Why are there so many churches?

Properly, Jesus’s church is his followers. Not a church institution nor organization; not the hierarchy of a denomination nor the people in leadership who try to steer the masses; certainly not a building. It’s people. The church is people. All the people who are enroute to God’s kingdom… and all the hangers-on who may yet get in as well.

So since Jesus’s church is that, instead of all our individual denominations… why are there so many different denominations of church? And why do some of ’em even actively compete with one another, as if they’re a bunch of different retail businesses trying to win over customers?

Well there are lots of reasons. Some are good and valid. Some really not.

I’ve simplified them down to five. Maybe oversimplified; you can tell me whether I’m missing any particular nuances here. The first two reasons I consider valid, and even have scriptures to back me up. The last thee… not so much.

The prayer mood.

As we know, prayer is talking with God. You have something to tell him? Start talking. You want him to talk to you? Ask him stuff. It’s not complicated; it is just that simple.

It’s just we overcomplicate things. We learned a bunch of prayer rituals, which we figure gotta happen every time we pray. Gotta get in the prayer closet. Gotta assume the right posture: Head to the ground, facing Jerusalem; or eyes closed and hands folded; or facing the sky, arms lifted high. Whatever your tradition dictates.

And just as we put our bodies in a posture, we put our mindset in a posture too. We figure the best way to get ready to receive God, the best way to submit to his will, is to assume a prayer mood, an emotional state which we imagine is best for prayer.

You might not even be aware you’re psyching yourself into that state. It’s just you always have. It’s what you’ve always seen other Christians do, and that’s how you picked it up. You feel you oughta be humble when you approach God, so you mentally lower, or even degrade yourself. You feel you oughta be open to stuff he wants to teach you, so you imagine your mind wide open, ready to accept anything. You feel if God’s gonna be present, it’s time to put on a display of loving him with all our mind, so you conjure up that feeling as best you can. And so on.

I was just reading something by E.M. Bounds, who’s full of bad advice when it comes to prayer… but unfortunately his books on prayer are really popular. He believed we should ask God for “a fervent spirit” when we pray, so we can be all intense and passionate and emotional and anxious. Wait, didn’t Jesus teach us not to be anxious?

Most of us know this prayer mood thingy isn’t mandatory. After all if we had to attain this mood before we could pray, the devil could easily keep us in any other mood but the prayerful one. So, thankfully, we never think of it as, “God’ll be displeased if I don’t feel this way when I pray.” But we wanna feel this way. It helps prayer feel good.

So, positive attitude. Clear mind. Loving, humble, focused thoughts. Emotions on the surface… yet more or less under control. Any stray thoughts, any unpleasant emotions—any pessimism, pride, or evil—has gotta be shoved aside. If we can’t do these things, it still totally counts as prayer; we just won’t consider it a good prayer. It’ll feel ineffective.

Yeah of course all this thinking is crap.

Prayer’s not about how we feel when we pray. As the psalms demonstrate, we can feel any which way. Sometimes the psalmists were psyched about talking to God… but sometimes they were distracted, agitated, irritated by all their enemies whom they wished God would curb-stomp. Sometimes their emotions were in check; sometimes they most definitely weren’t.

It’d be nice if prayer felt good. But it isn’t necessary that it has to. And since we can’t trust our emotions, who says it always has to?

Augury: When the universe becomes God’s game of Pictionary.

Back in the 1970s Peter Jenkins grew disillusioned with life, and decided the cure for this would be to walk across the United States. Halfway through his trip, he met Barbara Jo Pennell in Louisiana and asked her to marry him.

They hadn’t known one another very long at all; just a few weeks. Understandably she had her doubts about him. But one Sunday at church, the sermon was on the story of how Abraham’s slave went to find a wife for Isaac, found Rebekah, and concluded it was the LORD’s providence. Ge 24 and found Rebekah, and figured it was providence. When the preacher said, and repeated, the question Rebekah’s family put to her—“Will you go with this man?” Ge 24.58 —Jenkins and Pennell identified this as a sign. A sign from God. So she married him.

I read this story in the National Geographic, where he first published “A Walk Across America” in two parts; it later became a book. I remember at the time I read it, even though I was a little kid, my first thought was, “That’s a sign?” That wasn’t a sign; that’s a coincidental out-of-context scripture.

No, I don’t believe every coincidence is really God. Ecclesiastes makes it clear there are definitely such things as coincidences. Time and chance happen in God’s universe. Ec 9.11

It certainly was a useful coincidence for Jenkins—and for any man who’s desperately trying to convince a woman to marry him, and she believes in signs. In fact if he’s clever, he’ll slip the preacher a $20 and ask her to say a bunch of sign-like things in her sermon. Like “Will you go with this man?” and “Be not afraid” and “I am my beloved’s and he is mine” and so forth. You can manufacture signs, y’notice.

As can Satan.

Looking for signs in nature, and interpreting nature as if you can find signs in it, is a very, very old practice. Predates Christianity. It’s called augury, and some pagan religions specialize in it. And too many Christians, who aren’t aware God speaks to us and we can hear him, dabble in it too. They want a sign!—so they look for ’em.

Nation will rise up against nation.

Mk 13.8, Mt 24.7-8, Lk 21.10-11.

You notice the title of this piece is “Nation will rise up against nation,” yet when I translate the gospel passages which usually get interpreted that way, you’ll notice I render ἔθνος/éthnos as “ethnic group.” Because that’s what an éthnos is.

Mark 13.8 KWL

“For ethnic group will be pitted against ethnic group,

and kingdom against kingdom.

Quakes will happen various places.

Scarcity will happen.

These are first birth pangs.”

 

Matthew 24.7-8 KWL

7 “For ethnic group will be pitted against ethnic group,

and kingdom against kingdom.

Quakes and scarcity will happen various places.

8 All these are first birth pangs.”

 

Luke 21.10-11 KWL

10 Then Jesus told them,

“Ethnic group will be pitted against ethnic group,

and kingdom against kingdom.

11 Both great quakes and scarcity in various places,

and plagues will happen.

Both terrifying events

and signs from heaven will happen.”

Éthnos tends to be translated “nation” because for the longest time, people presumed a nation was a country consisting of a homogenous people-group. Ancient Israel consisted only of the descendants of Israel ben Isaac, and ancient Edom of the descendants of Esau ben Isaac, and Moab of the descendants of Moab ben Lot, and so forth. They all had the same ethnic background and race.

Racists especially liked this theory. Even though it’s not wholly true. The LORD let people immigrate, y’know, and become Israeli. Like Ruth the Moabite, or Uriah the Hittite. Like Moses’s Cushite wife. Nu 12.1 (This isn’t the same woman as Zipporah the Midianite, Ex 2.21 even though many Jews insist she is; this is someone from Cush, which is south of Egypt.) Like any of the various Hebrews and Canaanites with whom Israelis intermarried till Ezra ben Seraiah cracked down on the practice in the fifth century BC. Every culture has had intermarriage with neighboring countries and foreigners—and sometimes it was a scandal, and sometimes not. Pretending it never happened, of course implies it’s scandalous.

But racists still think of nation as meaning the very same thing as ethnic group. So whenever they talk about “this nation,” their nation, that’s what they believe it oughta be: A country which only consists of people like them. They wanna purge the country of other races—or at least make ’em second-class citizens. It’s not natural, they insist, for a country to be made up of, or led by, multiple races.

Goodness never justified anyone. Faith does that.

Galatians 3.7-9 KWL

7 So know this: Those who act out of faith?

These people are Abraham’s “children.”

8 The scripture foresees how God deems righteous

the gentile peoples who act out of faith:

He pre-evangelized Abraham, saying,

“All the peoples will be blessed through you.” Ge 12.3, 18.18, 22.18

9 So those who act out of faith

are blessed alongside Abraham’s faith.

Previously:

“By Law we’re good as dead—so live for Jesus!” Ga 2.17-21

“How’d you get from grace to legalism?” Ga 3.1-4

Abraham’s faith. Ga 3.5-6

Too many Christians believe in some form of dispensationalism—where God has multiple systems for how to be saved. I’ve lost count of how many times people have told me, “God saves us by his grace now, but in Old Testament times, you had to obey the Law.”

No you didn’t. Because that’s not why the LORD saved the Hebrews from Egypt. It’s not why God appeared to Moses—years before he ever gave Moses the Law to follow; years before Moses even knew there was a Law. It’s not why he gave dreams to Joseph, why he gave visions to Jacob, why he straight-up appeared to Abraham and had lunch with him. Nor even why he rescued Noah and (probably) raptured Enoch.

It was always grace. It was always God’s attitude towards the people with whom he had loving interactive relationships. It was the whole reason Paul and other apostles kept quoting the Genesis passage where the LORD justified Abraham by his faith—he wasn’t justified by being a Law-abiding Jew, because there was no Law yet. Nor Jews.

Yet thanks to dispensationalists, I still hear people insisting grace is a New Testament thing, not an Old Testament thing. Every so often I’ll talk about where we see grace in the Old Testament, and somebody pipes up, “But grace came through Jesus Christ.” Jn 1.17 They don’t mean (as John did in that reference) Jesus makes grace possible throughout human history, including Old Testament times; they mean there was no such thing as grace before Jesus came around. That the people of the OT never experienced grace. Obviously they missed the entire point of the Exodus.

Nor have they read and understood Paul. He never taught dispensationalism. Doesn’t matter how many proof texts dispys will use from Paul’s letters to back their ideas: They’re not using a single one in context. Paul taught salvation came by grace. Always had. Always will. Came by grace to Abraham; came by grace to the Hebrews; came by grace to the Jews; comes by grace to the gentiles.

And to prove his case to the Pharisees in Galatia who claimed the new gentile Christians had to first follow the Law before they could be saved, Paul didn’t even have to quote Jesus; he quoted the very same Law which dispensationalists claim is about justification by works. The Old Testament scriptures “testify of me,” Jesus said, Jn 5.39 KJV so why shouldn’t we quote ’em for evidence? As Paul did repeatedly.

If dispensationalists are right, and the Law had ever been a legitimate means to salvation, Paul would’ve gone an entirely different tack. He’d have used the very same line dispys try to use on me: “That’s old covenant. We live under the new covenant.” (Oh, and don’t forget the condescending tone.)

But you’ve been reading my Galatians posts, right? (Hope so.) So you know Paul used no such argument; not even close. It’s “How’d you switch gospels?” Ga 1.6-7 It’s that if anyone teaches salvation comes any other way than God’s grace, ban them. Ga 1.8-9 Quit letting ’em teach!

Nondirectional prayer.

I’ve written about unidirectional prayer—those prayers where people figure they’re talking to God, but he never responds, because he doesn’t do that sort of thing. Either he’s holding off till the End, and we have to learn to live with silence; or he only speaks through the bible, signs, and omens; or, as nontheists suspect, he’s been a figment of our imagination all along.

Regular readers of TXAB are fully aware I believe the whole God-doesn’t-speak-anymore idea is a steaming pile of crap. God responds, and if you’ve never heard him respond, you gotta learn to hear him. Stop doing all the talking, sit down, and listen. Concentrate on a passage of scripture for a few minutes, and see whether the Holy Spirit drops some thoughts into your head. Meditate. Make the time to do this frequently, and keep doing it till hearing him becomes natural.

But back to the people who believe God won’t talk back, won’t respond, isn’t interactive, and isn’t gonna make special exceptions during this dispensation. Who think prayer isn’t about speaking with God; it’s really about other things. Like learning how to pray for his will. Or learning to have empathy for the folks we pray for. Or continuing in religious exercises for their own sake. Or doing it to feel spiritual. Or whatever other excuses they use to keep up the practice, even though they’re not so sure God’s on the other end of the line.

They may be unaware of this, but really what they’re teaching people prayer is about, is learning to live without God.

Seriously. Because if prayer doesn’t work—if God is never gonna answer—then functionally he’s not here. Despite the scripture saying he’ll never leave nor forsake us, He 13.5 he has. He’s removed himself; he’s elsewhere; he’s not here. We live in a God-forsaken universe. May as well become Buddhist.

So technically these folks aren’t even practicing unidirectional prayer. If God’s not here anymore, they’re practicing nondirectional prayer: Their prayers go nowhere. Not up nor down; nowhere. They take the form of being addressed to God; they may even include “in Jesus’s name.” But they’re wasted breath. Dead religion.

God doesn’t believe in no-win scenarios.

Back in seminary my theology professor introduced us to the concept of the tragic moral choice. Ancient Greek playwrights invented it for their tragedies: One god ordered the hero to do one thing, and another god ordered him to do just the opposite. Obeying one god meant sinning against the other god. And like us, the ancient Greeks recognized sin has dire consequences… and wanna bet their plays would show the consequences?

Now, we Christians don’t have multiple gods with conflicting wills. We only have the One God. Yes he’s in three persons, but the wills of all three persons are in absolute sync. God’s not the problem. We are. We sin, and we live in a sin-plagued world.

So in the Christian version of the tragic moral choice, we’re thrust into a scenario where all the possible outcomes are gonna be bad. The only choices we make are gonna be sinful ones. We can’t win. That’s just the world we live in.

Fr’instance imagine you’re hiding Jews from Nazis who wanna murder them. Suddenly the Nazis come knocking. What do you do?

• Duh; lie and say there are no Jews there. Except lying is sin. Yeah, it’s a really minor sin compared to Jews getting killed—and if the Nazis find out you’re lying, you’re getting murdered. Still, this is the option most people unthinkingly take, as the best-case scenario. Still, lying is sin.
• Give them up; let them be murdered just to save your own skin. True, you didn’t lie, but you did passively permit evil, so that’s sin.
• Try not to literally lie, and hope the Nazis misinterpret you and go away. Most Christians prefer this one… usually because we don’t recognize God doesn’t do loopholes. Still lying, no matter what you might tell yourself to salve your conscience. Still sin.

Basically you’re going with the least-evil option. But don’t kid yourself: They’re all evil. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Tragic moral choices make a really good intellectual problem, and great drama. But they’re really bad theology. ’Cause unlike the Greek gods, who’d mess with humans and watch us squirm for fun, God loves his kids and doesn’t abandon us to such tragedies. Says so in the scriptures.

1 Corinthians 10.12-13 NRSV

12 So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall. 13 No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.

Christians commonly misinterpret this to mean, “God will never give you more than you can handle,” which isn’t so. He regularly gives us more than we can handle—because he’s meant to handle it for us, and we need to stop striving and start trusting. But when it comes to temptation, he wants us to win. And there’s always a winning option. In every temptation.

Y’see, God doesn’t believe in the no-win scenario. Even though we might.