baptism

A number of years ago while doing youth ministry at Vineyard of Faith in Windsor, CA, I was looking at various options of places to go to continue my education. I didn't really want to go to Seminary at the time, so I was looking at a variety of places that had distance education programs that would help me in youth ministry. Given that I didn't get the nuances of theology and thought the school didn't matter as long as it was Christian, one of the places I considered going was the Talbot School of Theology at Biola University.

After reading this article from Christianity Today which seeks to answer, "How can I know I'm a Christian if I can't remember when I first responded to the gospel?" I'm really glad I didn't. Why? Here's the author's conclusion:

For those who question their salvation, the best evidence is not the memory of having raised a hand or prayed a prayer. Nor is it having been baptized or christened. The true test of the authentic work of God in one's life is growth in Christ-like character, increased love for God and other people, and the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-25; James 2:18). A memorable conversion experience may serve as an important referent to God's saving work in one's life. But the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in making a person more like Jesus is the clearest indicator that one has been made a new creation in Christ.

Now, I think the guy nails it when he writes, "one can doubt the 'decision' was real, leading to numerous journeys down the aisle (just in case)." I've run into so many people who are in this camp. They've done the decision and then, days, weeks, or months later, found themselves doubting their faith and wondering if they really decided. So the decide again and then doubt again and then decide again. The whole time, they always find themselves wondering where they stand in relationship to God.

But, as for his final answer, that we know if we're save based upon the fruit in our lives, talk about setting people up to experience hell on earth! I mean, I have good days and bad day (we could even say moments in place of days). There are times my life looks really fruitful and times it doesn't. If I'm looking to the fruit, I'm going to be save now, damned in 5 minutes, and back to salvation an hour later. In other words, I'm just about as comforted as the person trusting a decision made for Jesus.

Now, I'm all in favor of doing good works, as long as we understand that the only good they do is to help out our neighbor, that even our non-Christian neighbor can figure out and do these same good works (and thus, based on the article, appear more Christian than many Christians), and that, before God, even our good works need to be justified. Of course, all this rules out the idea that we know we're good with God because of our works.

So, how do I answer the question? Yesterday, Christians around the world celebrated the Baptism of Jesus, an event where Jesus stepped into and bound himself to the human experience so that, in our baptisms, we could be bound to his divine experience. In other words, I point to baptism, not, as the author suggests, because it connects you to the church, but because in it, Jesus makes a promise to you and connects himself to you.

What's the beauty here? I never have to wonder about my salvation, because it's connected not to me, but to Jesus. I'm good with God because of Jesus promise, and knowing my status with God is secure, I'm now free to go and serve my neighbor and let the fruit grow as it will.

Here it is, my first Father's Day, but in more ways than I realized when I went to bed last night. The reality of my double fatherhood his me this morning during the children's message at Redeemer Lutheran in Ft. Collins. I'd gone up for the ordination of Matt Blackford, a friend from Seminary and a son of Peace with Christ in Aurora, the church that called me to plant Genesis.

During the children's message the pastor talked about how dad's like gadgets. As a gift for dad's he pulled out a bag full of cross shaped carabiners. He went out how to point out how the carabiners work to connect something and that the most important thing a dad can ever do is to connect his kids to Jesus.

First I should say, I was really glad to hear him make this point, after all, it's biblical. The central verses of the Torah are the Great Shema which say:

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:4-9)

It never ceases to amaze me just how home-centric those verses are and how much the encourage parents to pass on their faith to their children. We can also see this echoed in Luther's admonition at the beginning of each chief part of the Small Catechism where the father, as the head of the household, is to make sure that he teaches the children the basics of the faith.

All of this of course reminded me of my calling as Robbie's father and encouraged me in a pattern I have already begun where, if I'm the one who take him from his crib in the morning, the first thing we do is pray Luther's morning prayer which includes me blessing him with the sign of the cross upon his forehead as a reminder of his baptism.

My second fatherhood role struck me when a couple of kids grab carabiners and turned around to realize that their dad's were not there that morning. I don't know the story of why, they could be off in Iraq, at home sleeping, or they could live in some other state, Whatever the case, these kids were crushed.

This wasn't the first time I'd seen this on Father's Day. I remember when I was at Vineyard of Faith that Father's Day was one of the worst attended Sunday's of the year because people didn't want to think about their fathers because it brought up too many bad memories.

Then, as these kids stood their crushed, their pastor reached out, touched their shoulders, and gave them a kiss on the head. While it didn't erase the pain of their father not being there, it did give them the comfort of knowing that their perfect Father in heaven had sent them a man to be their pastor who, as Lori pointed out in a comment the other day (see this post), is a spiritual father. Given that I was ordained last July, this isn't only my first Father's Day as Robbie's dad, it's also my first Father's Day as a pastor.

Just a cool realization that I figured I'd share.

By the way, thanks dad for being a Great Shema kind of father. I love you!

As a final bit, here's a great post on being a biblical dad.

I've been doing a fair amount of reading and digesting lately. First it was Joe Myers', Organic Community, and now it's Alan Hirsch's, The Forgotten Ways. While I'm completely in love with Myers work, Hirsch has me a bit unsure right now. I think there's going to be some great stuff in the book, but it's going to require some serious filtering at points. This brings me to my blog title.

This past week something hit me. Neither emerging groups within the church nor pop-culture have their history straight when it comes to Constantine and the Council of Nicea, and I think the emerging groups, which would include people like Hirsch, are getting their history from pop-culture.

So, what's the pop-culture version? Basically it's that Constantine rigged the Council of Nicea in such a way that it allowed him to turn Christianity into a state controlled religion that would unite the Roman Empire. As a part of this, he picked out the books of the Bible while trashing other gospels accounts that didn't fit his version of Christianity. He also declared that Jesus was God, rather than just an amazing man. So, what can be determined from this is that Christianity is a sham without any legitimate foundation and is all about manipulation and control of the masses.

In response to this, Hirsch and others argue that pre-Constantine, the church had no structure or ritual, but functioned as this organic community where the Spirit ruled and life was amazing. Their goal is to push us back to that state of being Christianity because the problem with it is purely a result of Constantine coming in and establishing order, rules, regulation, and customs (one that Hirsch points to is infant baptism).

So, what's wrong with these views? Well from the emerging Christian side, they seem to forget that early Christian community flowed out of Judaism and therefore, much like Judaism did have order, structure, and customs. You see this well established in Paul's writings where he talks about elders and deacons and other who have specific gifts that are used for building up the body of Christ. In the case of infant baptism, it is discussed specifically by Irenaeus (late 2nd Century), Origen (3rd Century), and Tertullian (late 2nd Century), and implied by Polycarp (late 1st and early 2nd Century) and Justin (early 2nd Century), all of which tells us the infant baptism was happening during the lifetime of the Apostles.

In addition, very early in Church history you have bishops being established in various cities, this includes all of the men mentioned in the previous paragraphs and men like Clement who was the bishop of Rome while the Apostle John was still alive and teaching in Ephesus.

Moreover, things weren't all peachy in the early Church. Before Constantine you'd already had issues with, among others, the Montanists and Novatainists. You also have the over-realized eschatology that Paul challenges in 1 Corinthians and the Apostle John's Epistles dealing directly with a group who'd broken off from the Church and become Gnostics. Then of course you have Arianism which was the reason why Constantine called the Council of Nicea in the first place. He wanted the two major groups in Christianity to sort out a major theological difference on the person of Christ.

So, what does history say about the Council itself? First off, Constantine did pay for it because he wanted the Arians and what we'd now call the Orthodox to get their theology straight. Outside of that, pop-culture's understanding is way off.

When it comes to the books that belonged in the Bible, by the time the Council of Nicea arrive, Paul's letters had been established and passed around as a collection for 225 years and the four Gospels we have in the New Testament had been the only accounts used by Christians for 175-200 years. These well established books were the documents used as the two sides engaged in their theological debate.

As for the deity of Jesus, Larry Hurtado's work, Lord Jesus Christ, clearly demonstrates that Jesus was always considered divine by Christians. When it comes to the Council of Nicea, the debate wasn't about the deity of Jesus, but it was whether Jesus was, in gnostic terms, a demiurge, or if he was co-eternal with the Father. Interestingly enough, Constantine entered the Council on the side of the Arians who, though having the majority position at the Council, we're demonstrated, by Scripture, to be heretical. That's right, the minority ruled (thanks Athanasius).

So, why do I really care about this? Because truth is, there were some major changes that came with Constantine and the legalization of Christianity ... Christianity moved from the margins to the center of society, the culture was Christianized, there was the construction of cathedrals for worship, and appearing "Christian" became politically advantageous. As a result, there was a new understanding of what it meant to be a Christian.

In the Western world today, especially in Europe and the city centers of the US, Christianity is again on the fringe of society. We live in a world that is, spiritually, much closer to the 1st Century than any time since Nicea and there are amazing lessons to be learned from the Early Church on how to share the Gospel in this kind of culture, after all, in the first three-hundred years, the church grew from some 120 people gather in the upper room at Pentecost to somewhere in the range of twenty-million by the time of Nicea.

However, if we have a poor historical understanding, we'll be learning lessons from our glorified delusions rather than those who speak from the past to teach us today. May God grant us clarity in our quest to understand where we've been so we may better understand how to move forward today.