On judging your leaders. (As we should!)

1 Corinthians 4.1-5.

Paul and Sosthenes end chapter 3 of 1 Corinthians thisaway:

1 Corinthians 3.22-23 KWL

22Whether it’s Paul, Apollos, Kifa,

the world, life, death, the present, the future—

everything belongs to all of you.

23And you belong to Christ,

and Christ belongs to God.

I bring this up ’cause the next passage starts with οὕτως/útos, “therefore,” and a previous pastor of mine was extremely fond of saying, “Whenever you see a ‘therefore’ in the bible, read the verses before it so you’ll know what it’s there for.” The apostles wrote about how there shouldn’t be factions in Christ’s body period, much less fighting over one apostle or another, since all the apostles work for Christ anyway.

Likewise there’s nothing wrong with listening to multiple apostles! You can listen to Paul and Apollos; you don’t have to choose one or the other. You can listen to Kifa (which is Simon Peter’s Aramaic nickname Jn 1.42) too. And the other guys who wrote the New Testament. And the great saints who followed Jesus after them, if they have anything which still encourages us to follow Jesus. And your pastor. And your favorite Christian authors, Christian preachers, Christian podcasters, Christian bloggers. We all work for Jesus.

Well… assuming we do work for Jesus. For that, you gotta use your noggin and first make make sure we do. Make sure we’re producing good fruit. Double-check everything we say against God’s character and the bible. And if we’re making honest mistakes, be gracious… and if we’re not being so honest, or hard-headedly demand you’re the problem, and how dare you critique the Lord’s anointed: Yeah, you need to keep far, far away from such people. Not every self-proclaimed Christian is all that Christian.

Wait, is it okay for us to judge Christian leaders? Well of course it is. I bring it up ’cause it’s right there in today’s passage.

1 Corinthians 4.1-5 KWL

1For this reason, people* should consider us

like Christ’s subordinates,

and managers of God’s revealed mysteries.

2Here in addition, it’s a requirement for managers

that one should find they have faith.

3To me, this is the smallest thing,

that I should be judged by all of you,

or by a day in a human court.

But I don’t judge myself either,

4for I didn’t know anything on my own.

But I was justified out of this:

The Master is the one judging me.

5Therefore judge nothing before the right time—

which is whenever the Master might come.

He will give light to what’s hidden in the dark,

and will reveal the plans of people’s hearts,

and then a commendation will come to each person from God.

Baptizing babies, versus baptizing believers.

As I wrote yesterday, when I was a baby I was baptized. My grandparents’ church believed in the practice of baptizing babies. The formal term for this is pedobaptism, although frequently—even among Americans!—you’re gonna see the British spelling and pronunciation, paedobaptism 'pi.doʊ.bæp.tɪ.zəm Mainly because, I suspect, when you talk about pedo– anything, people immediately think of pedophilia, and we’re not going there. But paedo– stuff reminds people of pediatricians, and they’re okay! So let’s talk paedobaptism then.

Baby baptism, or infant baptism, is the standard in older churches. They figure we, as Christians, have a covenant with God. And exactly like the ancient Israelis, part of that covenant obligates us to make sure our descendants grow up to follow God. The Israelis (and the Jews today) ritually circumcised their baby boys as their way of declaring, “This kid’s gonna grow up to follow God,” so paedobaptists baptize their baby boys and girls as a way of declaring the very same thing.

It took a few centuries for baby baptism to become the standard, but it’s locked in now. Orthodox, Catholics, and Ethiopians do it; Lutherans, Anglicans, and Moravians do it; and some Presbyterians, Methodists, Nazarenes, and Congregationalists do it—it’s become a controversy in their churches. The reason for the controversy is the Anabaptist movement. The ana– prefix means “re–,” because all the first Anabaptists were originally baptized as babies, figured that didn’t count, and got re-baptized.

The Anabaptists started in the early 1500s: A number of central European churches decided one shouldn’t be baptized until we make a conscious decision to follow Jesus. It’s a view which kinda makes sense—why baptize a baby who may grow up to never follow Jesus? I mean, your parents might intend to raise you Christian, but you have other ideas… and for that matter, your parents might change their minds and raise you as nothing whatsoever, much as some of my Christian family members have.

Perhaps you’ve encountered this phenomenon—I certainly have—where people don’t follow Jesus at all, yet imagine they’re Christian because their parents had ’em baptized. So if you ask ’em, they’ll tell you, “Oh, I believe in Jesus”—but they don’t know what he teaches, don’t produce good fruit, aren’t religious at all, and aren’t even good people. In what way are they Christian? Well they were baptized.

Anabaptist churches still exist, but the Anabaptist idea of believer baptism (or if you wanna use the formal term, credobaptism) was adopted by lots of Protestant churches. Namely the Baptists. And like I said, it’s become a controversy among some Protestants: Some of the churches which still do baby baptism have a noisy faction which wants ’em to stop it. Presbyterian churches especially; Jean Calvin believed in baby baptism, but a whole lot of Presbyterians have adopted the Anabaptist view.

I was baptized Catholic, but I was raised in believer-baptism churches, and still go to those churches. So my custom is believer baptism. The Anabaptist view is what I was taught, it’s what I’m pretty sure the scriptures encourage, and I think it makes way more sense.

But honestly… I read Calvin’s Institutes. I can see the point of view of those Christians who prefer baby baptism. And if there’s deliberately a later ritual in which those people who were baptized as babies can confirm they really do intend to follow Jesus… I don’t really have a problem with it. The important thing is you’re following Jesus. If you’re not, neither type of baptism matters, ’cause you’re not Christian!

I know, I know; it’s a controversy, so people are gonna demand I take sides, and preferably theirs. And demand I get enraged at the folks on the other side. Nope! Follow Jesus either way, and I don’t have a problem. Escalate this debate into a holy war, and I have a big problem—with you.

Rebaptism: Getting wet again.

When I was a baby, I was baptized. My grandparents were Roman Catholic; not good Catholics, but Catholic enough to want their first grandchild baptized. So I was.

Mom later became Christian. She doesn’t count her Catholic upbringing, ’cause she doesn’t feel she committed herself to Jesus till adulthood. I became Christian soon after. And our church was having a baptismal service, so the two of us decided to get baptized—her at 28, and me at 7.

Had we been in a Catholic church, we’d’ve learned about their sacrament of confirmation: You confess your faith in Christ Jesus, your bishop anoints you with oil (representing the Holy Spirit, who comes to indwell you when you believe in Jesus), and now your baptism counts. Now you’re Christian.

But of course I didn’t know any of that stuff. I only knew what my Protestant church taught me: When you come to Jesus, get baptized! So I did. Got rebaptized.

Lots of Christians get rebaptized. I’ve watched many of ’em do it:

• People who were baptized as infants into the Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, or Presbyterian church, who later decide infant baptism doesn’t count; they wanna be baptized as believers.
• People who were baptized, but later slid away from Jesus, and wanna get devout and rededicate themselves to him, so they figure they oughta be baptized again.
• People who leave a heretic church, and figure that church’s baptisms don’t count, so they want a baptism which does count.
• People who just wanna. Their kids are getting baptized, so they wanna be baptized too as a good example. Or someone’s holding a baptism at a cool location, like the Jordan River in Israel, and they want the memory of getting baptized there.

For these and all sorts of other reasons, people get rebaptized.

Yeah, there are certain Christians who think this is completely unnecessary. I’m one of them. But at the same time, I also think it’s harmless. You wanna be baptized again?—go ahead and get baptized again! Doesn’t offend God; doesn’t hurt anyone.

(That is, unless you take a wired microphone into the baptismal with you, which’ll kill you, so don’t do that. But otherwise, go right ahead.)

Dispensationalists and infallibility.

So here’s a weird little phenomenon I’ve discovered. I’ve actually seen it many, many times throughout my life, but didn’t recognize what was underneath it till recently.

I was talking to a fellow Christian a few weeks ago; we’ll call him Ayokunle. He’s dispensationalist, which means he believes God has saved people in many different ways throughout history. Darbyists believe God used six different ways, ’cause we’re in the sixth dispensation. But most of ’em figure there are at least two dispensations—one before Jesus, one after Jesus. Before Jesus atoned for our sins, they figure God saved people because they were good—if they followed the Law, God saved ’em, and if they didn’t, he didn’t.

Is this true? Not at all. God saves people by his grace, and he’s always saved people by his grace. Paul of Tarsus’s whole argument to the Galatians about why they needed to stop it with the legalism, was that God’s never saved anyone by good works. Abraham included! We’re right with God because we trust him, not because we followed commandments. Ga 2.16 If we ever could be saved that way, Jesus died for nothing. Ga 2.21

Anyway, my discussion with Ayokunle is because he loves to quote the old saying, “God works all things together for our good.” I’ve written on it elsewhere, and it doesn’t mean what he thinks it means. I told him so.

ME. “There’s an entire book of the bible which refutes you. Ecclesiastes.”

HE. “Hm?”

ME. “ ‘Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.’ Ec 1.2 Vanities have no value. They mean nothing. They’re meaningless. But nothing God does is meaningless.”

HE. “Ecclesiastes?”

ME. “It’s a good read. Check it out.”

HE. “That is Old Testament.”

ME. “Correct.”

HE. “I am a New Testament Christian. Old Testament doesn’t apply.”

ME. “The bible doesn’t apply?”

HE. “New Testament does. Old Testament is of the old things which have passed away. ‘Behold, I make all things new.’ Rv 21.5 New Testament.”

ME. “So you don’t think the Old Testament should be in the bible.”

HE. “No; it should be in the bible. It has good stories. It tells us the history of the Jews. But it’s passed away. It’s dead.”

ME. “We’re not to trust it anymore for instructions on how to live our lives.”

HE. “Correct!”

ME. “But the 10 commandments are in there.”

HE. “Oh, the 10 commandments are in the New Testament too. We follow them. But the rest of the commandments are dead.”

ME. “So we can eat pork and shellfish.”

HE. “Yes!”

ME. “And have babies with our daughters.”

HE. “No! Why would you have babies with your daughters?”

ME. “I wouldn’t; that’s nasty. But it’s an Old Testament command to not have sex with your daughter. Lv 18.10 And you say that command is dead, so…”

HE. “No! No one should do that!”

ME. “Oh absolutely. But you said God no longer forbids it.”

HE. “Well there are natural laws.”

ME. “True. But people break those all the time, which is why God gives us biblical revelation. But you say it’s not biblical revelation anymore.”

He didn’t know how to answer that, so he quickly changed the subject. But it occurred to me afterward: In saying the Old Testament no longer counts, he also basically revealed he no longer considers it infallible.

In fact a lot of dispensationalists like Ayokunle explicitly teach the Old Testament failed: It didn’t successfully do the job of saving people! That’s why God had to replace its system of works-based salvation with grace. The Law no longer counts because it failed.

So when these folks claim they believe in biblical infallibility… well, it’s not consistent with everything they teach about the Old Testament. They might consider the New Testament infallible, but not the Old Testament. ’Cause it failed.

I pointed this out to a different dispensationalist I know, and after a bit of objecting, he finally said yeah, I got something there. If dispensationalists believe the Law failed to save, and needn’t be followed because it failed, then they can’t properly claim biblical infallibility. At least not for the whole bible. New Testament is fine.

“Morons” for Jesus.

1 Corinthians 3.18-21.

After Paul and Sosthenes wrote about us being bricks in the Holy Spirit’s temple, they finally bounced back to the subject of wisdom, which they’d kinda left behind in chapter 2 so they could go off on a tangent about how the Corinthians weren’t yet ready for deep stuff, and how they (and we) are collectively God’s temple. But now we’re back to wisdom. Namely God’s wisdom, granted to us Christians through the Holy Spirit—not spontaneously, as proven by every stupid Christian you’ve ever met, but when we listen to the Spirit and follow Jesus.

And if we wanna be wise, we gotta ditch what popular culture—including Christian popular culture, which has been fully infiltrated and corrupted by secular culture!—considers wisdom. Some of it is wise. Some really isn’t. In the United States, a lot of it is pragmatism—what works, as opposed to what’s good and right and moral. Most Americans figure if it works it’s good; then we go through all sorts of convoluted reasoning to explain why this also means it’s right and moral, and it’s not really.

Suppressing every other religion but Christianity, fr’instance—it sounds like it’d definitely make things easier for us Christians! And no doubt you can think of a lot of Old Testament verses which makes it sound right and moral. But is it moral to oppress people of other religions? Is it moral to obligate Americans to feign Christianity?—to go through all the motions, yet have no true personal relationship with Christ? What about when these hypocrites seek political power?—’cause they will; hypocrites love power. As you can see, the “wisdom” of Christian nationalism is profoundly stupid. But plenty of Christians fall for it.

So if you want wisdom, legit wisdom, listen to God.

1 Corinthians 3.18-21 KWL

18People must not delude themselves:

If any one of you thinks they’re wise in this age,

they should become morons so they could become wise,

19for this wisdom of the world

is moronic when compared to God.

For it’s written:

“The one who snares the wise in their subtlety,” Jb 5.13

20and again,

“The Lord knows the dialogues of the wise

—that they’re empty.” Ps 94.11

21So people must not promote other people,

for everything belongs to all of you.

22Whether it’s Paul, Apollos, Kifa,

the world, life, death, the present, the future—

everything belongs to all of you.

23And you belong to Christ,

and Christ belongs to God.

And, as the apostles add in verse 21-23, don’t divide Christianity into factions which follow one guru or another… because all these gurus work for the real guru, Jesus. Paul does, Apollos does, Kifa (i.e. Simon Peter) does, James does, John does, even John the baptist does. Likewise differing topics which Christians are free to debate about, like the world, life, death, the present, and the future: All of us get to speculate about ’em, and no one but Christ is the master of them. And us. Got that?

Blaspheming other people and things than God.

BLASPHEME blæs'fim verb. Say something about God (or holy things) which isn’t true. Slander.

2. Speak irreverently about God or holy things. Sacrilege.

[Blasphemer blæs'fim.ər noun, blasphemous 'blæs.fə.məs adjective, blasphemy 'blæs.fə.mi noun.]

As you can see, in the definition I just used (which I also used in my article on the subject), blasphemy is slander or irreverence towards God or holy things. And for some Christians, they insist only God can be blasphemed, and not holy things:

• Don’t speak ill of the LORD.
• Don’t speak ill of the LORD’s name; if someone uses his name for other stuff, like the names of altars and churches, you wanna carefully distinguish between the thing named for the LORD and the LORD himself.
• Don’t say evil things about the trinity.
• Nothing against Jesus.
• Especially nothing against the Holy Spirit, ’cause there’s no coming back from that one.
• For Roman Catholics, who believe the elements of holy communion literally become Jesus during the ritual, blaspheming them counts as blaspheming Jesus, so don’t. (One particular famous Catholic comedian will make Jesus jokes… but weirdly, will never make fun of the Eucharist, ’cause somehow that crosses the line.)

So don’t touch God; but these folks think it’s totally okay to blaspheme holy things, because they’re just things. They’re not God; they’re not divine; saying we can blaspheme them suggests they might be divine, but we worship nothing and no one but God. So you can’t blaspheme the holy bible, because we don’t worship the bible. (Or shouldn’t!)

Thing is… people kinda do have the ability to blaspheme the bible. If “blaspheme” means to slander, or speak irreverently about, of course there are people who slander and speak irreverently about bible. Antichrists do it all the time. When they say the bible’s a bunch of bunk, and claim it was written by delusional prophets, how isn’t that slander and irreverence? In other words, blasphemy?

Thing is, the people who insist only God can be blasphemed, wanna limit the use of the word “blasphemy” to God. When you’re slandering the bible, “slander” is fine. When you’re slandering God, “blasphemy” is the appropriate word. Because slandering God is a much bigger deal than slandering his prophets and apostles. One indicates the damaged relationship we have with God; the other just indicates we lack reverence for holy things and people. And a damaged relationship with God is obviously the bigger deal.

My own personal habit is, like those people, to only use “blasphemy” when we’re talking about slandering God, and not when we’re talking about slandering a church, a book, a preacher, a Ten Commandments monument, and other such things. But I gotta agree that yeah, technically, slander and blasphemy are the same thing.

And that’s a fact we see in the bible, ’cause the authors of scripture use βλασφημέω/vlasfiméo, “blaspheme,” to talk about other things than just God.

Dual citizenship… and picking a side.

Many Christians are fond of saying, “This world isn’t my home. Heaven is.”

To a degree that’s true. We’re part of God’s kingdom, with Christ Jesus as king. We recognize his reign, or try to; and follow him, more or less. Or at least we expect—despite our unloving, unkind, impatient, fruitless behavior, he’ll nonetheless graciously recognize us as his followers when he takes over the world. Maybe he will.

In the meanwhile we’re also citizens of our nations. I’m a citizen of the United States. As are many of TXAB’s readers, which is why I so often get U.S.-centric. Of course I realize this site gets readers from all over: You might be a citizen of Canada, China, France, Indonesia, Israel, Germany, Russia, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and Singapore… and that’s the top 10, so if I didn’t mention your nation you’re just gonna have to enlist more of your friends to read, and bump up your stats. Anywho as Christians we’re all fellow citizens of God’s kingdom. Yet we simultaneously have allegiances to our respective homelands.

In the U.S., if you’re both a citizen of this country and another one, we call you a “dual citizen.” We have lots of ’em. Officially the U.S. only recognizes one citizenship: Ours. (So pay your taxes. It’s why Americans who don’t even live in the States are still required to pay American taxes.) When people become Americans, our citizenship oath requires ’em to renounce their previous citizenship. But if their original homeland doesn’t care about that, and still counts them a citizen, they’re dual citizens. Most of the dual citizens I know are also Mexican citizens, and take full advantage of their Mexican citizenship whenever they’re in Mexico. One friend’s from the U.K.—and when he visits family in the U.K., he’ll even switch his accent from Californian to Londoner.

But here’s the catch with dual citizenship: The time might come when you gotta pick one nation over the other.

Say you were a citizen of both the U.S. and Russia. And say we went to war. (Hope we never, ever do, but let’s just say.) Well, you have to pick a side. Especially if you work for the government—of either nation. Neither country will let you stay neutral. You’ve gotta be wholly American, or wholly Russian. (Or you’ve gotta flee to Argentina.)

Well, that’s how Christians are when it comes to our national citizenships. I’m a dual citizen of God’s kingdom, and the United States. So what happens when the States does something hostile to the kingdom? Right you are: I gotta pick a side. And I’ll just bluntly tell you now I’m picking Jesus. Like any immigrant, I may have been born American, but I choose citizenship in his kingdom. So Jesus takes priority. Don’t even have to think about it.

Much as I love the United States, I’m fully aware when Jesus returns, he’s overthrowing it. When he raptures his followers to join his invasion, we’re gonna help him overthrow it. I’m gonna help him overthrow it. Willingly. Gladly.

If that sounds like treason against the United States, it totally is. And if it makes you as an American feel uncomfortable, it should. Because as a Christian you need to pick sides. This isn’t a hypothetical situation, y’know. Jesus is returning. Not “could return”: Is returning. Not in some “spiritual sense,” by which most folks think imaginary. He’s literally, physically coming to earth to take it over. Maybe not in our lifetimes… but maybe he will; we don’t know.

So where’s your allegiance? ’Cause when he returns, you’re gonna be on one side or the other. Better not be the wrong one.