Tag: tithing

Healers with Dirty Fingers

Faith Recovery Podcast
Faith Recovery Podcast
Healers with Dirty Fingers
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In “Healers with Dirty Fingers” the Three Failed Pastors caution the church.

Leaders in the church should be more concerned about the use of power than the use of porn. When they resort to worldly methods to gain compliance they become healers with dirty fingers.

“Healers with Dirty Fingers” Episode Notes:

The notion that we Christians must be free from the dynamics of control has urgent implications for the church.

A person who seeks to mold the behavior of others will always come under the sway of Satan. I’m not saying we shouldn’t want justice to be done. That desire is part of the divine image in us. Efforts to achieve it through interpersonal control become snake venom in our veins. They stroke our egos while blinding us to our faults. We confuse our personal ambition to be significant for concern for the “right.” Here’s what Jesus’ brother, James, had to say about the justice warriors in his church:

Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic.

(James 3:13-15 NIV)

Can’t you just hear this guy complaining?

“I’ve got a lot of good ideas, but nobody listens because I’m not in the right clique.”

“I guess it’s about who you know, huh?”

“Why should we listen to _____? I’ve never heard him say anything remotely impressive.”

“They don’t want me in leadership because they know I’ll shake things up.”

We might not think James’ warning applies to us because we think we’re free from “envy and selfish ambition.” But what was the surface-level ambition of the people he was warning? Look at the next three verses:

For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.

(James 3:16-18 NIV)

Notice what James promises them at the end of this section – “a harvest of righteousness (actually “justice” in Greek).” James wrote this letter to Christians who wanted to apply their faith toward making their society fairer. They wanted to reap a harvest of justice, but we can’t plant justice in other people. That is, we can’t convince them they’re being unjust. Even if we can force them to behave justly, they will believe they’ve been treated unfairly and so injustice perpetuates. The only way to harvest justice is by planting peace. That will require us to retain a posture of humility even as we’re being treated unfairly. It’s a divesting of power back into the hands of God where it belongs. Christians don’t fight for justice because they become corrupt in the process. Instead, we absorb injustice in pursuit of peace trusting that justice will spring forth.

The Satanic voice doesn’t say, “Do evil,” but “How can you do nothing when everything is so bad?”

That was the voice Jesus heard in the mouth of his own dear disciple Peter:

From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.

Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!”

Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”

(Matthew 16:21-23 NIV)

Skeptics criticize Jesus for not doing more to alleviate suffering in the world because they assess Jesus according to worldly standards.

Jesus came to save us from the corrupt society by setting us free from the elementary principles of the world. He certainly wouldn’t have resorted to using them to make people do the right thing. In dying, Jesus divested himself of all human power. By ascending to heaven, he rules above the elementary principles of this fallen world. Hear Jesus’ words as quoted by John:

“They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.”

(John 17:16-19 NIV)

When Jesus said he was going to sanctify himself, he meant that he would be set apart from this world. From heaven, he rules over the hearts and minds of each subject. As his subjects on earth, we reject the worldly principles and so are set apart as well. Christ’s disciples must never enslave one another under the elementary principles of the world because Christ has set his people free from them.

Healers with dirty fingers can’t offer pleasing worship to God.

Leaders must reject the temptation to resort to them for the “greater good.” Charisma can’t appear among the qualifications for leadership, not even the unwritten ones. Surely our insistence on “hip and cool” or “relevant” does a disservice to him of whom it was written:

He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,

nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

(Isaiah 53:2b NIV)

People want to be accepted by competent and attractive leaders. That’s just the way of the world. You can build a church that way and it will probably become large. But it won’t represent the gospel of Christ and it won’t be predicated on faith. Worldly methods work, but they corrupt those who use them. No wonder scandal emerges from within so many megachurches and international ministries.

It seems to me the avoidance of these methods is at least part of what James meant when he said that pure religion includes keeping oneself unspotted from the world. It’s surely no coincidence that he goes on to forbid interpersonal favoritism beginning in the very next verse.

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism. Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in. If you show special attention to the man wearing  fine clothes and say, “Here’s a good seat for you,” but say to the poor man, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,” have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?

(James 1:27-2:4 NIV)

It’s my hope that anyone who attempts to employ the elementary principles in a church setting would come under strong conviction or that those under their leadership would offer them a loving rebuke.

Share your thoughts on “Healers with Dirty Fingers.”

Hard to Get

At a hearing which could also be described as a near death experience, Martin Luther stood before representatives of God and of men to give an account. Before him were piled copies of his writings made abundant by Gutenberg’s good work. Within those documents smoldered the embers of revolution threatening to ignite a continent drained dry by papal greed. To suppress the coming conflagration, the church offered Luther a choice, face a literal flame or utter a simple word— “revoco,” in English, “I recant.”

Surely quivering, Luther’s voice rang out,

I will answer without horns and without teeth. Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason — I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other — my conscience is captive to the Word of God, I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. God help me. Amen.

Those words marked a watershed in Western history. Though many factors had led up to their utterance, they stand (at least for Protestants) as a clear transfer of ultimate authority from church hierarchy to the Bible.

Also, since that time we have fractured into thousands of denominations sects, cults, and subgroups. I think five hundred years is a long enough time to conclude that people will never understand the Bible alike. Actually, it’s more like two thousand.

Christians lament the existence of religions like Islam and Mormonism, but those religions emerged to address rampant division between people who claimed to obey the Bible.

Between the fifth and seventh centuries, the Roman church hadn’t yet seized the absolute power she enjoyed during Luther’s day. In the early seventh century, the religious landscape on the Arabian peninsula was littered with pluralism and syncretism. Into that confusing religious circus, the Qur’an spoke:

From those, too, who call themselves Christians, We did take a covenant, but they forgot a good part of the message that was sent them: so we estranged them, with enmity and hatred between the one and the other, to the day of judgment. And soon will Allah show them what it is they have done. O people of the Book! There hath come to you our Messenger, revealing to you much that ye used to hide in the Book, and passing over much (that is now unnecessary). There hath come to you from Allah a (new) light and a perspicuous Book,(Surah 5:14–15, Al-Qur’an [English Edition] Complete and Unabridged. Islamic Studies Press. Kindle Edition.)

Twelve hundred years later, a man born of a new world would claim an eerily similar status as divinely ordained arbiter. In reflecting back on his call from God, Joseph Smith wrote:

My object in going to inquire of the Lord was to know which of all the sects was right, that I might know which to join. No sooner, therefore, did I get possession of myself, so as to be able to speak, than I asked the Personages who stood above me in the light, which of all the sects was right (for at this time it had never entered into my heart that all were wrong) and which I should join.
 I was answered that I must join none of them, for they were all wrong; and the Personage who addressed me said that all their creeds were an abomination in his sight; that those professors were all corrupt; that: “they draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, they teach for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of Godliness, but they deny the power thereof.” (Pearl of Great Price, History of Joseph Smith verses 18,19)

Muslims and Mormons both hold that God revealed his will through their inspired text given through his ultimate prophet to clarify revelation, given in the Bible, but subsequently mishandled by those to whom it was given. It’s not hard to trace their line of thought from a belief that God gave the twenty-seven books which we call “The New Testament” to serve as Torah 2.0. If we needed a 2.0, then why not a 3.0 or 4.0?

Of course, no text no matter how precise or correct can possibly produce anything but division. Islam split in two at Muhammad’s death. Since then, multiple schools of Islam have proliferated over disparate interpretations of the Qur’an and Hadiths. The framers of Mormonism took leveraged their latter day status by correcting previous errors. They accomplished unity (for the most part) by reversing the Reformation and returning ultimate authority to the church.

Those of us who’ve not been called by a supernatural being to birth a new religion soldier on through glaring inconsistencies hoping somehow to credibly witness to Christ. He prayed that we’d be one so that the world would know God sent him. From the looks of things, that prayer still awaits an answer, and the world is still unsure about Christ. I don’t think it’s because God has failed. I think it’s partially because we’ve been divided for so long that we think it’s normal.

My fellow members at the Church of Christ used to say that if two people disagree on the interpretation of scripture one of them can be right and the other wrong or they could both be wrong, but they can’t both be right. Translation: “We’re the only ones who are right.” While I no longer sing that disharmonious tune, the logic still holds water. Out of hundreds of Christian denominations, either just one of them is right or none of them are. Most people would agree that none of them are, but everyone still claims to obey the Bible.

Let’s face it, the Bible is a big, complicated book written thousands of years ago over hundreds of years by people with their own ideas, problems, and interests. It is composed of multiple genres and written in archaic languages. None of the words were written to anyone living in the 21st century in the New World. To suggest that an average, uninformed American could start reading at Genesis 1:1 and gain any sort of cohesive insight into the will of God borders on delusion. That may be a difficult pill to swallow, but the existence of Bible colleges, seminaries, Sunday schools, or even Sunday sermons for that matter, testify to the truth of what I’m saying. Even the Gideons hand out primarily New Testaments rather than the whole enchilada.

Because the Bible is so vast and diverse, it’s message easily falls prey to the whim of those who would use it to legitimize their own wants or their claim to power. For instance, most pastors would readily explain that under Christ we no longer follow the law of Moses, but most churches have retained the practice of tithing. The New Testament does not enjoin tithing on believers in Christ not even once. It does speak of the early disciples collecting money, but those were special circumstances and almost always for the sake of alleviating poverty among their members or supporting fulltime ministers of the gospel. How could people who are trained and commissioned to expound the meaning of the Bible perpetuate such a glaring misinterpretation of it?

I have a hypothesis as to why. Institutions need predictable income to operate. When the church becomes an institution, it gladly trades grace-based generosity for an obligatory ten percent. Now, we just need some Bible verses to get everyone on board. Oh look, it’s Malachi 3:8–12. How convenient!

And then, we have the audacity to call the prosperity gospel a heresy! (Go read the passage in Malachi to see what I mean.)

Church leaders aren’t the only ones to blame; individual Christians have their own agenda as well. We might acknowledge that the New Testament doesn’t command tithing, but then go on to ignore passages which speak of divesting ourselves of material wealth and giving sacrificially to help our spiritual brothers and sisters in times of distress. I wonder whether many Christians haven’t been complicit in the tithing deception just because 10% is cheaper than generosity inspired by the love of Christ.

Tragically, our self-deception doesn’t fool those looking at us from outside of our fishbowl. When we consistently, persistently, and insistently mishandle the very book which we hold up as our standard, we deceive only ourselves and repel our sincere critics. No wonder unbelievers see Christianity as just a way for people to make themselves feel better.

We will discover and demonstrate that it is far more when we stop claiming to obey the Bible.

Please don’t get me wrong, I’m not discounting the Bible. I believe it to be inspired. In John 6, Jesus said that his words are spirit and they are life. The writer of Hebrews famously declared, “For the word of God is alive and active.” These words electrify me, but none of them indicate that we’re supposed to rifle through the Bible for rules on how to live. For all the wonderful things that the Bible says about itself, it tends to take itself far less seriously than we want it to.

A Little Peace

photo credit: http://leonsariah.com/is-tithing-biblical/

Why do Christian leaders tell people that they should tithe?  I don’t have the definitive answer but I do believe that I know something true about tithing.  Tithing is not for the generous but for the stingy.  Generous people need only hear of the need and they will meet it.  They do not need a minimum compulsory amount.  Church leaders feel the need to teach on tithing because they are leading a group of selfish people.  Take the selfishness one step further and tell the “givers” that God will return even more to them if they do tithe.

There was a time for tithing.  God assumed selfishness in the unredeemed people of Israel and made provision for it.  For those who have been implanted with the love of God, tithing has become obsolete.  The saddest aspect of tithing teaching is when we presume selfishness from the redeemed,  they begin to be selfish.

Here’s what Paul said about a general legalistic approach, which would include tithing.

The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.   Some have departed from these and have turned to meaningless talk. They want to be teachers  of the law, but they do not know what they are talking about or what they so confidently affirm.   We know that the law is good  if one uses it properly.  We also know that the law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels,   the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious… (1 Timothy 1:5-9a)