I left this comment (sarcastic in part) at this site entitled “The Nashville Statement Isn’t About Trump, And A Ton of Evangelicals Support It”.
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People in chronic pain chronically take pain relievers. It is the duty of every Christian to fight this immorality.
Which reminds me. I have no doubt there is a God (or something like it). Explain to me again why we need churches? And priests in robes? And why are churches structured like military organizations?
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What triggered this little outburst?
This means that one cannot embrace a homosexual or transgender identity as a believer, any more than one can be an “alcoholic Christian” or a “white-lie-telling Christian.”
But we know the cause of rather a lot of addiction including alcohol abuse. PTSD. Evidently the church hasn’t caught up.
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3 responses to “Churches Take A Stand”
If you are not a Christian, you may not need a church. If you are a Christian, you do. There are a number of reasons, both spiritual, political and practical.
Let’s to the practical first. The church is a Christian society, with all that entails. Larger churches, and small churches working together, provide significant real-world support for their members, including aid in times of emergency and need, support during trying times and experiences, counselling, etc. Many churches provide schools, some medical services, daycare, etc. Many nonmembers don’t see this, but in many congregations, it’s important. Virtually every church, even small ones, have benevolent funds for people in need. If you read the book of Acts, for instance, one of the first issues in the new congregation was how to administer the funds used for taking care of widows and the needy.
Politically, the church is a separate society. Think of the Amish. We don’t tend to think in those terms because the USA was established as a generally Christian society that recognized the importance of Christian values. But that was not the case with the original church. A good example is the church at Corinth. Paul pointed out that the Church was a place where Christian values were enforced, where norms of behavior were inculcated, and where people formed a society within a society. Paul, for instance, castigates members of the congregation for taking conflicts to court. Instead, he noted that Christians should solve their real-world disputes within the congregation. This is because, within the pagan world, the Christian congregation had different rules, different values, and different methods of interacting. The relationships between slaves and free, men and women, people of different races, etc., were all different inside the congregation.
As I noted, we are not really aware of this so much in a Christian society, where those values are expressed, albeit in a watered down form, globally. But as America becomes a post-Christian and more pagan society, many of us have returned to this vision of the church as a separate society.
Finally, a “real” Christian (to use the word “real” in the sense of that used by Wilberforce’s book “Real Christianity” in the 18th century or what CS Lewis called “mere” Christianity in the 20th) believes in the actual death and resurrection of Jesus, the atonement for sins by that sacrifice, and more to the point for this discussion, in the real power of the Holy Spirit, and the reality of Christian spiritual experience and spiritual conflict.
This has important implications both in terms of individual and collective spiritual exercise. The church is a place for spiritual training — and it is a skill, not something that just “happens.” The church is a place to organize collective prayer and other spiritual efforts. I am sure you are not aware of it, for instance, but when Trump was elected, an organization of approximately 13,000 neopagans and wiccans collectively attempted a binding on Trump (you can search for “witches cast hex on Trump). This got a lot of press. What most people don’t know is that in response, thousands upon thousands of conservative (theologically conservative, that is) Christians engaged in prayer in defense of Trump.
Now this may seem silly if one does not believe in the power of this stuff, but most theologically conservative Christians do, and this kind of organized activiy in the spiritual realm requires a church.
At the individual level, both training and testing of spiritual insight comes through the church. If one believes in revelational wisdom through the Holy Spirit, one must, as instructed in scripture, “test” those insights, since not all insights come from the Holy Spirit. The church is the place where people work these things out with help from other people of similar spiritual gifts. Similarly, many spiritual gifts require training. I am a mystic, for instance, and mysticism requires a guide and training. Other spiritual gifts, such as teaching, preaching, prayer, helping others, etc. also require training at a one-on-one basis. My wife is on a prayer team, and has spent years learning about prayer. She is much more effective in her prayer life than am I. In this sense, the church is the “dojo” for spritual training.
Christian who cut themselves off from the church hurt themselves. It’s a little like saying that one does not need to go to school to become educated, or one does not need to go to training to become skilled at a sport, or one does not need to do an apprenticeship to learn a trade, etc. It’s true, one does not, at least if one is profoundly talented and determined. But most people are not. And if they don’t get the direction and support they need, they will flounder. Churches provide this service for Christians who are serious about their faith.
Mark Twain had an interesting tale about Christians telling white lies: Was it Heaven? Or Hell?
billo,
Christianity did quite well without churches. And then Rome organized the religion. It hasn’t been the same since.
And the churches war on people in pain? And Christianity prides itself on ministering to the sick. I guess people in pain don’t count. Especially if the pain comes from child abuse.
14-Year Veteran Undercover Cop Exposes Truth About The Drug War: “I Used To Believe I Was Doing Good”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-16/14-year-veteran-undercover-cop-exposes-truth-about-drug-war-i-used-believe-i-was-doi
“When I went into policing I thought addicts had made the mistake of trying drugs and had no willpower to stop. Actually, problematic drug users – or at least all the ones I knew – were self medicating. Most of the heroin users I knew were self-medicating for childhood trauma, whether physical or sexual.
I remember the 60s. The churches were in a panic over people who got religion from a pill. The pills were made illegal.
An illegal religion? Where have I heard that before?