Really don’t wanna go to church.

There’s a guy whose blog I’ve been following for years. In the past three years he’s been really amping up his message to everybody to quit their churches. Stop going, he says. Just stop; stay home. You’ll be a lot happier.

And I get it. There’ve been times in my life where I didn’t wanna go to church either. I didn’t try to drag people away from church along with me, like this guy; I figured if you like church, you do you, but for me, nah.

For the usual excuses.

I HAVE ANOTHER CHURCH. I moved about 100 miles away from home for college, and for a semester I used the excuse, “I already have a church.” I didn’t care for any of the local churches I had visited. And whenever I went home, I did go to church, with my family. But when I was at school I figured it was okay… if I missed 10 weeks of church services.

CHAPEL COUNTS. Plus my school had daily chapel services. So they became my other excuse that semester. Me and a lot of other students.

DON’T GOTTA GO EVERY WEEK. When I wasn’t in church leadership, I found it was really easy to skip a Sunday morning here and there. Sometimes skip a lot of mornings. There are some Christians who only attend a service once a month… and of course there are those twice-a-year Christians who only attend Easter and Christmas services. If that; nowadays they can watch services on YouTube.

“I have freedom in Christ, y’know,” was my usual excuse for inconsistent attendance. And I do… but in context that passage is about freedom of conscience, Ro 14 not the freedom to be irresponsible.

I CAN DO THIS ON MY OWN. Years before, when I wasn’t at school, this was my excuse for a few weeks while I was really annoyed with the people of my church. ’Cause I totally can do this stuff on my own.

• Pray?—no problem.
• Sing worship songs?—easily done.
• Learn from fellow Christians?—I have their books; I have the internet; I got content.
• Study the bible?—sure.
• Tithing? Well yes, I could donate money to myself for “religious” expenses; or I could give that money to charity. Or I could spend all of it at a Peets one afternoon while I sat there reading some Christian book; wouldn’t that totally count?
• Take holy communion? I could eat saltines and grape juice on my own, and call it communion. But the vital element in communion is, y’know, actual communion—with fellow Christians. So that makes it tricky.

As are all our other rituals which require the participation of other Christians. Plus evangelism: Once you lead someone to Jesus, where do you take ’em so they can be taught Christianity and mentored? Well I could do it myself… but that’d mean I’m starting a church, right?

There are plenty more excuses. Some of them get pretty complex, and as a result they kinda merit whole articles, because it takes a little time to take these excuses apart. But for many a Christian, any excuse will do.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

Do you know what Christ Jesus really teaches?

Ask anybody what Jesus of Nazareth did for a living, and nearly all of us will say, “Oh, he was a carpenter.”

More precisely Jesus was a τέκτων/tékton, a “craftsman, artisan”—someone who made stuff. Sometimes in wood… and sometimes in stone. Nowadays Israel has a lot of trees, but that’s because of a serious reforestation campaign the nation started decades ago. Thousands of years before that, the trees had been cleared to turn most of the land into farmland, so by Jesus’s day, not a lot of wood. Lots of stones though—good thing for archaeologists. So Jesus worked with wood, stone, whatever; in general he made stuff. Makes sense; he’s the Creator y’know. Jn 1.3

So he was what we’d nowadays call a contractor. Mk 6.3 Family business, apparently; he did it because his dad did it. Mt 13.55 But by the time we read his teachings in the gospels, that was Jesus’s previous job. He left that job and took up a new one: Jesus was a rabbi. A teacher. Jn 1.38

Yeah, most of you already knew Jesus was a rabbi. Even those of who who responded, “He’s a carpenter.”

So why is everyone’s first response typically, “Ooh! Ooh! Carpenter!” Because it’s kinda obvious he’s a teacher, but “carpenter” feels like more of a trivia question—“Okay, what was Jesus of Nazareth’s little-known vocation? What’d he do for a living? ’Cause the teaching didn’t pay.” Actually it did pay: Rabbis took donations. Usually of food; sometimes of money, sometimes free labor. Some of Jesus’s followers included the women who financially contributed to his teaching, Lk 8.2-3 and also did stuff for him… and got to stick around and listen to what he taught. They were functionally his students, same as his Twelve. (Or at least that’s how Jesus sees them. Lk 10.38-42 Sexists, not so much.)

But “Jesus was a carpenter” actually comes from the statement the folks of his hometown made to belittle him: “Hey, why’re we even listening to this guy? Isn’t he just the handyman?” It’s exactly the same as if the pastor of your church invites a guest speaker to preach, and instead of it being some famous bible scholar it’s the janitor… and the janitor presents you with a truth so challenging, so contrary to your beliefs (yet entirely biblical!), your knee-jerk response is to find any excuse at all to demean him, so you pick on his blue-collar job. “Who’s this guy? Who does he think he is?”

Subtly, a lot of antichrists still maintain this bad attitude about Jesus: He‘s “just” a carpenter. He wasn’t really Christ; that’s some hype his followers made up.

Regardless, “rabbi” is maybe the second thing we list on Jesus’s résumé. Sometimes we remember “king”—when we’ve not presumed that’s merely his future job, and doesn’t apply yet.

Well. I use this example of “Jesus was a carpenter” to point out how frequently we get Jesus wrong. Even on as something as simple as his job description. We think we know him. But we make lots of little slip-ups on very basic data, and repeat the common clichés instead of quoting bible. We trusted what other Christians told us, parrot it, and never bother to double-check it: “Wait, where does it say that in the bible?” Or “Is that what this verse means?”

Ironically this is exactly what a rabbi does for a living: Train students to ask such questions. And we, Jesus’s present-day students, need to ask these questions.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

Why you’re not gonna read the bible in a year.

So I wrote yesterday about how people choose to read the enitre bible as one of their new year’s resolutions, and how they really oughta skip the whole bible-in-a-year idea and read it in a month. Because it’s doable, and because you’re more apt to retain and understand it if you don’t stretch it out.

But some of you won’t. I know; I’ve heard the feedback. Many of you got it in your heads a month is impossible. Or unreasonable. Or that you need the extra time to process what you read. (And okay, I’ll take your word for it you actually do meditate on what you read, and aren’t just pretending to practice a real spiritual discipline just so you can weasel out of the challenge. ’Cause I know some of you legitimately do. The rest of you, I have my doubts… but fine; you meditate.)

Likewise I know plenty of Christians with plenty of self-control, but reading is a struggle. It’s never been something they enjoy, nor do for fun. For all we know, they have undiagnosed learning disbilities. (Some of ’em have been diagnosed.) So, for the life of ’em, they can’t manage to get through the bible. It really frustrates them because they know they really should read it, but, y’know, reading.

I should point out new believers regularly claim the bible has proven a giant exception to their reading difficulties. Zealous new believers will pick up a bible, find they can’t put it down, whip right through it… and soon after, seek something else to read. Reading the bible turned them into readers! But that’s not everyone, so let’s be fair.

For those folks who don’t struggle to read, I still point out the way bible-reading plans are commonly structured, they are poison to reading comprehension. To reading retention. To natural pacing. To context. To enjoyment! They turn what should be informative and inspiring, into a chore. And people hate chores, and are happy to find excuses to get out of ’em. “Whoops, missed two readings. Oh well; guess I’ll start over again next January.” Then they don’t.

Chopping the bible into 365 segments (or 366 in leap years, or 313 if they let you take Saturdays off) is a design feature of the yearlong reading plan. This is the very thing which makes the plans terrible.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

St. John’s Day.

The third day of Christmas, 27 December, is the feast day of the apostle John.

Yokhanan bar Zavdi (English, “John, son of Zebedee”) was a first cousin of Christ Jesus; their moms were sisters, and I suspect Jesus stayed with John’s family while he headquartered himself in Capharnaum. Jesus chose him and his elder brother James to be part of his Twelve, Mk 3.17 the apostles he sent to evangelize Israel, who were later expected to run his church. Paul of Tarsus considered him a pillar of this church. Ga 2.9

He’s widely considered the student whom Jesus loved, Jn 21.20 and therefore the author of the gospel we call John, plus three letters and Revelation. There are various scholars who aren’t so sure John wrote those scriptures, ’cause John didn’t put his name on anything but Revelation (and they speculate the John of Revelation was a whole different guy named John). And maybe that’s so. But there’s no reason the author wasn’t this John.

Tradition has it John later took charge of the Ephesian church—either after Timothy held the job, or as Timothy’s bishop. Most Christians assume John died during his exile on Patmos, but traditions say he returned to Ephesus, where he either died of natural causes, or was murdered by antichrists.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

Santa Claus and misplaced, misunderstood faith.

Years ago round Christmastime, one of my 9-year-old students asked me, “Mr. Leslie, is Santa real?”

Oh good Lord, I thought, haven’t her parents had the Santa talk with her? I punted. “Ask your mom.”

This girl’s mom was one of those people with an all too common misconception: The way you keep your kids innocent is by keeping them ignorant. And of course this doesn’t work. As you might know from when you were a kid: When you had serious questions, you sought answers. If your parents didn’t have ’em, or wouldn’t give ’em, you’d go elsewhere.

And these days, older kids won’t even go to their parents for answers: They’ll do as their parents do, and grab their phone first. Wanna find out about anything? Grab your phone and ask Siri or Google. Heck, some of you might be reading TXAB right now because you went to the internet instead of texting your pastor.

I’m old: When I was a kid only academics and soldiers had internet. But when my parents weren’t forthcoming, I knew how to look stuff up in an encyclopedia. We had an old edition of the Britannica at home, and if it had little or nothing, there was always the public library.

And if I had to consult other people, there were plenty of knowledgeable adults around. Pastors, mentors, neighbors, schoolteachers, older relatives. Or when absolutely necessary, school friends—but I already knew they didn’t know anything. Not every kid does.

So as their schoolteacher, this is why I got questions about Santa. And God. And why people are so terrible. And how babies are made. And the definitions to certain words which children’s dictionaries correctly refused to include. And that’s just fourth grade; you should hear what junior highers and high schoolers ask—on the rare occasions they don’t assume they know it all.

I taught at a Christian school, so parents were usually okay with me answering God questions. That is, so long that my answers didn’t undermine their favorite assumptions. But some of ’em deliberately put their kids in Christian school to shelter them. Which is another common misconception: You do realize certain parents put their kids in Christian school because they’re bad kids, and are hoping the school will straighten them out so they don’t have to? So while you imagine you’re sheltering your kids, you’re actually throwing them into the hail. Nice job.

In any event the parents were so not okay with me answering any questions about baby-making. Heck, I didn’t wanna do it either; I kept telling them to ask their parents. I told one persistent girl, whose mom refused to have “the talk” with her, “Tell her, ‘If I don’t know how they’re made, what if I make a baby by accident?’ ”—and that worked.

I likewise knew (from experience; a story I’ll tell another time) parents definitely didn’t want me exposing their Santa game. Problem is, the girl asked me in the middle of class, and some of ’em decided to answer her question before her mom could: “Santa’s not real.”

“He’s not?” asked the girl.

“He’s real…” I fumbled, thinking specifically of St. Nicholas of Myra, “but maybe not in the way you’re thinking.”

“Which means,” insisted one of my very literal-minded students, “that he’s not real.” ’Cause kids know a wishy-washy answer when they hear it.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

Arianism: One God—and Jesus isn’t quite him.

ARIAN 'ɛr.i.ən adjective. Believes God is one being, one person, not three; and that both Jesus and the Holy Spirit are created beings and lesser gods.

[Arianism 'ɛr.i.ən.ɪz.əm noun.]

I’ve written on unitarian beliefs—namely how there’s one God, but contrary to how he’s been revealed in the New Testament, certain folks insist God’s not a trinity. Now, pagans and other monotheists don’t bother with the New Testament, so of course they don’t believe in trinity. But Christians do have the NT and claim to abide by it… and yet some of us still don’t believe in trinity. We call these folks heretics. (And of course they’d call us heretics, and round and round we go.)

One of the first major anti-trinitarian heresies Christians bumped into, is Arianism—a word pronounced the same, but is not the same, as the white-supremacist view Aryanism. It’s named for Áreios of Alexandria (c. 250-336), a Christian elder—or in Roman Catholic thinking, a priest. In Latin he’s Arius, and that’s usually what he’s called in history books. Arianism is based on Áreios’s insistence Jesus isn’t YHWH. He’s a second god, created by the Almighty, who does godlike things, but he’s not the God, but a lesser god. ’Cause God’s not a trinity.

You gotta understand where Áreios was coming from. When you read the gospels, Jesus is clearly a different person than his Father. His Father is God, Jn 8.54 and the usual, natural conclusion you’d come to is that God’s one person, and Jesus is another. Which is true! The hard part is the idea God is more than one person, and for Áreios and other Arians, that’s an impossible part.

Thing is, in the scriptures there are verses which bluntly state Jesus is God. Jn 1.1, Pp 2.5, What’d Áreios do with them? Simple: He allowed that Jesus must be a god. But not the God.

You gotta also understand where Áreios came from. Third-century Egypt was predominantly pagan and polytheist. They believed in Egyptian gods, Greek gods, Roman gods, and any other gods which sounded worth their time. Christianity, in contrast, is monotheistic: One God, and all the other gods are probably demons. The idea of trinity—of Jesus and the Holy Spirit being God exactly the same as the Father is God—rubbed Áreios the wrong way. To him it sounded way too much like weird gnostic polytheism. But two gods?—he could live with two gods.

Áreios was hardly the first to believe this. But he was the first to successfully spread the idea around. Largely through the use of catchy worship songs which taught his theology. Here’s a bit from his song “Thalia,” quoted by then-deacon (and Áreios’s chief critic) Athanásios of Alexandria. De Synodis 15. My translation:

The First One made the Son—the first thing he created.

He made the Son himself, giving birth to him.

Who doesn’t have any of God’s being nor uniqueness,

For he’s not the same. He’s not the same stuff as him.

The lyrics don’t sound all that catchy to me, but the music must’ve been way better.

Hence for a while there in the early 300s, Arianism was rapidly becoming the main form of Christianity in the Roman Empire. Even the emperor, Flavius Constantinus, had become Arian.

Okay. You might be going, “Why on earth are you writing about a 17-century-old heresy? Those people got condemned by the ancient Christians and died out.” And man alive would you be dead wrong. Arians are everywhere.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

Heretics won’t believe the incarnation.

1 John 4.1-6.

From time to time Christians ask me how I know whether someone’s an on-the-level Christian, or whether they’re a phony, a heretic, a hypocrite, or just generally on the wrong track. For two reasons, usually:

• They honestly don’t know. And these guys make them nervous… and somehow I don’t, which is odd, but whatever. They’ve decided they can trust me enough to pick my brain.
• They not-so-honestly do know, or think they know. So this is a test to see whether I believe as they do, and whether I can be trusted.

Let’s set the dishonest folks aside. The reason Christians get so nervous about heretics and wayward Christians is because most of ’em think if they follow the wrong guy, their salvation is in jeopardy. And they’re not wrong. They should be following Jesus!

Frequently I point ’em to 1 John. It’s a letter full of good commonsense advice about living in a fallen world, including a world full of Christians gone corrupt, ’cause that’s exactly what John had to deal with when he ran the church of Ephesus: Gnostics and heretics and antichrists. People who were trying to pull away some of the Christians of his church, who knew better but need a little reminding and a little encouraging.

“Spot the heretic” isn’t a complicated game when we know what Christians oughta believe. Problem is, so many of us know nothing. Or we’re looking for the wrong thing: We’re being very very careful to remain orthodox, or at least carefully conform to popular Christian culture. But in so doing, we’re not looking out for what Jesus warns us time and again to watch out for: Bad fruit.

So often, I’ve heard ignorant Christians say of fruitless, jerklike leaders, “But they believe all the right things.” They seem to have all their theological ducks in a row, so it’s okay that they’ve created little cults where you’re never allowed to ask them questions, nor be disloyal to them—as if our loyalty belongs to anyone but Christ Jesus alone.

Yeah, on the other extreme people will follow heretics because they’re such nice people. Because they’ve confused niceness with rightness. They’re not the same thing. My friendly waiter might never wash her hands; friendly or not, she’s wrong. As would I be if I decided to tip her with a tract instead of money.

But fruit counts. And orthodoxy counts. Christians oughta have both. Good works and faith in God. Obedience to Jesus’s commands and compassion and mercy and grace for those who flub those commands. John wrote about both. Read the letter sometime, and learn the importance of both.

Today’s passage focuses mainly on orthodoxy, but I figured I should first remind you both fruit and orthodoxy are important, lest you get the idea it’s just orthodoxy. You might also notice a little bit of good fruit comes up in this passage too. And of course Jesus’s incarnation—which is why I flagged it as a scripture for Advent.

1 John 4.1-6 KWL

1 Beloved, don’t believe every spirit!

Instead examine whether the spirits are from God,

because many fake prophets have gone forth into the world.

2 This is how you know God’s spirit: Every spirit is from God

who acknowledges Christ Jesus came in the flesh.

3 Every spirit is not from God

who doesn’t acknowledge Jesus is even from God.

And this behavior is of antichrist,

which you heard “is coming”: It’s already in the world. Now.

4 You children are from God, and you conquered them,

because the One in you is greater than what’s in the world.

5 They’re from the world, which is why they speak from the world,

and the world heeds them.

6 We’re from God. One who knows God heeds us.

One who’s not from God doesn’t heed us.

From this we identify the truthful spirit, and the erroneous spirit.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

Why do pagans celebrate a Christian holiday?

Every year, on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, my city has a Christmas festival. (Well, not in 2020 nor 2021, ’cause pandemic.) The local newspaper started it and sponsors it.

I like to joke the festival begins with the pagan stuff. Once the sun is mostly down (and this time of year, this latitude, it sets around 4:45 PM) about 2,000 people gather round the 60-foot tree. The local Air Force band plays a few songs, the mayor says a few things, the people are led in a few secular carols about silver jingle bells, snowmen (even though we’re well below the snowline), reindeer (even though we’re on the wrong continent), and Santa Claus. Who makes an appearance, and the tree gets lit.

That done, the city’s Christians take over. Downtown fills with tent-canopied booths, nearly all of ’em set up by local churches. We give out cookies, cocoa, cider, and other treats. Our choirs sing. Open-air Christmas pageants are performed. One megachurch in particular handles crowd control and cleanup.

“What’s with all the Christians?” a friend commented years ago.

“Well it is our holiday,” I reminded him.

I find it a drastic contrast. My family does too. I’m usually there early to set up and work my church’s booth, so I see everything. My family, most years, skips the newspaper’s opening festivities, ’cause all they care about are the church booths. Because I’m manning the booth, I kinda ignore the pagan tree-lighting stuff at the beginning. And the few times I’m not in a booth, I go to Starbucks and get something egg-nog-flavored, then go check out the sister churches in town.

Whereas the non-Christians who only wanna hear the Santa and reindeer songs? They clear out early. Things get way too Christian for them. They might go to the downtown bars; otherwise they’re done.

And many of us Christians are fine with Santa songs, but the opening festivities are too crowded and impersonal, and we’d rather check out church booths and say hi to our fellow Christians.

I’ve lived elsewhere, and visited their local Christmas celebrations. Those celebrations weren’t adopted by the local churches. As a result they were mostly about Santa and snowmen and reindeer… and I found ’em pretty dreary and empty, and didn’t go back.

Some years ago I bought an edition of C.S. Lewis’s letters, and among them is a bit about the oddness of pagans who celebrate Christmas. Imagine, Lewis wrote his brother, if some non-Buddhists decided to enthusiastically celebrate a Buddhist holiday. (I imagine them celebrating it American-style, with tacky decorations, songs, sales, movies, and festive coffee drinks.) Now imagine, since these non-Buddhists aren’t big on the Buddha, they remove all the elements of him from the celebration. Even insert some mascot, whom they celebrate more than the Buddha. Then celebrate anyway.

Lewis later developed this idea into a satire, “Xmas and Christmas: A Lost Chapter from Herodotus.” In it, the people of Niatirb (get it?) vigorously celebrate a holiday called Exmas, while the religious folks celebrate an alternate contemporaneous holiday called Crissmas.

I agree with Lewis: It’s super weird to celebrate some other religion’s holiday, yet strip that religion clean out of it. It’s exactly as if pagans took over Hanukkah—and instead of remembering the Maccabees, they invented some guy named Hanukkah Harry who flies round the world and delivers socks.

But weird or not, I don’t wonder why people do it. They do it for the same reason they have sex though they’re not in love; the same reason they take heroin instead of seek true joy. It’s fun. Christmas is fun, whether Christ has anything to do with it.

True, it’s meaningless without Christ. But it’s still fun, and fun’s all people care about.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

Modalism: The illusion of three persons in one God.

MODALIST 'mod.əl.ɪst adjective. Believes God has multiple personas, approaches, functions, or aspects of his nature—which other Christians confuse with trinity.

[Modalism 'mod.əl.ɪz.əm noun.]

Some Christians don’t believe God’s a trinity. For a variety of reasons, but mostly because they can’t fathom the idea (and to be fair, it’s a difficult one), or they’ve been raised in an anti-trinitarian religion or church. Fr’instance if you were raised Muslim and later become Christian… well now you have to follow Jesus in a whole new way than you’re used to, plus there’s the fact he’s God. It’s a hurdle. Not an impossible one, but it’s not all that easy for some.

Because it’s not easy, these folks can sometimes slide into one of the usual Christological heresies which make him something other than God… or human. I keep bumping into modalism because I’m Pentecostal, and certain Pentecostal churches have full-on embraced modalism. They teach it instead of trinity. They think it’s mighty clever of them. I’m sure Sabellius of Rome thought the same thing when he came up with the idea in the 210s.

Modalism doesn’t claim Jesus isn’t really God, or isn’t really human. He is; he’s both. Jesus is absolutely God.

But… he’s also God the Father. And God the Holy Spirit. Y’see, God isn’t three persons; modalists insist he’s only one person, and there is no trinity. God is one. But he looks like he’s three, from our limited human point of view.

Why’s he look three? Time travel.

No, seriously. Time travel. I know; time travel is still theory, and hasn’t yet been scientifically documented. But we’re all familiar with science fiction, so we have a general idea of how time travel works.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

When the fullness of time came, God sent his Son.

Galatians 4.1-5.

There’s a verse in the bible about how “when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law.” Ga 4.5 KJV Christians like to quote it ’cause it references the birth of Christ Jesus, the first coming of Jesus. It’s an advent scripture.

In context there’s a lot more to unpack, so I’ll unpack it. First the passage:

Galatians 4.1-5 KWL

1 I say for as long as heirs are children,

all of them are nothing more than a master’s slaves.

2 Instead they’re placed under nannies and butlers

until the father’s appointed time.

3 Likewise us. When we’re children, learning the basics of the universe,

we’re like slaves.

4 When the fullness of time came, God sent forth his Son,

birthed by a woman, birthed under the Law,

5 so he might redeem the Law,

so we might receive God’s adoption.

It’s used as a proof text for the incarnation, but it’s not actually about incarnation. It’s part of Paul’s explanation about the Christian’s relationship to the Law of Moses. As Paul regularly taught, the Law is a schoolmaster: It teaches us the difference between following God, between rightness and righteousness, and sin.

But now that Christ Jesus has come, we follow him, not the Law.

Not that the Law’s irrelevant! Nor nullified. But our relationship is with Jesus, so we follow Jesus. We’re saved by Jesus’s self-sacrifice and God’s grace, not the Law.

Read the whole thing! ➡️