The Christian Ambush: A True Story

 
I was once suckered into a captive audience situation. In high school I was a music lover. That’s an understatement. I suppose that’s what made me vulnerable. A girl I liked invited me to a “concert” at her church. “What kind of concert?” I asked. “I don’t know really,” she lied, “just a live band. They’re supposed to be really good.” But the lie was justifiable, her youth pastor had explained on Sunday (a friend later informed me), because the teenagers in the high schools don’t realize the precariousness of their eternal fate. When an immortal soul is at stake, sometimes you have to do or say what’s necessary to get them to church, he said.

How dumb am I? Of course it was a rat trap, and I was the rat. Things went badly for me fast. Just in case you’re wondering why I didn’t just walk out; I hadn’t driven myself, being only 15 years old. They’d picked me up, and it was a longish drive in the rain at night. I wasn't going to call my mommy to rescue me. There you have it. They were my ride, and unless I wanted to be soaked to the bone and freezing, I was stuck. 

Well, first of all the band stank. And the songs stank. I was just sitting there minding my own business when the critical moment came. I didn’t see the ambush coming. The lead singer asked everyone who was “saved” to stand up. Suddenly I had a choice to make. I felt the pressure build around me. It was in the air. I had to choose. I could stand up and avoid the humiliation that was about to be unleashed upon the poor seated “unsaved” kids, or I could risk staying seated and hope for the best. Well, the best was not to happen for me that night. I should have run to the bathroom and hid in a stall until it was over, but that option didn’t occur to my 15-year-old stupid self because my folks “raised me up” not to be rude. (Never mind the rudeness that was about to be inflicted on me!)

From my seat I looked around, and as far as I could see, I was the only one seated. I felt like a toadstool in a giant redwood forest. I sat there wondering how any of these teenagers could possibly think they knew what “saved” meant. I wondered how many of them stood up to avoid being singled out. I remember actually praying to God to help me be brave in the face of the pressure that was about to be applied to my boneheaded remaining-seated concert-going self.

“We’re going to pray now for those who are seated that they might know the Lord and accept Jesus into their hearts to make him the Lord of their lives and be born again,” the lead singer said (or something to that effect). He prayed for a long while. Yes, he started with threats of hell. There were lots of Amens and teary halleluiahs from my “friends” in the immediate vicinity. But wait, there’s more. 

They asked my friends for my name. The singer began praying into the microphone for “Bert’s” eternal soul. Entrapment and now I was betrayed by my buddies. (But it was entrapment and betrayal for a “noble cause,” they certainly rationalized.) At least I found out at that moment that there were others seated like me. My name was not the only name called. I had partners in crime somewhere else in the forest of standing, praying, weeping “Christians.” I felt a little better knowing I wasn’t alone. 

Why didn’t I just stand up? I considered it seriously but decided against it. It wasn’t that I considered my self “unsaved.” I didn’t. It was just that I resented their presumption that I was unsaved (simply because I was from another denomination I suppose), and resented their assumption that my status before God was their business, and resented their covert conniving to lure me in and “fix” me, and resented the absurd assertion that just standing up at their church somehow magically made you saved. So I sat while the lead singer prayed for my salvation. But that’s not all.

After a very long prayer supported with tears and whispers of “Yes Lord,” the singer instructed everyone to lay hands on those seated as he prayed. The first hand put on my head made me really angry. They had shanghaied me and now they were violating my personal space. I didn’t give anyone permission to touch me. But they got away with it because, I presumed, there were only two ways I could have stopped them from touching me at that point. I could physically protest in some way, push their hands away, but I worried that would draw even more unwanted attention. Or I could stand up and “get saved!” But I didn’t do either. I folded. At least a dozen hands touched my shoulders and head, and I just sat there humiliated. Surely I was the victim of the longest mercy molesting in the history of Christendom.

My “friends” didn’t talk to me on the way home. They were punishing me for something, I guess. I wondered if the silent treatment was a planned response designed to shame recalcitrant heathens who refuse to knuckle under to pressure. I couldn’t believe the hostile atmosphere in that car. No one said a word the entire way home. But I was glad in a way. I had nothing to say to them—nothing nice anyway. They dropped me off in cold silence. Maybe they took it personally, like I had held out on them so as to embarrass them in front of their church friends and youth pastor. Perhaps I robbed them of bragging rights: “We saved Bert Gary! Can you believe it? Bert Gary! It’s a miracle!” I really don’t know. But one thing was certain. They judged me as hopelessly hell-bound and never spoke to me again.

For more evangelical bad behavior:
Hell House
The Prosperity Gospel: God In a Box
Katrina - The Wrath of God?
Don't You Hate Christian Tracts


See this blog published as an article in PTM with a fantastic layout

Cussin' & Swearin'

Cussing and swearing are not the same thing.

Cussing is the use of profanity—you know, saying BAD WORDS.

Swearing is pledging an oath of truth, like when you swear to tell the truth in court, as in swearing to testify to the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God “under oath.” Public officials are sworn into office with the same oath, "under God."

By wrongly equating cussing and swearing, we misinterpret the commandment against using the Lord's name in vain. (Ex 20:7) It has nothing to do with using God's name when you use profanity. It has everything to do with lying while swearing to God that you're telling the truth.

The Lord’s third commandment is against perjury, not profanity.

It’s worth noting as well that Jesus said to avoid going around swearing to tell the truth altogether. He said:

"Let your word be 'Yes, Yes' or 'No, No'; anything more than this comes from the evil one.” (Matt 5:36-37)

I’m not saying that profanity is OK. It’s definitely inappropriate in most settings. The use of profanity by children, for example, should not be tolerated in my opinion, especially in public places, if not in the home, though I leave the cussing-at-home issue in the hands of parents where it belongs. “Street language” or “gutter talk” as it is called from the mouths of minors shows a lack of maturity and respect. We typically ban young people from making certain gastrointestinal-related reverberations, don’t we? To me profanity is no different. It’s childish, rude, avoidable, and intolerable.

Just between us adults, however: Is Jesus tape recording all conversation for any slip up, keeping score so as to condemn us for the slightest vocabulary infraction? Come on! What happened to freedom in Christ? Are we free from legalistic nitpicking over every little shoot, darn, and crud or not?

I hate to burst your bubble, but the Apostle Paul cussed once. Sad but true. I regret to inform you that he used the s-word. Well, he did it in Greek, but it’s the s-word nonetheless:

“More than that, I now regard all things as liabilities compared to the far greater value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things--indeed, I regard them as dung!¹⁰ --that I may gain Christ,” Philippians 3:8 (emphasis mine)

The word translated here as “dung” means, well, you know what it means. It’s an s-word. And it’s an s-word in biblical Greek too: skubalon. So next time you hit your thumb with a hammer, say “Skubalon!” It’s New Testament approved! (If you don’t enjoy my sense of humor, don’t read what I write—just a suggestion.)

I believe that when it comes to s-words and the like, the law of love does a better job of helping us distinguish between words that help and words that hurt than any goody-two-shoes list of bad words George Carlin or any of us could come up with. People—adults—hung up on dos and don’ts haven’t realized their liberty in Christ from worry about these things.

Do words themselves have some kind of power over us or our eternal destinies that we should cower in paranoia about everything we say? Some seem to think so. My question for them is this. Is any power possessed by those words greater than the power of Jesus?

I don’t believe that cuss words in and of themselves have the power to condemn anyone. No matter they have four letters. No matter what letter they begin with. No matter the number of vowels, consonants, or syllables. But I do most definitely believe that we condemn ourselves when we use words—profane or not—to hurt or offend people.

I vote for thinking less about vocabulary and more about strengthening relationships. And I vote for words that build up, not tear down.

"All things are lawful," but not all things are beneficial. "All things are lawful," but not all things build up. (1 Cor 10:23)

Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing. (1 Thess 5:11)

And that’s all I have to say about that, dagnabit!

.

The Meaning of the Cross: Moronic and Offensive

The Moronic and Offensive Cross

The cross of Christ is moronic and offensive, wrote the Apostle Paul:

“For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,

‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’

“Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?

For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe.

“For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom,

but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block [skandalon -  in the Greek---the root of our English words scandalous; it also means offensive] to Jews

and foolishness [morian -  in the Greek---the root of our English word moronic] to Gentiles,

but to those who are called, both Jew and Greeks, Christ [is] the power of God and the wisdom of God.

“For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.” (bolds and italics mine) (1 Corinthians 1:18-25) (New Revised Standard Version)

So Paul claimed to preach a message that is both scandalous/offensive and moronic/foolish. What was that message? You just read it above: Christ crucified. Does that strike you as strange? Christians comfortably speak of Christ crucified all the time. What is offensive or moronic about saying Christ crucified? Consider the following.

Christ is the word that replaced the term Messiah in the Greek-speaking world where Paul took the gospel. So we are talking about Messiah (God’s anointed) being crucified. Now take note of Deuteronomy ..21:23.. (and Galatians ..10:13..). We discussed this verse at the beginning of this chapter. It says that God curses/damns anyone hung on a tree---and therefore anyone crucified. Have you put it together now?

Christ crucified is a Greek way of saying Messiah damned!

Now it sounds offensive, does it not? Now it sounds moronic too. How could an intelligent, prudent man like Paul preach Messiah damned? It is stupid and disgusting, is it not? How can God’s anointed one be damned by God? It does not make a lick of sense.

But Paul made no apology. He was not ashamed of the gospel. (Romans 1:16) He believed it was true precisely because it was too outrageous not to be. He, like so many after him, believed it because no one but God could come up with something so spectacularly ridiculous!

Messiah damned. Offensive? Yes, in the extreme. Moronic? Yes, absolutely. But as Paul wrote,

“For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness (moronic-ness) of our proclamation (Messiah damned), to save those who believe.” (1 Corinthians 1:21)

And he wrote,

“For God’s foolishness (moronic-ness) is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness (Christ crucified or Messiah damned) is stronger than human strength.” (1 Corinthians 1:25)

In the current climate of political correctness and hypersensitivity, it is as if we are surrounded by “the offended.” Christians today are not immune to this “don’t offend” trend. We have joined the ranks of the hyper-vigilant. Not to offend is casually seen as a Christian duty.

Yet how do we reconcile our political correctness with Jesus? Jesus offended people. His teachings and behaviors offended people. And the Bible comes right out and says so. His own kin and hometown folks took offense at him. (Matthew 13:57; Mark 6:3) The Pharisees took offense at him. (Matthew 15:12) His own disciples took offense at him. (John 6:60-66)

Moreover, Paul said the gospel is offensive! Specifically, he wrote that the gospel message of “Christ crucified” was a stumbling block to Jews, meaning an offense to religious sensibilities. (1 Corinthians 1:23) In other words, the message itself is offensive by human reasoning. Paul referred to Isaiah in Romans 9:33:

"See, I am laying in Zion a stone that will make people stumble, a rock that will make them fall, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame." (New Revised Standard Version)

“A rock that will make them fall” can be translated “a rock of offense.” The Greek word for “offense” is the same in all the preceding paragraphs. Again, skandalon--- ska,ndalon in the Greek---means stumbling block; it is the root of our English word scandalous; and it means offensive.

While the message is admittedly scandalous/offensive to some, particularly to the religiously hyper-vigilant, Jesus made it clear that one need not experience it as so. Jesus said, “blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me." (Matthew 11:6) And Paul clearly wrote that to those being called by God, the message of Christ crucified (Messiah damned) is not moronic or offensive, but is the power of God and the wisdom of God. (1 Corinthians 1:24)

“For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength.” (1 Corinthians 1:25)

This is what Jesus is all about, according to Paul. And that is not preached and taught very much today. How so? When the subject of Jesus comes up, arguably the most common response is to start talking about “doing right” and “straightening up” and “trying harder” and “getting back to church” and “stopping drinking.”

People feel shame and guilt at the mention of Jesus’ name rather than forgiveness and freedom!

They should feel understood and liberated and empowered. They should feel wonder, awe, and delight. Instead, when Jesus is mentioned, they too often start talking about “getting right with The Man before I die so he won’t punish me.” Hopefully this book will change some minds. That is what “repent” literally means, “to change one’s mind” (meta,noia , meta-noia, change-mind).

It is too strange and wonderful to be true. The Judean authorities’ master plan to erase Jesus was to get him hung on a tree and thus damned by God. (Deuteronomy 21:23) And the message that his first believers embraced was exactly that---Christ crucified, Messiah damned by God! Who but God could have planned something so brilliantly absurd?

A God-damned Messiah saves the world. Offensive. Moronic. Provocative. Perfect.

The Father carried the world’s condemnation through his Son’s cross, and thus died to sin and death and condemnation on behalf of all humanity. He became our curse. (Galatians 3:13) That is how he saved the world. He did it because he loves the world---the whole beautiful, terrible, holy, cancerous, hilarious, reptilian, awful, and wonderful ball of wax. (John 3:16-17)

Leave it to God to die so well.

[Adapted from Jesus Unplugged, Copyright 2005, Faithwalk Publishing]

For more on Roman crucifixion see Was Jesus Crucified in the Manner Shown in Paintings and Movies?