Posted on by Abe Austin

Deeper Love- Common Criticisms

Disagreements on Love)

As a traditional Christian, I have been challenged about how I can follow Jesus’s admonition to love everyone, and also be opposed to certain lifestyles, particularly those under the LGBT umbrella. I’d like to take a couple posts to address this matter. Sometimes I feel these questions are posed in good faith, and sometimes not, but in both cases, I believe the inquirer deserves for me to have ordered my thoughts and feelings into a coherent and genuine answer.

To start things off for today, I do have to point out why I say that sometimes these questions are not asked in good faith. I believe that many of the people asking these questions don’t actually believe that disapproval precludes love. We all have people that are very close to us, that engage in something that we think is hurtful, that we wish they felt differently on, that we fundamentally disagree with them about. Whether it be politics, or self-destructive behavior, or mannerisms, we all see flaws in other people, even the ones we love most. Yes, differences of opinion can become a source of hostility, and sour love in a relationship, but we all know that it doesn’t have to be that way. We can both love a person and disagree with parts of them.

Of course, it is true that I could profess to be a Christian and also have a deep hate and resentment for everyone in the LGBT community. That is a possibility, but it is not a foregone conclusion. It is also possible that I can both love and disagree.

Narrow Questions)

I do also find it interesting that I only ever get these questions related to people living an LGBT lifestyle. As a traditional Christian, there are many other lifestyle choices that I am also opposed to, yet no one ever asks me why I “don’t love them.” For example, I’m just as opposed to fornication, adultery, and most forms of divorce. Why not challenge me as to whether I can still love a person who cheated on his spouse or who got a divorce because he just wasn’t feeling it anymore?

From what I have observed, it seems that the love of Christians is only brought into question on LGBT matters because that movement is unique in its requirement for total acceptance. The fact that these questions only come up in such narrow contexts suggests more about the views of the people that ask them than they say about me and my views.

I think it’s also worth noting that among all the behaviors that I renounce as a Christian are ones that I struggle with also! I have spoken at some length on this blog about my addiction to pornography, which I absolutely condemn as one of the greatest evils of our day. I have always known that it is wrong, and every time that I’ve engaged with it I’ve felt deep shame, but also each time I strive to fall back in love with the Son of God that still lives inside of me. Thus, on questions of whether I can disapprove of behavior but still love the individual, my practice begins with myself.

Posted on by Abe Austin

A Loving Relationship with Christ- False Comforts

Twisting the Love of Christ)

There are a number of false doctrines relating to our relationship with God that are taught in the world today. There are those that say God does not exist and there is no absolute moral truth, so we may do whatever society will allow. There are those that say God does exist, and we must obsess over every shortcoming, trying to attain perfection on our own. But it is not as though unbelief is always paired with moral depravity, and belief with moral legalism. There are also those that mix the two in strange ways.

One example that I have seen repeatedly are so-called Christians who live in or support direct violations of God’s commands, and when challenged on that incongruity say something along the lines of, “Jesus loves us, no matter what we do.” Because they know Jesus loves everyone, they are sure that he accepts everyone, and to suggest otherwise is a hateful suggestion that he really doesn’t love anybody.

In short, they conflate love with acceptance and twist the gospel message. It is a difficult issue to disentangle, because they actually do have a correct understanding of the nature of Christ, but a terrible misunderstanding of what that actually means in regard to our salvation.

Roadmap)

In the course of this study, I am going to try and correct this confusion. I am going to start by acknowledging the points that the morally liberal Christian gets right but then show where they go astray. I will use scriptures to establish what the correct conception of our relationship with Christ is, and the signs by which we can gauge how aligned we are with those truths.

My purpose in doing this is not to be cruel to those who invoke the love of Christ incorrectly. To be frank, I do believe that they need to be awoken to the pain and guilt of wrong actions, but not because I desire ill for them, but because for all of us this is the first step to true healing and joy. I seek to dispel the palliative lies, only so that we can live in the healing truth.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Christian Submission

In what way have you given up your own will
And submitted to God’s instead?
And if you haven’t
And if you won’t
Then can you call yourself a Christian?

Matthew 7:21; Matthew 16:24

Posted on by Abe Austin

Grit vs Surrender- The Core Disagreement

The Outsider’s Perspective)

I began this study focused on the secular humanist, who balks at the idea of God’s commandments restricting his pursuits of pleasure. Afterwards, I shifted to the confused Christian, who is frustrated by his attempts to obey God while still holding part of his heart back. I’ve spent some time in that latter category, and would like to briefly shift back to the secular humanist, and how he often misinterprets adherence to the laws of God.

From the secular humanist’s perspective, God and His commandments are understood as a checklist, one series of behaviors that are forbidden and one series of behaviors that are required. Thus, an individual’s level of obedience can be measured by a simple comparison to that list. The more points where you align with God’s law, the better you are in His eyes. If you get enough points right, Jesus will cover the rest and you get to go to Heaven, but if you are off on too many points, God will send you to Hell.

Thus, many secular humanist say they reject Christianity because they are not willing to conform to lists of rules that they don’t believe in. Many of them believe that God doesn’t exist, or that if He does that Christians fundamentally misunderstand Him, and that He really want people to be true to their own autonomy. Or if the Christian God did exist, the secular humanist concludes that He is a tyrant, and being true to one’s own autonomy and being damned for it would still be more noble than subservience to a cosmic taskmaster.

Autonomy as a God)

In short, the secular humanist sees autonomy as the ultimate ideal. It is the highest god that it would be blasphemous to sacrifice for anything else. Any discussion about commandment-following is therefore a distraction. True, the secular humanist might not want to adhere to those commandments, but the deeper, core issue is that they worship the autonomous self over any creator God.

To the secular humanist, the following of the commandments would be torture, because they would refuse to let go of their sense of autonomy. Every commandment would be like a shard, cutting deeply into them, fundamentally opposed to their most-precious ideal.

I think if Christians and secular humanists understood this, they could actually discuss the real issue, instead of quibbling over this side business of following rules. Yes, the true gospel of Jesus Christ leads to obeying God’s commandments, but that’s not really what it’s about at its core. It’s about letting one’s will be absorbed into the Almighty’s, and the Christian who isn’t willing to do that is outside true theology just as much as the secular humanist.

I won’t take the time to exhaust all of the reasons why the surrender of autonomy to God is essential in Christian theology, I am only interested in making the point that this is the true disagreement between it and secular humanism. I will, at least, use tomorrow’s post to share one of the reasons that the scriptures tell us that surrender is essential, but beyond that I would have to do a separate study to truly explore the matter.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Grit vs Surrender- The Gritty Life

Eternal Conflict)

In my last post I discussed how God’s commandments invite us to relinquish the slavery of our sin. Ego, lust, and vanity all make demands of us, they make us do things that are harsh and damaging, but then God sets us free. Those of us that see God’s commandments as oppressive assume that vice is a basic human need. Only when we see vice for the chains that they are, do we understand that God’s intention for us is liberation.

Thus far this message of freedom has been directed to those that suffer under the tyranny of sin but have not yet realized it. Today, though, we will shift focus to those that understand the greater liberty of righteousness, but who struggle with the part that still clings to their vices.

There are many faithful, including myself, who know their vices, who wish to be rid of them, who believe that life will be better and freer once we do, but who still keep a part of those vices even so. Many-a-time we try to make a clean cut from our old ways but continually wind up back where we started. Some of us have simply resolved that this is our cross to bear throughout the rest of our lives, never accepting the vice, always fighting against its pull, but never being totally rid of it either. From this view, grit and effort are simply part of what it means to be a Christian.

Still Holding Back)

And there may actually be some truth in that perspective, but also there is some lie. I will speak from my own experience. I have certainly struggled back and forth, working my hardest against my carnal self, trying to make some progress by taking two-steps-forward-and-one-step-back. As I have investigated this experience, though, I have found that the real root of my struggle is that I’m still holding something back from God.

Initially, I didn’t even realize that I was doing so. And even when I started to assume that I was still holding something back, I didn’t know right away what it was. I had assumed that I just enjoyed my vices, but on closer inspection, the reasons for holding onto them went much deeper than surface desire. Typically, I do the vices as a way to cover something more tender and vulnerable that I’m not yet ready to commit to the will of God.

Thus, I try to make myself better, but because I’m not identifying the core vulnerability and not ready to surrender it to God, I’m destined to fail. I am setting myself up for a life of continually trying, and slipping, and trying again. It is a hard life to live. It is a gritty life. It might be a step up from a life of wanton indulgence, but it is still not the life that God meant for me to live.

Thus far, I’ve spoken of things in general. Tomorrow, I’ll give a specific example of a vice that I struggled with for years, and the unwillingness to surrender that was behind it.

Posted on by Abe Austin

A Foundation Built on God- Life Defined by Faith

Jesus foretold that, “Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity,” (Matthew 7:23). This is a sobering warning to Christians everywhere that many who think they are in alignment with the Lord are actually offensive to Him.

There are multiple conceivable ways that Christians would find themselves on the left hand of the Lord. Perhaps they are hypocrites, professing Christ’s name but still harboring secret sin. Perhaps they treat Christianity as a political cudgel, using it to condemn those that they have no right to. Perhaps they are social Christians only, going to church and saying prayers, but more dedicated to the false churches of social trends.

I believe there are many in that last category. People that treat Christianity as a garnishment to the rest of their life, not the foundation and basis of the entire thing. It is, frankly, a way of being that I continually struggle with also. Most especially I lapse in my prayers because I am just too preoccupied with the distractions of the world, too concerned what I might miss out on if I make time “just” for connecting to God.

Obviously, I do perform a scriptural/spiritual study each weekday, and I do believe that that has helped a good deal in keeping God elevated in my mind, but I do crave more. With this short study I am going to try and identify for myself how I might do better in this aspect of daily prayer.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Basis for Judgment: Assuming the Divine

Yesterday I started to speak about the difference between humanity and machines. It makes no difference to a machine whether they are used for their intended purpose or an adulterated one. Machines do not even care if they are used in such a way that destroys themselves. Machines do not have any objective truth ingrained within them.

Humanity, on the other hand, possesses all these things. It matters that we function as designed, that we do not destroy ourselves, that we are in alignment with the truth that we are built from. Misalignment in any of these categories causes frustration, depression, and culminates in real tragedy. Real hearts become broken, real potential becomes lost, real tears are shed.

Our society is taking apart its own foundation under the logic that there is no such thing as objective truth, that no principle is sacred, that every belief can be discarded without consequence. But if this is true, then by that same logic, all of the new philosophies being championed today also have no objective truth, are not sacred, and can be discarded without consequence. If you argue that Christianity has to go to make a better world, then you are conceding that there is such a thing as better, which is also to concede that there is an ideal, which would bethe end result of following every “better.” And what would the ideal be based on if not objective truth? What would the ideal be if not sacred? What would the ideal be if not undiscardable? To claim that there is a better, is to claim that there is an ultimate destination, and that must be sacred.

Of course, this isn’t to say that all traditions must be sacred, or all traditions must be superfluous. To be sure, the world does at all times and in numerous ways need to change. There really are traditions that are not aligned to truth, that are not sacred, that can be discarded. Sometimes massive overhauls have been necessary to bring mankind closer to objective truth and the ideal. All of this is true, but then these changes ought to be grounded in universal truth and the ideal. Historically, our greatest reformers understood that the only reasonable justification for change was to show that it was tied to the divinity that encompasses us all. Just look at a few key examples here in America: the founding of our nation with its basic freedoms, the abolition of slavery, and the civil rights movement. These were all based on the notion that some tradition or status quo needed to change to bring humanity closer to the universal truth that it was created from. Most of the main figures in these movements justified the new principles by showing how they were based in scripture or theology, that they were principles given by God Himself, thus showing that the change was bringing us closer to what was universally right.

Sadly, this is not the mindset that much of the social change in the western world takes today. The 1960s represent a turning point in how we have justified change and social “improvement.” Martin Luther King, Jr. was one of the last of a dying breed, a spiritual man who sought changes based on a reasonable understanding of universal truth. He is deservedly revered today, but we do not follow his example well. Even during his lifetime, a more base template for effecting change was emerging, coming into full swing as the sexual revolution. Here was a fundamental upset to the established order, based not on alignment with God, but with the self.

Things have only continued in that deplorable strain. Our society has since championed all forms of promiscuity, infidelity, sexual perversion, identity confusion, and self-worship. To accomplish this, society has cast down principles of self-control, public decency, innocence of the youth, the life of the preborn, religious tradition, responsibility and duty, and love of country. Society has not made these changes in the name of alignment to some higher power or greater truth, but by claiming that the self is the highest power and greatest truth. Man has become his own god, and in so doing, denied his connection to true divinity.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Basis for Judgment: Today’s Social Waves

Thus far I have examined the shifting beliefs and philosophies of the world, and how we tend to be changed by them over time, constraining our thoughts to certain patterns so that we stop being able to conceive of other alternatives. In my perspective, basic Christian and traditional principles are becoming progressively unfathomable to the western world.

I will be specific. Abortion, gay marriage, transgender medical procedures, euthanasia, and complete uniformity in the nature of men and women. These are the main social waves that I see taking our western world from its foundational Christian values. Some of these are firmly in opposition with Christianity, others are only at odds dependent on the degree to which they are pursued.

I believe that the media overemphasizes the conversion of the world to these agendas, presenting these as closed cases, when the battle is actually very much alive. Unfortunately, the media is the community that primarily surrounds and shapes us today, and what it presents as a decided principle tends to become the social reality soon enough.

Earlier, I discussed the parable of the Emperor’s New Clothes. Take any of the issues I mentioned above and replace the “clothes” with that philosophy. The media insists that everyone else already sees the “Emperor’s clothes”, and the individual comes to believe that everyone really does. The individual feels that there is something wrong with himself that he does not see the clothes, so he advocates for the clothes even if he does not actually see them. He describes them by simply parroting the descriptions that others have said. Most shockingly, in time he may come to truly believe that he does see them, too.

And what is the harm in all of this? Why is it at a bad thing if we as a society evolve and embrace new ideas, even if it means throwing out the theologies of old? We have discarded many antiquated beliefs, such as our superstitions, and we consider that a good and progressive thing, so why not this? Why can’t everything be cast aside if it is deemed outdated and replaced with what the masses decide is good for now?

I concede that there would not technically be any harm in this if we were merely machines changing software. To the computer, there is no difference between running its original programming or running malware. It continues happily either way, because the wires and bits have no objective truth to follow. Any failure to fulfill the purpose of their designer makes no difference to the dead material that composes the machine. Even if a virus causes the machine to run overly hard until it completely breaks itself and ceases to function at all, the machine does not care.

But mankind is not this way. Mankind is not a machine. Mankind is inseparably connected to its creator and to an objective truth, and the destruction of mankind is of great consequence. We will explore this more tomorrow.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Optimism in a Falling World- Faith, Hope, and Charity

Over these past few days I have considered the roles of faith, hope, and charity. Specifically I have considered how each of them is integral to being invested in this world, rather than stepping aside and letting it fall to ruin.

These three qualities are definitely linked to one another. We must first have hope in God and His purposes. We must have hope that He is able to reclaim our own soul from ruin, and then we can foster hope in His ability to reclaim the souls of our brothers and sisters as well. With that spark of hope we can then act in faith, investing in our communities and nations, trying to bring some good into them, even when we’re not sure how we will succeed. And integral to all this work is to have genuine charity for those we work with. We need to have an unconditional love, even for those who do not give us a reason to love them.

And it is important to note that none of these qualities can be taken for granted. It might be tempting for us to say “well I’m a Christian, of course I live with charity,” when in reality this is not a given. I called myself a “christian” for many years, and all the while had a hopeless outlook on my own soul. Having no hope, I was incapable of investing faith to care for myself. And as I was unable to give those kindnesses to myself, I certainly didn’t have the capacity for charity for my fellow-man. Having the label of a “baptized christian” meant absolutely nothing about me. It certainly did not mean that I was actually a Christian.

Possessing these qualities does not come cheaply. Perhaps some of us are more naturally inclined to one of them or the other, but I think it is fair to say that all of us have a great deal of work ahead if we mean to achieve all three. None of us are born a full and complete Christian, we have to work our way into it.

I also want to emphasize that if there are any of us who are giddy for the destruction of the wicked, then they we do not possess charity and are not true Christians. And if there are any of us who wish the world was better but are not willing to do the work to help it be so, then we do not possess faith and are not true Christians. And if there are any of us who have just given up on the world, then we do not possess hope and are not true Christians. Faith, hope, and charity are not things a Christian should have, they are things that a Christian must have, or they are not a true Christian.

And I do not mean any condemnation by that. I used to be devoid of these qualities as well. I was not a true Christian, but I was able to become one, and so can anyone else. In fact, even true Christians must continue striving to become ever more so.

Posted on by Abe Austin

What Sort of Disciple Are You?- Personal Example

I spent two years of my life serving a mission in the Caribbean. It was a wonderful opportunity to see various countries and cultures, and be educated by the similarities and differences between them. One trend that stood out to me was how powerful of an influence one’s society could be.

For example, it was not uncommon to hear of individuals changing their religion after moving to another country. Hindus from Guyana might very well become Christians after moving out to the islands, to better fit in with those around them. Similarly, Christians from the islands might become Hindus after moving to Guyana.

I, myself, come from an environment where a single religion makes up the majority of the culture. Many that move here join the religion, and so long as one remains in this bubble it is far easier to maintain that faith. It is very easy to believe that we are the way that we are forever, that we would never embrace a different walk of life. But if you have never lived in a culture where you are a minority, then you do not realize how tempting it is to change yourself just to fit it in.

Our default tendency is to believe whatever we are surrounded by. It is possible to believe more deeply than this, but that requires conscious, intentional discipleship. Whatever your religion is, it may be helpful to ask yourself if you are that religion because it is convenient, or because you actually believe in it. For example, I am a Christian, but is that because I am surrounded by Christians, or do I really and truly believe that Christ is the only way to spiritual perfection. Do I really believe that his teachings will provide me peace and fulfillment that I cannot find in any other place? I do, but I had to do real work to obtain that belief.