Ahem.. you can read Donnie’s post here.

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I haven’t read “The Myth of a Christian Nation” in particular, but there is a part of that philosophy that I’ve been wondering about.

I’m speaking purely philosophically now (not campaigning for Huckabee), but if one were a practicing Christian and there was a sincere politician – a True Believer as it were – that got into politics would you not support him? Is your safe distance from these candidates really part of some inspired ideal or is it just cowering in the face of public opinion?

I’m speaking purely philosophically now (not campaigning for parochial public schools), but if you really believe that everyone should know about Jesus, wouldn’t you be happy that children were being taught – sincerely now – about Him in schools? I see, the schools might screw it up, or use it as leverage for some other not-very-Chirstlike agenda. Let’s not even try. Okay…

The whole power-under thing is intriguing. I’m all for it really. I’m all for reaching people wherever and however you can. That said, there’s a common flaw in this and every philosophy that seems to be present no matter how idealistic the leaders seem to be.

That flaw is money. It’s easy to pigeonhole the one side – the “right-wing”, “fundamentalists”, whatever you want to call them always get the rap for being too greedy.

No one seems to talk about the other side though. Even the most politically liberal Christians take pause on the subject of money. I hear that Jesus wouldn’t want to be taught about in schools. I hear that Jesus wouldn’t want to be spoken about in government. But Jesus WOULD want the government to be in charge of redistributing the money.

So we don’t want the faith to be associated in people’s minds with the countless and unspeakable atrocities that America commits every day (yes that was sarcasm). So we get as far away as we can from identifying as a “Christian Nation”. Great! Let’s tell the government to institute a flat tax and halt all activities that disproportionately tax the wealthy! Let’s get out there and handle the evangelism AND the giving ourselves!

“But…. oh” you say, “Geez man.. wait.. let’s not get crazy now, Bill! We can trust people to reach souls, but they can’t be trusted to give. Let’s um… let’s make an exception here. Let’s just let the government help us with just the money part. Let’s let them keep up the good and efficient work of distributing our money like Jesus would want, but discourage anyone mentioning the J-word in public. How’s that grab you?”

If you really want the government out of it, let’s get the government out of it!

Several of you have lost hope in me now. You can just imagine me sitting there counting my money and watching Fox News – taking the occasional break to go downtown and run over poor people with my car. Let me tell you I don’t get Fox News anymore and I’ve never run anyone over. I’m not against giving either. I give a fair amount, and (for now) I could certainly give more. I’m not heartless – I just don’t like inconsistency.

EPILOGUE

That is pretty unfocused. That could have really been two or three posts, but there you have it.

We are encouraged every Sunday to get out there and bring Christ to the people. I don’t bring my faith to work, excepting the rare occasion that someone asks and only then when I’m sure no “offendable ears” are listening. That is partially because we (the team, not me personally) have already had unpleasantness over that sort of thing, but mainly because in most work places it just isn’t welcome.

The way they talk, it seems like a lot of people at Church would pat me on the back for this – this keeping of Christ in his place. That sounds weird when you say it like that – almost blasphemous.

I also worry about making public posts about this because I might have to interview for a job before and atheist web-surfer someday. Is that weird? Should I just redefine this fearfulness so it reads like an ideal? Would it change the fact that minding what you put online is a very real concern in today’s economy?

So many questions, but I do know a few things:

According to our founding legal documents, the “Christian Nation” in a legal sense may very well be a myth.

The “Separation Clause” is a myth too.

Anyway, he is blogging his way through a book entitled No Perfect People Allowed: Creating a Come As You Are Culture in the Church and recently wrote about some of the material in chapter two.

Also, I’m nearly ready to post a book report of my own – likely the first of many – though I’m just going to go ahead and do the entire thing in one shot

It’ll help if you take a minute to read the original post. Here is what I wrote:

I’m having some trouble reconciling

“How do we best contextualize the unchanging truths of Scripture in ways they can understand and live out in their culture?”

with

“Truth is relational.”

I’m not sure how exactly how “relational” is being used here, but the way it comes off on the surface seems a little hazardous.

It seems to say that what is necessary to reach a person and bring them into the church community is relative – changing based on the person and their circumstances.

I don’t think that is a very good way to define the Truth. The approach, as far as evangelism, would do well to adhere to that interpretation, but the core has to remain the same.

Jesus did indeed say “I am the truth.” He said, in fact “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” and then said “No one comes to the Father except through me.”

He didn’t say “No one comes to the Father except by a custom built path tailored for each individual relative to their experiences.”

I agree that a church should have wide open arms. None should ever be turned away, and it does disturb me when I see it happen. That said, it is a slippery slope to “reinterpret” too much when representing the Truth to someone.

A friend of ours says this on his blog page entitled “Emerging Me”:

“What if truth is a constant pursuit? What if it changes as we understand God’s love better? God does not change. And TRUTH does not change, but MY understanding of what I thought truth is changes.”

“What if [truth] changes…”
“…TRUTH does not change”

That doesn’t work. The truth isn’t a constant pursuit, though your understanding may be. You might, though, have been right the first time. Then you aren’t being progressive. You’re falling away.

If one has truly misunderstood, and has come closer to God by working through this misunderstanding, I think that is great!

That line of thinking; however, can be abused by rationalizing a denial of difficult truth by simply “understanding” it away. It seems like a pretty patronizing attitude to take with the King of Kings.

I think it is a matter of balance. On the cultural side, there are many ways to bring people to the Son. On the Truth side lies only one way to get to the Father.

I once asked a relative how she felt about someone dying and really not being sure if they were in heaven or not.

She said that she believes that regardless of life on earth, everyone gets a chance to accept or deny Jesus once they have died.

It isn’t true. No matter how good it makes you feel, or how much it motivates you to get up and get to church – it isn’t true.

I also had the opportunity to speak to the congregation about Financial Peace University. Usually when I speak in front of people part of my brain goes away to a happy place and the mouth just does its thing until my time is up. This time; however, I actually prepared, and made notes, and thought about what I would say before I got up there. That worked out pretty good, so “sorry” to all my speech teachers in school – you were totally right and I was wrong.

I do, apparently, have to start numbering my points. Derin was cool enough to point out that I delivered first, second, second, second, and last points during the speech. Oh well, those middle ones were tied for significance anyway.

We did have a few sign-ups to come to the preview class which, by the way, is free and is taking place on January 7th, so that was encouraging. It is no secret that it comes highly recommended from me. There is something for everyone in there – even those of you that have handled every dollar perfectly from the very first – I know, that’s everybody

In his book, The Total Money Makeover, Dave Ramsey recalls a pastor he had that said living right is difficult, but not complicated. It applies to almost everything, especially money. He goes on to say there are no “secrets of the rich” because the principles they use to become so aren’t secrets. Being a movie star or founding Microsoft would be the rarest of exceptions to the rule, that being that almost every millionaire in America did it the hard way. Hard, but not complicated.

I think we (humans) like to make things more complicated than they need to be because it creates more points of failure. More points of failure means more opportunities for excuses when we fail. I should expound upon that someday…

But not today! Looks like this’ll be the last from me until after Christmas, which we’ll be spending up in Iowa with the family.

Merry Christmas to everyone and travel safe!