Well, I am not a liberal
Well, given all the debate about inerrancy, doctrine and belief going on in the comments of this post, I think it is great that I can just answer an internet quiz and find out straight away if I am a liberal:
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You scored as Emergent/Postmodern. You are Emergent/Postmodern in your theology. You feel alienated from older forms of church, you don’t think they connect to modern culture very well. No one knows the whole truth about God, and we have much to learn from each other, and so learning takes place in dialogue. Evangelism should take place in relationships rather than through crusades and altar-calls. People are interested in spirituality and want to ask questions, so the church should help them to do this.
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What's your theological worldview?
created with QuizFarm.com
It is probably a reflection of this typing that I found it extremely difficult to answer some of the questions because I wanted to deconstruct some of the terminology.
June 24th, 2005 at 12:20 pm
Thankyou Dan
I concur. That is what i was trying to get at with one of my earlier posts.
June 24th, 2005 at 1:30 pm
Lexia,
That is the very reason why christians should take it so seriously.
It does take a lot of time to decide properly. You don’t just jump into it.
Dan, that is a very wordly view. I would be interested for any biblical support for it.
June 24th, 2005 at 1:45 pm
Homer, give me a couple of days and i will knock out a more detailed post on it, we can have the discussion there.
June 24th, 2005 at 1:51 pm
okay.
It is a good topic for a post.
June 24th, 2005 at 2:20 pm
My sense is …there is a popular but false American ‘gospel’ creeping into this discussion.
The false ‘gospel’ that through God’s grace ..one can ‘overcome sin’.
What the HECK Lance ? What do you think GrAce does ?? Yo u can most CERTAINLY overcome sin and wickedness and repent ! what makes you think other wise !!
June 24th, 2005 at 2:33 pm
What do you think GrAce does ?? Yo u can most CERTAINLY overcome sin and wickedness and repent ! what makes you think other wise….
Comment by ABJ — 24/6/2005 @ 2:20 pm
June 24th, 2005 at 3:06 pm
“What do you think GrAce does ?? Yo u can most CERTAINLY overcome sin and wickedness and repent ! what makes you think other wise.”
You’ve missed the point, (an American churchgoer, missing the point, how could this be?)
The point is…that you..and your fellow countrymen (when I did the research on Christians and their attitudes to homosexuals, it was always American churchgoers who were advancing this false ‘gospel’) have turned grace into ‘the law of grace’.
So overcoming sin through grace, instead of being a byproduct of acceptance of God’s grace through belief in Christ’s sin-atoning redemptive sacrifice for sin on the cross..and has been turned into a ‘law’ - a prerequisite for salvation, which you fail to impose on your own life but impose on others.
And it’s not just a mishearing of the true gospel by churchgoers. I’ve spoken with pastor after pastor in the US who teaches this crap, and this crap ‘gospel’ has filtered back from the US into churches in Australia….particularly charismatic/pentecostal churches. (g’day Phil)
To twist the grace of God into a law that you require of others but don’t fulfil yourselves…shows just how far the American …and much of the Australian church has fallen away from the gospel…or to use the term in Galatians, ‘fallen from grace’.
I’ll ask the question again, have YOU overcome (as in ’stopped committing’) sin and wickedness ABJ?
And nice summation of the situation Dan
it IS very much ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ in churches….and another complete distortion of the gospel.
June 24th, 2005 at 11:33 pm
You’ve missed the point, (an American churchgoer, missing the point, how could this be?)
haha =sometimes true sometimes not. I say though God has been gracious to me to show me when I do._
The overcoming sin part is not a prerequisite to Faith, (although some think so and that is where the phrase “Can’t clean the fish before you catch them) it is expected after you are walking with Christ for while. (granted the church sometimes does not teach this, and over at the ooze is article about the national problem of this) You are expected to change and grow and mature-it is Gos’s grace that helps you grow and get over the hard stuff in life.
Yes, I don’t commit sin and wickedness. My worse thing is Pride (which my friends help me with and take me down a notch and then build me back up again and my own tendency to care for others much more than myself. Any sin I do I repent of.
it is not a hard as you make it sound. Even if you live in a sinful place, doesn’t mean you have have to sin. Florida is littered with porn shops and gambling and other avenues of sin but I don’t have to Go there.
June 25th, 2005 at 3:56 pm
Lance,
you might find this surprising but I am going to come to your aid.
ABJ is concerned that you believe grace is gaining the benefits of the cross without having to change your life.
your words are a bit sloppy and could be interpreted that way.
I actually don’t think that is what you are trying to say.
Can you just confirm you are not saying this for ABJ’s sake and others.
June 25th, 2005 at 8:08 pm
My beef with particularly Australian and American pastors..and your average American and some Aussie Christians…is they preach a gospel of change being a ‘prerequisite’ of salvation’.
Change is a consequence of salvation…but if no change happens in the life of a Christian (which is the norm - let’s get real about that, many Christians tend to become more arrogant, more judgemental, more haughty and bigger jerks) salvation is not nullified, because nothing can seperate the believer from the love of God.
You go to any Pharisee Club service tomorrow, and they will tell you that you need to change something about yourself….do something better, be more committed about something, but they will NOT tell you that grace has secured your salvation in Christ - that your eternal relationship with God is sufficient NOW, despite your ongoing sin.
Should you change your life after becoming a Christian? Yes.
Do you HAVE to change your life to secure salvation (a ‘prerequisite’ or the ‘law of mandatory change through grace’) No.
June 25th, 2005 at 8:31 pm
Lance,
You are essentially saying you do not need to change.
What do you think sanctification is then?
June 25th, 2005 at 9:04 pm
Should you change your life after becoming a Christian? Yes.
Do you HAVE to change your life to secure salvation (a ‘prerequisite’ or the ‘law of mandatory change through grace’) No.
in this wording I agree, but my main contention was that Christians do need to change and the power of Grace helps them change and overcome sin.
June 26th, 2005 at 3:55 am
This would summarise my view of sanctification.
http://www.russpickett.com/system/study07.htm
My starting point is the Hebrew word for sanctification, ‘kadesh’…which means ’set apart for/by God’.
It is primarily an act of God…(the presence of Christ in an individual..causing the individual to become more mature and God-like….something the person can’t manufacture in their own right)..remembering we would not even exist in the first place if it was not for God.
I think Christians hugely overstate the human contribution to this maturing process.
And whether intended or not…Christians set benchmarks for ‘acceptable stages’ having been reached in the santification process. One of those benchmarks is implied in the often-used term ‘overcome sin’.
Christians in their mind..usually mean ‘overcome sin’ to be a process..as in the ‘overcoming’ (continuing process) of sin.
However, most people who HEAR this …without knowing Christian jargon and theology would know of the word ‘overcome’ as meaning a completed act….. ‘defeated, finished, victorious’….not ’still in the process of defeating’.
So I find Christians using the term ‘you must overcome sin’ as being misleading.
Again, if they/you mean a person must ‘overcome’ (completely defeat sin) to be saved, then that is a false teaching (thank you Wesleyans for that red herring)…
If they/you mean….one ‘must be defeating’ sin…I think that is still misleading, because it implies…the sin must be completely ‘overcome’ (defeated - past tense) at some stage in this life for there to be salvation.
No, it is the understanding that one CANNOT of their own volition ‘overcome sin’…and that Jesus must be totally relied upon to ‘overcome’ (completely defeat) sin on our behalf…..is the true maturing in God-likeness for the believer ..and integrating this knowledge into our understanding and actions that leads one to being ‘kadesh’ (sanctified).
No Christian has ever ‘overcome (fully completed the victory over) sin’…and it’s time Christians stopped telling this blatant lie (a sin).
The lie is repeated by Christians and their pastors every day of the week..and twice on Sundays.
But heck, what’s the point in telling you all this…you’re followers of John Wesley, not Jesus Christ.
June 26th, 2005 at 11:58 am
No Christian has ever ‘overcome (fully completed the victory over) sin’…and it’s time Christians stopped telling this blatant lie (a sin).
I have never heard this expressed at all and my guess is I have gone to more conservative churches than anyone else here.
I agree if it is said it is a lie and comes directly from Satan.
yoour wording is stil ambiguous however. It is not clear at lest to me whether you believe a person should try to change their life or continue in their old ways.
June 26th, 2005 at 1:20 pm
So….what would justification and sanctification look like for Shane Warne then?
Would his (hypothetical) Christian life involve being constantly dragged before Homer’s Bonking Court….as the Christian response to his sexual addiction?
Or would he be saved by grace through faith in the midst of his sexual addiction?
WWJD with Shane Warne?
June 26th, 2005 at 1:57 pm
I am unaware that Mr warne has any pretensions to being a christian.
everyone can be saved but not everyone will be.
Jesus would warn him of his future.
No-one talked more of the consequences of Hell than Jesus.
June 27th, 2005 at 3:12 am
“Would his (hypothetical) Christian life involve being constantly dragged before Homer’s Bonking Court”
“I am unaware that Mr warne has any pretensions to being a christian.”
What is it about the word ‘hypothetical’ that you don’t understand Homer? (hypothetically).
June 27th, 2005 at 3:16 am
“Jesus would warn him of his future.
No-one talked more of the consequences of Hell than Jesus.”
I didn’t know Shane Warne was a Pharisee like you Homer….
Well..there you go.
June 27th, 2005 at 8:33 am
Lance on this logic
1) preaching about the consequences of hell is being a pharisee
2) jesus was a pharisee.
congratulations!
June 27th, 2005 at 2:29 pm
on a note for Lance, you are very google friendly-I couldn’t find the signpost link so I googled ” sign posts and Lance” and you were top of the list
June 27th, 2005 at 3:56 pm
I would have thought you would have got it by now Homer, but since we always have to spell out the bleedin’ obvious……
Jesus would have told Shane Warne (as He did with other sexual sinners) that the real relationship Shane had been searching for could be found in and through Him.
Jesus saved his hellfire and brimstone rants for hard-headed legalists like you Homer.
June 27th, 2005 at 5:20 pm
No Lance he would have done both as I stated previously
June 28th, 2005 at 10:21 am
“Or would he be saved by grace through faith in the midst of his sexual addiction?”
I believe that this is the heart of Christ’s ministry; unfortunately, some people (including myself) have fallen for the false belief that there is an ‘on and off’ switch for our ’sins’. No such switch exist, believe me, I have tried. All that makes sense to me today is that anyone who believes in Jesus, in whatever way they can, is saved by grace through faith in the midst of our sins.
What I find happens is that I am sometimes locked into the thinking of “Why won’t people change like I want them to?” To which the reply is offered, “Why won’t you change the way people want you to?” Primarily my sin is about my relationship with God; when I see myself as God sees me, then the need to offer judgements disappears because;
a. it is not my place
b. Jesus did not come to condemn, why should I?
c. it is not my place
d. how can healing and reconiciliation take place in any situation when I believe I hold the high moral ground?
These are just a few of thoughts that I add for conversation as I seek to be more authentic in my life . . .
June 28th, 2005 at 1:15 pm
Anthony no-one holds the moral ground.
If you commit one sin you are condemned. We all have done that and so are condemned.
however as 1 Cor shows there is a vastb gulf between a repentant sinner ( which the church is made up of) and unrepentant sinners ( which the world consists of).
how can anyone look up their nose at people who lived like we used to.
We were saved by grace, which is a gift, but that does not mean we do not attempt to change otherwise we are not holy or for the pedants apart.
June 28th, 2005 at 4:58 pm
Tracking back to the origins of this post, isn’t it possible that holding views that the church is made up of repentant sinners and the world consists of unrepentant sinners part of the problem as to why people do not want to have anything to do with organised religion? And am I right in saying that when you say ‘church’ Homer, you are referring to the gathering of the repentant sinners on Sundays (or whatever day it is that ‘church’ happens)
June 28th, 2005 at 5:00 pm
By declaring ‘church people’ to be repentant and ‘world people’ to be unrepentant is looking ‘up the nose’ (although I think you mean ‘down their nose’)?
June 28th, 2005 at 5:03 pm
Anthony,
Yes that is what I am saying however it is simply a matter of fact.
no looking up your nose is saying you are better. the difference between a repentant sinner and an unrepentant one is simply grace.
Try looking at Revelation they will still be rebelling even after judgement
June 28th, 2005 at 5:13 pm
But the point is..that you HAVEN’T repented Homer.
You may have given up the ‘naughty’ sins…to make yourself look good…but that’s just it….you’re operating in a sinful way….in living out that supposed ‘non-naughtiness’.
Conservatives seem to be totally blind to the proud and haughty nature of themselves…..a sinful lifestyle which you love ‘flaunting’ on this blog Homer.
June 28th, 2005 at 5:27 pm
“I believe that this is the heart of Christ’s ministry; unfortunately, some people (including myself) have fallen for the false belief that there is an ‘on and off’ switch for our ’sins’. No such switch exist, believe me, I have tried. All that makes sense to me today is that anyone who believes in Jesus, in whatever way they can, is saved by grace through faith in the midst of our sins.”
And congratulations on your posts Anthony.
I was starting to think that no Christian gets it..because everybody’s been giving Homer pretty much a free run on this…..
Why is it more moderate Christians just allow conservatives and Pharisees to have free run of the church?
And frankly…why am I just about the only one here…in a supposed ‘emerging’ community directly advocating grace for sexual sinners?
Signposts is on just about every Australian Christian blog’s blogroll. Yet there’s just a tiny number of people discussing this.
Come on lurkers. You’ve seen enough of the conversation now. Where do you stand….or IS Homer the spokesman for the church’s position?
June 28th, 2005 at 5:59 pm
Fair go mate - you know full well I’ve flown the flag on here, and so has Phil and Dan, many times. That’s just the top of my head, I’m sure there’s others.
I know that those with Homerish views always sound more strident, because they have a less inclusive approach to life. But it doesn’t mena that people are necessarily listening.