“Disturbing doctrine” –by Steven Fisher
I’ve been serving the homeless with a new friend this week. We went to 3 cities over 3 days to feed and minister to hundreds of “the least of these”. Oh, she’s a she. Almost immediately my buddies started teasing me about “my new girlfriend”. I’m glad they’re quick to point out potential specks even when they know my call to singleness.
What did I learn from this?
Jesus meets a woman at a well. So what? Aside from being a great story about living water and the division of Isaac and Ishmael, it’s important to note that the New Testament writer finds Jesus’ purity in this simple meeting so interesting that it actually gets a mention in the cannon. She must’ve been A) a prostitute, or B) super freakin hot.
Did his friends wonder?
Did they tease him?
We call him Messiah, but to James and Andrew he was just a guy. A popular, dangerous, radical guy. But still, a guy.
A single guy.
Hanging with the divorcee.
Here’s what the Bible says in John4:27.
“Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”
Why were there no chants of “someone’s got a girlfriend!”?
I think it’s because they expected more of their Rabbi.
I want my friends to expect more from me.
Does our faith boil down to just what we believe true for ourselves? We are quick to judge, quick to point a finger, quick to condemn others when it serves us, but not so much when it comes to our friends, neighbors, and popular leaders. Are we the pharisee Christ speaks to when he says “you burden your people with unbelievable loads but won’t lift one finger to keep them from stumbling?” Hypocrites. Brood of vipers.
Some of us still believe the bible to be the inerrant, inspired, word of God.
Don’t we?
Ephesians 5:3 says this.
“But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people.
Here are a few other things we “believe”.
1) In our modern day and age, premarital sex is okay because it’s era consistent and an acceptable moral state as viewed by society at large. (worship leader)
2) Oral sex and assisted manual release (a reach around) is okay because that’s not really sex. (pastoral intern)
3) Sexual advances, requests, and explicit verbal descriptions is perfectly fine with your ministry partners. (Youth ministry assistants)
4) Having sex with a student is okay if they turn 18 during the school year. (2 private school teachers)
5) If a man won’t be a man of God and keep me pure, then AFTER we have sex I break it off, because HE can’t be called to holiness. Sex is your parting gift. (small group leader)
6) Getting a lapdance is okay as long as the stripper isn’t “saved”. You don’t lust after the sisters in church, and you’re not really sinning because the dancer, having not yet accepted Christ, is dead anyways. (small group leader)
7) A man is supposed to have sex. That way God knows he is not a gay. (layperson)
8 ) This (2 extra marital affairs within church leadership at the same time) is between those involved and God. Who are we to judge? (pastors and worship leaders)
Who are we to judge?
The obvious response is “are you freakin kidding me?”
I’m more surprised by the fact that these mindsets are so prevalent that we actually feel it’s wrong or “intolerant” to get involved.
I asked a good friend to review this. She replied that I should check my heart to make sure I’m not trying to get even with the people that made these statements.
I was not expecting that.
I would however, expect that if the bride of Christ was being raped and beaten, sacked and used against her will, that the first thing people would call for would be removal from positions where church leaders screen the flock for new bedroom talent and places where pervs that distort Christ are given access to your 17 year old sons and daughters!
Check my heart.
Do I do that before the pastor gets a reacharound or afterwards? He’ll probably want to take a little nap. I should wait. Should I check my heart before tipping the stripper, after I’ve washed up, or after I’ve convinced my girlfriend that since we’re sooooo really in love, we should move in together? You want a big wedding, right? Really this is a better way for us to save money. And hey babe, technically we’re already married in Gods eyes, we don’t need some consumer driven wedding industry to make our love official if it’s real in our hearts. We can just lie here and sleep …we won’t let it get too far…well, okay…just the tip, just for a second, just to see how it feels.
Maybe that’s where I’ll start checking my heart. At the tip.
I wonder if that’s what the captain of the Titanic thought…just the tip, just for a second, just to see how it feels. How’d that work out again?
These cavalier and casual attitudes towards bad behavior are really distressing. We stand up and shout for children in foreign lands, or people without enough food to eat, we call our senators to ask for new legislation and laws, we have reverse confessionals asking forgiveness for all the wrongs the church has done over the years, all the while we ourselves are unwilling to take a stand or to call for any real accountability and righteousness in Gods house. Brood of vipers.
Here’s a question.
Is it wrong to ask the pedophile to stop molesting your four year old?
Would that be insensitive?
Is it intolerant of the pedophiles needs?
Is that too edgy? Too close to the daily news? Too real?
Be careful, try not to offend. Everybody stumbles.
What he/she really needs here is prayer.
Agreed.
Lots of prayer.
However, before we pray I’d really like for him to stop touching my daughter and do everything I could to get him away from the rest of my children.
Ummm….I agree with the very aggressive message you wrote, however, your point was easily taken….even without having to use the F dot-dot-dot word.
Yep. There’s a few things I could have said with less emphasis for sure. However, it’s interesting that while a summit county mother grieves over her little girl being raped this summer, more people are concerned with my intentional bad language than with the mental, physical and spiritual health of this girl and a family that is now distanced from the church, and more importantly, from GOD.
Please do not miss the truth in that.
I’m guilty of many bad decisions, including trampling over vs 4 with an F-bomb…but I hope I never have to stand before God and have him say that because I was neither hot nor cold, I can’t use you and will spit you out of my mouth.
Can’t imagine what the mother is going through, let alone the little girl, and my message did not convey any type of insensitivity at all. Let me be very clear about that! What I, and perhaps the others you referred to as being more concerned about your foul language than the main point of the article was, when you are trying to “walk the walk” for Christ, you better be darn careful what comes out of your mouth for everyone to hear or read. As Christians people are watching us like hawks. It’s called discernment and needs to be used. I don’t know, perhaps you’re a young Christian, so forgive me if the Lord is using this as another lesson learned. Good article, I’ll give you that much, just needed alittle cleaning up.
“As Christians people are watching us like hawks.” This is exactly my point!!!
The world hears us say one thing, yet sees something so far removed from our beliefs that we look nothing like the church we claim to represent. I am only a 10 year old in Christ, still learning and still maturing…but when I grow up i hope to be known as the man of God that people look to for light and hope, for peace, joy, and love, and know that when it comes to right, is not going to waffle or back down because it’s not popular at the moment.
Thank you so much for sharing your heart and for reading, I’m blessed, inspired, and sharpened by our conversation!
Sometimes the “moral compass” needs a bit of calibration. There are instances in life when in order to get a piece of machinery or an electronic item to work properly one must be intimate with the subtle nuances; there will often exist some method of “gentle persuasion” employed that will yield the desired response, but there are times when these simple and gentle methods fail and then one must oftne resort to the less gentle and somewhat less subtle persuasion of the purposefully and well placed strike of a hammer.
As to Steve’s use of the “F” word, I understand that some might find that offensive, but in the context it serves the purpose efficiently and effectively…the bigger question in my mind is why on typical television, one will not hear the “F” word, or the street terms related to bodily excretory function, etcetera, but using God as a prefix to damn or damned seems to be perfectly acceptable; I am sorry, I find that much more offensive than any of the other words currently deemed as offensive by “our” FCC.
At the risk of getting off the apparent topic of Steve’s colorful metaphors: I salute you for being one more person willing to take a stand on sexual purity. It’s not the cool thing to do (the cool thing, seemingly, is to have emotionally detached semi-anonymous sex early and often) but it’s the good thing to do; “good” in the way that God is good and not merely nice. Having in earlier years been through the self-delusion of “We can just lie here and not cross any lines” and suffered the emotional and sexual brokenness that comes thereafter, I’ve got a profound respect for anyone willing to push the issue of purity and not shy away for fear of being either too explicit or too prude in others eyes. Press on.
(As a side note: if only to avoid the kind of controversy you see above, which distracts people from your message, I’d cut back a bit on the profanity. That’s a lesson I learned from Mike Sares and a certain Christmas Eve reading of “the F-bomb poem” that landed us in Christianity Today’s blog a full four times…none of which would have bothered me if people had actually listened to the poem instead.)
Steve,
I loved it. Right to the core…straight to the point. I cannot even believe people got so focused on the “F” bomb, which wasn’t really the full bomb of “F” that’s out there. I found that to be rather trite. I mean c’mon people. Let’s get with the point and stop pretending that we are so far above it that such a minor reference has to become the focus of an otherwise well written statement in defense of being real and standing pure for Christ. I think that is the real offensive thing.