City on a Hill

One of the constant struggles for a Christian seeking to follow God is to find the balance between showing righteousness (as understood by God) and resisting sinfulness (as understood by God). In church you will sometimes hear someone say "There are only two things you can do in this world which you can't do in heaven: sin and teach people about Jesus." The implied question is "what should our life be about?"

Some people believe that when someone becomes a Christian they some how can or some how ought to be able to resist sin in all situations and live with perfect integrity. This is not what the Bible teaches and not what has ever happened. Rather Christians are still tempted and sometimes allow themselves to be carried away, which is heartbreaking for God, the individual and all other Christians. In that sense it is one of a Christian's calling to resist sin in themselves and flee from things that influence them towards sin while chasing after things that influence them towards righteousness. This need has caused many Christians to flee from their world and society in order to live a more righteous life.

The problem with this is first that the isolated Christian or community is still infected by sin and though they may sin less (maybe) they still sin. So it is not as if withdrawing from the world really solves the problem.

But more important complete withdrawal is against God's will. The escape from sin was accomplished by Jesus Christ's death and resurrection and hiding from this wicked world does not accomplish it (otherwise we wouldn't have needed God to save us). But more than that God has specifically called Christians to be in the world, like a contrast to the normal worldly world.

Jesus described the believer's role like salt, which brings out flavor in food and also in His day was also for medicine. He also said His followers should be like light (a city on a hill) which people could clearly see or like a lamp on a table which exist specifically to be different than the darkness around it. This points to the Christian's need to be in the world of regular people and showing what God is like.

But in that same part Jesus reminds us that we are not supposed to be like the world, if a salt loses its saltiness no one would keep it, a lamp under a basket is useless. Christians are not just supposed to be in the world with Christian bumper stickers but in the world while also different from the world.

The problem and conflict for a believers is that just as the light of Christ found in us can influence people in the world towards Christ... so too can people in the world influence the believer towards the world. "Bad company corrupts good character." (1 Cor 15:33) So there is a kind of balancing act where a Christian needs to soberly and wisely understand when we are showing others what God is like through their good conduct, self-control and grace towards others ... and there are times where we are falling into the same kind of thing that everyone does.

I haven't got it all figured out but I think the answer goes something like this: recovering alcoholics should not hang out bars.

Dan Savage, Rick Warren Debate

I wrote:
In your response to "Faithful Obama Girl" you refer to Rick Warren as a "gay-hatin', right-wing Christian bigot." I found this confusing. I can understand that he represents a political/social faction which has an agenda opposed to your own. I can also imagine that I can not even begin to imagine how any criticism of a gay lifestyle takes a sinister aura when it has a religious basis. However, is it accurate to describe Warren this way? Certainly, he does speak against the gay lifestyle, but would you say that anyone who does this is a hateful bigot? Is there a difference between the beliefs of Rick Warren and those of Fred Phelps?

I could understand if you described Warren (or myself) as a dangerously deluded Christian fanatic because you believe that our beliefs naturally lead towards the hateful bigotry of Phelps. I would disagree but differentiate between that description and the one you gave.

A Biblical Christian

The Depraved Nature of Man

I am reading an introduction to the tenants of Calvinism.

I like the way the book approaches the issue. It is a text book that I found but starts by wanting to establish the fundamental principle of Calvinism. The idea of Pre-destination and the depraved nature of man are the most controversial Calvinist ideas but it makes sense that they are not the key, fundamental be-all end-all of any system of thought.

The author establishes that "the sovereignty of God" as the central theme of Calvinism in the same way that the catholicity of the church is the central theme of the Roman Catholic church or salvation through grace is central to Lutheranism. But that is not what I'm writing about.

What I disagree about is the statement "the Bible maintains that man is totally depraved." It is not that I am a huge defender of the mankind and am dead set against the idea that we are depraved... it is that through my reading of the Bible I could not say that it says that man is "totally depraved."

Perhaps the statement is poorly made by Calvinist or maybe it means something other than the common use of the word. The common use of the word, in my best understanding, is that to be "totally depraved" is to be completely without any boundaries or conscience at all, to be a maniac and fully without any virtue at all, worthy of nothing except destruction.

Where Calvinism and I agree is that the Bible presents a picture in which each man is on a path that either leads to perfection with God, through Jesus Christ or else is on a path that leads to total depravity. Everyone is sort of good and sort of bad but if extended towards eternity we are progressing/digressing towards one state of the other. If that is what Calvinism states then we agree... but they state it poorly... they state it incorrectly.

But if my understanding of what it means to be "totally depraved" is correct then the Bible does not present or teach that people are currently depraved. It also does not present or teach that only Christians or Jews are the only kind of people who have virtue. For example Jesus makes a point about some virtue that his contemporaries posessed and he said "Even pagans do this." This would suggest that not all pagans are eating their children.

How I would state the issue in a way I believe best describes what the Bible says over all is that without divine intervention all men are on a path that will lead to complete depravity and that our best efforts are insufficient to solve this. If I interpret the Calvinist tenant that way I have yet to encounter any problem with their theology (so far... I'm like on chapter 2)