TXAB: The Christ Almighty Blog

RELIGIONri'lɪ.dʒənnoun. Worship of a superhuman controlling power, usually a personal God or impersonal universe.2. Particular system of belief and worship, as demonstrated through actions and declarations.3. A supremely important pursuit or interest, followed as if worship.[Religious ri'lɪ.dʒəsadjective.]A significant part of authentic Christianity is religion: We worship God, and we do it through actions. For any belief system which doesn’t take any action, which doesn’t result in any changed lives or good deeds (or even bad deeds), isn’t real. Or, as James puts it, it’s dead. Jm 2.26But for a lot of Evangelicals in the United States, religion’s become a bad word. “Religious” has become mixed up with traditional. More specifically with the more empty, meaningless traditions which attempt to express worship through action, but don’t appear to bring us any closer to God.Fr’instance. When we were kids, and somebody taught us a rote prayer, they didn’t always explain why we pray…

Yep, I’m taking apart a Chick tract again. Recently an interesting yet annoying argument came up in a discussion group about the difference between devout Muslims, and the nutjobs who call themselves Muslim—then murder people and blow stuff up. Watch certain news channels and you’ll never hear there’s any difference. As a result many Americans think there is no difference. They assume the fakes are actual Muslims and call ’em “radical Islam.”I’ve pointed out this is like claiming a white supremacist is a “radical Christian.” Scary thing is, there are many pagans who actually respond, “Yeah, that’s precisely what it’s like.” To their minds when you call yourself Christian or Muslim, even if you’re not at all like Jesus or Muhammad taught, it’s still what you are.Anyway. If you wanna know how various Fundamentalists and certain conservative Evangelicals think about this, I find it really useful to turn to fear-mongering tract-maker Jack T. Chick.Chick tracts are meant to convert people …

The evil spirits who get us to follow and worship ’em.One fairly common pagan belief is animism, the idea everything has a anima/“soul,” or lifeforce. No, not just things that are actually alive, like plants, animals, fungi, and bacteria. Inanimate objects could have a lifeforce too. Like weather, water, or fire, which certainly act alive. Like the sun, moon, planets, and stars, which pagans actually worshiped as if they were alive.And lest you think that’s just an ancient pagan practice, look how often people still do it. People talk about the “vibe” of a place—a workplace, nightclub, school, restaurant, home, whatever. Or the luck attached to a charm or item of clothing. Or the “feels” attached to a favorite chair, blanket, toy, car. Or the “spirit” of a good idea, like charity, patriotism, wisdom, and prosperity.The ancient Greeks believed these lifeforces were intelligent beings. Like little gods. Everything important had one. They weren’t necessarily important enough to be full-o…

A new authority. One that really bugged ’em.Mark 1.21-22 • Matthew 7.28-29 • Luke 4.31-32As Jesus wrapped up his Sermon on the Mount,Matthew includes a comment about the way he taught his lessons, and the way his listeners reacted to it:Matthew 7.28-29 KWL28 It happened when Jesus finished these lessons, the masses were amazed at his teaching:29 His teaching wasn’t like their scribes, but like one who has authority.It’s much the same way Mark and Luke described it when Jesus first began teaching in synagogue.Mark 1.21-22 KWL21Jesus and his students entered Kfar Nahum, and next, Jesus joined the synagogue.He was teaching on Sabbath 22 and they were amazed at Jesus’s teaching:His teaching wasn’t like that of the scribes, but like one with authority.Luke 4.31-32 KWL31 Jesus came to Kfar Nahum, a Galilean city.He was teaching on Sabbath, 32 and they were amazed at his teaching,because his lesson was given with power.Incorrectly, preachers tend to claim this whole “not like scribes, but so…

Adultery has a whole different definition in the Old Testament.Years ago one of my eighth-grade students asked me what a concubine was. ’Cause he wasn’t familiar with the word, and it was in his bible. It’s in everybody’s bibles: Pylegéš/“concubine,” which Strong’s dictionary defines as “concubine; paramour.” I just went with the 21st-century term for paramour: “It’s a girlfriend,” I told him.Later that day his mother called me to complain. She heard the story, spoke with her pastor, and he assured her a concubine is a wife. Not a girlfriend. What sort of morality was I attempting to teach her son?Um… it wasn’t a morality lesson. It’s a definition. The morality lesson comes from whether you think the bible’s references to concubines is prescriptive or descriptive: Whether because the patriarchs did it, we can; or whether the patriarchs simply did it, but Jesus calls us to be better than they. (I’ll save you the guessing game: It’s nearly always the second one.)The patriarchs had concu…

Stop it! Crack open a dictionary and the first definition you’ll find for penance is often “voluntary self-punishment as an expression of repentance.”Actually that’s not what penance is supposed to mean. Our word penance comes from the Latin verb pænitere/“be sorry.” That’s all penance means: We regret what we did, we apologize, we ask forgiveness, and we resolve to do better in future. Period. When Christians confess our sins to one another, that’s all penance, penitence, repentance, or whatever word we wanna use for it, ought to consist of.Problem is, the way Christians have historically demonstrated how sorry we are, is to prove it by making ourselves suffer. By undergoing punishment. Sometimes voluntarily. Sometimes not.So let me make this absolutely clear: God’s kingdom is about God’s grace. Christians punishing themselves, or punishing one another, is contrary to grace. It’s not a fruit of the Spirit.I won’t go so far as to call it a work of the flesh. That’s because there’s a t…

Why American Evangelicals don’t believe in, nor care about, climate change.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. NASAThe 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 remembe…

Have they no hope? Well, let’s not rule that out.Yeah, this is gonna be a bummer of an article. Sorry. It needs saying.When Christians die, it’s sad. ’Cause we’re never gonna see those people again in this lifetime. We often say, “We’ll see ’em in heaven,” and that’s true—though not quite as pop-culture Christianity imagines it. We’ll see them in the kingdom of heaven. Once Jesus returns to establish that kingdom, we Christians are all getting resurrected, and they’ll be back, better than before. As will we. That’s our hope.But it’s not pagans’ hope.The Latin word paganus meant someone from the country, and therefore not from the city. Christians adopted it to refer to people who don’t live in the city of God, or civilians who aren’t in the Lord’s army. By definition a pagan isn’t in the kingdom. Not going to heaven. They’re outside—and outside isn’t good.So when pagans die, it’s a profound loss. Not only are we not seeing them again, we’re likely not seeing them in the age to come. B…