The View from the West Mesa

While surfing the net looking for churches, I came across a widely known church's website. Very well done graphics and organization for the most part. Unfortunately, it was difficult to find anything that described what they believed except for an oft-repeated refrain, "It's all about Jesus." Not very helpful really. I mean, that's like motherhood and apple pie, right? Is it really all about Jesus? I know that at first blush, who could argue with such a statement? And I admit that as far as it goes, it's an OK statement. But not in the absence of any amplifying descriptions. As some of you may have noticed, I get a little concerned when folks want me to believe it's all about anything, and this is no exception. Let's get the obligatory disclaimers out of the way up front. I am a disciple, I accept Jesus as the divine Son of God and savior of the world. I understand that his coming and death were pre-ordained by God. I understand the expectation...

One more observation from Sunday. I have kept this a separate observation because it's implications are so far reaching. Our speaker Sunday made the observation, I think, or maybe he just recalled this to mind for me, that there is no secular existence. We Christians often get bogged down in church doctrinal discussions because we want to make a distinction between our "regular lives," and our "church lives." This is a problem because it belies the realization that we don't really buy into this Christian faith as fully as we say we do. You've heard this before, but we seem to forget it when we leave the church property. We live as though there is a difference between our church existence and our weekly existence. We run the risk in making the same mistake that the People of God have made repetitively through history. We forget that we are his people in his creation for his purposes. We are his people every moment of our lives whether we are at ...

Our speaker on Sunday, aside from what I observed in my previous post, did have some good, positive and on-topic things to say. The most important thing is that salvation has never really been about getting to Heaven. We aren't called to be baptized and then go to church hoping to not sin to the point of being excluded from Paradise. We are called to a salvation life now, right here, right now. Some people refer to this as our baptized life or even living into our baptism, a phrase I like because it parallels the idea of living into the likeness in which we are made.  If salvation isn't about getting to Heaven, then what is it about? If you read my previous post, you already know that it's about transformation; about coming to actually be the image of God in it's finer details. We take on the character of God as our character; it becomes the warp and woof of our very existence. This is not a mere learning do be nice, although we will be. It isn't about learning...

Today we were told that "relationship trumps doctrine," and that "it [the Gospel] is all about relationships." The problem of course, is that neither of those are correct. More correctly, they are both less than complete. I understand that when giving a class, it is often difficult to tie the topic up in a bow in one session, relying on subsequent sessions to clarify and bound the initial "hook." Unfortunately, our speaker only had today to launch into this discussion. When you are confronted with that challenge, a speaker should figure out a way to bound his statements or pick a topic that is more restrictive and more easily explained. It isn't as though our speaker was rushed for time, he had plenty of opportunity to clarify his statements so that they would represent the whole of Scripture rather than this tiny bit. He simply didn't. A moment's reflection will reveal that relationship does not in fact trump doctrine in an absolute ...