God is kind

A couple years ago I had a sort of a mini crisis of faith. It wasn't that I was out there doubting Scripture or anything like that, but I had come to realize that my understanding of Scripture just wasn't sufficient. And so I spent a lot of time asking a lot of questions.

One passage that gave me trouble was Acts 14:14–19. Here we have Paul and Barnabas in Lystra, and they perform a miracle, so the people of Lystra decide they must be gods and begin to worship them. Paul reacts as we'd expect him to, and tries to set them straight. It's a story I've known since I was very young. But what caught my attention was v. 17

he did not leave himself without witness, doing good, and giving to you from heaven rain and fruitful seasons, filling your hearts with food and gladness.

And it got my attention, because I realized my personal theology (if I can use that expression) didn't fit in with a God who'd bless pagans, "filling [their] hearts with food and gladness."

See, the dispensationalist in me was insisting that God could only be pleased in New Creation. I was convinced that a man cannot see the kingdom of God unless he is born again. I recognized that Christ's death brought about, in a sense, the end of Adam's race. He is not only the second Man, He is also the last Adam. And I had no idea how to fit God's blessing idolaters with food and gladness into that.

And bear in mind, Acts 14:17 is Paul speaking. This is after the Cross, after the Resurrection. This is clearly not something we can push into the "not for today" category.

Well, I've spent a lot of time thinking about this verse, and I've come to a conclusion I find surprising. Acts 14:17 has been giving me trouble, because I have allowed myself to forget that God is kind.

It's so easy for us to fall into various brands of puritanism that make God out to be mean, demanding, even unkind and unloving. When I think about puritanism, the first thing that comes to mind is the Calivinistic variety, maybe somewhere in New England. But there are other flavors of puritanism too. Dispensationalists have their own varieties, including several centered on "brethren."

One of my daughters has expressed concern about a friend who "doesn't seem to think that God actually likes her."  I think a lot of us have experienced that one.

God is kind. Let's not allow ourselves to forget that. God isn't the creditor who demands the last farthing. He gives freely because that's who He is. He pours out blessing on all of us, regardless of what we deserve. 

It seems to me there aren't too many sins worse than thinking ill of God. Let's be vigilant.

Acknowledging God as God

Sometime in the last six months I was sitting in a "Bible Church" on a Sunday morning, and it was a disheartening experience. We sang songs where "I" figured prominently, but "Christ" wasn't so prevalent. And we heard a very long sermon that seemed to be all about "community" and "sharing" and "real relationships," but there wasn't a whole lot about the Lord Jesus. And as I sat there I thought to myself, "Roman Catholicism is better than this, at least Roman Catholics have a God."

I was so surprised by what I had thought, that I was taken aback, and spent the rest of the day thinking about it.

Now, I have all sorts of problems with Roman Catholicism. I'm in no danger of converting to Roman Catholicism, because I have no interest in working for what God offers for free (Romans 4:5). And while I could make the argument that Roman Catholicism doesn't explicitly deny the Gospel – because they believe in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ (1 Corinthians 15:1–8) –; there is an implicit denial of the Gospel, because there is a responsibility to "walk according to the truth of the Gospel" (Galatians 2:14), and Roman Catholicism surely fails that test.

But the fact remains that my experiences in Evangelical churches have begun to make Roman Catholicism look a lot better than it once looked.

When so-called worship music is a lot about "I" and not much about "Him," then I have to ask who is actually the object of worship. When sermons are mainly about "I" and not much about "Him," I have to ask who is really at the center. When I can sit in a church for the better part of an hour and hear nothing about the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord, I have to ask why precisely I'm there.

 

Many years ago, after we decided we could no longer remain in fellowship with a particular "brethren" group, we spent several months visiting a "continuing Anglican" church. 

(I need to pause to give a word of explanation for our non-American friends. The Anglican church in Canada and the Church of England are associated with the Episcopalian church here in the United States. Here, "Anglican" generally signifies a church that has broken away from the Anglican communion. There are something like 16 Anglican denominations in the USA that are explicitly not in fellowship with the Church of England.  I'm oversimplifying a little, but it's important to note that "Anglican" in the USA is carefully chosen to mean "not Episcopalian" and "not in communion with the Church of England.")

Several people acted surprised that we would gravitate to a liturgical church after being so thoroughly "brethren," thinking we'd end up somewhere more Evangelical. But in my mind, liturgical worship is much closer to what we practiced with "brethren" than what I'd find in a Baptist church or a Bible church.

What I value about "brethren" assemblies is exactly what I valued about liturgical worship: the focus is on the Lord, not on me. The "main event" is remembering the Lord, not listening to a sermon. And while I understand there are some dissimilarities between liturgical worship and the Lord's Supper as practiced in most "brethren" circles, I found the similarities much more compelling. For example, liturgical worship is entirely participative (is that even a word?): there's no question that you're not a spectator, watching a show. You're absolutely participating.

I honestly believe "closed brethren" are much more closely related to Anglicanism than they are to the local Baptist church. It makes perfect sense to me that when W. T. Turpin abandoned brethrenism, he returned to the Church of England, rather than joining a Baptist church.  

OK, this wasn't meant to be a defense of Anglicanism. My point is that it made sense to us to step from "brethren" into a liturgical church, because the beneath-the-surface similarities were compelling: we were interested in "church" that was about the Lord, not about us. We were interested in a place where the Lord's Supper was central. We were looking for something where the congregation was actively participating, rather than simply listening to someone speak.

So I'm on an "assembly quest" again, because we're no longer in the city. We didn't intend to leave the assembly so much as we intended to leave the city and come to a place where we have room and it gets dark at night. And I'll hasten to say, when I've been back in the city, I've remembered the Lord at the same assembly where we'd been in fellowship from 2010 through 2019. The assembly there knows very well why we left, and it had nothing to do with them.

But we've been living in the middle of nowhere for more than two years now, and we've visited  a whole lot of churches. In this area in particular, there are too many small non-denominational churches to list. And over the last couple years, I've given a lot of thought to what I'm looking for in a church. 

So here's what I've settled on as a first requirement: they need to acknowledge God as God. I don't need to hear sermons about how to live a better life, and I don't need to sing songs about myself, my own devotion, and my own faithfulness. "Jesus, Jesus, how I trust Him" is a catchy song, but when I pay attention to the words, it's obvious it's about me, not about Him. I can do without that sort of thing.

And I'm not saying I'm looking for a liturgical church, by the way. I am saying that liturgical worship gets the most important thing right, and the best of "brethren" has a lot in common with it.