Life can be funny sometimes.

Or maybe I’ve just got a twisted sense of humor.

Over the last couple years I’ve come to believe that many of the things I’ve been taught to avoid and in some cases even demonize, are not in and of themselves evil. Music, alcohol, etc.

A friend of mine explained it to me this way: “America is a nation of gluttons. We do everything to excess.” And he’s right.

Sadly though, people like to pick and choose what they demonize. I know people who are quick to condemn me for having a drink, yet most doctors would consider them to be obese and last time I checked, the Bible is just as harsh towards gluttony as it is drunkenness.

And just for the record, I’ve never been drunk. Never even been buzzed. And I don’t ever plan to be either.

Anyways, ever since moving back to Louisiana, I’ve really begun to ask the question, “What is church?”.

Do I have to go to a building with “church” in the name in order to “go to church”?
Do I have to go to that building at a certain time, on a certain day?
Does there have to be a very specific order that determines what is done in “church”?
Is an online community real community?

I’m still wrestling with these questions daily, so by no means am I saying that I have all the answers. Nor am I against the traditional Protestant concept of church. I believe that church, when done right, is an awesome agent for change, discipleship and spiritual growth.

The big question I’ve been wrestling with is, have we put God into a box by putting His church in a box?

Last time I checked, the Biblical definition of a church is the regular assembly of believers for the purpose of edification and instruction. In other words, to refresh and to teach. If that is church, then I go to church every Sunday night at McAlister’s where there is a Bible study. And if online communities count, I go to LifeChurch.tv every week.

All of that brings me to this: earlier this week a friend told me that they have really begun to “question my lifestyle”, because I don’t go to (their definition of) church, I enjoy the occasional adult beverage and have been known to smoke a cigar every now and then.

Yet the funny part (funny to me) is that twice in the past two months I’ve had very deep, thought-provoking, long conversations with an unchurched friend of mine about Jesus, the Bible, church and sin, and during both conversations we enjoyed a couple cigars and some bourbon.

Thoughts?

There’s a really cool site you should check out called ChurchRelevance.com and Tuesday they posted an article called “Abortion Statistics Are Changing”. Basically it stated that according to Gallup 51% of Americans now consider themselves to be pro-life and 42% consider themselves to be pro-choice (I guess the other 7% are undecided).

Anyways, the article goes on to compare the traditional Christian solution to abortion with newer, more holistic solutions.

Just to be clear, the traditional Christian viewpoint is that the shedding of innocent blood is a sin, therefore abortion is a sin and the only way to decrease abortions is to make abortion illegal. For many Christians there is no alternative – it’s either all or nothing. Abortion must be illegal and they’ll do whatever it takes to make it illegal.

As the article quotes Donald Miller, “It’s a great bit of idealism. But it is a pipedream, and I think we need to face that now twenty years in. We need to face that, and we need to be able to work together to come up with other solutions. And so many people will disagree with that. They will say, ‘No, we have to win a moral victory,’ and actually, the moral victory will cost many, many lives.” It’s this point that really stood out to me. The rest of the article is very good and you should read it for yourself, but I want to use my blog to expand upon Miller’s statement.

Making abortion illegal, as Donald Miller pointed out, while being the ideal solution it is highly unlikely. The pro-life side may “winning the fight” at the moment, but not by much. I mean, we’re not talking about a landslide here – two years from now another poll may show those numbers have flipped. Now, I’m not saying Christians should give up the legislative fight, but to rely on it as a means of ending abortion is a pipe-dream.

I grew up in a church that was a leader in the local Right To Life movement. If there was a rally, we were hosting it. If there was a march through downtown or midtown, we were leading it. If there was a telethon on the local Christian TV station, our pastor was the co-host. I remember being so excited as a child when I got my first box of tithe envelopes and it even had a section titled “Anti-abortion” where you could designate funds. Where did those funds go? That’s a good question. Same for the funds raised at pro-life rallies, marches and telethons. What’s worse, just after the political conventions of 2000 (the year I turned 18, so it was my first time to vote) my church hosted a pro-life rally where, if you gave to support the Right To Life group that was represented you received a bumper sticker that read “I Vote Pro Life!”. Don’t misunderstand – I believe abortion is a sin and that it is my responsibility to keep that in mind when deciding on who to vote for. And many people voted for Bush because of his unashamed pro-life stance. But what happened to the money that was collected that night? It ended up in Baton Rouge and Washington, D.C.

Nine years later, what has changed?

Some will say, “But we’ve kept partial-birth abortion from being legalized”; I won’t argue that (even though President Obama has already stated he does not support partial-birth abortion, so I doubt we have anything to worry about for at least the next few years). But here’s my point: we’ve spent billions of dollars trying to make abortion illegal, yet there is still an average of 2,000 abortions performed daily in the United States. Think of it this way: many pro-life organizations like to use words like fight, battle and war when talking about their cause. They say things like, “We’re fighting to end abortion” or “We’re in a war with the liberals”. So let’s look at this from a military standpoint. The pro-life movement loses an average of 2,000 people per day to “the war”. Pro-choice supporters lose nothing. Zero.

Doesn’t sound like we’re winning when you look at it that way, does it?

But what if there were a better way? The world has Planned Parenthood; what if there were faith based organizations that, instead of offering abortion assistance, offered financial assistance, counseling and even adoption assistance? There are some ministries that offer these services, but they are few and far between (definitely not as widespread as Planned Parenthood). Life Choices is a great example in the Monroe area. Sadly, they’re the only example in Northeast Louisiana.

Better yet, why doesn’t the church do it’s job and offer assistance? I realize most churches cannot handle operating a full service crisis pregnancy center, but they can support ministries such as Life Choices or even pool together with other area churches to start a joint effort crisis pregnancy center if one is not in existence. Oh, wait, that means churches would have to work together. Ooops.

All I’m saying is we’re spending billions of dollars on a stalemate. Why not use that money to offer a viable alternative to abortion?

A recent report showed that 25% of women who had an abortion did so because they wanted to postpone child bearing and another 2% because of the mother’s health. The other 73% got abortions for reasons such as low income, fear of family reaction, religious shame, relationship problems, age and convenience (career women). What if those 73% had assistance from the church and ministries such as Life Choices? Will Life Choices and others like them end abortion? No, but they’ll get us a hell of a lot closer than we are today.

So what’s more important – winning an argument or saving babies?

Misquoting People or Taking Quotes Out of Context

If you are going to quote someone, please keep the quote in the correct context and don’t misquote the original author/speaker. By this I mean don’t add to the quote (putting words in someone’s mouth), don’t remove words from it (misquoting) and don’t spin it to fit your purpose (context). If the quote you are considering doesn’t work for your message in it’s original context, DON’T USE IT!!!! The same goes with scriptures; I can’t count how many times I’ve heard a great sermon that ended up being tainted because the speaker misquoted someone or took a scripture out of context and spun it to suit his need. Of course, this problem is not new. One of the primary reasons there are thousands of denominations in the Christian church is because we humans can’t agree on the proper interpretation of scriptures. So first, when you quote the Bible tell me the scripture you’re quoting. I’ll be the first to admit I don’t know every scripture in the Bible by memory, so don’t go through a whole message with statements such as “The Bible says…” or “Jesus said…”; tell me where it is in the Bible. I want to be able to read it for myself. And if you’re going to quote someone outside of scripture, provide me a reference. For example, if you quote a passage in a book, give me the name of the book, the author’s name and the page in the book. Prove to me you’ve actually read the book because it isn’t pretty when you misquote a book thinking no one in your audience has read that book when in fact, there are those who have. And they know what you’ve quoted is not accurate. I may sound harsh, but think about this: if I, as a Christian who was raised in church, don’t know the entire Bible by memory (all 31,103 verses) then how will someone who is truly unchurched respond when you quote scripture (or someone outside scripture) and don’t at least provide a reference or source material so they can check up on what they said? My pastor in Georgia (Brent Stephens) is a perfect example of this. He understands that not everyone is able to spend hours a day studying scripture, so when he quotes scripture, he does just that. He tells you exactly where to find it in the Bible. Same thing when he quotes someone outside the Bible; he gives credit to the originator of the quote and if it was from a book he tells you where and how to find it. He actually takes the time in his sermons to connect the dots so that it doesn’t matter if you’ve got a doctorate in theology or if you’re a high school dropout, you leave actually knowing more than when you came. And he isn’t the only person like this, just the first that comes to my mind (as I’m writing this at 4:00 am). Now, I’m not saying Christians should be skeptical of their pastors, but the world is. Again, drawing from personal experience, I grew up in a church culture where the speaker/pastor/evangelist’s words were gospel truth and it didn’t matter if they gave you scripture references or not. I have friends who, to this day, base their choices in life upon what their pastor says is right or wrong. An example of this is that a couple of years ago the pastor of the church I grew up in gave a message in which he claimed that drinking alcohol is a sin. At first, it was a great message because the pastor was giving scriptural reasons for not drinking (as opposed to saying the drinking is a sin). And of course he used the usual scriptures which condemn drunkenness (Proverbs 20:1, Proverbs 23:20-21, Ephesians 5:17-19, Galatians 5:20-22, Titus 1:6-8, 1 Timothy 3:2-4). Then he made the leap. I put the leap in bold italics because it was the kind of leap I thought I would only hear from Randall in Clerks. He quoted 1 Timothy 5:22-24, which says in the King James translation “Lay hands suddenly on no man, neither be partaker of other men’s sins: keep thyself pure. Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities. Some men’s sins are open beforehand, going before to judgment; and some men they follow after.” He then attempted to tie it into Leviticus 10:9 which says “Do not drink wine nor strong drink, thou, nor thy sons with thee, when ye go into the tabernacle of the congregation, lest ye die: it shall be a statute for ever throughout your generations.” One problem: he omitted the middle portion which says you aren’t to drink alcohol IN THE TABERNACLE. His interpretation of these two passages of scripture was that if you are going to drink alcohol, you can drink only alcohol and never drink anything else again (water, juice, soda, etc.), otherwise you will die. If that wasn’t bad enough, he then quoted the story of Jesus turning water into wine (John 2:9-11). Expounding upon the scriptures he said that in the ancient Greek language there are three words for our English word “wine” (which is true). The first word is defined as fermented grape juice, the second is defined as unfermented grape juice and the third can mean either/or. According to this pastor, in the ancient Greek texts of this passage the third is what is used. Fair enough…… but then he made an assumption that in my opinion is not safe to make. He asked, “Do you really believe that our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ would actually create something that has caused so much heartache and destroyed so many families?”

Just a few days later I overheard two friends arguing over what was said in that sermon. One was asking the other to show him where the Bible says drinking is a sin. The other could only respond with “Pastor says it’s a sin.” He couldn’t show anyone where the Bible says it is and he was to the point of being enraged because someone actually questioned what the pastor had said in a sermon. I know I’m coming across as harsh, but it’s because I do not take lightly the weight that a person is under when they give a message to a group of people, especially considering some of those people will be gullible enough to take what is said as gospel truth and not actually investigate the truth for themselves. I’m tired of Christians who tell me what they believe, not based upon scripture, but based upon their church or their parents. And so is the world.

Putting Down Other Churches/Pastors/Leaders/Methods just because they’re different from what you and your church do.

I’m tired of hearing fundamentalist pastors put down seeker churches. I’m tired of hearing emerging pastors put down traditional churches. Whether you like it or not, we’re supposed to be on the same team. So you don’t like that the preacher across town teaches more than he screams, if people are coming to Christ as a result of that church, get over it. Otherwise, you aren’t preaching the Bible, you’re preaching division in the body of Christ. Focus on the community and the people you are called to reach and quit worrying about what someone else is doing, even if you don’t approve. That’s why I love Fellowship Church’s C3 conference. They bring in speakers from different denominations and styles; from traditional to contemporary, emerging to post-modern, because even if those speakers have disagreements over the methods used, they all agree on one thing: Jesus.

I mean, sure, there are some very specific non-negotiables of the Christian faith: sin is the problem, Jesus is the answer, the Bible is true and Hell is hot. But if you agree on all that, does it matter if you wear a suit to church? Does it matter if the songs you sing are 200 years old or 2 days old?

As long as Jesus is glorified nothing else matters.

To sum it up, I have an unusual analogy. I read an interview in a magazine back in 1999 or 2000 where Bill Goldberg was asked what he saw as the reason for WCW’s drop in ratings, revenue, popularity, etc. and what he said was rather interesting; “Instead of focusing on our product and doing the best we can do to make our TV shows and PPV’s the best they can be, we keep comparing ourselves to the WWF and their product.” For those that don’t watch wrestling, the WWF (now WWE) ended up buying WCW in 2001. While there were thousands of factors that contributed to WCW’s demise, everything led back to one word: priorities. And that is a problem I see in a lot of churches – their priorities are all screwed up.

So what’s your main priority; Jesus, or something else?