting, suit clothed, hymn humming, man-of-the-cloth. Yet, the person you know, Tina, is far from that caricature, more at home in Starbucks than the average sanctuary.

Concerning The Bible as The Fourth Person of the Godhead: Who has tried to sell you that? I really thought I was up on most of the cults, but this is a new to me. In a lot of ways I think we are talking semantics about the Written vs. the Living of God. While the Living Word (Jesus Christ) lives in us (and is with the Father), we have the written word (Bible) as a standard, a yard stick if you please, to identify error. If not, Christ-followers could have long been seduced by every whacko philosophy, religion, and anti-religion over the last 2000+ years. This is where we may differ; while each believer has the Living Word inside, not all of what comes out of the believer is 100% free from the old nature. That is where the Written Word comes in.

Case In Point: The Church in Ephesus…… Between the time Paul established the church and the time Christ returns…”You have left your first love” —- SOMETIMES WE NEED MORE THAN OUR INNER VOICE AND OUR FELLOWSHIP GROUPS.

Of course Jesus is our final authority. But our whole discussion about reading the Bible makes it seem like it is a burden and we don’t need anything but divine revelation from Jesus every day when we get up. Some days I need correction, but I’m too stubborn to listen to Jesus cause I think I’m right and my wife is wrong. I need the Apostle Paul to tell me from Ephesians to put off pettiness and anger like an old garment — from the Written Word.

All in all, we’re try to split hairs….we’re trying to separate our need for the Written Word from the Living Word. We need them both for balance. The Living Word will never act contrary to what’s in the Written Word. That’s the divine paradox. He could….because He is God, but He has chosen not to.

Of course His Word is a path and a light to my feet, but only to The Living Word. I am more interested in The Living Word it takes me to and the Author who wrote it. As to “the Word of God must be cloistered and guarded by professional clergy,”….that blame lays largely at the feet of lazy believers who rely on over-head projectors for their praise songs and never open their Bibles except at church. WARNING: This is a sore subject with me. Don’t make the claim to me that Truth is guarded by a few when believers won’t attempt to feed themselves. Most come on Sunday morning to receive the “regurgitated” knowledge from the pastor/teacher, maybe take notes, retain only 10 percent of what is shared, then most won’t make another solid spiritual connection in the Written Word, a small group, or corporate gathering until the next Sunday morning. Ninety-five percent of the ministers I know would be thrilled to have their flocks actually reading the Word. Most, if they are reading at all, will be getting some form of the Word in a re-hashed, diluted form from a “devotional guide.”

And while it is true there are those church professionals who guard organized religion for the hierarchy sake, it is grossly unfair to those of us who have made it a life-long study to understand the cultural context and original language God-breathed for us. While He does not change, Unfortunately our culture and languages do and we often lose some of the most beautiful pictures of grace because things become lost in the passage of time. We are not guardians of these truths…we would give them away freely but no one wants them, without getting them by their own “divine revelation.”

Perhaps, “hidden” was a poor choice of word concerning the Bride of Christ. I believe she is much broader than the organized church, IE. the institutional church. That we agree on. In fact, I could create a lot of questions. In Rev 21:2,”John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a BRIDE adorned for her husband…” It was the Apostle Paul in 2 Cor. 11:2 who talked about presenting believers as a chaste virgin to their engaged husband. But that is a discussion for another BLOG.

This “Bride of Christ” is, in fact, members of the Body of Christ He is “jointly fitting together”, a living body. How He is doing this, I really don’t know, and I’m leaving it up to Him to sort out. Though I’m not particularly happy with how some institutional church systems seem to feed off people, but in this country the membership vote with their feet. An empty seat speaks loudly. If people are truly as upset with they way they are being mistreated as you say, why are they lining up to be on leadership boards to “do unto others?”

Jesus made it clear that our role was not to deal judgment over the real or the imitation…to pluck the tares from the wheat. He would do in the Day of Judgment.

You seem to propose a “Jesus-and-me, three’s a crowd” …. in some of your blogs. Unfortunately, like the coals of a fire, most Christ-followers I’m in touch with aren’t strong enough to survive in the Jesus-only atmosphere. They still need the regular corporate worship/teaching/fellowship. Quite frankly, my wife and I need coping with raising a struggling 16-year-old and a special-needs 20-year-old boys. We cannot provide the programs and support for ourselves that is needed apart from our corporate body.

I get really leery when ever I hear this Jesus Only pop-theology from anyone. Oh, it sounds good. It sound blissful, filled with daily revelation, all answers given from a loving Savior. Theoretically it is possibly to only rely on Jesus for all truth. But then why did He full us with the Holy Spirit?

I’ve seen this “Jesus Only” fad crop up from time to time over the last four decades in the Body of Christ in America. And it only seems to flourish in America were we have the decadence and time to be so self-absorbed. Ours is a society founded on independence and that extends to our social ties, religious (institutional) ties, personal ties, and divine ties. We declare our “rights to separate” from a church if they expect too much of us; our “rights to privacy” if a fellowship group gets to close to knowing us; our “rights of grace” to JESUS ONLY if the Scriptures expect too much, the Father demands too much, the Spirit convicts too much.

It has been my observation over almost a half century, save those isolated for the cause of Christ by prison or laboring in a remote corner of the globe, few stand strong in the “Jesus and Me” position. For most it was well-intentioned but they either fell for some cultish lie or into a lifestyle of total self-absorption.

It is interesting you said “If I choose to go out to the wilderness with Jesus on my arm because I heard him calling me out to it,…” Perhaps this is a more accurate description of a “Jesus-and-Me” experience. Here in can be a rich sense of indwelling, His presence as close as your own breath, the cool refreshing of Spirit as it washes over your soul……but not without the heat, the sand, the stripping away of all the useless chaff, and the ego which has to die before His hope is rebirthed in you.

Yes, this was a mutual experience, but not one my choosing. Jesus had me by the arm, but He pulled me along as an unwilling participant. How much better had it been my choice.

If this was your wilderness, it taught you something different than mine. I learned I am no Lone Ranger. I need the Body of Christ more than ever before. I need to share my giftings and grace and mercy in humility. For all my years on earth, and all my chronology in the body Christ, I discovered how immature and selfish I was. And I was devastated. There was nothing in me to glory, but that of Christ my Lord. And He let me live.

I went through my desert for 12 years. He showed me there was a lot of Him “with skin-on” that needed me inside and outside of the institutions I mistrusted. He has pointed be to the corporate and the non-corporate Body. At times there will be ministry in silence (which will be the hardest for me to do). As FFH sings, “I will worship in the waiting…”

In my own journey, condemnation was something that use to spring easily to my lips. A good trip to the dessert will tend to burn that out of a prophet. In the case of Isaiah, when the angel touched his lips, the second half of his writings contained a tenderness of restoration that some claim came from a changed or different man.

Thanks for allowing me along on your journey with my own. Somehow, I suspect we will never totally agree till we bow at the throne and discover how wrong we both actually.

Then it won’t matter.

With Great Brotherly Affection,
David