Some good thoughts by others on character ...

There are two ways of looking at the job of discipleship. One is to think of it something akin to learning physics. In fact, much of discipleship (Bible studies, cell group questions, personal reading etc.) look very similar to things you might do getting your degree. Another way to look at discipleship is something more akin to becoming a basketball player: the best players take the same truths everyone else knows (keep your elbow in when you shoot) and work at integrating them into their lives until they are second nature. They take seriously everything their coaches say, and are ruthless in their self evaluation as they strive to make all the fundamentals automatic reactions to the events the face in a game.

There were a couple of articles I've read recently that I really thought were evidence of people performing that self evaluation with the attempt to follow in Christs steps.

First, here's an article on public passion versus private devotion. Its not actually a beration of pastors - the writer is a pastor and is examining himself.

"Leaders make the greatest hypocrites because of their ability to persuade and deceive. Rarely is there a pastor whose character exceeds his reputation. ... If your family, friends, and congregation have better things to say about you than God, it’s because you give them that impression. ... Too often we use this ability not to convey who we are, but who we want others to think we are." - Francis Chan

Another great article was with a new author struggling with self promotion and pride. The thoughts were very honest and candid.

But other forms of self-promotion are more insidious, more complicated, harder to discern. ... Am I complimenting this person because I really like him or because I want something from him? Am I doing a favor for someone else with the expectation that he’ll scratch my back when the time comes? A “tit for a tat” and “a blurb for a blurb” you know. Am I afraid to criticize my friends when necessary because I fear losing their influence? Am I critical of another Christian because they are mistaken or because my heart is jealous, or both?

...

Do I want money and recognition? Do I feel the need for validation? Do I like it when I look successful? Or do I want people to learn more about Christ and honor him with their lives? Yes, yes, yes, and yes. I pray that my heart is mostly concerned with the last yes, but sometimes it’s hard to tell.

I despise self-promotion in myself and in others. And just to show you how twisted the heart can be, I’m sure that part of the reason I hate to be self-promoting is because I have a dread fear of appearing to be self-promoting. Whatever humility I evidence, I bet half of it comes from not wanting to look proud.

-Kevin Deyoung


Of course, the most important question is how to change these things. More to the point, do I quit self promotion even if it costs me book sales? Do I quit saying things from the pulpit or in public that are likely to make me seem more saintly and instead simply focus on talk that edifies others and ignore me entirely. The transparent questioning process is wonderful - it is using the Bible like a mirror to see ourselves as we are. But it is a useless exercise if we do not take the next steps to correct those things despite the cost to personal reputation.

For a more recent article on self-promotion, and one pastor's confession see:

http://www.outofur.com/archives/2010/11/pastoral_narcis_1.html

Here is another Christian writer, talking about the importance of humility (not a confessional article like thehe others ...) : http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2010/december/22.50.html

Discovering Christianity or Accepting Christianity.

The job of a typical pastor in evangelical circles in Canada is to convince his congregation that the Bible supports his statements. The idea being that people want to be like the Bereans - checking to see whether the scriptures say what the pastor says they do.

Let me suggest something crazy. This might be a bad idea.

Its not that I think the Bible is not the final authority. I say this, because I think it is. Permit me a few moments of your time and I think you may be able to see why.

Meet John Smith. John is a computer programmer with good intelligence and is a very analytic thinker. Julie Jones is an Art Major from a wealthy family who has travelled all over the world. Bob Holmes has been to seminary got average grades, and has just become a pastor of a new church.

John and Julie go to church one day and hear Bob's sermon. Bob starts his sermon by saying 'I was just reading a devotional book yesterday and I love how it talked about how we could trust God for everything, big and small. My brothers and sisters we need to trust God for everything - even down to how your teenager performs on his midterms, its all in God's hands.'

Unfortunately, Bob who has misread the intent of the author of his devotional who doesn't believe that you can pray good grades into your child's life. After all, Bob was only an average student and frequently misinterprets what he reads.

John, who is very analytical sees the problem with Bob's logic straight away. He immediately dismisses his pastor's point. Every time Bob gives a sermon, John feels that Bob's responsibility is to convince him using compelling logic. If he fails, John has no responsibility to accept what he says. Unfortunately, although John is smarter and a better thinker than Bob, he doesn't have all the background in hermeneutics and Jewish culture that Bob does. The next Sunday, John remains unconvinced when Bob gives a sermon about the ways God interacts with our lives. Although Bob was completley correct, he just did a poor job arguing for his point.

Julie on the other hand, is a very emotional thinker. She loves the idea of trusting God with everything. However, she recently went through a divorce and had her heart broken. She feels like God has let her down, and although she doesn't question her pastor's logic or biblical knowledge, she feels like he is in an ivory tower - disconnected from the sufferings of his congregants. "Maybe God takes care of all the needs of people in the Bible, but her certainly hasn't done that in my life" Julie was overheard telling her close friend.

So we have a number of problems here.

John has started to think for himself. Basically he takes the beliefs that makes sense to him and starts to form a theology out of it. One thing he accepts, another he does not. He reasons this way: "If Christianity is true, then it must be logical. I have deemed the pastor's point illogical, therefore it cannot be Christian." In the end, the only things that are Christian are the things that are logical to John. Unfortunately, if you compared the thoughts of a thousand John's out there, they would all have *very* different theologies.

Julie has also started to think for herself. She reasons this way "If Christianity is true, then it must be real to life. I have deemed the pastor's point to not be real to life, therefore it is not Christian." Unfortunately, if you compared the thoughts of a thousand Julie's out there, they would all have *very* different theologies.

Bob has also started to think for himself. He uses the basic training he got in seminary and combines it with the things he reads and experiences in life. He reasons this way "If Christianity is true, then it must be coherent. I have been given basic Christians truths and tools to analyze and interpret the Bible, so if I find a devotional that passes all my seminarian tests, then it must be true." Unfortunately, if you compared the thoughts of a thousand different pastors they would all have *very* different theologies.

These differences between the Bob's Julie's and John's are not minor. They literally worship different Gods. One God is willing to grant almost any prayer that is asked. Another sees the suffering on earth and believes that God only gives us the power to maintain good character as we go through life. Another believes that God has spoken to them and told them that its OK for woman to preach. Another says that they can't be talking to the same God because the Bible clearly forbids it. These are not minor differences. These leave and interact in ways that contradict each other - they both cannot be following the same God.

The fundamental problem I see is that everyone is trying to 'discover' in one way or another what Christianity is. As they go through the process of discovery they end up baptizing their own opinions as Christian. Each person views every theological statement as an opinion to be evaluated - the ultimate trustworthiness of a statement is their's to determine.

But there is another way to view such things. It could be that Christianity is a set of truths to accept. To live as if they were true, even if at first you don't believe it. In fact, there may be truths which you shouldn't understand because they are very deep. The Bible talks about 'Meat' vs 'Milk' and truths which only the spiritual man can discern. It never claims to make sense. Its interesting, because CS Lewis said that its the Christian truths which we most dislike or find hardest to believe that are the most helpful, because they reveal the points where our compass is off. Christianity is something that you 'pass on' and 'entrust' to faithful persons who are able also to teach others.

John objects to this because his pastor isn't trustworthy. Bob seems to be making up what's in Christianity on the fly. But perhaps the problem is that John needs to go a different church structure (a more hierarchical one) where each pastor isn't allowed such freedom in their teaching. Or more to the point, perhaps he has to learn to trust his own intellect less.

Julie objects to this because the truths need to resonate with her heart. Perhaps what she needs is to talk to a Christian counsellor who can help show her how the Christian truths interplay with her experiences. Or more to the point, perhaps she needs to learn to try on a different set of lenses through which to view the world.

Bob might object to this because he feels that he is trained to be a Bible expositor, to figure out what the Bible says. Perhaps, he needs to spend some more time with the Church Fathers. Or more to the point, perhaps he should spend some more time delving into what the role of a shepherd is.

If someone chooses not to do this and wishes to use the power of their own intellect or the truth of their own life experiences to discover what is true and what isn't. That's totally fine. Its just that you can call you're conclusions 'Christian' Instead, you have taken a set of Christian principles and chosen which ones to keep and which ones to discard. The result is your ideals and principles. You aren't a Christian, though you may be a good person who built many of their principles on Christian ideals.

To be a Christian is to take Christian principles and walk through the precarious journey of accepting them and acting as if each of them were true, even the ones you find most difficult to believe and accept.

Obviously this little entry leaves many questions unanswered (how could such a suggestion be fully defended in so few word - where is the 'official' set of Christian doctrines etc.?) but I think that everyone will at least see the problem I am trying to identify with the approach that Bob, John and Julie have taken towards Christianity.

Prayers for Changed Events

There are two fundamental ways of looking at God's normal way fighting the war with 'the world.' 1) God changes events so that people are changed? or 2) God changes people so that they will change events.

Those who view the world via 1) tend to make a lot of well-intentioned prayers for changed circumstances without realizing the what those prayers are like. I will make this post and just give one example:

When you are late for work and you pray that God will help you “make it on time”, what are you actually asking? That God will cause people to pull off the road that never originally intended to leave to thin out traffic for you? That God will hack into the control lights, contrary to the laws of physics, and extend the greens for you? Shorten the road to my destination? Basically even this well intentioned prayer is asking God for an exemption from the effects your decision to leave late, and to hang the consequences on everyone else.

The nice thing about 2) approach is that we tend to focus our prayers on conforming our character to Christ: "Lord let me be patient and joyful even though I'm frustrated that I'm late."

What if God Took a Day Off? (Part 2)

So to summarize from the last post:

When we assume that God is deliberately causing the events that occur after our prayers (e.g. if we pray that we get healthy to deliver a presentation) then whatever happens we must explain God's hand. In other words, if we get well then God was blessing us. If we stay sick, then God wanted to improve our character. Let's call this practise "Reading God's Intention Into An Event" or "Reading God's Intention" for short.

But we know there are times when this is a bad idea. For example, if someone is stealing a TV from a store and they pray "God don't let me get caught", it is not a sign of God's approval if they get away with it. They got away with it because they were a sneaky criminal.

Some of the bad results of "Reading God's Intention into an event" when God was not actually forcing his will on a situation is that:

* You begin to confuse God and society. If we are prosperous we believe that the opulence given to us by our society is actually given to us by God, and we can become bitter towards God when external events go awry.

* You begin to confuse God and your opinions. We tend to narrate our events as God supporting, satan opposing us in any of our endeavors (e.g. God is blessing my ministry, satan is really opposing it). Thus tending to cement ourselves in our current positions and views. The problem with this is that NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS, we can read the events of life this way.

* You begin to confuse God and luck. If you are one of the 'lucky ones' (e.g. you are one of the 7 people out of a 1000 who prayed for better financial situation and got the request) you tend think God answered it, and that others should expect God to do this.

Is Every Event Following a Prayer Divinely Designed?

Well these issues are only problems WHEN the events that follow a prayer are not due to God (i.e. they are just the natural course of events that would have occurred regardless of how we prayed) OR if God has deliberately caused something to happen FOR A DIFFERENT reason than we think. But how often does this happen?

1) Mixed motives.
The Bible says that the heart of a person is a deep well "Who can fathom it?". When we looked at the example of the man running away with the TV, we know that he can't ask out of a virtuous heart "Lord don't let me get caught." If he doesn't get caught, and thinks this is an answer to prayer then he is going to misunderstand God.

But how many of our prayers for a better job are based out of pride rather than a pious regard for our family. How many prayers for 'making it through' are actually just the result of a spending pattern than is marked by greed and debt? How many prayers of "use me God" are actually rooted out of a desire to be a Christian superstar? Its hard to know. Even our best works are rarely altrustic. But then, we are in the same situation as the theif praying: we may attribute an 'answer to prayer' from God as condoning an attitude or action or thought pattern he actually despises.

2) Blind to Freewill
There may be times when we ask for a prayer like "Lord really open Mr. Smith's eyes." It is possible that in that particular issue, God is leaving it to Mr. Smith's freewill. Whatever Mr. Smith does, it is not an answer to your prayer, per se, it is simply him exercising his will.

3) Inconsequentials
It is possible that if you pray about a random coin toss, a board game, or the outcome of a sports game on TV that God may ignore those prayers altogether. Those are simply irrelevenat prayers. Whatever happens, we are not learning anything about God, we are simply learning about the competency of professional athletes. (There is a deeper question here - how many of our prayers are about things that are inconsequential to the kingdom. For example, whether you are a pauper or a prince is inconsequential to the kingdom ...)

4) Unobjective views of the situation
There is a whole realm of thought about the objectivity of our perspective on any event. If you pray "Lord help me to do a great job of a presentaiton to these kids" and then you give your presentation only to be met with blank stares ... you might reason "Well God wants me to learn to not seek human glory." However, it could be different altogether, God might actually have answered your prayer in the positive, its just that the group of kids are not very expressive. They might go home and tell their family and friends all about the presentation. Thus even if God does answer our prayer, our lack of ability to correctly read the situation means that we ought not to "Read God's Intention" in th event.

5) Failure to know God's true motives
Perhaps there are times when God truly does answer our prayer, but for ocmpletley opposite reasons than we think. The Israelites prayed for meat ... and they got it! They must have been thinking "We prayed for it and God showed us that he just wants us to ask him for what we want" ... but the Bible goes on to say "God gave them their request, but sent leanness to their souls." God sent them their request out of a frustration - in a divine throwing up of his hands. He quit caring! Understanding God's motives is incredibly difficult, if not impossible, and yet this is what is REQUIRED of us if Reading God's Intention is anything less than an incredibly dangerous act.

Well those are just a curosry glance of some reasons why the danger's posed by "Reading God's Intention" are much more real than we think!

What If God Took a Day Off? (Part 1)

Let's play an game. Imagine that God took a day off. For one day, God was not going to meddle with the world, and it would simply run according to the laws of nature and our free decisions. What might happen on that day?

Four Vinettes From God's Day Off

Larry the plumber might pray, "Lord, I need a new truck for my job. Please find me one." And then he finds one! He praises God and says "Thank you Lord, you meet all my needs. You knew that I just want to make an honest living and you honoured that."

Teressa the school teacher prays, "Lord, I can't get sick today. I'm being reviewed by my principle." But she doesn't get what she asked for. Instead the flu gets really bad - she manages her class poorly, loses her temper and gets poor grades. She says "Well, the LORD is teaching me a lesson. I need to learn to just do my best regardless of how I'm evaluated."

John the contractor, decides that he's going to raise money for his church. He dedicates this money to God and asks him to protect him. Part of the process was applying for tax credits he didn't really earn. But the money is going away from a wealthy government and into the hands of the poor. He praises God because he doesn't get caught in his scam. "Surely you are a God who brings down the rich and raises up the poor!"

As a matter of fact, that day 1,000 people around the planet say "Lord, I believe that if I just have faith, I can have a better job. I'm going to trust you to give me the best job possible. 7 of those people get pay raises that very same day. They go around telling other people that the only thing holding them back is their faith. They just needed to believe in God.

But do you know what - none of them learned anything about God that day. He'd taken the day off. All their ideas about God were nothing more than fictions.

The Moral of the Stories

This example has a VERY powerful and a VERY important lesson in it. If there are times when God is not exerting his will in a situation, and we assume that he is, then we are going to have very wrong ideas about God.

I want to run through each of these ideas and look at what would happen if God actually ignored these types of prayers all the time. Let me preface this by saying - I'm not suggesting that God doesn't answer prayer. I am saying that its possible that we are praying about things that God is not about to interfere with for very good reasons.

The Example of Larry

But you might say. "Look at Larry the plumber's example. He praised God because he found a truck! How can we it be a bad thing that he praises God as his provider?" Well, first of all, God didn't get him a truck in this example! If the situation would have been different (let's say Larry was a plumber in the impoverished nation of Cameroon) he wouldn't have been given the truck.

This could be a problem in every day life IF our prayer for our material possessions and necessities were not ALWAYS being supernaturally answered by God. We are thanking God for the things that our society is giving us - rejoicing, taking joy in, desiring what our wealthy society provides for us. The real God will seem much more austere. This God who lets us struggle, hurt, sorrow and suffer, and merely offers his condolenscences and urges us to help others in need - teaching us how to rally around each other in a community - that God is unknown to us and perhaps even a little repugnant.

The example of Teressa

"But look at Teressa and how she interacts with God. She has prayed for something, but when her request for good health is denied she doesn't get angry at God, she draws a really valid conclusion - God wants us to humble and do our best in all circumstances." Its true that Teressa drew a valid conclusion about God - but that is not because she was watching God at work and learned something about him. Instead, she actually has to perform mental gymnastics to figure out a way that the God of the Bible (i.e. with the character traits of the Bible) might be responsible for what is actually just the relentless mundaness of the laws of nature.

This could be problem in every day life IF our prayers for a certain topic are not actually being 'answered' by God. We start to try to explain away every event as if the choices of men and the laws of nature are actually the loving actions of a divine benevolence. We search for the fact that makes us think "ahhh ... this is why that tragedy happened."

For example, I know of a lady who's spouse died. At the bedside of her dying husband a person became a Christian. One of the lady's friends said to her "See, that's why your husband went through this tragedy, to save an eternal soul!" As a matter of fact, some Christian thinkers and apologists even try to suggest that this is the very best of any possible worlds. The tsunamis, genocides, tortures, the actions of the Lord's Resistance Army - these are only apparent tragedies. They are veiled mercies that we don't appreciate simply because we don't see the bigger picture. Of course, this kind of mental gymnastics is much easier to pull of in prosperous times and places (and we are the richest generation ever in the history of mankind). But its easy to see why when tragedy falls our faith falls apart. Our creative limits are reached, we crack when we realize We are no longer able to read divine benevolence into the universe's response to our prayer.

John the Contractor

"Yes, I see the problem with John the contractor." You might say. "He doing something against the character of God, and thinking God approves just because it works out."

I am glad that my interlocutor agrees at this point, but there is a bigger problem. John the Contractor THINKS that he is doing a good thing. He thinks that his prayer is valid. There is no mechanism in prayer to say 'Beep - this one isn't valid, if you get away with it, it doesn't mean that I (God) condone it.' That means that if you are like Terresa and you are performing mental gymnastics to justify all life's responses to your prayers - you have no safety. If you are completely wrong - or doing something that you think is right but is actually wrong - God isn't going to stop you from your practise of reading God into the situation.

But think of how many people are succeptible to this. For example, imagine there are two sincerely wonderful Christians. They even pray about many of the right things, prayers that God hears and answers. But the catch is that one of them believes that the KJV is the only valid Bible translations and that all others are the devil's Bible. The other thinks this is ridiculous and campaigns against the KJV-only person. Now both are going to pray 'God give me wisdom to help me through this battle.' They will both see times when their ministries are effective and they will credit that to God's support, and they will see other times when their ministries suffer and credit that to Satan's attack. In other words, the moment they start reading God into the events that follow their prayer they are going to begin mental gymnastics, and there is no way for them to know when this process has started! There is no way to know when 'reading God's hand' is illegitimate.

But think of how many important things Christians disagree about, and pray about from opposite sides. Surely this is going on all the time!

Perhaps the moral is that we shouldn't be reading God's hand in the events of the world at all. It is unsafe and unguarded territory. But then how do we know if something is an answer to prayer or not. It was easy to know when we assumed that God was either deliberately allowing or intervening in the events that followed EVERY prayer. It was our duty to translate the events of life (man's free choices and the events of the laws of nature) into divine intent. But what if that isn't true? Well, we don't know that it isn't true yet. That will be next blog post. But let's move on to one last example.

The outliers

Now here's one last danger that would occur if we were actually praying about topics where God wasn't intervening one way or the other (he was just letting things happen). 1,000 people prayed in faith for a better life, but only 7 got answers. But who do you think is going get on TV, radios, church pulpits and Christian universities? Surely, its not the 993 who just say "I asked for a better life and didn't get it." What kind of story is that? Maybe they have sin in their life. Maybe they didn't really have faith. Maybe God had a special reason for leaving them where they are. Who knows? But if someone prays and they get a marvelous response, then they are going to get attention. (And notice that we don't ask questions from them: 'Maybe they just got lucky?')

If you say to someone, "that's not right, God isn't about exempting us from the sorrows of this world, or using his power to make this battle ground a little heaven for us" you will be rebuffed with "Well, I've heard stories of God's power" (they'll be thinking of the 7) and then they'll say "I've seen it in my own life" (and they'll be thinking of the times when good stuff happened to them after they prayed).

But the problem is that we use stories and not statistics. There were not a statistically big number of people who get rich. Nor is it even possible that there could be! (Not everyone in the world can be indepedently wealthy, who would do the work?) But we use them as support for our beliefs anyhow, because that's the pattern we're used to following.

Summary

When we assume that God is deliberately causing the events that occur after our prayers (e.g. if we pray that we get healthy to deliver a presentation) then whatever happens we must explain God's hand. In other words, if we get well then God was blessing us. If we stay sick, then God wanted to improve our character. Let's call this practise "Reading God's Intention Into An Event" or "Reading God's Intention" for short.

But we know there are times when this is a bad idea. For example, if someone is stealing a TV from a store and they pray "God don't let me get caught", it is not a sign of God's approval if they get away with it. They got away with it because they were a sneaky criminal.

Some of the bad results of "Reading God's Intention into an event" when God was not actually forcing his will on a situation is that:

* You begin to confuse God and society. If we are prosperous we believe that the opulence given to us by our society is actually given to us by God, and we can become bitter towards God when external events go awry.

* You begin to confuse God and your opinions. We tend to narrate our events as God supporting, satan opposing us in any of our endeavors (e.g. God is blessing my ministry, satan is really opposing it). Thus tending to cement ourselves in our current positions and views. The problem with this is that NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS, we can read the events of life this way.

* You begin to confuse God and luck. If you are one of the 'lucky ones' (e.g. you are one of the 7 people out of a 1000 who prayed for better financial situation and got the request) you tend think God answered it, and that others should expect God to do this.


But all this analysis is moot. If God actually does intentionally allow every event or intervenes in every event that we pray about, then the people are right to read God's hand in every thing that happens in response to their prayer. So next time (in part 2) we'll look at whether its biblical and logical to think that this is the case.

"Trust in the LORD"?

I was biking to work a week ago, and on the way I drove by a sign on a church that said "Trust in the LORD." Having another hour to go before I reached my destination, I began thinking about that phrase. It seemed ambiguous at best, and incomplete at worst. Let me illustrate what I mean with an imaginary conversation.

Imagine if I said to you, "Depend on Rogers." You're first question would be:

"Depend on Rogers for what?"

"Let me clarify." I might respond. "Rogers is a Canadian tele-communicataions company."

"OK, so I depend on them for phone services. If I am lost in the forest, I'll just be able to use my cell phone to get help, right?"

"No, you can't just make up anything related to telephone service and depend on them for that."

"But you said, 'Depend on Rogers', you didn't give any restrictions on what I could depend on them for."

"There are implicit restrictions. Obviously, you can only depend on them for what they promise. You can't put words in their mouth. They promise to have the fewest drop calls of any Canadian Provider. They don't promise coverage for every spot in Canada. When I say 'Depend on Rogers', I mean that they are trustworthy. When they promise something you can depend on them to fulfill it."

So if you want to figure out whether or not you can depend on Rogers, you need to investigate whether or not it is true that they have the fewest dropped calls. Did they keep their promises? If you don't know what the promises are, there is no way for you to 'trust Rogers' because you don't know what to trust them for!

Now, imagine if we apply this to a conversation we might have with a pastor of that church with the sign:

"Trust in the LORD"

"Trust in the LORD for what?"

"Let me clarify, the LORD is God. God is so powerful He can do anything!"

"So, if I don't want my spouse to die of cancer, I can trust God that won't happen. Nothing is too hard for God, right?"

"No, there are implicit restrictions. Obviously, you can only depend on God for what He promises. You can't put words in His mouth. When I say 'Trust in the LORD', I mean that He is trustworthy. When He promises something you can depend on Him to fulfill it."

So if you want to know whether or not you can trust God, you need to know what He promises and then you can investigate whether or not it is true. The problem with just saying "Trust the LORD" is that you leave people floundering as to what to trust God for.

Now, if you're a God-fearing person of a major world religion you are probably not trying to decide whether or not God is trustworthy. That's a fundamental tenet of your worldview. However, you probably are very interested in what you can trust God for. And that's the burning question on everyone's mind: "What *exactly* has God promised?"

There are two major directions to go with this question.

First, you can believe something like this: "God will give me anything I want as long as I believe it from the bottom of my heart." This an unfalsifiable position. If I "trust God" for something and He let's me down, I can simply chalk it up to a lack of faith. Another unfalsifiable position is: "God will do what's best, but remember He's the only one who knows what's best." So no matter what happens, even if it's the worst tragedy, I can still believe God did what's best, I just don't have the knowledge to know it. It's an unfalsifiable position.

The ironic thing with this situation is that you don't end up depending on God for anything. There is no situation where I can 'rely' or 'depend' on the promise, because I never know whether "I've believed with all my heart" or whether "This is God's will" or anything else. There is no sense in which I trust God for anything. I simply watch the events to see what happens.

Second, you can believe in some premise, like "God promises to heal me of any disease if I ask." I can then look at the world and see if this is true. "Is there ever a case where God has not healed someone who has asked for healing?" And herein lies the rub. If you actually believe that God has made this promise, then you can consult data from the real world to see whether or not it is true. However, should you find an example where your belief doesn't hold (for example, you see real God-fearing believers of all faiths die from disease) then you either believe God isn't trustworthy OR that he never promised that.

So if you would like to trust God, then you must believe that there are falsifiable promises that God has made. But my question is, what falsifiable promises do you believe in? Can you say that without exception they have always held true in your experience? And remember, you must not just consider examples in our rich countries in North America, you must also consider all the events happening to people throughout the world (e.g. Sudan, Cambodia, Rwanda,etc).

So the final question, which is not meant to be rhetorical, but simply exploratory, is: Which are the promises we can trust God for when you exort us to "Trust in the LORD?"

Imagine if your pastor believed ...

Imagine for a minute that next Sunday you're pastor gets up on the pulpit and says: "You know, I've been thinking. I believe that Mary really was a perpetual virgin. I believe that the bread actually becomes Christ body. In fact, I think that probably the Catholic church or the orthodox church is legitimately linked to the original church founded by Christ." How would you react? How do you think the pastor should be treated? Quite likely, the pastor would be pulled in front a board and warned, saying "either get your ideas right or you will no longer occupy this pulpit." And he would get a fair and firm warning. Why? Because those issues matter to us.

Now I don't mean to pick on pastors, because many are splendid people. But think back to your experiences with pastors you've had. What if you're pastor has not lead you to care about the poor one iota more than you did before you met him/her. Is there less pride in your life now than when you came under his tutelage? Has your patience increased? Probably most of us have very similar dispositions as 5 years ago. But isn't that much more of a tragedy?

Is it more important that you not have an idiosyncratic (from the outside) view idea about Mary, than that you actually care and feed for the poor. Its interesting because Christ says that in judgment day he is going to say to the ones he sent to hell "I was hungry and you gave me no food, thirsty and you gave me no drink, naked and you clothed me not, sick and in prison and you visited me not." It seems to me to be a very practical religion, Christ-following is very simple, straightforward and tangible. And yet when we think about the idea of not gaining these characterisitics under a pastor we dismiss their absence as unimportant (because only legalistic minds dwell on them) but when it comes to ultimately benign ideas, we become indignant, irate and ready to review the pastor's worthiness as our leader.

This helps demonstrate what our core beliefs are. What defines us as Christians are not the beliefs that we hold that produce actions (beliefs like: God identifies himself with the poor so therefore help them) but creedal statements which are ultimately so opaque that the common man cannot make heads or tails out of them (and I would argue that the theologian can lose himself in his own slop of words).

This distinction is key: action producing belief vs. non-action producing beliefs (aka benign beliefs).

The most interesting thing about beliefs (and in particular benign beliefs) is that we tend to think people are 'godly' for what they choose to believe, as if beliefs were something you could turn on and off like water. Suppose I was to offer you $100 dollars, could you believe for 30 seconds that Santa Clause was real. Could you do it? What about $1000 dollars? What about eternal life? No, of course not! Because beliefs are representing reality. You do not choose what reality is, so, if you are honestly trying to know the truth, you cannot just decide to believe something that you don't. You wouldn't be trying to represent the world anymore! So, suppose the pastor honestly believes in the virginity of Mary, or suppose you don't. Neither of you are more honourable or less. You just happen to believe this. Maybe one of you is 'dumb' or 'uneducated' or 'tricked' but those are not moral flaws!

However, you are certainly accountable for whether you follow through with your action producing beliefs. You are definitely free to choose to help the poor or not, to exercise patience, to offer a prayer of thanks, to put others above yourself. And when we are not godly persons - we should worry about whether we are 'Christian' or God followers. We should not be worrying about whether we are God followers when we stumble across new beliefs.

You might object and say, 'Yes but we are commanded to believe in Jesus.' Yes, and by that he does not mean to take the theological corpus as you have twisted it (and rely on your fallible, and mostly uninformed interpretations of the Bible) and believe in that (sorry that does sound synically :( ). It means, that you need to believe in him, listen to what he says! If I believe in my coach, I listen to him when he says 'Kent, you can be an all-star point guard but you need to work on your left hand' instead of saying in my head 'Nope, my left hand is fine, I need to work on my foot speed.' To believe in him does not mean arguing about whether he is the best coach in the league or being convinced that I have all the answers to his critiques. It means I listen to what he says to me!

And yet when it comes to Jesus, 'believing in Jesus' seems to mean that we subscribe to a certain packages of ideas about him rather than actually just listening to what he commands us to do! This promotes the situation where it is possible to 'believe in him with your lips but to have your heart from him'. But what does he say: "If you love me, keep my commandments." And later what to the epistle writers say about him "If any man love not the Lord Jesus, let him be accursed when the Lord comes."

Revisit your central beliefs and when you feel your faith most violated. What does it say about you?