Text Treatise: How Do We Deserve to Be Treated by Other People?

This was a response to a friend's text. I had expressed frustration with the behavior of coworkers and she'd replied with the ever-relevant "anything better than hell is better than you deserve."

Well, there are two levels of "desserts." The one you mentioned is before me always and is a relished bulwark against pride and resentment. Then there is "what we deserve" in the sense of how other humans should treat us if they were acting in obedience to the Law of God and with the Love of Christ. So there is a sense in which it is wrong how you and I and any Christian is treated -- but it's not wrong because we deserve better on our merits, but because God says that there is a better standard by which they should be treating others. So not a dessert in an ultimate sense, but a dessert in the sense of idealized personal relationships.

Basically the ultimate sense is important to avoid sinning by thinking that we deserve any thing, which is pride: thinking we deserve more than we do, which in an ultimate sense is nothing good, and everything bad. The second sense is helpful in addressing grief and other emotions in response to ill treatment: that feeling such a way is valid and appropriate. You have been wronged, and you are not inherently wrong to feel anguished or even angry about it. "But in all your anger do not sin." It's helpful as a perspective on why it's wrong: it's not wrong, what they did to you, because you're hurt. That makes you the standard, and now we're back to pride. It's wrong because it's a sin against God. David after indirectly murdering Uriah: "against you, and you only, oh Lord, have I sinned." If you should be angry at mistreatment, it should be because they're dishonoring God, not because they insulted you. I try to harness my feelings of insult and turn it into zeal instead. To validate the emotions in an appropriate way, with truth.

~ Rak Chazak

Can I Keep Going to A Catholic Church After I'm Saved?

I figured I'd try to phrase this title to respond to Google searches.

Elizabeth Prata has made a number of posts the last few months to remind everyone that it's unwise to call people in different religions (Roman Catholicism, Greek Orthodoxy, Copts) "brothers in Christ" just because they claim to follow Jesus.

Push-back on this is inevitable. In the comments to this article about evangelicals being too comfortable with Rome, someone disputed a claim Elizabeth made in the article, that anyone who is truly saved will cease and desist attending Roman Catholic churches, and that staying put inside such a church is evidence that a person is not saved. The commentor (Glenn) said that she shouldn't/couldn't say that, because he's known people who have been saved in RC churches and continued attending for some time.

I piped up and gave my synthesis. The whole comment thread is at the link above. My comment is reproduced below.

"So when you read "Catholics are not saved" understand that the lengthier version is "Any Catholic individual who believes and accepts the dogmas of Rome are not saved.""

That directly addressed Glenn's stated concern, as I understand it.

As for people remaining or leaving an RCC church, understand that it's a process. I have a friend who was saved out of RCism. For some time she had been going with her family (still living under their roof) to their RCC regularly. She's been continually growing in understanding of doctrines such as submission, etc, and about a year ago informed her parents that she would not go with them any longer. Her concern may have originally been that participation would aid her ability to witness to them, and demonstrate child-parent submission, but eventually it became clear that she could not appear to support what she knew was damnable teaching. Neither I nor anyone else persuaded her to refuse to go to mass. She came to that conclusion herself as a result of the process of sanctification: regularly studying the Scriptures and having her understanding thereof illuminated by the Holy Spirit.

And I think that's what Elizabeth's saying. I condone her forceful statements with respect to people who are truly saved by necessity leaving the RC church they're in. To speak in terms of gray rather than black and white is not helpful, and mitigates the perception of the seriousness of the issue. 

I don't believe Elizabeth would insist on a strict timeline, that if someone goes to mass with their family a few times after believing on Christ, that their profession of faith is insincere. But as with showing spiritual fruit, it is something that is Biblically inevitable. If they never leave, then it shows that their conscience was never provoked by it, and that is evidence of the lack of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. So someone who is saved WILL leave a heretical church.

The difference in how long that takes is a function of their obedience, gain of Scriptural wisdom, and the Holy Spirit's prerogative in sanctifying their desires. But I daresay someone who stays many years is evidencing severe disobedience, doctrinal error, and most likely that they simply didn't receive the Gospel message in truth.

Reading what you two are writing, it doesn't seem you're fundamentally opposed, but the disagreement is over what way is appropriate to define the matter.

In that regard, I 'take Elizabeth's side,' because my major premise is that those who are truly saved will not lose their salvation if they risk being offended by her words. And those who are not saved need to know that being in an RCC church is Biblically unacceptable and they are in danger of hell. And i both cases, those still in an RC church are in need of being convicted in their souls. And conviction comes by the Holy Spirit through hard truths (truths you agree to in letter, Glenn), not by giving every single condition every time you make a statement, and thereby dulling the emphasis off of everything said.

~ Rak Chazak

Texting Treatise: Different Responses to Temptation

Texting Treatise: Different Responses to Temptation

The first section contains the types of responses or non-responses to sin, where a person rejects the idea that they should be repentant about it.

Blindness

Lack of Awareness: unaware of what you are doing

Qualified Unawareness: aware of what you are doing, but think it is good. Unaware that it is sin

Incorrigibility

Apathy: aware it’s wrong but don’t care to change it

Minimization: aware it’s wrong but deny the severity of it

Defiance: aware of the wrongness and severity and willingly indulge it anyway without contrition

In this next section are different types of responses to sin that contain a measure of contrition (feeling sorry) or repentance (genuinely desiring to flee from or overcome the temptation). For the sake of making it seem more interesting, psychologically, I’ve arranged them in a potential ‘maturity scale’ that the hypothetical average sinner might progress through while dealing with recognized temptations to sin in their life.

Contrition

                Sub-set: Vain Heroics

Halfhearted Abstinence: an attempt to break from it, but not strong enough in conviction to persist. Likely followed by binging on the particular temptation (shopping, drinking, sexual activity, surfing channels/websites, abandoning healthy eating or exercise, etc) upon crashing

All or Nothing: can lead to longer sustained abstinence, but more often leads to more time in between attempts, because of the fear of failure. Successive failure leads to disillusionment with pure abstinence and leads to a variety of different attempts to deal with the issue:

                Sub-set: Allowances

Hesitation: failing with abstinence doesn’t immediately lead to abandoning that method, but can cause a person to rationalize not trying right now, while they’re waiting for the perfect moment to start. They tolerate giving in to the temptation because they tell themselves that they’re planning to try to abstain from it soon

Banking: sinning more in the short term to satisfy an imagined quota that your flesh desires, so that you can hope to have better success in your abstinence effort. This leads to an expectation of high indulgence, which produces a cycle of periodic abstinence followed by binging, which is worse than the initial ‘halfhearted abstinence’ program.

Putting it Out of Mind: not thinking about it, in the hopes that it was one’s focus on trying to deal with the temptation so strongly that led to the catastrophic failures in the past. When this inevitably fails, it is modified to

Tolerance: not keeping track, and letting yourself get away with indulgence in the hope that by not “banking” it, you’ll end up indulging in it less, and that by not trying to abstain all-or-nothing-wise, you won’t have a “crash.”

                Sub-set: Searching for Loopholes

Rhythm/Scheduling: when tolerance doesn’t end up diminishing your gratification of your sinful desires, and you catch yourself, you may try to “out-think” yourself, by intentionally planning to give in to the temptation at certain points, but insert periods of focused abstinence in between. It’s basically a modified “banking/all-or-nothing” approach with shorter periods of abstinence that make success more likely. When the periods are extended in the effort of “weaning” yourself off of a dependence on the indulgence, you reach the level of

Gradual Improvement: this can be reached with or without the “scheduling” stage; it’s basically an attempt to “play a long game” and start comfortably with a high tolerance for your indulgence, gradually decreasing how much of an allowance you’ll give yourself. This is basically a more intentional version of

Fatalism: aiming for less than perfection because you can’t get it. Whereas the “gradual improvement,” “scheduling” and “banking” approaches tolerate sin for the sake of trying to build some sort of spiritual immunity to it (doesn’t work, by the way), fatalism is the final resting place of many people (note that this scale does not have to be limited to Christians). They decide that they’ll accept a certain amount of giving in to temptation over a certain length of time, indefinitely, because they’ve decided that they’ll never have victory over it. Such thinking can lead a person from being contrite  to becoming incorrigible. However, some people may make a few further desperate steps to dealing with the issue of their temptation

Christian Encouragement: How I Compliment Pretty Girls Who Have Good Theology

The following contains 1,700 words of fairly easily-readable monologue that I sent as an expanded version of a compliment to a girl on her theological soundness and zeal. I'll place a page break early on, to avoid cluttering the front page, and encourage you to click on "read more" to look at the whole thing for your consideration, edification, what-have-you.

Hiyah,

I came across your facebook profile on a [..............] post where you had commented. So the fact that you seemed to affirm pre-trib eschatology was what first stood out, not to mention the fact that you're following a page representing Reformed doctrine, which is encouraging. The next thing that I saw was that you're cute, which is only natural considering that I'm a typical male in that I'm visually oriented, and that my personality preference (which I find the Myers-Briggs profile to be a fairly effective measure of) is to thoroughly evaluate everything I perceive. It's a little unclear from facebook and your blog, but erring on the safe side, I'll treat you as if you're married and avoid anything that might be flirtatious. However, I have many compliments to give you.

It's rare for most young people to be very theologically astute -- I speak as one myself, who feels sometimes as if the peer landscape is very sparsely populated with Christian brethren -- and considering that roughly half of any age group is female, and only a subset thereof is of notable physical attractiveness, it's only logical to conclude that it's a very rare thing for a beautiful young woman to be so zealous for good doctrine as it is apparent to me that you are.

And mark, that is primarily what makes you beautiful:

3Your adornment must not be merely external-- braiding the hair, and wearing gold jewelry, or putting on dresses; 4but let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is precious in the sight of God. 1 Peter 3:3-4

Irrationality in Regeneration: A Source of Relief

Lemme explain some terms before I start:

• Something irrational is something that can’t be explained, for which there can’t be discovered a reducible reason WHY something is the case/is happening, by using logic. (Something is reducible if it can be broken down into parts—a bike can be reduced to a collection of gears, bolts, chains, wires, metal frames etc;  abstract reasoning is broken down the same way, just with premises, reasoning mechanisms, etc)

• Regeneration is the phenomenon that occurs when God initially “changes a person’s heart,” as only He can do, that alters their instinctive desires and motivations. I’m not more than a lay theologian of 3-4 years going, but in my understanding it would be inappropriate to refer to regeneration as a continual process after a person’s saved—that would be sanctification. But regeneration’s effects are felt continually, and become more pronounced the longer a person is sanctified. But there’s an initial period that the affected person can point to as the moment when things changed. That’s when God ‘regenerated’ their soul, awakening them to receive the gift of salvation by faith in Christ.

To the point: when I began my investigation into Biblical Christianity (having had a nominal belief, at least, for as much of my life as I can remember up to that point) in early 2010, I came upon a philosophical challenge: is my motivation pure? Specifically, the motivation to do good. Consider the materialistic-reductionist view: everything you do to help others, which appears to be altruistic, is ultimately done for a selfish reason on some level. And if you can’t figure out what that reason is, it’s still reducible to a conditioning of your brain from previous behavior. You help others because you want to feel good from helping them—and therefore, your actions are not unconditional, they are self-serving. Your act of helping someone else is merely the way through which you satisfy your own selfish desires to feel good about yourself by riding the boost you get when you do something nice for someone else. You never help someone just to help them. You’re merely using them to get to your real goal.

 

‘Probably something the atheist economist-philosopher Ayn Rand would be all on-board with, since she held that people were utterly selfish, no exception—although she considered that a good thing. Selfishness (or as likeminded libertarians would put it, self-interest) is held up as the highest good in various areas of modern thought. Can you think of anything more anti-Gospel at the core? Selfishness is good, and nobody is truly altruistic; doing good for others is fundamentally selfish in itself?

 

Charity Promotion Becomes Surprisingly Thorough Analogy for Responses to the Gospel

At my work, we have a promotion where people can make a small donation to a charity, and receive an item to present at any future purchase for the rest of the year and receive a free food item with their purchase. Some of the responses have struck me as really lacking, as far as good excuses go, and after enough of these, it provoked me to analogize these excuses to people's rejections of the Gospel.

There are three categories. Some people have no 'promo item' and don't want one. Others don't, and do. Others have them, and either want more or don't want more. These represent, metaphorically, rejection of the Gospel, acceptance of the Gospel--and thereby salvation, and acceptance or refusal of ongoing sanctification by the Holy Spirit.

The free item represents salvation, the small donation represents the cost of repentance and submission to Christ, and the further donations represent sanctification and deeper intimacy with God.

Rejection of the Gospel

-- no, I'm suspicious of the word "free." Nothing's really free. (this person doesn't understand the nature of a free gift, thinks there's something he has to do for it, and can't appreciate the gift)

--no, I'm suspicious of charity donations I don't choose myself. (this person thinks religion is personal and doesn't appreciate the absolute truth of divine revelation. He's inclined to pick a religion that feels right to him, rather than the true Gospel)

--no, I'd rather not incur the cost (this person doesn't want to give up whatever's standing in between them and their salvation--sin)

--we don't really come here that often/don't have [Restaurant] near where we live (this person can't see how a relationship with God will benefit them, so they're not interested. They're selfish. They see some benefit, but want more than they expect to get.)

--I don't really eat those (related to the above one. This person doesn't see any benefit at all, because the benefit he wants is contrary to the gift that he's offered)

--I got one of those before but never used it/lost it. (this person 'tried religion,' and it didn't work for him, so he figured it was worthless)

--I've already donated on my own time (religious. Thinks he's done enough work and deserves his reward without the cost of repentance)

--not today, another time (this person wants to keep on sinning, and thinks they'll have time later on to repent)

--I don't have the money with me (this person wants the reward, but thinks that there's other things in their life that distract them, that they think they need to be concerned with, more than salvation)

--good sales pitch, but no thanks (this person inexplicably refuses even though he clearly understands the offer and sees the benefit of it)

Salvation

--well, it's for a good cause

--yes, anything for that charity!

--free for a whole [time span]? (appealing benefit: eternity)

--for just such-and-such a price? (appealing benefit: low personal cost)

--sure. 

--(smile) sure. (based on sales presentation)

Responses to Sanctification

--I already have one (person doesn't understand that sanctification is a continual process and they're never done growing)

--I have one with me, but I don't want to use it (why wouldn't you want God to sanctify you?)

--I have one, let me use it now (person responds willingly to discipline or other sanctification)

--I do have one, and let me get another (person gladly looks forward to the refining fire of sanctification)

--yes, I got one last promotional season, and let me get another this time

--let me get several, to give to my kids or grandkids


I think minimal interpretation makes most sense; everybody can draw the most out of reading this by considering it with their own mind.

~ Rak Chazak

"No Man Is As Polite As You"

Ehm. Not to toot my own horn. I wasn't expecting such a compliment, but that's what made it stand out when I heard it. I'm going to attempt to draw something valuable out of it.

I just began working at a fast-food chain restaurant, and each of the days I was there, there were also two or three Ukranian girls at the fry-station, sandwich area and drive-thru station. I worked the cash register. In the middle of the day, there would tend to be a 'rush,' where there's more than two or three people in line at a time, for an extended period of maybe an hour or more (at our establishment, at least)--this prevented us from being able to talk much initially, not that you should be doing too much of that when you're on the clock, anyway. But over the 5 days we were there at the same time, we had the opportunity to trade some words back and forth. I "impressed" them with showing that I knew the words 'spaziba' and 'dobre utre' (I'm spelling them as they sound to me, not according to any actual standard), which mean 'thank you' and 'good morning.' I learned 'dobre veche' (good evening), 'bon scheuye spaziba' (thank you very much) and was reminded of the word I'd forgotten, 'izviñi,' which means both 'excuse me' and 'I'm sorry.' It' a very utilitarian word, thus. 'Parschallista' means both 'please' and 'you're welcome,' making it very easy to get the words right if you're just learning the language! Specifically, this language is Russian. There is a Ukranian language, but Russian is widely spoken in the country and it's the only thing I heard them speak while they were there.

They were there doing a student work-exchange over the summer. I've run into Russian college students doing that before, when I worked at a summer camp. There was a girl named Vicka who was really motivated to try to experience everything (rock wall, swimming pool, biking) while she was there, and I had the most opportunity to talk to her. Some of the other guy staffers suspected us of being interested in each other, romantically. That wasn't the case. In February, there had been some Thai girls doing a similar exchange at the same restaurant. So it seems that this is a widespread thing, where other countries send students here to work and live for a short amount of time, to have the opportunity to practice their English, interact with actual Americans, and of course see the sights. Always surprised that my small town ever gets the interest of people from far away, I nevertheless enjoy being a part of the impression that these people get of the place when they leave.

Free Use, Wiki Commons

The above graph on the left shows the religious diversity in the Ukraine. White is atheist, and the rest of the colors are mainly sects of the Orthodox Catholic Church. This is typical of European countries of the present time--there tends to be more nontheists than any other individual group in these countries, though there are long histories of the influence of traditional religions, mostly Christian or nominally christian, in those places. I bring this up because while I'm not assuming what the girls I worked with believe, it's nevertheless a reasonable inference to make, that what I was asked was influenced in part by the national spiritual landscape of their home country, irrespective of their personal beliefs.

The "more American" of the girls (spoke better English, not that the others were unable to communicate or anything) spoke up when they were all standing together and we were talking. She said, midst giggles from the other two, that 'no man can be (or is, I forget which she said) as polite as you.' This was after first asking why I was so polite. To me, I was just behaving normally, not putting on an act in order to speak with customers, although maybe putting in more effort to appear cheerful and friendly than usual, but other than that, 'what you see is what you get.' I tried to think of a reason, and gave her that it's just natural to me to be respectful like that, that it's genuine. "No men are as polite as you," she said. And now I come to the twofold impression I gained from the experience:

1. It struck me that this has happened before. It isn't something that contains itself based on geography. I've met many an American girl that treated me with suspicion for no readily explainable reason. Through the grapevine, it's come forth that people sometimes have the impression that I'm putting on a front, not being genuine, that maybe I'm hiding something. They think I'm too nice. Of all the things to have for a problem, right? People think I'm faking my personality because they can't see why I should seem so happy or pleasant to others, particularly strangers. It hurts a little, but I'm more happy that it's because of being too friendly and nice than because I come across as the opposite. I wouldn't be surprised if a great number of potential friendships or romantic relationships were prevented in the past because my demeanor motivated people to be suspicious of me. It's a loss, to be sure, but on the other hand it's inadvertently screened for people who are more confident in themselves and less judgmental of others to be the sort of people that I eventually get closer to. And lest I be remiss, this all is directly tied to my faith--or rather, my regeneration. You can really tell the difference between a saved and unsaved person by whether they have joy or whether they do not. In general, of course. I simply want to affirm that I have the outward personality that I have because I have the inside satisfaction and joy that comes from knowing the answers to the tough questions of life, and having relief in the knowledge that I know where I'm going, I know what my purpose is, and I have a healthy relationship with my heavenly Father. It isn't any more complicated than that. Which brings me to my next point.

2. Shortly after that, the young girl (they were all about 19--at 23, I feel fairly old) asked me if I was religious. For simplicity's sake, I didn't argue about the meaning of the word, and decided to answer 'yes.' I wanted to make myself understood and not confuse her. She responded, "ah, that explains it." A little while after, she asked me if I went to church and I explained that I hadn't had the opportunity to visit during college and currently didn't have a car (see earlier blog post). She said, 'aha, well you're not *really* religious, then,' and this may have been her teasing me and possibly attempting to bring some jocularity into the conversation to draw it away from the serious topic, which people can find uncomfortable, because the other girls laughed at her and implied she was messing with me. I did respond that 'well, if being religious just means you go, sit, and leave, once a week, then yeah, I'm not really religious.' So there you see that I did make a slight attempt to define the term and not imply that I was just your run-of-the-mill lame churchian, or whatever she might have had in the back of her mind because of her prior experience, when she asked.

It was a short but fascinating exchange, to me. My surprise at the declaration by the girl (and the two others emphatically agreed on that point) that I was inhumanly polite can be explained by the fact that there's very few Christians (capital C) around, and consequently most people live the bulk of their lives without really getting to see the fruit of sanctification in another person. So what's the reason why I was so polite and why they were so confounded by my behavior so as to comment on it -- and to declare that no other man on earth was as polite as me, no less? It comes down to Christ and His grace. His gospel. It always comes back to that. He is at the root of it all. 

So that was a little way in which I might have 'witnessed,' recently. Not something extremely remarkable, since I didn't exactly have (take?) the opportunity to share the full Gospel with them, but I'm hoping God will take that memory and use it to bring fruit in their lives when the moment is right in the future.

~ Rak Chazak

Follow-up on the Last Blog Post

Elizabeth and I seem to have been thinking the same thing. I wrote a short little comment on how the Spirit accomplishes sanctification and what role material things play in that, and just yesterday she posted an article reflecting on how the Spirit interacts with us in general. 

I'll link it here. It's very good (just 1900 words or so :) ) http://the-end-time.blogspot.com/2013/07/how-are-we-led-by-spirit-and-how-does.html 

If this line of thinking interests you, I highly recommend the fiction book, The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis, for more examples and thought experiments. The book is written as a collection of letters from a 'senior fiend,' or something to that effect, to his subordinate, and it explores the relationship between mind and body, in particular the relationship between spiritual influences (good or evil) and our minds.

~ Rak Chazak

Does Sanctification Come Through Experiences?

The following is based on the article 

Is Christian journaling good or bad? Is it a 'spiritual discipline'? Is it part of 'spiritual formation'?

From the blog, "The End Time."

            In her article, Elizabeth discusses the unbiblical practice of “journaling” as a mysticist endeavor to ‘allow God to speak to you,’ etc etc. She makes repeated (true) statements about sanctification that I wanted to reflect on for myself. She says that sanctification doesn’t come from something you do, or an experience you have, it comes from outside yourself—from God. Definitely true. But I think I need to be more specific and say that, logically speaking, God surely can use material/temporal conditions to effect sanctification. Just as God works through the Christian witness to reach the Lost, God can (meaning two things: He isn’t required, and He is able to) work through our thoughts, actions and life experiences to sanctify us. Thought experiment: if we were to reject that idea in totality, it would imply that our interaction with God is completely divorced from physical reality. But none of us exist in a void. We see, we feel, we experience things and think about them. What do we pray about if not other people, ourselves, and God’s kingdom—all things which are only contemplatable through our personal experiences with external stimuli? How do we experience spiritual personal growth if we do not have a real world to measure our development against? We don’t exist apart from everything else; we are intimately connected with the world we live in and we are definitely both affected by things that happen in it, and can effect things to happen in it. But note, this is distinct from those things being inherently sanctifying themselves. Can God use a tough personal trial to sanctify you? Absolutely. Can a person go through a tough personal experience and experience no sanctification whatsoever? Definitely. So what’s the difference between whether you can be sanctified through a given experience/thing, or not? It is God, and only God. This is consistent with the Biblical truth that God can use evil things for good. The evil things are not good, and they do not benefit you spiritually (sanctify you). GOD, however, can operate sovereignly through evil and accomplish sanctification in spite of it. Thus, my holistic summary of sanctification is that we as individuals are certainly able to be influenced by our environment, and even our own thoughts, but whether these things will produce a positive spiritual result or merely a temporary mental/physical one depends utterly on to what extent the Holy Spirit is involved in them. The conclusion, then, is to always pray that God will use the things that you do, think, and experience every day to grow you spiritually and sanctify your soul. You will always have interactions with the material world in this life. Why allow for the possibility of unsanctifying experiences? Ask God to ensure that the things that happen to you will be 100% for your good, and that He prevent the occurrence of things that are detrimental to your spiritual growth, even if that involves something in your thoughts. Then you can go about your day with confidence, knowing that God is intimately ‘ordering your steps,’ and making every possible opportunity into a learning experience.  

I think I’ve agreed with Elizabeth’s view as summed up by this statement she makes: “But doing journaling or not doing journaling doesn't hinder or help the Lord's Providential working in our lives.” 

Final thought from the Bible: Philippians 2:12-13: “Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill His good purpose.” 

~ Rak Chazak

I figured I would addend to the bottom, here, a relevant article by John MacArthur that was just recently posted. 
http://www.gty.org/blog/B140702 -- The Apparent Paradox of Sanctification

"The truth is that sanctification is God’s work, but He performs it through the diligent self-discipline and righteous pursuits of His people, not in spite of them. God’s sovereign work does not absolve believers from the need for obedience; it means their obedience is itself a Spirit-empowered work of God."