What do you believe and why?

What are some of your most deeply held beliefs or convictions? Why do you believe them? For most of us, our parents played a key role in shaping our beliefs.  Many of our beliefs have been shaped by personal experiences, teachers, peers, society, ministers and traditions.  They are not our original beliefs, but someone else’s.

What we believe matters.   What we believe can lead us down a path that leads to good or bad, success or failure, safety or danger, happiness or sadness, humility or pride and even love or hate.   One set of convictions or beliefs shapes those  that belong to the Ku Klux Klan or The Black Panthers or ISIS and another set of beliefs shapes those that belong to charitable organizations, support groups, community service that benefits all, etc.  What we believe really does matter.

From the earliest times Christians made attempts to summarize their essential beliefs the Apostle’s Creed is an example of that.  I know of no church organization that does not have a statement of beliefs and I know of no fraternal organization that does not have a statement of beliefs.  Beliefs matter!  They define our values, morals and relationships.  They shape our goals, ambitions, hopes, and dreams.  It is important we know what we believe in and be able to defends those beliefs.

Unfortunately we can be so rigid in our beliefs and convictions that we cannot listen to those with different beliefs or convictions.  This is especially true in the religious world.  Regardless of what we believe about God, humanity or our world, we will lack certainty and that lack of certainty should lead us to humility in our convictions and in our interactions with those who disagree with us.  How can anyone prove beyond a shadow of doubt  what they believe is absolute truth and that there is no other way?

I learned long ago that what I believed was sometimes flawed and not only hurt me it hurt others.  This is not going to set well with many, but there was a time that I believed if you did not accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior you COULD NOT go to heaven.   Pastor Joel Olsten is criticized by many in the religious community because he will not state point blank that your destiny is hell if you do not accept Jesus Christ.  I am not God and God has inspired men in scripture to write, “My ways or not your ways”, I am not to judge, but leave that to Him, that He can do anything He pleases and does not need our permission. 

I once believe that abortion was an unforgivable sin.  I once believed people that divorced and remarried without jumping through the church's legal loops to get an annulment could not partake of the sacraments.  I once believed if you were not baptized you could not go to heaven and that babies who died before being baptized were in LIMBO.  I once believed in purgatory.  I once believed priest had a special power to represent God when it came to forgiving yours sins.  I once believed we needed to sacrifice Christ over and over again at every mass as if the one sacrifice on the cross was not enough.  I now do not believe any of those things.  Not only did I sincerely believe those things I taught them to others.  I believed them because that is what my parents believed and my church believed.  I did not know any different and did not think I had the right to question them.

What we believe has a significant impact on our lives.  Our beliefs influence who we marry , the career we choose, the way we see right and wrong, how we see our parent and our children, what we do with our time and money, and how we face adversity.  Those beliefs lead us to say no to many things we may have said yes to and yes to things we might otherwise have said no to.

“I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth.”  I believe Christians must believe there is a God, a Supreme Being, that created the universe.  How God created it may be open for debate, but it is essential that a Christian believe that God did create all things.  I believe Christians must perceive God not simply as a force of nature, but as an entity, a Being, that is both intelligent and powerful.

Men like Isaac Newton, Blaise Pascal, and Galileo, who, despite the church’s blunder in criticizing their conclusions, continued to maintain their faith in God.  I do think science and faith are compatible.  I also believe these men were far more intelligent than me.  There are some scientist that do not believe in God, but there is just as many that do.

 Jesus Christ is our defining story.  Jesus demonstrates who God is, what God is like, and what God’s will is for our lives. His life and ministry, His death and resurrection shape how we see ourselves and how we see the world.  Jesus Christ provides us with a different perspective on life.  Christians believe we were born with purpose, our lives have meaning and when our mortal body is finished, we’ve only just begun to live. 

Richard Dawkins (who I believe to be evil) once wrote, “We are survival machines—robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes.” But faith in Jesus says that we were made for more than this.  In fact, the pain and brokenness in our world are largely the result of our living as “robot vehicles” blindly focused on serving the self.  Jesus calls us to be authentically human, to love, give, serve, and rise above our selfish genes.  As we do so we not only make the world a more just and compassionate place; we find joy in the process.  I pity Richard Dawkins and I am willing to show him mercy because of his broken body that may influence his beliefs.  Regardless of what Richard Dawkins says about Jesus Christ or what anyone else may say I know Jesus of Nazareth has been the dominant figure in the history of Western culture for over 2000 years and I doubt that Richard Dawkins will be.   

When God sought to communicate His love for us, he sent Jesus. It was in His Son that God’s message came to us and became our defining story. Through Jesus, God was saying: You matter to me and I love you.  In Jesus, God showed that He cares about those who are lost and those who are made to feel unimportant.  He showed us compassion for the sick.  He showed us how to love, to forgive, to give, to serve.  In Jesus’ death on the cross God showed us the depth of His love and the price of grace. And in Jesus’ resurrection, God defeated our evil, hate, sin, and death! 

My church has put so much emphasis on Mother Mary that our people know little about the Holy Spirit.  Many Christians in our church haven’t been taught about the Spirit, nor encouraged to seek the Spirit’s work in their lives. As a result, their spiritual lives are a bit anemic and they are trying to live the Christian life on their own power and wisdom.  That is impossible!

What are the voices you listen to, and what are the powers that shape your life?  I find there are voices in my own life that would lead me to give in to hate, indifference, desire, pride, infidelity, selfishness, or greed. But when we listen to the voice of the Spirit and open ourselves to the Spirit’s active work in our lives, we find that we are led to a very different place and to become very different people.

The Spirit convicts us and quickens our conscience when we’re doing wrong. The Spirit, through persistent nudges, urges us to act selflessly in our care for others. The Spirit makes us long to be more than we are at the present and to become more like the people God intended us to be.  in Galatians 5:22-23: “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”  The Holy Spirit gives us these gifts and no where in the Bible does it say Mother Mary does. 

How different is this fruit than the fruit of our own hearts, and the culture around us.

The “Holy” and catholic (universal/unity) church.”  When many people view the church today, it looks neither holy nor catholic. It seems filled with hypocrites and judgmental people; in fact, this is one reason why many have turned away from “organized religion” and why so many young adults today say that they are “spiritual but not religious.”  Interestingly, these same young people have great admiration for Jesus, but far less admiration for His people, the church. They see neither holiness nor catholicity (unity) when they look at the most vocal Christians and the most outspoken churches today. 

The word holy in the biblical context means belonging to God, or “sacred to” God or “set apart for” God. You’ve likely heard it said that the church is not a country club for perfect people, but instead a hospital for broken and sinful people who are slowly being made well. We need to make sure the non-churched understand that we know that and stop pretending we are bunch of perfect people.  The church does not belong to us it belongs to God.  The next time you try and tell someone they are sitting in your seat at church remember that. The church is holy when we love Christ and seeks to be faithful to Him.  The church is holy when we are not attacking one another for interpreting a scripture differently. 

Christ tried to forestall the divisions among His followers by telling His disciples not to judge one another, and to love one another and forgive one another. Nevertheless, the church divided and continues to divide to this day.   Our belief in the holy, catholic church (universal/unity) is an ecumenical belief that all who call upon the name of Christ and seek to follow Him as Savior and Lord are, despite their denominational or nondenominational names, part of one universal church.  The Roman Catholic Church is a part of that one universal church, and so is the Eastern Orthodox Church, as well as the Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Baptists, Pentecostals, Methodists, nondenominational churches, and all the rest.  What right do you have to say Catholics are not CHRISTIANS?  Does it make you feel more important than Catholics, more loved by God?  PRIDE!

I still believe in the importance of the church, but unfortunately at the moment I find that I cannot attend and that certainly has affected my life in a negative way.  I pray one day before I die I will be able to find a church that I can return to and feel at home.  I have not stopped looking.  People need to be able to express differences of opinion within the church and be respected and loved.  I knew that once in a church in Galveston, Texas and I will never forget it. 

Grow a full beard and become holy, wise and loved by Muslims.

A senior bishop in the Church of England believes the vicars, or parish priests, should grow full beards as a way of reaching out to the fast-growing Muslim community. What will he want next? I guess Christian women should begin to wear the Hijab and men wear the Kufis. I live in the Philippines where the Muslim community is prominent in the malls and streets. I respect what they wear if that is what they want to wear to tell the world they are followers of Islam. I do not expect them to wear a crucifix simply because the Philippine people are predominantly Catholic.  

The senior bishop thinks we Christians should make ourselves as appealing to Muslims as possible – political correctness really gone amuck. He claims the beards will make their Christian ministers appear to be more holy to the Muslims. I am not interested in my bishops and priest appearing to be holy I am interested in them trying to BE holy.

He said, “In Islam beards are viewed as an adornment and Muslim men are encouraged to wear them to honor the Prophet Mohammed.” That is all the more reason for me not to want to wear Islam garb or grow a full beard. I honor and serve Jesus Christ not the Prophet Mohammed.

He also claims a scripture in Leviticus bans a man from shaving. I believe Leviticus is Old Testament (old covenant) and Christians are supposed to adhere to the New Testament (new covenant). I find it strange that he would pick one scripture in Leviticus that supports his personal belief about reaching out to Muslims and ignore all the other laws of Leviticus.

 The Rev Adam Atkinson, Vicar of St Peter’s church in Bethnal Green one of the first to start wearing a full beard has said the reason he did so was he saw it as an alternative to getting a tattoo. That sounds real holy to me! He also said he had since been struck by how often it helped him forge new links with teenage boys who might not normally want to talk to a vicar.

Sometimes it is hilarious how church leaders use scripture. One of the scriptures they use for growing full beards is St Paul saying, ‘I become all things to all men that by all possible means I might save some’, 1 Corinthians 9:19. If this is isolated from the rest of Scripture one can assume that Paul was willing to do anything to reach the lost, including adopting their lifestyle and compromise his ethics, moral and beliefs. This is a doctrine that is popularized among the evangelism crowd today. If we use this logic then one cannot reach a drug addict unless we become one and we cannot reach a drunk unless we drink alcohol. Paul did not mean that.

 Paul taught that believers are to “abstain from any appearance of evil”, 1 Thess. 5:22. Paul would not have done anything contrary to Christ and His ways in his own life and ministry. Remember he rebuked Peter for his compromise of the gospel to the Jewish brethren. Paul was simply saying when speaking to a religious Jew he would use the law to speak to them and when speaking to a gentile he would use his conscience and culture to speak to them.

Remember I wrote earlier what is next. Reverend Atkinson said, “A Muslim friend said to him, ‘I will lend you a hat (kufis) and you can join me on Friday [prayers]. It was done in a jokey way but I felt it was quite affirming.”

The other vicar, the Reverend Rogers of All Hallows Bow, said: “One guy approached me about a year and a half ago and said ‘I can respect you because you have got a full beard’. If wearing a full beard made the man respect him then the man must be very shallow. Charles Manson a mass murder wore a full beard. He went on to say the full beard shows wisdom and he added: “I like the idea of being the ‘wild’ priest rather than the gentleman priest.

The Senior Vicar said, “David Beckham is the nearest we have to a popular secular saint, and his flirtation with various styles of beards has stimulated countless imitators.” David Beckham also gets a lot of attention by modeling underwear so I guess priests and vicars should start running around in their underwear. David Beckham is no saint to me.

Growing a beard in Islam is not dictated in the Holy Koran. It's a tradition. It is not a commandment of the Prophet Mohammed it was a suggestion. The prayers of those who shave off their beard are heard just as those with full beards.

Wearing a cross does not make you a Christian and having a full beard does not make you holy or a Muslim. Keep in mind the Hutterites, prevalent in the Canadian Parries and the Amish, prevalent in the Northeastern USA are Trinitarian Christians and have always worn full beards. Orthodox Christian priests and Orthodox Jews wear full beards. I think the fact that Orthodox Jews who wear full beards are hated by radical Muslims proves that having a full beard means little to Muslims/Christian relationships.  

I thought the timing of the beard comments by the Vicar in England was appropriate. His suggestion came two days after the earliest Christian community in Iraq was wiped out by radical Muslims and at a time when militant Islam is harassing, persecuting and murdering Christians – beard or no beard – across three continents. 

Did Jesus teach us to pray "Lead us not into temptation"?

Did Jesus teach us to pray “lead us not into temptation” or is there a problem in the translation or a problem in the construction of the sentence?   We know from James 1:13 that God does not tempt us to sin.  If He did, He would be acting contrary to His holy nature, against His desire for us to be holy as He is holy (1 Peter 1:16), and against all other commandments in Scripture that tell us to avoid sin and flee temptation.

Some people will say the phrase must be understood in the sense of "permitting."  Do not "allow" us, or "permit" us, to be tempted to sin.  This implies God has control to save us from temptation if we call upon Him.  I believe whole heartily God is in control of everything, but is it better to try and fix a scripture in the Bible in order for that scripture to makes sense to us or just admit it could be some kind of error and we do not know for sure.

It is possible that the Greek, which has three, rather than two, degrees of active/passive voice suffered from a misinterpretation of the Aramaic and that what Christ said actually meant "do not let us be led into temptation".

I like the petition offered by David in Psalm 141:4: "Incline not my heart to any evil thing, to practice wicked works with the workers of iniquity."  Regardless of either petition we must remember God is our deliverer and we are to pray to Him as such.  It is never God's desire for us to be led into sin.  If we resist the devil, we are promised that he will flee from us.  James 4:7 states, "Submit your selves, then, to God.  Resist the devil, and he will flee from you."  

God doesn't tempt us, but He allows us to be put into situations where our faith is tested and strengthened.  God always provides a way out of or around temptation.  It is also important to remember that we are unable to resist temptation without God's grace.  I believe it is not the temptation itself that leads us to sin, but the lack of resistance and trust in the Lord for deliverance from the temptation.  As Christians, we are in a constant fight with the desires born of our sinful natures - should I please myself or God?  We are in constant need of God's guidance so that our needs and desires are kept in proper balance. 

Do not throw out the entire Lord’s Prayer because of the confusion you may have with one line or simply because the English interpretation of the line may be an incorrect translation of what Christ actually said.  If you feel a need to then substitute, “Help me not be led into temptation". 

St. James wrote, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.  Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything," (James 1:3-5).  Perhaps we do not want to avoid temptation all together, but instead not give into temptation. 

Do not allow theological questions; despite the enormous debate and trouble they may cause becomes a barrier to your faith.  I try not to get hung up on such small questions.  I would rather not be tempted and I have no problem asking God not to tempt me or not to let me be tempted.  He knows that I am trying to pray in the way I was told Christ taught us to pray.  When you say the line "lead us not into temptation", God understands that you are praying not to sin and that you are worried that you might give in to temptation.  You don't have to have a Ph.D. in theology to be a good Christian. 

If you are praying with a sincere heart God knows what you mean.  He knows you are asking for help to resist temptation and that is what really matters.