Sunday, February 27, 2005

Life Is A Risk (February 27, 2005)

I didn't know I was risking my life the other day when I heard the doorbell ring and answered it. It was just a couple Mormons. Harmless.

But according to "Dear Abby" (and many police departments), my answering the door was a foolish risk. Burglars knock on doors to gain easy access. Dear Abby's readers report cases of people getting beaten, raped, robbed and held at gunpoint when all they did was answer a knock at the door. Now they have learned from the tragic experiences of others, and one has posted a sign that reads, "Don't sell me anything, give me anything, leave me anything or offer me anything. If you don't know me or my family, don't knock on my door and don't bother us!" Abby responded to that letter-writer, "I'd say you've covered your bases."

I suppose you can keep yourself a little safer by scaring away strangers and locking yourself in. If I had a daughter who lived alone I guess I would tell her not to answer the door either. Caution is a good thing.

That is, it is a good thing up to a point. Past the point where prudence should fix it, caution is a tool of the devil to drain away the delights of community and fellowship, as well as the virtues of contentment, compassion and self-sacrifice. If you over-protect yourself, you not only become a basket-case but you lose opportunities to have fun and do good.

Some months ago I read about a politician (a governor, maybe) who decided to set a public health example by not shaking people's hands any more. Hands carry germs, you see. If we abolish hand-shaking we'll all get the sniffles less. Great, but in our ever-isolating culture do we really need another barrier to social intimacy? What's so bad about getting a cold? Call in sick, take some Nyquil and sleep it off. Really, how many of us are going to leave behind despairing widows and orphans trailing our hearses just because we caught meningitis from a handshake? Lighten up people. Life is a risk.

If it benefits others, then risking your health and safety is noble and sweet. In Philippians 2:30 St. Paul praises Epaphroditus, who "almost died for the work of Christ, risking his life to make up for the help you could not give me." Epaphroditus might have avoided near-fatal illness by staying home, but he valued more than life the good service he could render to Paul. In A. D. 254, the bishop of Carthage, Cyprian, organized the parabolani (literally, "risk-takers") of his congregation to bury the dead bodies of plague victims and nurse the stricken city's sick people back to health. It may be that some of those parabolani succumbed to plague themselves. But it was worth it, because they were credited with saving the city from destruction, and God was glorified.

Our fellowship group had a fascinating discussion the other night about what to do if you are walking along Lake Michigan and you see somebody struggling in the water. Do you jump in to save him? You're no life guard. It might end with double tragedy - he might thrash around and drown you!

To which I think the right Christian answer is, “So what?”
Public Contempt For Biblical Convictions (February 20, 2005)

Former senatorial candidate Allan Keyes' daughter Maya recently announced that she is gay. In committing herself to homosexual behavior - without shame, confession, penitence or desire to change - she has rebelled against God. She has landed herself in the sinful chamber of horrors that St. Paul describes in Romans 1: "God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones...God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents" (Verses 26,30).

Has anyone in the media denounced this wayward daughter for defying God, holding her father in contempt and subjecting him to public ridicule? Not on your life. Rather, it is her father, a conservative Catholic Christian, who has been the target of withering scorn and “Bibliophobic” venom. In vain I’ve read the papers to see if there is an ounce of sympathy for the heartbroken man. There is none. Instead you will find headlines such as the one in Monday's Chicago Tribune, "Anti-gay bias hits home in the Keyes household." The father is the villain (for believing homosexual practice is wrong), and Maya is the courageous crusader for sexual dignity. Good and evil have been recast in opposite roles. It reminds me of missionary Donald Richardson's stunning revelation of an Indonesian tribe that regarded Judas as the hero of the crucifixion because of the crafty way he befriended Jesus before betraying him. In the media's glad reception of Maya and hateful denunciation of her father, the prodigal son story has been re-imagined. This time the son returns home with a bevy of prostitutes in tow and announces, "You are not worthy to be my father. I and all those who share my values are taking over, and we cast you away along with your hopelessly bigoted prejudice against loose living." Three cheers. Kill the fatted calf.

When I was in college my Sunday School teacher said that persecution comes to all devout Christians. Though he could quote Scripture on that (1 Timothy 3:12: "Everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted"), I frankly doubted that it applied to our culture. But now I am beginning to see the universality of persecution - though of course it comes with varying intensity. We don't have it so bad compared to most eras and cultures. But the world's general love for wickedness and contempt for God guarantees that sooner or later anyone who loves the Lord and takes a stand on Scripture will suffer for it. Be prepared for that, and don't be surprised. In the first century you could lose your life for saying, "Jesus is King"; in the 21st century you could (merely) lose your job
for saying, "Homosexual behavior is wrong." That day is coming, and may already be at hand. Don't back down. Loving the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind and strength necessarily includes accepting the Bible's teaching on sexual morality. Do this even if your own family members turn on you as the world applauds their courage.

Sunday, February 13, 2005

The Sinner’s Prayer And Baptism (February 13, 2005)

Have you ever heard an invitation to say a prayer to receive Jesus as your Savior and Lord?

Sure you have. Pick up any gospel tract and you will find a "sinner's prayer" at the end of it. Go to a Billy Graham crusade and it will culminate with a model prayer to mark your decision to follow Christ. Examine the curriculum of any evangelistic program ("Evangelism Explosion", "The Four Spiritual Laws") and there will be a prayer to get saved. Get the videos for Bill Hybels' Becoming a Contagious Christian or Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Life and you will hear more prayers to receive Jesus. These invitations are absolutely everywhere in the land of evangelical Christianity.

But they are not in the Bible. I know. I looked. If you don't believe me, spend some time studying the passages below, where I list every conversion in the book of Acts. In not a one of them will you find that the saved person ever says a prayer when he becomes a believer. Maybe some of them did in fact pray, but the text never records that. Nor do the apostles or preachers ever tell them to pray to receive Jesus. Here's the list:

Acts 2:38-41
Acts 4:4
Acts 5:14
Acts 6:7
Acts 8:12-13
Acts 8:36-38
Acts 9:17-18
Acts 9:35
Acts 9:42
Acts 10:44-48
Acts 11:21
Acts 13:12
Acts 13:48
Acts 14:21
Acts 16:14-15
Acts 16:33-34
Acts 17:4
Acts 17:12
Acts 17:34
Acts 18:8
Acts 19:4-5

What you will find in the biblical preaching of the gospel is a call to (1) repent, (2) believe, and (3) be baptized. You can do all of these without saying a prayer! Don't get me wrong - prayer is good, I like prayer, I have nothing against signaling your conversion to Christ with a prayer. I am merely pointing out that this practice is nowhere to be found in the Bible. It comes from evangelical tradition, not the Word.

What bothers me in today's standard Christian evangelism procedures is that the "prayer to receive Christ" has become a substitute for baptism - an unsanctioned alternative to the one true biblical way to mark conversion. Peter said, "Repent and be baptized" (Acts 2:38), not, "Repent and say these words after me." Now repentance involves one's behavior over time, and belief involves internal adjustment to one's convictions - but the specific act that flags our entrance into a new life with Christ is always baptism. In the Bible, new believers get baptized in a flash, within moments of their coming to faith. It
is never a social event. They don't wait for Sunday. They don't wait for a worship service. The baptizers do not take time to find out first how sincere their converts are (see Simon in Acts 8:13-23). People get baptized in the middle of the night (Acts 16:33 ), by the side of the road (Acts 8:36-38), or before they break a three-day fast (Acts 9:18-19). Often the only ones present are the baptizer and the baptizee. (Spectators are strictly incidental.) In short, people get baptized precisely under those spontaneous and abrupt conditions in which we are accustomed to have people say prayers to receive Jesus into their hearts.

It is simple. We “pray to receive Christ”; they got baptized. One of my pastoral burdens in life is to nudge people into biblically correct practice regarding this matter of how to express conversion, so that they will know exactly what it is they are supposed to do when they get saved. They’re supposed to get baptized.