Witnessing for Christ

I don’t remember exactly how it came up, but I had a long discussion with the guy sitting next to me at work about religion. I work as a video game tester, so there is just row after row of people testing games, and conversations aren’t exactly private. The guy I was talking to is interested in learning about different religions, but doesn’t know which one he wants to follow.

I thought it was really cool that we had this big long public discussion where I was able to talk about why Christianity is different from all other religions, some of the reasons why we can know it’s true, and various theological points that he had questions about. Apparently he’s had a lot of negative encounters with Christians, such as judgmental and condemning churches and people whose whole explanation as to why they believed in Jesus was “because I do” or “because I was raised with it.”

I was able to hold my own quite well during the conversation and came up with intelligent responses to his questions. I think I was able to provide him with a really positive example of a Christian who knows what they believe and why they believe it.

It was a really wonderful experience to be able to be an ambassador for Christ like that. God has really been preparing me for this situation and hopefully similar situations in the future. Being used as a witness for God has given me even more of a hunger for his word, and I’m going to continue to pray that he will use me to accomplish his will.

Grafted In

I used to see Jesus and what (relatively) little I knew of the Bible through the filter of my own experience and culture without even knowing it. It would never have occurred to me that it might be good to learn about Jewish history and culture. After all, what's the use of that in the here and now, right?

However, at that point my knowledge of God's word was somewhat less than intimate. I had heard sermons all my life and had memorized some verses for Sunday school, but that was basically it. Now I'm only about a month away from finishing my first full reading of the New Testament. (And then I can't wait to get started on the Old Testament!) I like topical messages in church as much as the next person, but it just doesn't replace actually reading the Bible all the way through in order. For me, reading it through makes it less about what I want to get out of a particular passage and more about what the author is really saying. When you're looking at it from this perspective, it becomes obvious that the more you know about the history and culture that the Bible deals with, the deeper your understanding of God's word will be.

In his book The Jesus I Never Knew, Philip Yancey says,
"Alone of all people in history, [Jesus] had the privilege of choosing where and when to be born, and he chose a pious Jewish family living in a backwater protectorate of a pagan empire. I can no more understand Jesus apart from his Jewishness than I can understand Gandhi apart from his Indianness. I need to go back, way back, and picture Jesus as a first-century Jew with a phylactery on his wrist and Palestinian dust on his sandals."

In addition to the fact that understanding the Jewishness of Jesus will lead me to a better understanding of Jesus himself, my interest in this subject is also inspired by what the Bible says about Gentiles being "grafted in" with the people of Israel to receive God's promise to Abraham and his children.

Romans 11:17 (NLT)
"some of these branches from Abraham’s tree—-some of the people of Israel—-have been broken off. And you Gentiles, who were branches from a wild olive tree, have been grafted in. So now you also receive the blessing God has promised Abraham and his children, sharing in the rich nourishment from the root of God’s special olive tree."

I like how this site puts it:
"The words ‘Grafted In’ memorialize the affirmation of our true identity as a people, Jew and Gentile, securely rooted in the finished work of Yeshua HaMashiach. If you believe in Yeshua, you are Grafted In!"

I even got a new necklace because I'm looking forward to learning more about these things.

Goodbye Living Room Study?

I've been a Christian all my life. I've never walked away from God or had any serious doubts. Growing up, almost everyone I knew was a Christian. There's never been a period in my life where I didn't go to church every week. When I moved out, I married a Christian and got involved in a great college age group at a great church.

So why, if I've been surrounded by such good examples my whole life, did I not grow very much deeper in my faith? I never studied the Bible on my own or looked into the reasons why Christianity is right and other belief systems are wrong. I'm still not sure why I didn't do those things, but I do know that ever since I started coming to The Living Room Study, something clicked. I found myself getting excited about reading the Bible on my own and about learning how we can know Christianity is true and how to defend it. Thanks to my dad, I've begun building a collection of books on apologetics.

If I can pass training, I'll have a job as a quality assurance tester for Vivendi games in El Segundo, which is also where David works. It's about an hour and a half away, which means that I won't get home in time to go to The Living Room any more. QA testing is just a temporary job because you get hired for a certain project and when the project is over they'll either keep you on for the next one or let you go. If I'm let go, then I'll be back at The Living Room in a few months, but if not, David and I want to try to move to El Segundo by the end of the year.

Knowing that this might possibly be my last time coming, I took my camera to the study tonight. I've moved so many times that I've become a bit obsessive about taking pictures of places before I leave them. I was too shy to take many pictures with so many people around because I thought it might look a little strange, but I found a picture online of the room where we meet. Here's that one, plus the two that I took tonight.

The Coffee Depot Baggage Room
In the bathroom
Steve Wiggins, Bible study leader

Edit, some weeks later: I haven't had much overtime at all, so I've been able to come late. This may change when my project has more overtime, though.

Christians: no one path to salvation?

According to a new survey, 57% of people who identified themselves as evangelical Christians agreed with the statement, "Many religions can lead to eternal life." I was absolutely dumbstruck when I heard this. I mean, I know that a lot of people are into the idea of "tolerance" (or at least today's society's definition of that word), but I had no idea that it was so widespread among the Christian community.

If you aren't sure why this is such a big deal, think about it this way. In John 14:6, Jesus says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me." As a teacher I know often points out, Jesus doesn't say he is a way or a truth. He says he is the way and the truth. And if that wasn't enough, the second part of his statement leaves no room for doubt about the exclusivity of Christianity. It is the only way and if you believe that you can be saved by any other means, you are not in the truth and therefore have not received salvation.

So wait a minute. What about all those Christians out there who say that there are other religions that can lead to salvation? It's pretty clear from what the Bible tells us that the issue of whether or not the Biblical Jesus is the only way is not a side issue. It's a core principle essential to salvation. You can't be a true Christian and also believe that Mormons or Buddhists or whoever will also be saved through their religion. Christianity isn't something that works for some people and doesn't work for other people, and everyone just has to find which religion works for them. That is in direct contrast to what Christianity teaches. How many people are there out there who claim to be Christians but really aren't? It's scary to think about.

Don't Judge Me!

Don’t judge me!
A closer look at one of the most commonly quoted verses in the Bible.

“You shouldn’t be judging me! Don’t you know that Jesus said, ‘do not judge’?”

How many times have you heard that? Those kinds of statements are becoming more and more common, by believers and unbelievers alike. If they have a way of making you stop in your tracks, it’s because that’s often what they’re meant to do. It’s an excellent conversation-stopper. After all, you don’t want to make yourself look like you’re disagreeing with Jesus.

The problem is, that verse, Matthew 7:1, is one of the most commonly misunderstood verses in the Bible. For one thing, the meaning that the verse is given in the argument mentioned above is self-refuting. The very statement, “you should not judge” is itself a judgment. That person is judging that you are wrong to judge their behavior, and therefore they are guilty of the same thing they just accused you of.

People will often quote verse 3, which says, "Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?” but you will rarely hear anyone continue on to verse 5, which says, “You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.” When Jesus instructs us to take the speck out of our brother’s eye, he is telling us that we should point out that person’s sin. But doesn’t that mean we have to judge them, even though verse 1 said we shouldn’t do that? Jesus isn’t contradicting himself here. By reading verse 5, we can figure out what the real context of the verse is. Jesus is only speaking against one particular kind of judgment.

The Bible talks about three kinds of judgment. The first is judicial, like the kind of judgment made by a court of law or by the church. One example of this is found in 1 Corinthians 5:3-5, where Paul is writing to the church about a man who is living in sin with his stepmother. He says, “As though I were there, I have already passed judgment on this man in the name of the Lord Jesus. You must call a meeting of the church…Then you must throw this man out and hand him over to Satan so that his sinful nature will be destroyed and he himself will be saved on the day the Lord returns.” The Bible commands that these types of judgments be made.

Another kind of judgment is a rational evaluation of the facts. Nobody can go through life without making this kind of judgment. I think that almost anyone would agree that going on a killing spree simply for the fun of it is wrong. Anyone who agrees with that is making a judgment. This kind of judging is also commanded of us. Matthew 18:15-20 says, "If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every fact may be confirmed. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.” So if you look at the facts (Person A is doing X), make a rational evaluation (The Bible says that X is sin so therefore person A is doing something wrong), and tell that person why what they are doing is wrong, you are doing exactly what the Bible says you should do.

The kind of judging that Jesus tells us we should not do in Matthew 7:1 is hypocritical or unkind judging. If we confront a person for committing the very sin that we ourselves are involved in, we are being hypocritical. Of course, we can’t wait until we are completely free from all sin before confronting someone else because that would be impossible. If you want to warn someone else who is involved in the same sin that you are currently struggling to get out of, you aren’t being a hypocrite. However, if you are making no attempt to get the sin out of your own life, you have no business telling someone else that they should. Also, if we approach people with condemnation, we are guilty of a sinful attitude. We should always approach people with a desire to help them remove the sin from their life, with a kind and compassionate attitude.

So if someone tells you that you shouldn’t judge them because Jesus said so, help them understand the self-refuting nature of their understanding of the passage, and explain to them what Jesus was really talking about.

A new thought

Tonight was the first time I took notes at The Living Room (click image below). I definitely want to continue and I wish I’d started earlier. I think I might actually prefer these chapter-by-chapter notes to topical notes, because whenever I go back to that chapter again I can easily find my notes covering that section. Very practical.

Steve said something today that was a complete revelation to me. He was talking about how when he was new in the faith he was listening to the testimony of a guy who had been really into drugs and all kinds of bad things and how he had overcome all that to become a Christian. He was really impressed by the guy’s testimony, but another guy said that he had heard better: the testimony of a person who had accepted Christ at a young age and hadn’t walked away from the faith but continued to stand firm and to grow in it.

I had always thought that my testimony (I was raised in a Christian home and accepted Christ at age 3 or 4) was kind of boring and wouldn’t be very impressive compared to a person who had a more dramatic story. What Steve said made me think about it in a whole new light and made me realize more fully the value of my testimony. So many people who accept Christ as children turn from it once they get older and are exposed to and tempted by the things of the world. So while it’s a miracle when someone turns from their sinful ways to trust in God, it might be even more of a miracle for someone to resist turning to those sinful ways in the first place.

The Living Room / Come Reason

Tonight's Bible study at The Living Room was really good. The teaching was great, as usual, plus Steve Wiggins played some new songs for us. The one that stood out to me the most is called "A Heart That Burns For You." It's a really gorgeous song and I can't wait until I can have it for my ipod. Steve says they're going to play it at church next week, so I'm looking forward to that.

I think that's pretty much all that happened today. I did more job hunting but didn't get much of anywhere. Yesterday I ended up going to Come Reason after all because my dad's online class was cancelled for the week. I ended up getting two free CDs, so I'm extra glad I was able to go. The subject was the resurrection as a fact of history. One of the CDs I got was from last year when he taught on the same subject, so I'll be able to go back over it and take more detailed notes.

In case you're curious, one of the things he talked about were known historical facts surrounding the resurrection and how they are evidence that Jesus really rose from the dead. The five points that he talked about that are agreed upon by most scholars, Christian or not, are these:

1. Jesus died by crucifixion
2. Jesus was buried
3. Jesus' tomb was discovered empty a few days later
4. The disciples all truly believed that they saw the risen Jesus
5. The skeptics James and Paul were suddenly converted after they claimed to have seen the risen Jesus, and they were both so sure of it that they died for their belief.

Lenny recommended a book that talks about these points called The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus by Gary Habermas.