Tag Archive - Religion

Laws of the Medes and Persians

June 29, 2011 in Religion with 0 Comments

Heard an interesting question last Sunday from the teacher who was teaching from Daniel.

 

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He noted that in Daniel, the laws of the Medes and Persians are held up as something set in stone. That is, if these guys passed a law, everyone obeyed it. Then he noted that after God rescued Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah (I don’t know why everybody refers to their Babylonian names) from the furnace, Nebuchadnezzar (the Babylonian) starts praising God and gets religion and all. Then he makes one of these laws or proclamations about getting violent with anyone who doesn’t respect their God.

Later on: regime change.

Then a new guy comes to power and just rearranges all kinds of national boundaries. In chapter 6, the new guy – Darius – makes another of those earth shaking decrees that basically went like this: when you hear the loud noise, fall down and wallow in the mud…

Which is kind of like the kids game/rhyme –  “Ring-a-ring-a-roses.”

They made a lot of strange rules then. Imagine if they had computers to generate more… (Imagine if we used them to make less).

But the point is that everyone followed the laws of the new guys on the block (i.e., Medes and Persians).

So Daniel survived the regime change and makes it out of the lion’s den alive and unharmed and Darius (the guy who threw him in their in the first place) comes out and gets religion – like his father before him.

Darius makes a new decree (like they needed another one) that everyone in his kingdom is supposed to fear Daniel’s God.

Why? Because he is the real thing.

So from that point forth in Ancient and Near Eastern history all people feared the God of Daniel.

Ok, so maybe not the whole region; But at least in all of Persia, right?

Not really.

I guess the laws of the Medes and Persians weren’t that powerful after all.

Or maybe it’s hard to dictate religion to a nation when you are a polytheistic brutal ruler who is only interested in his own power.

Seems to make a difference just who the ruler is. But it is also hard to take people where they don’t want to go.

Just thinking…

 

 

The far country

June 26, 2011 in Religion with 0 Comments

It was good to be back at the University church in Conway recently. I have missed this church for over four years. Because they are in the process of looking for a new preacher, they are having guest speakers. Jim Woodruff from Harding University was speaking the Sunday we were there.

Interstate 65 - Mobile River Delta - c.1981

I had never heard him preach before, but I’m glad I was there.

The text was the Prodigal Son. When the guy read the bible text, I silently groaned. (Not because of the guy reading – he is a wonderful guy and superb guitarist).

“No,” I was thinking, “How many hundreds of sermons have I heard from this text?”

How many have you heard?

Probably many.

This time though, Jim opened up the text in ways I had not heard before. One thing I liked was his description of the far country. He said that it could mean, not only a geographical reference but also a depraved heart or a broken relationship.

I understood the text so much better because it reminded me that I’d been there too. Not that I needed reminding.

I remembered a younger guy driving off to attend college at Jacksonville State University in 1981 in a sweet 1973 Dodge Duster (with artificial snake skin roof). Because I didn’t want to leave early, I left at midnight – it is a six-hour drive. Apparently sleep was not a big need of mine back then.

Because the I-65 Bridge wasn’t completed, I had to go by Scott and International Paper Companies in Plateau, drive through Baldwin County, and follow Highway 225 north to I-65.

I arrived around seven that morning, completely exhausted.

I made a few friends and promptly went to sleep  - on a couch I think.

I missed all the advising sessions that helped you pick the right classes to take for the fall. So I advised myself.

Because of this daring move, I ended signing up for French 101, engineering 101, and a few other classes I had no business taking.

It went downhill from there.

After a year and a half in northeast Alabama, I realized that I had taken a wrong turn in life. Not because I took French and Engineering but because of some bad choices I’d made. I made a deal with God: let me transfer to Alabama Christian College in Montgomery and I’d major in Bible. I reasoned that by becoming a Bible major, that would somehow entice God to overlook the past year and a half of my life.

This was not an especially wise motivation for wanting to become a preacher.

Jim asked in his sermon, “What is it that turns on the light in the brain? What wakes someone up to his or her real situation?”

For the prodigal son, it was the sight of seeing the pig food in front of him and remembering that his father’s servants ate better than this. He was just starving to death!

Here’s the point: God accepts motivation less than noble to bring us back to him. It didn’t matter that the motivation to bring the son back was his empty stomach.

Your motivation for returning to God doesn’t matter. What matters is that he loves you and wants you back home. What matters is that you come home.

 

Rules 101

June 10, 2011 in Religion with 0 Comments

A few weeks ago I heard preacher say that, at his church, men couldn’t serve at the Lord’s Supper without wearing a necktie (Yes, it is 2011). In other words, they all had to look like they had emerged from a 1950s time warp. The church I grew up in also had this rule. I tried to get around it: When I was a teenager, my mom bought a string tie from Texas (I think). It was hideous. Slim Whitman comes to mind for some reason. I’m not sure if the string tie thing would have passed muster at this church though.

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But, the preacher wasn’t praising the “no-tie-no-serve” rule. He was pointing out that these laws are neither biblical, based in common sense, nor particularly pleasant to look upon.

His swipe got quick results (considering the rules based tendency of this church): The next Sunday, not all the guys wore ties at Communion – not even a string-tie.

I’ve read that social groups adhere to unwritten rules; the rules that everyone knows instinctively. In most churches, there are probably hundreds of taboos or unwritten rules. Mine – it seemed to me – surpassed most in accumulating them.

This week, we are on a mini-vacation. I am sitting by a swimming pool in Orange Beach watching one of my daughters interact with some other young folks (using this word clearly shows my age) from Missouri on their Senior High School trip and I smell a cigar. Now I grew up with a father who specialized in inhaling the putrid and disgusting smoke from Pall Mall cigarettes (see here for details). But a cigar is nothing like a nasty cigarette. I don’t know the brand, but I really liked it. If I weren’t such a sissy I might just start smoking them.

My uncle CA (which stands Connie Alonzo – and not your typical Southern name) smoked Prince Albert pipe tobacco. I loved this smell, but again never took up smoking a pipe either. I am guessing that the Pall Mall’s inoculated me against any possible desire to smoke.

The unwritten rule in our church (and society in general now) is that smoking is a sin (but a tolerable indulgence that the church of big government readily sells to finance social programs). I don’t remember reading anything in the Bible overtly against smoking tobacco, but it is highly frowned upon nonetheless.

Which is funny because:

As a young teenager, I remember deacons standing outside the building corralling men to serve on the Lord’s Supper or say a prayer or take part in the service in general all the while puffing away on some awful smelling cigarette.

Now, if the deacons had been smoking a nice Ashton VSG or a Por Larranaga Hondouran blend, things might have been different.

They also didn’t have Google to find a cigar name, but that’s not the point. It may be a nasty habit, like almost any thing involving tobacco, but I just don’t see it as malum in se sinful.

Purposeful disobedience to Jesus? Now that’s is a different matter.

Sometimes it is just easier to build straw men arguments against bad habits and call them sin than to love and accept folks.

What are some of the taboos you were raised with?

 

 

Preaching on Your Feet

May 27, 2011 in Religion with 2 Comments

When I started preaching in 1989, I quickly realized that almost everything I’d been taught did not seem to me to be the correct way that I should speak. Now, I had some wonderful instructors along the way and would never want to malign them in any way. But the preaching I grew up with was not the method for me.

Preaching On Your Feet

Perhaps realizing that, I did not start preaching immediately after I graduated from a small Christian college with ONLY a degree in Bible. (I didn’t even look for a church until a friend called and talked me into an interview fours years later). I believe that Christian colleges do their students a great disservice by allowing Bible majors to “major” only in Bible. I met many guys who went back to school soon after graduating with a Bible degree for an additional degree – like engineering or business. The point is that – in my faith group anyway – there are many small churches that simply can’t afford to pay a person a livable salary. I believe that the preacher should be able to make a living elsewhere in addition to preaching. Just my two cents though.

But after the small East Tennessee church said I could move there and speak for them on a regular basis, I realized that I didn’t have a clue how to preach on a consistent basis. So, I started buying preaching books. I learned from people like Fred Craddock, Thomas Long, and Eugene Lowry and others. They all came from different churches and perspectives, but they taught me the necessity of preaching texts and doing my homework.

Unfortunately, and probably because of my backwardness, I preached many, many sermons from these guys – never completely developing my own style. Later, I took another unfortunate life-turn when I, wanting to escape the legalistic tendencies of the churches I’d worked with, and went to law school (thank you Dusty for thinking that was funny).

Next week, we are moving for the eighth time in 18 years. I don’t know if I’ll get the chance to preach again on a regular basis – but I hope so. One of the things I did in preparation for moving is to get rid of almost all of my hard bound books. I am going digital – as much as I can. But I also ditched all the sermons I used over the years. I did this primarily after reading and being convicted by a book called “Preaching on your Feet” by Fred Lybrand. It isn’t the most well organized book, but it caused me to realize just how important immersing yourself in the text is to the delivery of a message.

This may sound like common sense to you, but I had always focused on outlining and developing major points. Although I’d read many preaching books through the years, this one helped reshape my beliefs about preaching in a way that’s so basic I am somewhat reluctant to write about it. (I obviously overcame that reluctance!) I’m just hopeful that I’ll get to use the lessons in the future.

Here are some of the reasons for “preaching on your feet” that I copied from one reviewer named Scot McKnight on Amazon.com:

  1. Time management: you save the hours it takes to write out a sermon or write out thick notes.
  2. Connection with the audience: eye-to-eye is better than eye-to-manuscript-to eye. The struggle here is palpable for those who sit and listen.
  3. Remembering: if you can remember it, they can remember it.
  4. Humility: struggling to find the best word is normal human existence.
  5. Adaptability: good preachers read the eyes of those who listen and adapt and adjust to the levels of comprehension.
  6. Holy Spirit led. Obvious and potentially a source of abuse and an excuse for lack of preparation.
  7. Personality trumps plagiarism: Lybrand is big on each preacher having personality, that person’s personality and not someone else’s.
  8. An act of faith.
  9. Growth in confidence.
  10. Readiness.
  11. A walk with God is more intimate to preaching …
  12. You become sharper (if not smarter).
  13. Fresh delivery.
  14. Joy in preaching.
  15. Audience is expectant.