A Jester in the King's Court

Ok, I think after 3 posts…it’s time to wax somewhat theological. I wax this way often. A theological waxing is much cheaper, and often less painful than any other waxing a person may do. From what I’m told. Being a man, I’ve never had to pay someone money to put hot glue on a piece of paper, press it to a b’hair portion of skin, and then rip it off. But, that is beside the point….

Topic: Cheap Grace (suggested by me…inspired by my theology class)

Back in pre-Nazi Germany, a pastor named Deitrich Bonhoeffer (if it’s misspelled, that’s because it’s German, not because I’m inadequate….though I am also German…I think I just dissed myself) who wrote a book called The Cost of Discipleship. It is an amazing book, and is one of those books everyone should read (much like The Great Divorce By my boy Clive, and I Am America (And So Can You!) by Stephan Colbert, but dedicated to heroes like you). I would actually say The Cost needs to be read more today than it has in decades past.

Tuesday night in my theology class, we had a talk about what the bear minimum was someone had to believe to be saved. Now, it as a neat exercise, and one I will do with my youth group soon, but please realize I hate the question. It sounds minimalist…as though the reason Christ died for the lost was merely to keep them out of hell. But, not the point. So, as we started listing what had to be held to….we ended up with a list that looked like this:

Believe we are sinners
Believe Jesus is God
Believe in the God of the Bible
Believe that Jesus Died for our sins
Believe Jesus rose from the dead
Believe Jesus is the only way to God
Believe we are saved by grace through faith and not by anything we do

There were a few others, but we realized that they were all subsumed under other headings. Anyway, once we boiled the list down to these few points, a few people in the class started talking about how the list was too long, and that people don’t need to believe in that much to be saved.

Ok, so…here’s the gig…we are already doing an exercise that minimizes Jesus’ missions quite a bit….but then we have people that look at that minimum and say its too large? That we need to put less doctrine in the salvation experience, because its about a process…or about a journey…and not what you know? I fully agree salvation is a process…Paul talks in 2 Cor about those “being” saved. We are continually experiencing salvation as believers…and God does take us on a journey to meet Him. But that does not mean, as was suggested, that we are saved at the moment of realizing I sin and there’s a God. If that was the case…then let’s stop wasting time talking to LDS, JW’s, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, etc. The Buddhists and atheists are what need our help.

Now, the saddest thing about this…is that of the 7 points listed above….only “we’re sinners” got 100% of the vote out of that Southern Baptist class room. The rest were seen as too stringent. As it were, too costly. One point brought up for the list, was that Christians need to die to self…and it was defined the same way repentance would be really. And 3 of us voted for it. 3 out of 20 SBC students thought that you actually need to turn from your life and submit to it Christ to be saved.

I hope that others in there just didn’t understand what was being asked…but from what I can see…the church is full of people right now that don’t think it’s important to know who Christ is when you trust Him, and that trusting him doesn’t mean at all that you submit to Him. And not only is the church full of them…but they are studying to lead the church. This is why we have to endure heretics like TD Jakes, Benny Hinn, Tony Jones and Brain McClarian. This is why we have to deal with fools like Joel Olsteen, Doug Pagiatt and a third teacher that everyone loves so much that including his name would only spark anger here. We don’t care about truth anymore. We care about making people feel good and accepted…and that’s it. We care about calling people Christians, instead of confirming that they are. We care about getting as many people on the broad path that we can, rather than actually directing them to the narrow way Christ spoke of.

Now that’s bothersome.

I need topics for my next more humorous post.