Showing posts with label #Age. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #Age. Show all posts

“Believing for God” and viruses.

by K.W. Leslie, 14 March 2020

As I write this, the United States is dealing with an outbreak of coronavirus; specifically COVID-19. It’s as communicable as flu, and a little more fatal, so people are encouraged to wash their hands, avoid touching their faces, and stay away from one another.

And since humans are creatures of extremes, this also means they’re stockpiling supplies, “just in case.” This is why the grocery stores are running out of hand sanitizer, cleaning supplies, toilet paper, and certain types of food. (The average American diet being as lousy as it is, y’notice the stores aren’t really running out of fresh fruits and vegetables though. Just saying.) Likewise a lot of major events, like sports and concerts—any venue where they’ll pack a lot of people in the audience—are getting canceled, just in case someone with coronavirus is there, and infects everyone else. Better safe than sorry.

I live in California. Our governor encouraged everyone to cancel any large gatherings: Any events with 250 or more people should be canceled, or postponed till the end of the month. He didn’t make it an executive order; he’s trusting people “to do the right thing.”

Some will. Some have. My church, fr’instance, is moving our services to the internet. We don’t have 250 people, but it’s a lot of people in a small space, and again: Better safe than sorry.

My mom’s church, on the other hand, has more than 250 people in regular attendance. Last I heard (and this might change), they’re meeting Sunday as usual. Because “we’re believing for God.”

Believing for God to what? Did he promise them anything? Did he specifically tell them he was gonna do something? Because he didn’t tell Christians in general any such thing in the bible.

Jesus did say we can pick up snakes Mk 16.18 in a textual variant; it’s a passage which we oughta interpret as God’s divine protection during something which could potentially happen in the course of ministry. Ac 27.3-6 Unfortunately there are such Christians as snake-handlers, who’ve turned this into a sacrament—if you really trust God, let’s play with the snakes! Like I said, humans are creatures of extremes.

But in that variant, Jesus didn’t say, “These signs accompany believers: They will interact with people who have communicable diseases, and won’t get them.” He certainly has the power to make such a declaration—and contrary to the name-it-and-claim-it crowd, we don’t. But Jesus didn’t grant us any such thing, because he doesn’t want his followers to foolhardily assume we’re immune to everything, and step into situations which’ll kill us.

And that’s precisely what’s going on when churches choose to ignore basic precautions, and do as we do regardless. It’s not an act of faith: God’s given us no promises to put our faith in! It’s an act of wishful thinking. We hope God’ll spare us this plague, even though he gave us no preventative measures we can do as acts of faith (i.e. look at the snake on the pole, Nu 21.6-9 or paint the doorposts with blood Ex 12.13).

…Although God did give us public officials, Ro 13.1 who offer us these preventative guidelines because they’re trying to prevent worse. When we ignore them because “we’re believing for God,” we’d better have a darned good, biblical reason for expecting God to act. Not just wishful thinking or “I know better” libertarianism.

Nor carnal thinking.

I mentioned the governor’s precautions to someone a few days ago. His response? A dismissive, “Oh, the governor.” He doesn’t respect the governor. Mostly because he’s Republican and the governor’s Democrat: If they’re in the opposition party, they must be bereft of all commonsense, so you can ignore everything they tell you. Even in this instance, when they’re simply repeating the advice of medical professionals.

And yeah, no doubt a number of Christians feel they’re entirely free to do likewise. Honor our civic leaders. Honor the president. Pray for them and follow their advice. That is, until they’re in the opposition party; then mock them, dismiss them, and ignore them. If our governor were Republican they’d be quick to limit their meeting sizes and close their buildings; it’d be their patriotic duty! But he’s Democrat, so f--- him; they trust God.

So this whole “believing for God” deal? I’m not saying Mom’s church has adopted it because they’re led by Republicans; I’m entirely sure they’d do the same thing if our governor were Republican. But plenty of people in her church will easily adopt the “we believe God” mantra because he’s not Republican. It’s their own small, petty way of sticking it to the governor: “We’re meeting anyway. In your face, you liberal wiener.”

Likewise there are too many Christians who don’t believe in science. So when nurses and physicians assistants and doctors tell ’em, “Here’s what you oughta do,” their response is likewise, “Oh you don’t know what you’re talking about,” and do as they’re gonna do anyway.

Or fall for any “wellness” scam which supports their biases. I have friends who seriously think oregano oil will cure coronavirus—hey, it killed a different coronavirus in a lab test, years ago!—so they’re gonna buy that. So I actually read the lab report which they think proves their claim: It might win a grade school science fair, but it proves nothing. It poured oregano oil directly onto the virus—which is fine if you’re using it as a household cleaner, but these folks are talking about it as if you eat it and it cures you, and that’s an entirely different, and unproven, deal. It didn’t compare oregano oil to the results of what a placebo, like saline, might do—and I betcha saline would kill coronavirus faster. Since there was no placebo, of course there was no double-blind study; we’ve no idea whether oregano oil honestly works better than alternatives. Honestly, it might! But it might not: It wasn’t tested properly, so we don’t know. All we really know is people are selling oregano oil, and I betcha it costs way more than bleach.

Both these problems are examples of carnal thinking. It’s people who follow their biases, not the facts; believe what they choose to believe, rather than what’s been tested and proven, whether they like the results or not; believe whom they choose to believe, because the people they trust tell ’em everything they want to hear.

In some cases it’s obvious carnality; it’s pure arrogance. This one pastor I know of, who plans to open his church no matter what, hasn’t even bothered to consult God: He’s entirely sure God would want the churches to be open, because we Christians can pray for the sick to be cured… and of course because he doesn’t trust the government. He’s entirely sure he knows God’s mind, and that he’s right; so why ask? This pastor’s kind of a dick, so his behavior doesn’t surprise me any.

Trusting your gut instead of wisdom: That’s not faith in God! That’s pride: That’s faith in your own gut. That’s faith in your flesh. Those who follow the flesh are actually opposed to the Spirit, Ga 5.17 and are following themselves to their own detriment; Paul even says it’s death. Ro 8.6 We must never confound the desires of our own minds with God’s will, or project our wishes upon him. We must only pursue what he actually wants, what he truly promises.

And, if he’s promised nothing, use your heads. Use your commonsense. Follow the advice of experts, of scholars, of wiser people than us. And yeah, sometimes the advice of public officials in the wrong political party.

God’s gotta actually say something.

God never stopped talking to his kids, despite what some doubters might imagine… the better to ignore what he’s currently telling them, although that’s a whole other article. So when we’re talking with God, if we ask him, “Hey, should our church meet this Sunday?” and he says, “Sure; don’t worry about this virus thingy; I got you,” now we have something we can put our faith in. Now we have something we can trust.

We still need to get this confirmed though. We absolutely do. For three reasons.

SUPER HIGH HEALTH RISK. If all the other churches are staying home, you’re gonna get visitors. The bigger the church, the greater chance strangers might attend… and the greater chance one of ’em is infected. In fact if you’re a church which believes in faith healing, and people intentionally visit you to get cured, there’s a really good chance you’ll get an infected visitor.

All sorts of people attend church, but the gospel is particularly for the weak and ill… and as a result our churches have a lot of weak and ill people in ’em. People with chronic conditions, the elderly, the young… and all of these are people whom flus and coronaviruses will particularly affect. These viruses are deadly enough as it is, but if you’re already sick, or your immune system is already compromised (i.e. you’ve got AIDS or lupus, or you received an organ transplant), it’s likely to kill you. Churches in particular need to be cautious about disease!

And, frankly, we’re not. Because too many of us “believe for God” instead of taking basic precautions.

Plus churches aren’t all that sanitary anyway. Churches can seldom afford to hire professionals to clean the bathrooms, much less the seats, so things can go years without disinfection. Too many Christians wear their best clothes, not their cleanest like the bible mandates, and some of their “Sunday best” hasn’t been washed in a while. Too many of us like to greet one another with hugging and kisses and warm handshakes, and of course don’t use sanitizer. Churches are meant to be family, so we let our guards down just like they’re family—and you know how fast a virus can spread within a family.

So God had better say, “I got you.” Otherwise the virus will.

WE DON’T WANNA CLOSE. Unless we don’t really wanna go to church anyway, we wanna follow the scriptures’ admonition to keep meeting regularly. He 10.25 Christians need our support system; newbies especially. There’d better be a really, really good reason to skip a week. Heck, we’re entirely sure God wants us to meet, no matter what! Viruses and hurricanes and other plagues? Pshaw; isn’t God mightier than all those things combined?

Plus if you don’t personally know anyone who’s fallen ill, you might not think the situation is all that dire anyway. Shutting down all the sporting events, concerts, and conferences feels like overkill; like living in fear, and we’re certainly not afraid. Perfect love casts out fear 1Jn 4.18 and all that.

So if we pray and that voice in our head says, “Nah dude; open as usual,” of course you’re gonna hope that voice belongs to God. But this is a classic case of confirmation bias: The voice is telling us what we want to hear. It’s tapping our desires. Even righteous-looking desires, like the desire to have church services as usual.

But God doesn’t need to instruct us to do what we’re already gonna do.

Yep. The Holy Spirit is far more likely to correct us than confirm us. He confirms us when we have doubts—“No no, stay the course”—but otherwise he doesn’t have to confirm us; we’re doing fine! It’s only when we start veering off course that he’s gotta drop us a new message—“Come on, child, you know better”—or when an unexpected obstacle is coming—“Later today you’re gonna have to do something out of the ordinary.” (And sometimes he tells us why… but often he doesn’t, ’cause he’s trying to grow faith in us.) In every circumstance the Spirit speaks as necessary—and no, this doesn’t mean he speaks rarely; we need a lot of guidance! But telling us to do as we’re doing, usually isn’t necessary at all.

So if the Spirit tells us to ignore our elected officials—and especially if he tells us to ignore the laws!—we’d better darned well be sure the Spirit told us so. Test that voice; make sure it’s his voice and definitely not our own, or the devil’s. Viruses are a life-and-death thing, and we especially don’t wanna be wrong about that.

POTENTIAL TERRIBLE TESTIMONY. When we’re “believing for God” to keep our churches virus-free despite the obvious health risk, he’d absolutely better come through for us. Because if he doesn’t, and we become the epicenter of an outbreak, we’re boned.

And not just us. Christianity as a whole. You think pagans care about the differences between one church and another? Between one denomination and another? They don’t care about our differences. (Neither does Christ Jesus; pagans have that correct, at least.) So if one church, fr’instance, harbors pedophiles, pagans treat it like every church harbors pedophiles. If one church thinks science is hogwash, pagans think every church dismisses science.

So one church’s reckless behavior is gonna affect the whole of Christendom. Same as usual. Not good.

And it gives antichrists more ammunition to bash Jesus, bash people who depend on Jesus, discourage those who might be considering Jesus: In general it makes our work harder. All because one pastor didn’t bother to double-check his gut feelings, and now his church is Plague Central.

Our faith is only properly placed in God and what he’s no-fooling, in-context said. Accept no substitutes. Doubt yourself; trust him. And be wise.

The Graham rule.

by K.W. Leslie, 12 July 2019

Here’s a big excerpt from one of evangelist Billy Graham’s autobiographies (yep, he wrote more than one), Just As I Am. It’s a good read.

From time to time Cliff [Barrows], Bev [George Beverly Shea], Grady [Wilson], and I talked among ourselves about the recurring problems many evangelists seemed to have, and about the poor image so-called mass evangelism had in the eyes of many people. Sinclair Lewis’s fictional character Elmer Gantry unquestionably had given traveling evangelists a bad name. To our sorrow, we knew that some evangelists were not much better than Lewis’s scornful caricature.

One afternoon during the Modesto meetings, I called the Team together to discuss the problem. Then I asked them to go to their rooms for an hour and list all the problems they could think of that evangelists and evangelism encountered.

When they returned, the lists were remarkably similar, and in a short amount of time, we made a series of resolutions or commitments among ourselves that would guide us in our future evangelistic work. In reality, it was more of an informal understanding among ourselves—a shared commitment to do all we could to uphold the Bible’s standard of absolute integrity and purity for evangelists.

The first point on our combined list was money. […]

The second item on the list was the danger of sexual immorality. We all knew of evangelists who had fallen into immorality while separated from their families by travel. We pledged among ourselves to avoid any situation that would have even the appearance of compromise or suspicion. From that day on, I did not travel, meet, or eat alone with a woman other than my wife. We determined that the Apostle Paul’s mandate to the young pastor Timothy would be ours as well: “Flee… youthful lusts” (2 Timothy 2:22, KJV).

Our third concern was the tendency of many evangelists to carry on their work apart from the local church, even to criticize local pastors and churches openly and scathingly. […]

The fourth and final issue was publicity. The tendency among some evangelists was to exaggerate their successes or claim higher attendance numbers than they really had. […]

So much for the Modesto Manifesto, as Cliff called it in later years. In reality it did not mark a radical departure for us; we had always held these principles. It did, however, settle in our hearts and minds, once and for all, the determination that integrity would be the hallmark of both our lives and our ministry. Graham 127–129

Graham’s music director Cliff Barrows called all of these resolutions, made in 1948, “the Modesto Manifesto.” It was their way of avoiding the scandalous reputation of con-artist evangelists, like we see in the documentary Marjoe, or the novel Elmer Gantry (another good read, by the way). The goal was to be far, far better than that—and get those concerns out of the way so they could focus on sharing the gospel.

But more recently certain politicians, including our current vice president, have made the national news because they observe one resolution of the four. The second one. The sexual-immorality one. Where they’re not gonna be alone in a room with any woman other than their wives, for fear of the appearance of evil. Not the actual evil themselves; they’re pretty sure they can keep their zipper up. (Not that Bill Gothard ever needed to undo clothing.)

They call it “the Billy Graham rule.” And to the world outside the Bible Belt, it strikes ’em as ridiculous. You can’t be alone in a room with a woman? How in the world are you gonna have private meetings with women constituents? With women staffers? Are you this paranoid about women? Or have you this little self-control?—that every time you’re alone with a woman you’re gonna assault her? You gotta always have a chaperone around? Is that feasable? Are taxpayer dollars gonna pay for this full-time chaperone?

Now inside the Bible Belt, and the conservative Christian subculture, the Graham rule makes perfect sense. And it’s everywhere. And it’s mandatory, in some churches. I’ve worked for ministries where they absolutely forbade one man and one woman to be alone in a room, or a car, together. Because like Graham and his team, we all knew people who slipped up in this area. Not about people who did this; personally knew people who did this. In my life thus far, I’ve had five pastors whose ministry-related sexual activity became public scandal. And that’s just the people who got caught.

So yeah, there’s a need for accountability guidelines like the Graham rule. Question is, should it specifically be the Graham rule? Because the pagans who think it weird and wrong, have a valid point: How can you provide equal access to your constituents if you need a chaperone for half of them? How does that not perpetuate a sexist power structure?

Stuff to think about. So I did.

Evangelicals, climate change, and creation care.

by K.W. Leslie, 05 June 2017

Gotta admit: For the longest time I was skeptical about climate change.

Back then it was called “global warming”—the idea of pollution changing our planet’s atmosphere, creating a “greenhouse effect” which trapped heat and gradually upped the world’s average temperature. And even if it did exist, big deal. So the world’s temperature went up a degree or two. What kind of impact would that make? Hardly any, I expected.

’Cause naïvely I’d imagined “average temperature” meant everywhere only got warmer by a degree. The north and south poles, however, got warmer by more than that. Warm enough for a lot of ice to melt.


Between 1980 and 2003, the north polar ice cover shrunk 1.6 million square kilometers. It’s getting so ships can now travel the Arctic Ocean. NASA

The reason I hadn’t believed in climate change was because, at the time, it was speculation. Based on evidence, but still speculation. I’m old enough to remember when scientists were predicting global cooling: Back in the 1970s, some scientists claimed another ice age was on the way, and the United States would be covered in snow like that lousy 2004 movie The Day After Tomorrow. Global cooling, global warming; make up your mind, science guys.

But between the shrunken ice caps and sinking islands, I grew convinced. Obviously the poles are getting warmer; ergo the earth is getting warmer.

The “price of industrialization”—well, when Beijing can’t be bothered to filter their smokestacks. CNN

All right, if pollution is the problem, can we solve it? Of course we can. Some of you older folks remember when London, New York, and Los Angeles were covered in smog to the level Beijing currently is. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1970s, and despite the nearby ocean making it legitimately overcast in the mornings, it used to remain “overcast,” in the wrong shade of gray, most days. It’s not anymore. California passed laws capping emissions. There was some uproar at the time, ’cause adjustment costs money, and those who have to spend the most on it really don’t wanna. But now we can breathe our own air… something China’s bigger cities can’t yet do.

So can we fight pollution and win? Of course; we’ve done it before. Humans, as the LORD once pointed out, can do whatever we set our minds to. Ge 11.6 At the time it wasn’t a compliment; we were up to no good. But we can do good. Not always for righteous reasons, but still.

Problem is, a significant number of politically conservative Evangelical Christians in the United States don’t believe in climate change. Even after they’re presented the very same evidence I was.

My irritating politics.

by K.W. Leslie, 21 November 2015

My politics annoy people.

I’m not as conservative as my friends assume I should be. To their minds, all Christians should be as conservative as they. If we’re not, they wonder just how Christian we really are. ’Cause in their minds, Christianity is conservatism; conservatism is Christianity; if you follow Jesus you’re naturally gonna think like they do. Thanks to the human self-preservation instinct, they assume because I don’t think like they do, I’m the one at fault. I’m wrong. (Doesn’t help that I’ll totally admit that.)

I’m not as progressive as my other friends assume I should be. To their minds, all Christians should buck the knee-jerk conservatism of popular Christian culture, ’cause it’s hypocrisy, corrupted by social Darwinists who’ve manipulated gullible social conservatives into adopting their worldview and voting their way. Because I still side with conservatives on many issues, they reckon I’m still stuck in my old knee-jerk ways; I’m not as “enlightened” as they. Not yet. I’ve come this far, so they’ve not given up hope. But they do wish I’d hurry up.

So whenever I express a view, I’m gonna annoy one camp or the other.

That’s the trouble with being a political moderate. Contrary to what Rush Limbaugh’s always taught, a moderate isn’t someone who wants to please everybody and can’t pick a side. Such people do exist, but they’re not moderates. They’re apolitical: They don’t have a side—and don’t care enough to choose one. A true moderate has totally chosen sides: We ally with conservatives on certain issues, progressives on others. Not for the same reasons—because our worldviews don’t match.

See, I’m trying to follow Jesus. No, I’m not saying my conservative and progressive friends aren’t trying to follow Jesus. Some of ’em are, and some not. Some of them think they are, and some aren’t even trying. It’s just that in my quest for Jesus, he points me in directions different Americans consider leftward or rightward. I’m trying to be consistent with his standard, not any one party’s.

I know; some of you totally understand Jesus transcends politics, so you can respect that. But plenty of people don’t believe any such thing: If Jesus could vote, he’d absolutely be in their party. No question. Have you seen the pagans in the opposition party? Great googly moogly.

How CCLI shakes down your church.

by K.W. Leslie, 14 November 2015

One of my responsibilities at my church is multimedia. Yep, I’m the guy who makes sure the words to the worship songs are on the screen, so you can sing along to them.

When I was a kid we still had hymnals. Then we upgraded to overhead projectors; then PowerPoint; then specialized multimedia presentation software which was pretty much PowerPoint with a huge database of songs. Currently I’m using this app called ProPresenter. It’s not bad.

Whether you’re using one app or another, it pretty much works the same way: Our worship leader tells me which songs she intends to inflict on us Sunday morning. If I don’t already have slides for that song, I hop onto the CCLI database and get the lyrics. Then make slides for the verses, the chorus, the bridge, the “extemporaneous riffs” which are really just imitations of what the original musicians did on their YouTube video, and there y’go. Ready for Sunday.

What’s CCLI? It’s Christian Copyright Licensing International, a royalty collection agency. They charge each church an annual fee (anywhere from $49 to $4,260, depending on size), which grants permission to collect sheet music from their site. Chord, lead, or vocal sheets, and their site can transpose it into other keys for you. (That feature’s actually quite handy.) Once you inform them which songs you’ve used, they’ll send royalties to the artists.

And, they claim, you need them. If you do all sorts of things in your church—display or photocopy lyrics, distribute chord sheets, sing popular songs—you need CCLI. What’s implied is you need them lest you violate copyright laws. Point of fact, what you only get from them are sheet music and lyrics.

That’s not nothing. Other lyric websites might misspell words, mix up lyrics, forget to capitalize God’s pronouns, and get the chords wrong. Although years ago I heard Phil Keaggy complain CCLI didn’t get his chords right either, which is why his fans were having such trouble duplicating one of his songs. (To be fair, CCLI probably got the bad info from Keaggy’s publisher, who transcribed the song without any input from Keaggy.)

But copyright protection? Actually, CCLI doesn’t give you that. ’Cause your church doesn’t need it.

You read me right. Your church doesn’t need copyright protection. American copyright laws specifically exempt churches. I’ll quote you the law ’n everything.

Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106 [the copyright holder’s rights], the following are not infringements of copyright: […]

(3) performance of a nondramatic literary or musical work or of a dramatico-musical work of a religious nature, or display of a work, in the course of services at a place of worship or other religious assembly[.] 17 USC §110

Meaning, in other words, singing a song in church, whether as worship, or as “special music.” Meaning when you play a song over the loudspeakers.

If you do this in church, you’re fine. You’re legal. The music publishing companies won’t send a jackbooted tach team to interrupt your services and haul the pastors off to music jail. No matter how much the more paranoid folks in your church would love to see that scenario, as proof the world is out to get ’em.

Why we gotta have freedom of expression.

by K.W. Leslie, 16 October 2015

And in this age, we have Blog Action Days.


I’m participating in the Blog Action Day thingy, an attempt to get bloggers and their readers to focus on a particular worthy issue. This year it’s #RaiseYourVoice, an attempt to speak up on behalf of journalists, photographers, bloggers, writers, and pretty much everyone who’s not allowed to speak up for themselves.

In the United States, freedom of expression is pretty much the content of our Constitution’s first amendment: A guaranteed freedom of religion, speech, the press, and to petition government.

Among us Christians, freedom of expression is a tricky thing. Because not every Christian is agreed we have freedom of expression. Or should have.

I know many a Christian who’s outraged, outraged, by some of the stuff on television. It’s just filthy. So, they tell anyone who’ll listen, they got rid of their TV. They threw it right out. They don’t watch it anymore.

…Well okay, they watch stuff on the Blu-ray player. And off Netflix. And sometimes they’ll reconnect the cable for sports. And they’ve downloaded every episode of Little House on the Prarie from Amazon, but watching old TV doesn’t count as “watching TV,” does it?…

Anyway. Some things, many of us Christians insist, shouldn’t be so freely expressed. “Let no unwholesome word come out of your mouth” Ep 4.29 and “Touch not the unclean thing” 2Co 6.17 and all that. We practice self-control, or at least we fake it really well. So others should practice self-control. And if they can’t, maybe we oughta pass some laws. Or, if doing so bothers our sense of libertarianism, we can just do as we usually do: Boycott them, boycott their sponsors, boycott their business partners, shout ’em down, hack their websites, slander ’em widely, and otherwise try to ruin them. ’Cause it’s our duty as good citizens and devout Christians.

But when other people do all that stuff to us—why, we’re being persecuted.

It’s a blind spot. A big black hole of a blind spot, where the inconsistency falls in and gets squashed into a singularity: “Those are entirely different things. They’re promoting evil. We’re promoting Jesus. (And our politics, which are Jesus-approved, so they’re part of the package.) Evil needs to be fought. And it’s evil to fight us, ’cause we’re on God’s side.”

So when I talk to my fellow Christians about freedom of expression, they’re all for it—for us. Not so much for others.