Why Worship is Better Than Sacrifice

Growing up in a Christian home and serving in various church activities all my life, I have heard my fair share of “God delights in mercy, not sacrifice” quotes. A leader usually shares this sentiment right before everyone is about to serve overtime in some big event or a draining ministry endeavor, just to remind us all that our laborious sacrifice is not what pleases God.

Just remember, God isn’t satisfied because of what we can offer him… Now go and overextend yourself for God’s sake, even though that’s not what makes Him happy.

Literally every VBS, this is what someone was saying during the prayer huddle before we’d start. Obviously, I don’t disagree with the truth of scripture, and I do not contend with the heart attitude behind the use (and often misuse) of these scriptures. We are encouraged all over the bible to minister to the heart of God and to expand the borders of the kingdom of God by spreading the gospel, and this requires effort, time, and resources. The goal in sharing these verses is to encourage those who are putting a lot of effort into serving for the kingdom to remember that God is more interested in our private heart attitude to love and submit to Him than He is about what we will do for Him.

I’m concerned, however, that passages of scripture like these, specifically Psalm 51:16, “You will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it,” and 1 Samuel 15:22, “Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the LORD?” have been applied to our current situations so often that we might miss the bigger picture behind why sacrifice does not appeal to God. To discover the why behind that bigger picture, I’m going to look to Genesis, because just like the name implies, so many things start in Genesis.

In Genesis 2:15, after God has created this beautiful and good world, scripture says that God made man and “put” him in the garden in the east to “work it and keep it” (ESV). However, there have been some issues in how this has been translated over the years. Many people assume that work was created by God as a good thing because before Adam and Eve sinned they are given instructions to work the earth and take care of it. This doesn’t really add up, however, because “work” as often used elsewhere in the Old Testament means “toil” (בְּעִצָּבוֹן֙) and that’s what it means in Genesis 3, after the sinful fall (Gen. 3:23).

We get a better translation of these words and their significance when we look further into the Old Testament. Whenever the author uses the word “put” elsewhere, he’s referring to Levites, or Israelites in general, who are ministering in the presence of God or in the tabernacle (Ex. 16:33-34; Lev. 16:23; Nu. 17:4; Deut. 26:4, 10). When Levites are ministering in the Tabernacle, they are “keeping” (וּלְשָׁמְרָֽהּ׃) and “tending” (לְעָבְדָ֖הּ) to the worship of God and the obeying of his commands in the tabernacle.

In other words, a better translation of Genesis 2:15 for our day would be,

The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to worship and obey in the garden.

This is further backed up by the fact that God gives Adam a command in the very next verse,

You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.

Adam was created to worship God and obey Him. He was put in the garden so that he could be exposed to the choices of obeying God or disobeying Him, and Adam’s worship was dependent on that choice.

Here is why all of this is significant—Your labor for God, as good as it is, will always be something you do because we live in a broken world marred by sin and pain. Your worship of God is something you can do that is intrinsic to your pre-sin design. Before sin, you were called to worship and obey God. It is the only thing you can do in your relationship with God that aligns with God’s perfect design for you, and thanks to Christ, you’re allowed to do it again freely, in His presence.

You will always have to work and sacrifice in this life. The reality of this world where God is moving but has not yet perfected this space is that everything we do requires expending ourselves in difficult ways. But your worship, which predates toil, will always be more pleasing to God because it is what God made you to do without sin, without toil, and without sacrifice.

“To obey is better than sacrifice” (1 Sam 15:22) because if Adam had obeyed, there would be no need for sacrifice. Your sacrifice is required because of a lack of obedience. At the heart of genuine worship is obedience to the will and glory of God. He delights in obedience, and He delights in our worship. Don’t separate those two things. The biblical authors joined them together for a reason.

God is a God of Order

“God is not a God of confusion, but of peace.”

1 Corinthians 14:33 ESV

This verse is quoted often in Christian homes and churches, and for good reason. It’s a helpful reminder that God doesn’t orchestrate chaos for His people. A clear distinction that sets God’s people apart is the peace and order among the body of Christ, Christians. That word confusion in the greek is akatastasias, which can mean a disturbance, commotion, or disorder. That’s how Jesus used it in Luke 21:9 when describing the future outbreak of wars and mass deaths within the imminent Roman Empire. But the apostle Paul in quoting this verse is just finishing up an important series of teachings about how God does not sow discord among His people, and he uses this language to point back to a powerful belief that ancient Jews held for thousands of years before this writing—God is a God of order.

There is an important theme that runs throughout scripture where God and the forces of darkness are juxtaposed between order and chaos. In the Torah, the prophets, and New Testament epistles chaos is the result of sin and rebellion. Where there is chaos, evil is reigning and death is winning. Then God comes in to heal and restore, and He brings order. He brings purpose, unity, structure, and harmony. ORDER.

If we go back to the very beginning of everything, we see God introducing this truth to us within the fabric of creation. In Genesis 1:2, on the first day of creation, the author describes the earth God created as “formless and void”

( ṯō-hū wā-ḇō-hū ). People often get stuck thinking about the scientific implications of an amorphous earth with whirling gases and fire, but this misses the more important element being introduced here: God is preparing a place for human beings to inhabit where they can be in close relationship with Him, but as of right now, the land is uninhabitable. It is a land of chaos, where human life cannot survive. It is a wasteland, a desolate wilderness. God is preparing a place of beauty and flourishing, but that place is not yet ready. When God is finished, the land will be “good,” and not stuck in a “not yet” state. A powerful picture is being presented here that will illuminate further the need for God’s grace and power to transform empty wildernesses into beautiful lands ready for God’s people to inhabit. God will defeat chaos and bring order.

Deuteronomy 32:9-10 plays on the same imagery,

But the Lord's portion is his people,
    Jacob his allotted heritage.

He found him in a desert land,
    and in the howling waste of the wilderness;
he encircled him, he cared for him,
    he kept him as the apple of his eye.

The wasteland of the wilderness is where Israel waits before they can enter the “good” land that God is going to give them as an inheritance. The land isn’t ready yet, and neither are God’s people for that matter, but God is doing what only the One True God can do—He’s transforming darkness and emptiness into beauty and fullness.

The prophet Jeremiah uses the same imagery when describing the desolation of Israel as it goes into captivity,

I looked on the earth, and behold, it was without form and void;
    and to the heavens, and they had no light.

Formlessness and the void are where the forces of sin and death are reigning, but God is up to something! God is bringing order and purpose to what was once chaotic and useless. God is bringing healing and rest to what was once broken and anxious. God is going to create a land of thriving where desolation and wilderness used to be the standard.

This theme is revealed in numerous other passages in the Old Testament.

Exodus 15 displays God’s triumph over evil when crashing waters destroy Egyptian soldiers (the author of Psalm 18 reflects on this).

Isaiah 17:12-14 pronounces a woe to those who rage like the raging sea.

Isaiah 27:1 shows God defeating Leviathan, the ancient near-east sea serpent who represents the depths of chaotic waters (and evil).

God is a God of order. He defeats chaos and brings everything into alignment with His good will.

This creation narrative has even more to consider. On the fourth day of creation, God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night” (1:14 ESV). The syntax of the original text reads more like, “Let the lights in the expanse be for separating…” Many scholars believe the creation account in Genesis 1:1, where God creates the “Heavens and the Earth” refers to the celestial planets, stars, moons, and suns, because of the use of the term “heavens” throughout the rest of the Old Testament implies these planets and stars. If this is the case, then God would not have recreated the lights in the heavens on the fourth day, but instead, He would have given them purpose and visibility from the earth’s vantage point for the sake of humanity, which He is soon to create. In other words, God took the celestial bodies of the universe and assigned them order and purpose by giving them cycles, seasons, and usefulness.

Two of the biggest struggles humans face in contemporary life are discovering our own usefulness and purpose in a vast world that seems to be just fine without us, and the ability to fulfill that purpose and give structure and parameters to it. The National Library of Medicine stated,

Life purpose was significantly associated with all-cause mortality… A growing body of literature suggests that having a strong sense of purpose in life improves physical and mental health and enhances overall quality of life.

Simply put, purpose comes from order, and order comes from God, and without order, we are swimming in chaotic territory where darkness and evil have the upper hand. No wonder lacking purpose leads to poor quality of life. God has been shouting this to us from the rooftops ever since Genesis!

Wherever you see a lack of order, question it. If it is in your own life, challenge it. The enemy would love to have little pools of chaos in your life. But God wants to bring order to that chaos. God wants to establish plans and seasons, purposes and boundaries, where He structures your heart, mind, and priorities.

Order defeats chaos. Light defeats darkness. God defeats evil.

This is why Paul so strongly implores the Corinthian church for 14 chapters about how they need to squash discordant attitudes and the in-fighting in their churches. Their lack of unity produced chaos, and that chaos is where devils and darkness have space to work on us.

When you sense disunity and friction among Christians, don’t shrug it off, and don’t make excuses for it. Do the hard work of pursuing unity, because unity is a byproduct of order, and the author of order is God Himself!

Meet Jesus at the Table

One of the greatest things I’ve come to appreciate about Luke’s gospel account is his masterful use of storytelling to establish truths instead of blanket factual statements. Luke creates scenes that carry theological implications, and a major recurring scene is that around dining, or being seated at a table.

Luke powerfully employs the image of dining at a table as a metaphor for redeeming mankind and bringing us into communion with God once again.

Jesus calls Levi, a sinner, to repentance at a table at his house (5:27-32).

He forgives the sinful woman while at a Pharisee’s dining table (7:36-50).

He satisfies more than 5000 individuals with a miraculous meal (9:10-17).

He heals a man with dropsy while at a table banquet (14:1-24).

He is known as one who “receives sinners and eats with them” (15:2).

He redeems Zacchaeus, a sinner, at his house at the table (19:1-10).

This realization reaches its culmination at the last supper. Jesus reclines at the table in a furnished upper room, where they all should have partaken in passover together. Instead Jesus chooses to personally abstain from eating the passover meal (22:16) and introduces the bread as his broken body and the cup poured out as his spilled blood to signify that he would suffer for their gain. Jesus would bring redemption to those sitting at the table with him, but it wouldn’t come from their passover lamb, it would cost significantly more. Historically, Jesus’ disciples would have had their own cups to drink from, so Jesus’ passing of his cup would have made a profound impression: Doing so was a symbol of entering into a communion relationship with someone through good times and bad.

Luke portrays the table as a place where human need meets divine grace. It is where the presence of Jesus transforms the sad remembrance of things past into the glorious promise of things to come.

A Scholar named Eduard Schweizer reminds us:

In contrast to all other religious communities of their time, the early Christians had no temple, no statues, no priests, no special cult; the only thing visible was a table with a meal around which they came together every week. It was the continuation of the table fellowship of Jesus, and especially of that meal on the last evening together. It was a definitive gift from God and a central manifestation of the truth the church brought to the world.

Human beings are broken beings, but they no longer feel their brokenness when seated at the table with Jesus. Forgiveness, acceptance, and mercy for sinners is displayed across the fellowship table with Jesus. The table is where communion with God happens. At the table we remember what God has done at the Exodus, what He does for us now through the work of the cross, and what He will do for us at the marriage supper of the lamb as we have communion with him eternally after being raised with him.

This is one of many reasons why Paul had to correct the abuses of communion among the Corinthian church (1 Cor. 11:17-34). Meal gatherings were still suffering from theatrical showcases of wealth and social status. Superiority and class distinctions overshadowed the significance of how Christ actually destroyed those barriers by making everyone equal when they sat at his table: All people are now only defined as sinners saved by his sacrifice once they sit at his table.

The table has historically been a metaphor for intimacy and communion with others, and Jesus invites us to sit at his table. Reflect on these thoughts the next time you’re sitting at a table. Remember how beautiful God’s acceptance is because of the mercy He poured out so you could always have a seat at His table.

Don’t Downplay Worship for Justice

There’s a saying that makes its rounds every 10 years or so in nominal Christian circles, and it goes something like this:

“Jesus did not ask to be worshiped. He does not want our worship, he wants social justice.”

This is completely untrue, and it derives from classically liberal Christianity in the early 20th century. Before we get to that, however, let’s establish that God does care about justice, and Jesus does want to be worshiped. This nonsensical idea that we have to devalue one thing to elevate another is foolish and dangerous. We do not need to minimize God’s worship to elevate God’s justice. We should be wary of minimizing any aspect of God’s character to favor another. Common social reform philosophies do this all the time—they require that we identify and tear down a villain social group to elevate another, oppressed social group. In this context, the pious worshiper is the villain.

This has been happening since philosophies concerned with social reform began, and Christianity was naturally thrown into the mix. Let’s talk about how that all started.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Christianity went through some wild cultural gauntlets. People were focused on two things almost exclusively: (1) How our beliefs and values fit within science and reason, and (2) how we can better push humanity toward utopia. Within this world of science, reason, and progress, Christianity was in danger of becoming a fairy tale folk religion, aiding in personal peace but serving no real contribution to humanity’s modern needs. A few eloquent theologians stepped up to the plate and tried to curb the issue. Classically liberal theologians like Albrecht Ritschl and Adolf Harnack felt compelled to force Christianity to keep up with modernity, the world of modernism. Enlightenment philosophy and the scientific method were the filters through which everything must be viewed, and we have Immanuel Kant to thank for that. Kant decided that Christianity should only be valued for the moral foundations it contributes to society. So to help Christianity “compete” with modernity, liberal theologians funneled faith through the hose of Kantian ethics and morals. The theologian who made this idea famous in our North American Churches was Walter Rauschenbusch. He authored the famous work, A Theology for the Social Gospel. Essentially, Rauschenbusch reduced Christianity to a few simple religious statements and socialist-political and economic programs. Theology has nothing to contribute to personal faith, eternity, or macro-universal belief: It must be sequestered into the corner of moral judgments and values.

Despite Rauschenbusch’s blatant disregard for proper methods of interpreting ancient literature, we should be grateful for his contribution to Christianity in that it sparked a revival for the Church taking initiative in matters of social justice. After abolishing institutional slavery, Christianity once again fell into a mold where it was criticized for ignoring social plights, and over the last hundred years, Christianity continued to grapple with its place in social causes and politics. As corporate giants grew and individuals were swallowed up in the river of socialist dynamics, Christians wanted to apply their faith in a context that met these needs, and they are noble for desiring to do so.

But there is nothing wrong with churches valuing worship services and investing in opportunities to praise God corporately; doing so does not diminish a church’s impact on social justice. If a church is neglecting the needs of the community, the issue goes deeper than their approach to worship. Typically, when churches invest heavily in worship and exaltation of God within their congregations, they are known for feeding the poor, clothing the destitute, and housing orphans and widows. It’s as if close proximity to God results in acting out the will of God in justice and healing. Those who value intimacy and communion with God will share the same values and desires that are in God’s heart. If God wants justice for the oppressed and the poor, then worshiping Him and spending time in His presence will transform your heart to want justice for the oppressed and the poor. It is completely false and out of context to portray Jesus as a divine figure who diminished worship practices and religious experiences while attempting to reform society and bring justice. So let’s take a closer look at a few moments when worship is explicitly offered to Jesus in the New Testament.

As soon as the Magi who traveled from the East saw Jesus, they “fell down and worshiped him” (Matthew 2:11). They also offered him some seriously expensive gifts. The author of Matthew is highlighting the significance that magi from a distant, pagan land are recognizing Jesus as one who should receive worship.

When Jesus enters Jerusalem before his crucifixion, the crowd lays palm branches in his path and shouts, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” (Matthew 21:9). This is a declaration among Jews that transformed the original meaning of the word (save us, please!) to a promise that God is coming to deliver His people as He did in the Exodus (Salvation is coming!) It directly identifies Jesus as the One God Who has come to save His people.

After Jesus walks on water in front of his disciples, they worship him, saying, “Truly you are the son of God” (Matthew 14:33). Jesus does nothing to correct them.

When Jesus reveals himself to his female disciples after he rose from the tomb, they “clasped his feet and worshiped him” (Matthew 28:9). Jesus tells them not to be afraid. He doesn’t tell them to stop worshiping him.

When Thomas sees the holes in Jesus’ hands and believes, he says, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28). Jesus doesn’t correct him.

In 1 Corinthians 8:5-6, roughly 20 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection, the apostle Paul writes,

Although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many ‘gods’ and many ‘lords’—yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through who are all things and through whom we exist.

In this scripture, Paul adapts an ancient Jewish expression of faith called the Shema (Deut. 4:6-9; 11:13-21). You see, devout Jews were explicitly monotheistic, meaning they worshiped only one god in a polytheistic world (where multiple gods were worshiped in various ways). The fact that first-century Christians (who were largely converted Jews) added a binitarian shape to their monotheistic worship of God alone by associating Jesus as their “Lord” is impossible to fathom unless they had no problem accepting Jesus as one who should be worshiped alongside God their Heavenly Father. That the early church chose to go against custom and promote the worship of Jesus speaks volumes.

The very reason Jesus was crucified by the Sanhedrin was for declaring to be God. He was questioned by the Pharisees (Matt 22) His disciples (Luke 6) and Pontius Pilate (Luke 22:66-71) and accepted association as God each time, solidifying his condemnation. If Jesus did not want to be worshipped, he did a terrible job disassociating himself from it. If anything, the position demands that we at least call Jesus incompetent for missing the significance of this issue in his teaching.

Jesus consistently regarded himself as God among monotheistic Jews who devoutly worshiped God (YHWH). The Jewish faith had an immensely high view of institutional worship that separated them from every pagan tradition. That Jesus never instructs his followers to reject these customs of worship is profound.

I’m barely scratching the surface of the evidence here: Jesus expected worship, received worship, and is pleased by our worship. Jesus overturned social norms and institutionally established values, sure, but every time he did it, he revealed a divine hierarchy where the kingdom of light is overturning the kingdom of darkness. It is beyond the context of the gospel narratives to assume Jesus’ miracles were more about social justice than they were about light defeating darkness. The kingdoms of evil were being overpowered by the kingdom of God (Luke 11), and the more people flocked to Jesus in worship and acceptance of his godhood, the more they accepted the values and principles of the kingdom of God itself, which seeks to establish justice, mercy, healing, and wholeness. I am all for social justice, as every sincere follower of Jesus is. But I will never downplay worshiping God for the sake of elevating the principles of God’s kingdom. I will never deny God what is due Him for the sake of spreading some of His principles. God demands worship and He demands justice.

Give Him both.

Is Church an Institution? Or People?

It’s something I heard all the time, “We are the Church! It’s not a building! We are the Church!” 

Are you though? 

I started to notice a growing tendency with a few people in my church concerning what Church actually is. They’d say things like, “WE are the church. It isn’t an institution.”

Unless there was some sort of social or political crises in our neighborhood. Then the same group of people would call me and ask, “So what are you going to do about it? You’re a church, after all. You should be doing something.” 

Wait a minute. This isn’t adding up. When it’s convenient or advantageous, the argument was, “Church is people, it isn’t an institution. Stop making it all about the institution!” and when a person did not want to be bothered, the argument became, “What is your church as an institution doing about this? This is what you get paid for, right? You need to do something.” Whenever a Black Lives Matter protest broke out, or when a natural disaster hit nearby, or when there was some scandal in the nearest high school with some dangerous trends spreading among students, people would ask me, “Well as a church what are you doing about it?” 

I remember sitting down in the lobby one winter with a fellow church member and having a candid conversation about how we could help several families who had lost their homes to a major fire. Plans were put together to purchase winter clothing and have groceries brought to the families thanks to mutual help from members of our church. This woman had told me on multiple occasions that church is about people, not the institution, and that we should spend less time focusing on the institution of the church. As we discussed the needs of these families suffering loss, she looked at me and said, “This isn’t enough. There’s still more of a need here. You’re a church. You are who people go to when they need help. What kind of church is this if it cannot meet the needs of others?” I sarcastically looked at her, (and I’m not proud of this) and said, “I thought you were the church? What are you doing about it?” 

Though I wish I had been less crass in my response, my feelings towards the situation are the same: We cannot complain that churches focus too much on their institutions instead of people when we have something to complain about, but blame church institutions when we don’t want to carry responsibilities ourselves. That’s a dangerous game that only compounds issues. So is the Church a group of people? Or is it an institution? Well, first let’s ask this: How does the bible consider the Church? How did people in the first few centuries view Church?

Both the Book of Acts and early church fathers show us that the very first church was, in fact, an institution just as much as it was a group of people. The first major controversy regarding church behavior came down to the decision of a select group of people in the Jerusalem church. Many gentiles (people who did not practice Jewish dietary or sabbath laws, and who often participated in pagan rituals of worship and food preparation) were becoming followers of Christ, which begged many to wonder how gentiles should behave. Almost none of them were circumcised. Do they need to be? How difficult should we make it for gentiles to join the fellowship of the church? Though dozens of smaller churches had sprung up by this point, there was a central place of authority that was tasked to prayerfully decide how this issue should be handled, and that central place was the church in Jerusalem. According to church tradition (and also implied in the Book of Acts) The Jerusalem church was led by the Apostle James. Though there are thousands upon thousands of christians across half of the Roman Empire at this point, the most influential christians who carried the largest spiritual load of the people and who worked most laboriously to spread the gospel were entrusted to make the decision for every single other christian. That means that an institutional framework was applied to the church to delegate practical and spiritual matters, and there was a clear delineation of authority among christians. This pattern continued for centuries, though the location changed from Jerusalem to Antioch or Alexandria, where major Christian churches were established as well. There was always a central institution that represented the whole of the group and help oversee and source everyone else to some degree.

At the same time, no one can deny that the church only exists because individual christians make it so. The apostle Paul remarks several times (1 Cor 12:12; 27; Rom. 12:4-5; Eph. 2:19-22; 4:4; 15-16; 5:29-30; Col. 1:24; and more) how each believing Christian is like one brick, mortared into the structure that makes up Christ’s body on earth, the Church. We all have a role to play, and we all make the structure function, so of course the church is not only an institution: It is and institution comprised of God’s people on earth. But too often I hear people say things like, “Well, that building isn’t the Church, I am the Church!”

No. No you’re not. 

You, by yourself, are not the Church. You cannot be. In fact, if you manage to get a few other people who band together with you, and you all happen to be christians, you’re still not the Church. And here’s why…

The Church is God’s dynamic organism on earth, fulfilling His mission to spread His Kingdom of salvation and righteousness across the entire world. You are either working with other Christians to make that mission a reality, or you are sitting around complaining at how others are doing it wrong. If you’re working with other christians, churches, institutions and operations that are living to fulfill this mission, and you have regular participation, accountability, fellowship, and exhortation with these groups, then you are, in fact, participating in the church. If you’re sitting just outside the walls complaining that everyone does it wrong, are making excuses as to why churches don’t deserve you, and you are choosing to work for God all by yourself, you are not part of the church, because that’s not how it works. There is a mutual submission to each other, especially to people you don’t like, or people you disagree with, that comes into play when functioning as the Church. As both a people and an institution, we are supposed to struggle to find unity with each other until our personal preferences and preconceived biases are sitting up there on the cross with Jesus’s death, letting go of petty grievances and working together in mutual grace and mercy. 

Now over the last century, especially in America, there has been a large shift in how some churches function, and perhaps this is where some of the “corporate church” criticism comes from. As businesses and non-profits made their entire mission about raising money and building success, that mindset easily seeped into the minds of ministers too. The mission may have become cloudy concerning spreading God’s kingdom and instead focused on raising funds, getting every penny from tax exemptions and taking advantage of grants and property opportunities. Yes, at times in American history church institutions have appeared to sell out for the sake of worldly success markers rather than kingdom ones. But it is extreme to become anti institution over the failures of some churches throughout the years. The answer to a problem is not to fling too far in the other direction. That’s never the answer. Being anti institution is not being pro Church, because at the end of the day, the Church is still an institution just as much as it is a collective of Jesus followers.

Sometimes it’s easier to criticize a faceless institution than it is to criticize a person. That’s where the temptation comes in. People might think, “Well Joey’s a nice guy. He’s doing his best. It’s just his church that’s the issue.” 

Honestly? Just tell me that you have a problem with something I’m doing. Be honest. I can handle it. I’m supposed to handle it. Don’t blame the faceless institution. Talk to me. 

This happens with many generic complaints: “That church is really judgy,” or “that church is so legalistic,” and “the teaching in that church is just not enough for me.” Well, who at that church is judging everyone? Who is legalistic? Who’s teaching is sub par? Is it really every single person in that church? Of course not. But it’s hard to have those tough conversations, so we just criticize the entire institution instead. But if the church is made up of people, then we need to work through our issues with these people. Rather than blindly blaming “that church” or the “institution” of church, be honest and air that grievance with the person on the other end of it. 

Now if you are a person who operates alone not because you are anti church-institutions, but because the church has hurt you, kicked you out or snuffed out your ministry, I’m sorry. That’s truly difficult to experience, whether called for or not. Sometimes in the friction of disagreement, a mutual conclusion can’t be reached, and there are church leaders who would rather send a person away than find a different solution. Sometimes the church leader has no other solution and it really is best for a particular person to stop being involved in ministry. Sometimes lay people or pastors give in to fear and just avoid dealing with the long process of healing that is needed. But that doesn’t make these decisions less painful. We’re all stupid humans, and we hurt each other sometimes. If you’re on the fringes of the church institution because you’ve been hurt, I encourage you to seek restoration and healing rather than giving up on institutions. Maybe not in the same church, but somewhere you can make a clean start, because God still sees people who need you in the local church, and there are people in the local church that you need. Really, you guys need each other. 

Since moving into an RV and traveling full-time with my family, church has looked extremely different to me. I’ve spent more time around campfires and in front of coffee mugs (I’m pretty much always drinking coffee) having church in small settings. And I love that. I think America needs more of that. But there will always be a need for larger church institutions. Every community needs an institution, as well as small gatherings and home churches, because among that united church ecosystem the Kingdom of God will spread, and people will be loved. I still watch my home church online and participate with them, and I thank God for that. Without their institution, I wouldn’t have that resource. Is the Church an institution, or is it the people?

Yep. 

Why I’m (Still) A Christian

I spoke with an old friend of mine. Someone I had not spoken to in several years. I talked about how my family and I transitioned into a full-time RV lifestyle this past year, and he talked about his developing career in marketing and business ventures. I asked where he was living and where he goes to church these days, to which he hesitantly replies “I’m not going to church anymore.” Throughout the conversation, he explained how he has decided he is not considering himself a part of the christian faith at this time. He pulled apart his former beliefs and did not find anything worth keeping. After a few days it occurred to me: If he had just given me the name of a church, I would not have thought anything of it—I just assumed his faith had remained steadfast in the first place. It did not occur to me that I could have asked, “Are you still following Jesus? What has your faith been through? How has it stood the test of time and experience?”

In the last decade I’ve read dozens of stories of Christians who decided they could not continue to call themselves christians while walking the current path they’ve chosen. The only solution was to pull up their religious roots and call it quits. The popular term for a while was “deconstruction,” where you attempt to remove all bias (virtually impossible) and investigate the claims of your faith by holding them up to intense scrutiny and examination. In the last couple of years this term has become synonymous with quitting christianity, even though the term supposedly applies to much broader areas of philosophy and other lingual systems. Perhaps it’s my cynicism, but on my social platforms, people who challenge their faith and walk away come off as intellectual, while people who continue to embrace their faith appear ignorant and unwilling to examine it. After reading so many stories of people who have walked away from some form of Christian faith, I started to wonder, so who made it? Who has challenged their faith, torn it apart, and continued forward still following Jesus? I want to read those stories too. I want to know who has found something worth keeping, rather than assuming every follower of Jesus blindly believes the same thing they always believed because they are spoon fed church jargon, or they’ve challenged their faith and decided to leave it behind.

So I’ll start with my own story. 

In my early twenties, I chose to challenge every assumption and belief I held concerning christianity, and read everything I could that was contrary to orthodoxy. It would take forever to recount everything I processed during that time, so I’ll share three specific challenges I dealt with concerning orthodox christianity and it’s counter-arguments, and how I continued to claim Christianty is true afterward.

Christianity was fabricated and mythicized by the early church

One of the first arguments I came across that I never heard growing up in church was the claim that the bible is mostly fictitious stories made up by people who wanted power for themselves by promulgating popular legends about Jesus. At first I found this hard to reconcile with, and it caused me to have serious doubts about Christianity as a whole. How can anyone prove that the historicity of the accounts of Jesus and the early church were real? Am I supposed to rely on blind faith to accept biblical claims? Show me the evidence! 

The first real answers came when I read about The First Quest for the Historical Jesus, which is usually traced back to the writings of a guy named Herman Reimarus. Reimarus claimed that Jesus was a real person who never intended to establish a new religion, but thought of himself as a human messiah who would overturn the social paradigms of Rome and establish a new earthly, political kingdom (This is obviously completely contrary to the entire message within the gospels). Reimarus then claims that Jesus’s hopes were dashed when Rome crucified him, but Jesus’s disciples stole his body and rode the momentum of his movement to build a religious system that eventually became Christianty. These kinds of claims are jarring when you grow up never hearing such things, which is exactly what my scenario was. Reimarus’ writings sounded brilliant at first, and I felt like a fool for never considering that Jesus might be a figure mostly invented by people who crave power. This phase of my doubt was shortly lived, however, for a plethora of reasons.

The accounts of Jesus and the first century church are loaded with failure, doubt, contradiction and confusion. The entire gospel of Mark (which is one of the most reliable and earliest accounts of the stories of Jesus) portrays the disciples as faithless failures who never seem to pick up on Jesus’s greater message and constantly let him down. Why would the church intentionally downplay the performance of the disciples if the goal is to create followers of the disciples within the church? This would make things harder, not easier for the biblical writers, and likely the early church would have eventually removed these passages to garner more followers. But they didn’t. They continued to elevate Jesus in their writings even at their own expense. In other gospels like Matthew, Jesus shares many teachings that are difficult to understand even within the first century’s context, and there were plenty of struggles the early church did have issues with that never find answers in the gospels. If the stories were fabricated, why not create scenarios that answer heated debates and strife within the early church, like food laws, or the Gentile mission, or the purpose of water baptism, or church-state affairs? C.S. Lewis suggested that if the Bible is fiction, it is terrible fiction, and thus is more than likely wholeheartedly believed by those who wrote about it. Reimarus’s work has been mostly discredited by scholars now, but the ideas he put forth live on for many who simply haven’t studied the bible or the history surrounding it.

There probably was not a historical Jesus

This one was challenging for me, because when I decided to question whether or not Jesus ever really existed, I turned where most people turn… the internet. I was bombarded with poorly researched “history” that never cited real sources about how there is no historical mention of the Hebrew named Jesus in official Roman records, and that the entire story of God becoming a human was borrowed from pagan myths that existed centuries before Jesus. At first glance, this rocked me a little bit. I never learned any of that before. But after six months of digging deeper and reading scholarly books and historical records, I found out none of those things are true. 

Firstly, there are records of a historical Jesus in Roman texts. We have more proof Jesus existed than the Roman poet Virgil (which no one questions, because less is at stake if he isn’t). Some have tried to explain the historical Jesus as a real figure, but someone completely different from the Jesus of the Bible, like a cynic philosopher or social revolutionary (Like Reimarus mentioned above). These attempts also fail serious scrutiny. I learned this easily by reading the account of The Jesus Seminar and the 1st and 2nd Quest for the Historical Jesus (also mentioned above), which you can do too if you’re willing to run down that hole. The books that shaped my beliefs most on this are called Jesus and Judaism by E.P. Sanders and Who Was Jesus by N.T. Wright. 

Second, It is impossible to reconstruct a historical Jesus figure who did not claim to be God and who did not work miracles and perform exorcisms. Many have attempted this, and they failed. Even first century opponents of Jesus’s movement like Celsus and the Jewish historian Josephus admit to Jesus being known for supernatural power and claims of divinity, making it ridiculous to claim the church fabricated that identity onto Jesus over time. Celcus went so far as to suggest Jesus was trained in Magic by Egyptians. Clearly enough people were exposed to his supernatural activity that it becomes ridiculous to suggest he was not a real person.

You cannot prove God exists

David Hume’s famous argument, “What Caused God?” made a big ripple in my life for about 5 solid minutes.

The cosmological argument, which claims everything that exists needs a cause, or a God to start the process, was rejected by Hume as a simple matter of passing the buck, You say everything must have started from something or it can’t exist. Well, what started God?  

Oh man. Shaky. This one messed with me. Hume was brilliant. Until it occurred it me (maybe supernaturally brought to my mind by God, just to make my atheist friends squirm a little), Christianity never claims every single event has a cause. Christianity does not claim God has to come from somewhere because everything has to come from somewhere—this is a scientific analyzation tool that in no way answers questions that exist outside of the laws of scientific inquiry. The Cause and Effect model examines the physical universe only. Judeo-Christianity has claimed for thousands of years that God is not bound by His own universe or its laws. An intelligent thinker named Thomas Aquinas used the cosmological argument simply as a way to reference the idea that the seen and felt universe always operates with a system of laws of cause and effect. Challengers in his day made claims that material forces were randomly caused with no origin or purpose by other material forces. Scientific methods proved over time that this never actually happens in the material universe. Effects always need causes. Aquinas claimed that something bigger than “material” stuff, something outside of physics, has to cause physics. Thus God is the greater Causer.

Hume’s response: “Well, what caused the Causer then?” This is a nonsense question, because no one is claiming that God has to follow the laws everything else must follow. Atheists are the ones claiming only the physical universe exists. The cosmological argument claims that more than a physical universe must exist, because the effects of a physical universe must have been caused by something, so what material thing created all of your other material things? You have to start somewhere. God, the great Causer, does not need a cause to start him, because He is not limited by physicality. Only if you claim that the material world is all that exists do you need to answer the question, “Well, what caused the material universe then?”

Atheism often suggests that only something physically material can begat the physical universe. Christianity suggests that only something metaphysical can begat the physical universe. These two methods do not have to abide by the same rules and principles of science to answer their respective questions. Atheism was exciting to me for about the same amount of time Michael Scott loved that chair model in The Office. If Christianity was false, I was not going to find an alternative in atheism. 

In the end

I believe there is a major difference between seeking truth and seeking an excuse to be rid of a belief model you don’t want. I won’t imply that everyone who “deconstructs” their faith and decides to abandon it does so because they don’t care about truth. That’s an unfair position that insults the intelligence of many wonderful people who simply will not agree with some of Christianity’s claims. But I won’t pretend there aren’t some who deconstruct their faith because they are jaded by Christianity and welcome any reason to leave it behind. I did not approach things this way. I remember the day I prayed and asked God to rip apart all of my preconceived notions of truth and show me what is real. I did not want to blindly follow anything, but I also did not want a reason to abandon Christianity either. I just wanted Jesus, plain and simple, if He was real. In my experience, God has proven Himself to me time and time again. I cannot find good reason to doubt His existence or historical mentions, and I have had enough personal experiences in my life where doubt becomes too difficult. I have seen prayers answered, miracles performed (yes, real, supernatural things) people manifested with demonic activity (yep, that one too), and a myriad of other experiences that become hard to deny. But that’s my experience, and it does little help for someone else who might be struggling with whether or not Christianity is worth it. If that’s you reading this, I pray you get all the answers you’re looking for. I wanted to share my experience because I feel too few people who have traveled through doubt and come out still believing, too few of us ever really talk about it. We should all talk about it a little more. 

Sexual Immorality, the Human Body, and Community Holiness.

Paul’s first address to the church in Corinth articulates a unique theology of the human body and its purposes in God’s inaugurated kingdom on earth. In examining 1st Corinthians 6:12-20,  Paul addresses boundaries and abuses of freedom in the Christian life (6:12-13), God’s purpose for the human body in Christ (VS 14-20), the sinful practice of sexual immorality against both the body and the Lord (VS 14-18), and communal holiness for the collective church as Christ’s body (15-20). This paper will endeavor to explain and support the position that Paul’s theology of the human body, explicitly expressed and supported in this passage, was unique in Paul’s day and is coherent and consistent within greater Pauline literature. It will begin by addressing the wider issue at stake in Paul’s entire letter to the Corinthians.