Worshipping in Spirit and Truth
Live from Salt Lake City, Utah, this is heart of the Matter where we do all we can to worship God in Spirit and in Truth. I’m Shawn McCraney, your host.
Show 21 498 A Necessary Look Back May 24th 2016
Our prayer tonight will be given by:
Remember, we have a new book out now and I personally believe it is the most important thing we have ever put together. It’s called Knife to a GunFight – misinterpreting the purpose and place of the New Testament. If you are a seeker of God in spirit and truth and you are willing to examine your religious traditions you will want to consider the contents of Knife to a GunFight. It and all of our books and products are available by going to www.hotm.tv
Discussion with Matt Slick
Last week we did over two hours with Christian Apologist Matt Slick of CARM.org. I respect Matt and his views and believe he has every right to maintain them as an individual follower of Christ. I also believe that he has the right to teach those views to others even though I disagree with them. I can do this because I believe that God is in charge and those who seek Him in spirit and in truth will find – no matter what men and women toss into the mix. So while Matt and I do NOT agree on many things, and admittedly I am typically more the one who leans more toward unorthodox notions than Matt, in my estimation we are all in the same boat rowing toward the same destination.
Unfortunately, Matt does not feel the same toward me (or others who differ with him and his views). What seems to have pushed him over the edge toward my person was my saying that I believe Jesus had one nature – that of being a human being.
LOOK THE HECK OUT!
Jesus had one nature. Jesus had one nature. Hmmmmmm.
Does this mean what Matt and others want it to mean. No it does not. But it is a statement that is really really difficult for Trinitarians who insist on embracing a concept that is known as the hypostatic union of Christ.
Understanding Jesus' Nature
Simply put the hypostatic union of Christ says that Jesus Christ (BOTH) 100% God and 100% Man. I have trouble with this man made definition but not for reasons that you might not think.
Do NOT get me wrong – I am not saying that Jesus was NOT God in the flesh. I affirm the biblical fact that He was the Word of God made flesh (listen) and that the fullness of the Godhead dwelled in Him bodily. But when He condescended below all things I believe the Word made flesh was tempted in all things. Because James says God cannot tempt (nor be tempted) I wonder how a being that was concurrently 100% God was able to be tempted WITH ALL THINGS?
That Jesus “learned obedience through suffering” (I don’t see how a 100% God learns anything). That He was unaware of things (I think 100% God is aware of everything). If this is so why didn’t the 100% God of Him know the time or hour of the end (I think 100% God would)?
I don’t believe that 100% God would ask God why He had forsaken Him. Yeah, I know, I know – our scholars have ways of explaining all of this. But to me their ways don’t necessarily fly.
Having said this, however, we also paradoxically admit that while He was 100% Man He was NOT 100% like us – and so the 100% Man application comes with exceptions and extenuating circumstances – which tend to flow over to Him being God with us.
For instance, None of us were born of a virgin or conceived of the Holy Spirit. None of us were with the Father from the beginning and none of us were God’s Words made flesh. None of us have ever walked on water – excepting Peter. None of us could perceive thoughts the way He did. And not one of us has the right to call God “Father” from the womb.
Admitting all of this I have to wonder where this idea of “100% this” and “100% that” came from. It seems too convenient. Too contrived. Too human. And it does not taste right in my brain. It tastes created. The variables are too many and the exceptions too great for me to just readily accept such rhetoric. But because I refuse to accept Matt or
Love Over Knowledge
others rhetorical tools am I to be considered a heretic, not a saved Christian, not a brother? My faith and devotions to God are openly rejected and called into question because I don’t swallow what everyone else swallows?
Before Matt and I sat down we had lunch and this topic of who is Christian came up and he said some thing to the effect that he could tell me in a matter of minutes if I am a true saved spirit-filled Christian . . . or not. This is the EXACT thing we are trying to resist. As we said last week there is one test by which we can KNOW who are Jesus disciples – love. Period. I know of no other litmus test to vet others. None. Especially if a person openly admits – as I do – that Jesus is Lord, that faith in Him is the only means of salvation, and that He overcame sin and death and the grave. I not only admit these things, I share them whenever possible. And we actually believe that we can look at people who admit this stuff and claim that they are NOT saved because of differences in other areas? Astounding.
Systems of Doctrine
My dear brother Matt, like many others, has a system which, like Calvin, takes scripture and creates a lock-tight methodology that he believes solves, answers and categorizes many things and people without fail. It is a system that provides certainty, absolutes, and as such demands complete conformity to its core tenets – or a complete rejection of those who differ. In my estimation, this system is blind to a number of biblical facets and factors that have been avoided or ignored because they inherently refute the system established. It is an antiquated system of doctrine and dogma and demands and it must be replaced sooner than later by Christian love and faith – according to the conscience of every believer. This takes effort because our minds work and seek for systems that provide certainty. Admittedly, my mind does the same thing and I have a tremendous tendency “to see what I want to see” and to remain utterly unaware of things that confront my preferred ideals.
The Subjective Approach to Faith
This is yet another reason why we propose and promote the subjective approach to the faith over what we have allowed ourselves to believe is a gathering of objective demands or truths. And on THIS note, let me reiterate – I believe that there is an abundance of objective truths. But they are only wholly and solely know and understood by God, and no other. As humans we are ambling about in the dark and not privy to a perfectly clear understanding of them. For this reason LOVE must abide and prevail over all things certain and doctrinal.
Paul went so far as to hypothetically suggest that even if we came to a point where we have:
“the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, (we) are nothing.”
I thank brother Slick for his willing participation in what is one very difficult enterprise – to let love reign over knowledge. He is always welcome on the show as we will continue to try and prove this to be the standard or measure by which God wants us all to operate and relate with each other.
We’re going to have a unique show tonight as I am pushing the third and final part on Satan to describe some random concepts and ideas.
Gifts and the Punk Scene
My daughters don’t often give me gifts. It’s because they truly know I don’t want anything (unless I can eat it). But yesterday I was given this gift – a book about the LA Punk scene of the 1970’s. It was written by one of my favorite musicians John Doe. I grew up in a family that loved music. A few of us were actual musicians that played instruments but the love of music was central to my childhood and family dynamic. It was a constant. From my oldest sister and her friends I was vaguely introduced to some of the early founders of rock and roll who were rhythm and blues artists, some early country (part of the Fresno country scene), and folk. I toddled about to Muddy Waters, Bill Haley, Fats Domino, Hank Williams, Elvis, Ray Charles (and the Mess Around) and Johnny Ray. Before I knew it I was listening to the Everly Brothers, Dion, Richey Valens, the Platters.
The Evolution of Rock and Punk
…and then (of course) the Beatles. As rock and roll continued to get more and more “refined and produced” “the 60’s” seemed to say, “enough!” and from my older brother, I got more Beatles (like Revolution No. 9), Dylan, Joan Baez, the Animals, and a super strong baptism in the sounds of Hendrix, Black Sabbath, Joplin, Jethro Tull, and the Doors. In them music returned to some extent to “the raw.”
My next older sister in line introduced me to Dan Folgelberg, Crosby Stills Nash and Young, and as she grew older I met Bands like Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Bowie, Elton John, and ELO. One summer she lost her mind and started grooving to Donna Summer. For a week or so I think I even became a fan of the Village People. But the music kept morphing, getting more refined, returning to the raw, then falling into the hands of the suits returning for more production techniques and synths.
The Shift to Personal Musical Tastes
Around this time I started to come into my own tastes (based on what was available and popular at the time – Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, but then out came the stage acts and the outlandish performances by Alice Cooper, Queen, the Sweet, and finally Kiss. About this time – 1974-77 – music sort of had become really bloated, overly produced and quite the show. From disco to heavier rock to Top 40, the raw and the unrestricted freedom of expression in bands like early Hendrix and Zeppelin had taken a back seat to super refined and overly produced studio albums. In the end music sort of sat around on vinyl chairs under colored lights snorting cocaine and being self-satisfied. I went along because there was nothing else to do. But I still hadn’t found (heard or seen) what I was looking for.
One afternoon, I think I was around 16, I was in my parent’s backyard listening to an LA radio station when the DJ said he was going to play something new from across the pond. I remember exactly what I was doing at the time when the first riffs to “Anarchy in the UK” bounded out of that portable radio and into my heart. Unlike the studio albums of Boston, Styx (and even Zeppelin at the time,) unlike the smooth disco beats, this was the rawest of raw – even though it too was studio produced. In it I heard honesty.
The Raw Honesty of Punk
My next door neighbor and I immediately went to the local Licorice Pizza and bought our shared copy of "Nevermind the Bullocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols," and I churned that album like no other. In it, I heard open expressions about social inequality, poverty, abortion, government oppression, selfishness, and “problems.” These were real issues that spoke harshly but honestly to the things real people experienced. Almost overnight I became what was known as a punk and have essentially remained so in my heart ever since. The early punk movement was unique not only due to the music, the themes of the music and the social misfits it attracted, it was originally engaging because it was up close and personal and it refused to comply.
It terms of its intimacy, bands were used to standing removed from audiences who had purchased tickets and would sit in their seats while the band played. With punk came in your face confrontations, the stage dive and mosh pits. Instead of performing from afar the band immersed into the crowd. And, at least in the earliest days of punk, everything was welcome – so long as nothing tried to dominate. I remember when the Dead Kennedy’s had their first hit – California Uber Alles. Ronald Regan had just left office as Governor of California and liberal Jerry Brown replaced him. You’d think the Dead Kennedy’s would have mocked the conservative but instead they sang about the fear of Brown forcing everyone to become hippies and to wear hippy shoes. Everything was subject to examination, nothing was sacred.
Like all things in this world, punk (and all that it represents) had its failures, but at its core, it’s true foundation (not its pretenses) lay an unabashed drive to “know and to be what you wanted in the face of that knowledge.”
So we come to religion.
Coming to know the Lord and to be a Christian I’ve realized that organized religion has evolved and de-evolved in patterns similar to rock and roll music. From its originator – a homeless Jesus hanging naked and raw on a cross outside of…
The Over-Production of Faith
The city limits – to His martyred apostles, to a monolithic empire called Catholicism, to being all about money and power and control, to a bunch of private labels of Protestantism, to more money and more refinement and more “shows” the faith – which started so real and raw at the hands of its originator, has also gone the way of music and become so over-produced, so full of elements that exist outside of the faith, so full of PR, and lights, and fog machines, and social media that its raw original roots can sometimes become unrecognizable in the lives and ways of those who admit it into their lives. Robes and dirty feet have been replaced by suits or Tommy Bahama shirts, open hillsides have become brick and mortars full of presenting pastors removed from the audience, and what were once simple proclamations called the Good News have become overly produced religious presentations and political machinations– to an extent that even the approaches that “appear raw” are socially and technologically manipulated.
Seeking the Raw Roots of Faith
Where’s the punk? Where’s the deconstructed garage churches of old? You know, the ones that get together to love the founder and then to accept each other – in His name? When did the love of God and Jesus, like the love of music, become so regimented, so money based, over-produced, so corporate? And when will the human race of Christians finally let go of all the corporate, ersatz church playing and just seek to know and then to choose to be according to their knowledge?
- Recently I had a good friend in the faith tell me something that hurt me quite deeply but did cause me to reflect. He looked me straight in the eyes and said, “You are a heretic and I doubt very much that you are saved.” At first these words made me laugh – I couldn’t actually believe they were being said to me by him. But when I saw that he was serious they shocked me to the core and I reflected on them with great earnest.
Was it possible? Was I one of those who will say, “Lord, Lord?” and He will look at me and say, “I don’t know who you are?” I unconsciously began a personal inventory and started to examine my heart and soul, my beliefs, where I place my faith and trust, my life’s priorities, the things I accept as true, the love I have for God and man. These questions rumbled around my brain silently for a few days.
A Reflection on Personal Faith and Identity
Then I received an email. It was from a teammate I had when I attended BYU as a freshman and swam competitively. Apparently there was a reunion of all BYU swimmers that had been coached by Tim Powers. Sadly I was not invited (for obvious reasons) but apparently some of the guys there brought photographs of me when I was a freshman which made the rounds with people who knew me.
This former college thought I would find the pictures interesting – and I did. Because they revealed a number of things I had forgotten. Before I show them to you remember, these pictures captured the essence of my person at eighteen years of age. I was an active LDS member but as I’ve always said, I was also one of the most evil people alive. I think the look in my face and eyes and the very photos support this conclusion.
I was a punk, I was extremely violent, I was criminal, and I was filled with rage. There was no authority on earth that could tame me, no human I feared, and I could care less about women, animals, or laws of the land. Here I am – here I was – at 18 years of age.
(SHOW PICTURES HERE)
After serving a Mormon mission some of my natural inclinations were redirected by the core animal you could see in those pictures remained. But I tried to play the LDS game, got married, had three daughters. Because I exhibited leadership traits (which were all based in the flesh) I was placed in leadership roles – Elders Quorum President, early Morning Seminary teacher, Stake High Council, Bishopric – but all the while that ANIMAL
(show one picture)
remained, and if you crossed my path you were in danger. Being a father, being a husband, being in a Bishopric did NOTHING to hold the animal back if I was provoked, tempted, or inconvenienced. My life was self, self, self.
Then I came to know the Lord in one heck of a miraculous
Transformation Through New Faith
Regeneration. He took me and my desperately wicked heart and soul and by the reality of His Only Begotten and the blood shed for me, gave me a NEW heart. New. My friend in the faith said he doubts that God has done this in my life. His assessment is based on some views he deems unorthodox so how can I know if what He says is true?
Having been given a new heart I was still had all the old flesh and machinery operating around it – and so change has taken time. It started in the Calvary Chapel School of Ministry where I started to learn the Bible by and through the Holy Spirit. But even there I got into a physically threatening altercation with another guy and stormed out of a class (quitting temporarily) when an instructor told me I had to wear a tie to an event. But I could sense the Lord working as I apologized to the classmate and returned to school – and wore a tie.
Then the Lord did something that actually served to capture me and my failures and growth as a young Christian week in and week (out until this very day) – in 2006 He put me, a baby Christian, by all accounts, on live television. And every week I was forced to face life as a professed Christian before an audience of people who belonged to my former faith – and those who were part of the Body. I never watch the shows. Ever. But I know that I was in transition while on them. Not out of Mormonism, but out from a life “long in the most sinister of flesh” and slowly but surely into a more spirit-lead life walking with the King.
Evidence of True Conversion
The apostolic writings to the saints in the early church, outside of those directives that are toward missional efforts, are all about believers growing in the faith. Conversion is only the beginning and the sign of true conversion is the fruits of the Spirit – which are not immediately obvious or present in the life of a believer, but would and will present itself in time . . . . as love. Not as an ability to argue. Not knowledge. Not spiritual gifts like tongues or prophecy. As love.
. . . more love, deeper love, love that is kind, not boastful, humble, forgiving, longsuffering, and fruit of the spirit that (with love) is evidenced by joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, temperance.
Love as the Core
John the beloved puts it this way:
1st John 3:11 “For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.”
And then
1st John 3:14 We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death. 15 Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him. 16 Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.
And
1st John 4:7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. 8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. 9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. 10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. 12 No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. 13 Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit.
Paul tells us clearly that this love of God and Christ “Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.” 1st Corinthians 13:7
And again, John tells us clearly that by the presence of this love we KNOW that God is in us and that we are in Him.
I humbly submit, by the power of God and His strength and love, that HE has brought me not only out from being one of the most dangerous freemen in north America to being a man who now,
Faith and Understanding
BY AND THROUGH HIM AND HIS STRENGTH, seeks ardently, stridently to
“Beareth all things,” “To believe all things,” “To hope all things,” and to “endure all things.” With all being defined as all things of God.
As to my friend and brother and his assessment of my standing with God? I believe he means well. I believe he wants what’s best for me. But I know he is dead pool wrong. I am a Christian true and through from being a wretch to becoming a true Son of God.
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