Monday, June 11, 2007

Robert Morrison

This year we celebrate the 200th anniversary of Robert Morrison coming to China as a missionary. Little as we know in order to come to China, he had to work for the East India Company as a translator, most likely also involved in the opium trading business. (And he must have known about the harmful effect of opium then, see here.)

I did not know him, so I don't know what he was thinking then, so the following is just my own speculations.

If it were you, what would you do? Spread the "Gospel" (i.e. assuming it's just concerned about going to heaven) and ignore the effect on Chinese people's body (because that is the only way to be in China)? Justify my works by the good things I did? Pray and try to find another way, if there was no other way, just wait?

I think I can understand why he did it, but was there another way? God's way? hmm... no one knows.

Let me tell you a story of a colleague of mine. (Kinda related) Some of you may have heard about it on the news, some of my co-workers are fighting for a change of our payscale (to a fairer system) recently. She was also involved in the fight herself. She spent a lot of time doing work for the union. And one day, she was very tired and she made a very big mistake at work.

Suddenly she realised God did NOT want her to work on this. He did NOT call her to fight for this. She ignored what was important to work for something that was not that important. God could take her job away anytime He wanted, and what she cared about most.

She let go of her work for the union.

Sometimes, the cause can be noble, the work can be worthwhile, but does God really want us to be the one doing THAT? Is God calling us to do something else?

Saturday, June 09, 2007

Revival

My church and everyone seemed to be talking about revival ever since I can remember, when are we going to see a revival? Maybe if we actually concentrate on God, instead of methods, strategies...

From the internetmonk

Our denominational leadership speaks of revival endlessly, yet the direction of our churches has never been less spiritual, more pragmatic, more imitative of secular marketing methods or less God-centered.


Church mission

One of the friends from my fellowship posted something from Stanley Hauerwas. (I don't know who Hauerwas is =P, but it's something worth thinking about.)

Jesus's instructions for the disciples' mission, however, remain true for any understanding of Christian evangelism. Too often concern for the status of the church tempts some to employ desperate measures to insure that the church will remain socially significant or at least have a majority of the population. But the church is not called to be significant or large. The church is called to be apostolic. Faithfulness, not numbers or status, should be the characteristic that shapes the witness of the church. Indeed it may well be the case in our time that God is unburdening the church so that we can again travel light.

Friday, June 08, 2007

What is Salvation?

I read this post by Bishop N.T. Wright on what salvation is. As always here's an excerpt and I've highlighted some of the points I found important in red.

...... Part of the difficulty today is that most people who speak about 'being saved' in a 'religious' or 'faith' sense mean by it, quite simply, 'going to heaven when you die'. Heaven is important, and our immediate destiny after death is important (I write from a Christian point of view, of course), but it is not the final destination, since in the New Testament the final destination is the 'new heavens and new earth' we are promised in Revelation 21, the renewed, redeemed creation we are promised in Romans 8, the 'summing up of all things in heaven and earth' we are promised in Ephesians 1.10....

And -- and this is the point -- this final destination, not the intermediate 'heavenly' state, is 'salvation'; because the creation is good and God-given, so that to imagine that 'salvation' means being rescued FROM the world is to deny the most fundamental article of the creed. If 'salvation' means simply 'leaving behind the world of space, time and matter', then this is not really 'salvation' from the ultimate enemy, death itself, which destroys God's good creation, but colluding with it. Rather, 'salvation' in the New Testament -- though of course our culture has done its best to distort this -- is all about God rescuing humans AND CREATION AS WELL from death -- in other words, the redemption and renewal of creation, and of human beings within that, into a newly embodied world of which the present world is simply the foretaste.

If that is 'being saved', what about 'good works'? From Ephesians 1.10 to Ephesians 2.10: we are saved by grace through faith FOR GOOD WORKS WHICH GOD PREPARED BEFOREHAND for us to walk in. Separating the two is like saying 'which is more important, breathing or eating?' Obviously if you stop breathing you won't do much eating, but equally if you never eat you will find your breathing eventually in trouble. Not a perfect analogy, but the 'salvation' which is 'by grace through faith' is precisely the rescue of our humanness from all that corrupts it, including ultimately death, and sin which anticipates death -- so if we are indeed rescued from sin and death then it makes no sense whatever to say 'well, I'm saved, so I won't bother about good works'. We aren't saved BY good works but we are saved FOR good works -- for the rich, wise, mature human life which reflects God's glory into the world.

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Once saved always saved?

The girl whom I talked to after the evangelical meeting in my China trip asked me repeatedly, "Am I going to heaven if I believe in Jesus?" As I have said in the previous post, it seemed to me that the only reason she wanted to believe is to get the ticket to heaven. Another thing that bugs me is how we should respond to her. Of course, I know the "official" evangelical answer, but is that the best way to deal with this? Then I read this from the internetmonk today.

(It's quite long, I'm sure many of my friends won't read something this long in English, so I have tried to summarise this and highlighted some points in red in case you don't want to read the excerpt.)

...In a recent podcast contrasting evangelical (Shea is a convert to the RCC) and Roman Catholic views on spiritual security and assurance, Shea made a unique comment about a common area of disagreement... “I became more secure in my relationship with God once I was no longer certain I was going to heaven.”

Shea is skewering the common conception that evangelicals believe in easy salvation with instant assurance, but produce millions of believers who get “saved and resaved” with regularity or care so little about the possibility of hell that they never consider actually following Christ. It’s a bit of a caricature, but it’s also based in some truth. Many conservative evangelicals make it difficult to discuss the topic reasonably because they prefer to run to extremes that aren’t helpful to anyone except people wanting to make stupendous numerical claims for their evangelism.

Let’s talk about the evangelical doctrine of assurance for a moment. It’s one of my favorite topics- having spent many hours wrestling with the Bible and Methodist friends over the question- and it is one of the most misunderstood, distorted and pastorally damaging of evangelical teachings.

First of all, what are we talking about? Most usually, we seem to be discussing “Can I know for certain now that I am going to heaven?” Some call the subject “assurance of salvation,” but that gets into the area of what a person feels at a given point and not into God’s work of salvation itself. Most Protestants call this subject “perseverance,” and by that they mean that quality of faith that continues through life to heaven.

On that question of “Can you know that you know that you know?” I’ve heard at least a thousand Baptist preachers shout “Yes!” based on what we grew up calling “once saved always saved.” “Real Baptists” tend to like OSAS, while more reformation influenced Baptists prefer perseverance, but all of them agree that the elect, the people of God individually, those who belong to Jesus, persevere to the end, do not finally fall away and cannot lose this salvation.

Of course, many Protestants, following, but going far beyond, John Wesley, believe that Christians may, at any moment, move into a state of unbelief, and therefore into a loss of salvation which must be recovered. Depending on the group one is dealing with, this may take the form of only losing salvation through actual, explicit rejection of the faith- apostasy- or go all the way to the views of some Holiness groups that there isn’t enough security in the Gospel to last out the morning worship service. “Born again….and again….and again….and…” is not a joke.

The strength of the doctrine of eternal security is that struggling, failing Christians hear the good news that God is on their side and has not abandoned them. Pastorally, it is a powerful doctrine, and when you work with young Christians, it is important. They are frequently overwhelmed with guilt and failure, and without a strong, Biblical promise that those stumblings and departures from obedience have not disqualified them from God’s gift of salvation. Christians that haunt young disciples with the threat of a God who will abandon or give up on them do little good, despite good intentions. Fear of hell produces something entirely different from transforming grace.

In terms of language, eternal security and perseverance are preferable to the deceptive and misleading “once saved, always saved,” a phrase explicitly tied to certain evangelical evangelistic practices, like the “praying the sinners pray.” OSAS is not the view of any mainstream, historic Baptist doctrinal statement. For example, here’s part of the Baptist Faith and Message Statement 2000 on God’s Purpose In Grace.

All true believers endure to the end. Those whom God has accepted in Christ, and sanctified by His Spirit, will never fall away from the state of grace, but shall persevere to the end. Believers may fall into sin through neglect and temptation, whereby they grieve the Spirit, impair their graces and comforts, and bring reproach on the cause of Christ and temporal judgments on themselves; yet they shall be kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation.

Many who reject eternal security ridicule the idea that those persons who lived as Christians in some respect, but don’t finally go to heaven, were, in fact, not ever “true” or “real” believers...

The language of the Baptist Faith and Message says that being a Christian and beginning to be a Christian are not the same thing. That’s the problem with “once saved always saved.” Christians are marked by perseverance, not just beginnings. Perseverance in what? Not in sinlessness, but perseverance in imperfect faith in Christ and imperfect obedience to Christ. We can say that “those with true faith” persevere to the end, despite certain failures in faith along the way...

What this means is that we have to have a way to talk about assurance in the present, and in the future. In both cases, we need to talk about the faith and the promises of God. In both cases, we need to retain Biblical realism about the importance of perseverance. (The Bible is never as anxious to pronounce an individual beyond apostasy and certain for heaven as some evangelicals are.)

...In their 2001 book The Race Set Before Us: A Biblical Theology of Preserverance and Assurance, Thomas R. Schreiner and Ardel B. Canneday, both Baptist Biblical scholars, suggest that there are other choices. Their book presents a full view that salvation is always past, present and future, the many warnings and commands of scripture work exactly as their were meant to work, providing the path of past, present and future faith a disciple travels to a completed salvation.

In other words, “once saved, always saved” isn’t the confessional Baptist view, and doesn’t need to be the view against which other Christians react. At the same time, Baptists and other evangelicals could do much to end the abuses of invitationalism, stop the pragmatic pronouncements of automatic salvation to anyone who makes a profession and stress things like Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, church membership with integrity, public worship, growth in grace, etc. that mark the life of the true believer. Defending the salvation of those who have no part in the people of God or desire to walk in the way of discipleship isn’t ever wise. We don’t undermine anyone’s assurance by saying “This is the road we’re walking.” We increase assurance and make the discussion and supposed appeal of “losing” salvation less likely.

Monday, June 04, 2007

Thanksgiving for Lo Ding Short Mission trip

It's always great to go on to short mission trips with fellowship friends because we know each other well (strengths and weaknesses) and we can talk to each other directly (no need to waste time in thinking of a polite way to ask people to do things =P). And not to mention it's fun to be with a group of friends! Just like the old days when we went to camp often.

Every time we were able to experience God's grace and work. And we learnt from our past mistakes. And we have learnt a LOT from our previous pastor.

Although this trip is very different, because of Rev. Hui has left and there's a great change in the style of the trip (not for the better, I'm sorry to say). We learnt to be independent.

From the preparation work of the message of the evangelical meeting to deciding the theme for the evangelical meeting, we could see God's own Hands in it.

Over 20 people decided to accept Jesus as their personal saviour. The one whom I personally talked to had the exact problem I've been talking about in my blog for some time (and I just talked to Mimi about that problem in the van on the way to the church), i.e. I think she really believes in Jesus, but I think she wants to be a Christian because she can only go to heaven this way. I've explained to her that she needed to let Jesus be her master, she accepted, but I know her reason behind is more likely to be due to her wanting to be "saved". I really don't know what to do in situations like this. I don't think I'm in a place to judge her motive anyway. This is exactly why I think we need to change the whole way of presenting the Gospel. I've tried to explain to her the many other aspects of Gospel, I really don't know if she "heard" what I said because she was too preoccupied with her own ideas.

As some of you may know, I have always been called to teach rather than to do evangelical work. That is why the experience of teaching Sunday school moved me. This is not the first time I've taught Sunday school in China. However, this time every pupil was attentive and responsive, you can see their love in the Bible. If only we cherished our Bible like them. Then maybe evangelicals may have more hope.

China Church Visit 2007

Sunday, June 03, 2007

Answers for Evangelicals??

If you've been reading my blog, you'll notice that I've been complaining about evangelicals recently... This is from the internetmonk, here, I agree partly with him, tho I don't think ONLY doing these 5 things are going to help the evangelicals, hmm... but certainly better than nothing...

1) I’m convinced that the greatest answer evangelicals have within their power is the determination to start new churches.

2) I believe every evangelical pastor and church needs to make specific plans to teach and mentor as many persons as possible in a one-on-one, spiritual direction relationship.

3) The help evangelicalism needs isn’t going to come from within its own ranks entirely. The sicknesses are too pervasive. We desperately need to be “re-evangelized” by Christians from the global south, Africa, Asia and among the poor.

4) No one will be surprised to hear me say this, but we need to find a way to simply have less music in evangelical worship.

5) Churches and associations of churches must commit to serious, college and seminary level training for laity, including all leaders and as many laypersons as possible.

I'm real tired from the short mission trip, so I'm gonna be brief, but I have to say I agree the most with point number 2 &5, and I disagree with point number 1 the most.

Teaching has been weak in evangelical churches, considering the education level of Christians and their ignorance about the Bible. Sunday churches taught by layman who's never had seminary education simply cannot satisfy me now. And spiritual direction is something that can only be taught through close relationship.

I don't think starting new dysfunctional churches are going to solve any problem, people are just going to leave soon afterwards.

(Sorry if there's any grammatical error, I'm dead tired and English is not my first language.)

Friday, June 01, 2007

What is the Good News?

I'm trying to think what was wrong with the Gospel, and how we should tell everyone what exactly the good news is all about. I think this may be the answer I'm trying to find. Read the whole article here.

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Comparing Evangelicalism with An MAO Inhibitor?

If you have no idea what an MAO inhibitor is, that's normal.

I KNOW what an MAO inhibitor is (it's a kind of drug for treating depression), but still I don't see the connection between MAOI and Evangelicalism.

Because Francis Beckwith left the evangelical church for the Catholic church, many people speculated on the reason why so many evangelicals left. This MAO thing is also one of these speculations.

The MAO I speak of is Mystery, Awe, and Otherness. You know, the stuff modern Evangelicals jettisoned on their way to a bookshelf full of systematic theologies, dusty pages of do’s and dont’s, and three-points-and-a-conclusion sermons. In their rush to be real and down to earth, Evangelicals found a way to make God dull. In short, modern Evangelicalism has become a theological MAO inhibitor.

I can’t help but think that most of these “un-converts” who fled to Rome did so in part because of the radical vivisection Evangelicalism got away with concerning the Body of Christ. I happen to believe that God placed in each one of us a yearning for mystery, awe, and otherness...

How so? Remember when you basked in the throes of the first ache of passionate love? The object of your affection seemed like some strange creature from another planet that you’d walk across burning coals to know, even if that knowledge was little more than a favorite book he or she loved. Remember that first kiss? The electricity! That mystery, awe, and otherness found in the kiss of your beloved! (Song of Solomon explodes with mystery, awe, and otherness, doesn’t it?)

hmm... I have to say I don't agree with this. I agree sometimes we experience passionate love towards God, but hey, that "feeling" won't be there forever. Internetmonk commented on this MAO idea,

Many evangelicals live in hostility to anything other than plain churches, exegetical lectures, bare bones art and a pervasive negativity to all things outside of their church.

I agree with this partly. Maybe not all things, but certainly a lot of things that are DIFFERENT from them. I have always hated this, talking about love without really loving. Talking about grace without showing grace. Zero tolerance to anyone who dare to be different from them, I'm NOT just talking about "sinners" (Who aren't sinner? But some apparently are MORE sinful in an evangelical's mind.) I hated it when the ex-pastor of my church ridiculed Catholic priests and nuns WITHOUT even knowing what they believed in. (Yeah! You can't even begin to imagine his ignorance.) And he has NEVER given up that much for God as anyone of them.

Not to mention the thing they have reduced the Gospel into... "Believe in God, and you'll be able to go to heaven, it's a free gift, you only need to believe." (Not that it's NOT true, but I hope you understand what I mean, if not please read my previous posts)

To talk about cheap...