Blatant Meaning from Obscure Verses – An Oxymoron Possibly?

I'm about to open another bag of snakes and I really shouldn't. I keep making a personal vow not to post any more blogs for a while. But I'm so disobedient. Then something happens that really moves me. Then something else happens and the dots start to be connected.

The second reason that I should not post is that I'm so busy that I have to do it on the run. When I do that, my typing becomes typo-ing.

The third reason, if two were not enough, is that I'm seriously sleep deprived. It's a long story but I've been averaging about 5 hours of sleep per night and then last night I had one. It was a combination of being on call, having a seriously ill patient in the hospital (who is dying) and no one can figure out why. Where's House when you need him. The second reason I'm so sleep deprived is that Tyler (21) is living at home right now. Things are okay when he was alone, but now that all his friends are home from college, they start their day . . . at our house . . . at 10 PM.

But to my point.

The first dot that appeared was at church last Sunday. I have not been to Sunday school in a while, because I find it so frustrating. People ask me why I stay with this church and the reason is simple. Okay, maybe complex. The main reason is that my wife said she is not changing churches for any reason. Her friends are at this church and to her, friends are a huge part of church. Teachings and issues that drive me crazy really don't matter to her. So I don't think a husband and wife attending two different churches is a healthy thing.

Now back to my story.

Chuck is a darling, elderly gentleman at our church. Personally I really like him a lot. However, he has a theology degree and is some what of the pastor’s right hand man. The pastor really looks up to him (maybe the only layperson he looks up to in our church because Chuck is the only one he will allow to stand in for him as a Sunday school teacher). Chuck is also the head elder.

The problem is that Chuck and I don’t see eye to eye on most things that are Christian. Many times he has said to me, “If you really believe such and such, then you can’t be a Christian.” The problem is, I really do believe such and such. So I find it a little hurtful that Chuck says I’m not a Christian.

The issues were we differ on include:

1. Chuck says you can not be a Christian if you doubt that the earth is older than 6,000 years. In my book I don’t care how old you believe the earth is.

2. We should forbid our kids from going to any college but a Bible college (a segue with my last postings) because those who go to secular university leave the faith.

3. We should only read Christian books. He has caught my kids and I reading diverse things, some by great atheists.

I could go on. But I will come up to the latest event, and that was Sunday school last Sunday. Chuck is teaching the Ten Commandments. This week was the second commandment:

From Exodus 20: 4 (NIV)

"You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a thousand {generations} of those who love me and keep my commandments.

Chuck went on to say, that examples of these idols include all images of God or Jesus. He described how he had to cut the picture of Jesus out of the children’s Bible he used to teach children’s church.

So, at the very end of his 80 minute lecture (he actually read his entire lecture, word for word, from a 14 page script that he had typed up) when questions were allowed, I asked him about Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam. Chuck said it was an idol and God forbids it. Then he added his cliché that he uses every time, “God said it, I believe it, it is settled.”

The question was being begged and it was on the tip of my tongue but I looked at the clock. It was now 1:30 PM and I had endured a 80 minute lecture on a beautiful sunny NW day . . . to the point that my head was about to cave in. So, I let it go. But I really did want to ask him (as I have before ) “Where the hell did God say don’t paint pictures of Him!”

But Chuck always makes it an issue of believing God nor not. He said the same thing about the earth being 6,000 years old. “God said it, I believe it, it is settled.”

So obviously Chuck thinks that “God said it” in that Exodus 20:4. If that verse says that we are to never to have images of the real God, you have to read a lot more into that verse than is really there.

That brings me to my last point (another segue to my last postings) about what is the church? Our pastor, after observing many people leaving the church, some becoming freelance Christians or in other types of emerging churches, did a lecture series on why God wants you to stay in the “Chuch.”

But of course he defines the “church” as only the American Evangelical traditional church. Meets on Sunday morning at 10 AM., has Sunday school and preaching (our preaching comes first). The “worship service” being the center piece of the whole church experience.

I will conclude this thought by saying, back in the early 90s when I was trying to put my Christian-Humpty-Dumpty world back together again, I spent a whole year trying to figure out what the church really was. I was amazed, once I divorced “church” from the cultural context and really only looked at scripture . . . blatant scripture. I also did a lot of studying on church history. I really enjoyed a book called, Ante Pacem (the church before Constantine).

I challenge anyone to honestly define the church in the New Testament, but first taking off your cultural glasses and reading the mandates for what a church is . . . using only the blatant verses. You would be amazed how simple it really was.

But, maybe the church really should be defined as a building of people who meet on Sunday mornings at 10 AM for 1 hours Sunday school, followed by a worship service, with hymns, then a sermon by the pastor, who is the king of the church but with an elder board. But after all, this is what God "said" the church is . . . so I believe it and, I guess, that settles it . . . or does it?