Chris' Christian Blog

May 7, 2020

Prompt: "What are you studying in your free time? Share your new knowledge with us."

I am a student so I never study in my free time. I spend most of my work day studying. I am studying to be a chaplain. I am in the Master of Divinity program at Regent University. The classes I am taking right now are "Spiritual Formation 501" and "Graduate Foundations 500" and "Biblical Hermeneutics 600". Spiritual Formation is to help Christians become more mature Christians. As is the case with most college level classes it is geared toward younger people. I am 59 so I'm pretty much aware of my spiritual gifting, personality, etc. The class helps Christians identify where they are positioned in the body of Christ. I'm still learning a lot from reading the textbooks, but so far they seem to be agreeing with many of the things I have known for years. For example my textbook "Kingdom Living" written by a think tank called TASK or Theological and Cultural Thinkers says that the focus of the church has become altered from its original focus. Modern thinking is eschatalogical or end times thinking. We are so certain that the world is ending soon that our focus is on getting souls saved only. We fail to "disciple" those souls or teach them how to be apprentices of Jesus once they become saved. Instead they are often given some very brief instruction on spiritual disciplines (go to church, read your Bible, and pray) then stored in church somewhere. Church has become more about big crowds and buildings than it is about true Christian living. Then we wonder why so many Christians are viewed as having dual personalities: the personality that does the religious stuff a few times a week and the personality that is no different than the rest of the world.

I agree with them 100% and have always agreed with them 100%. I have spent my entire life trying to figure out what the key to Christian living was. I knew in my heart that I was being exactly what I hated most: a hypocrite. I would go to church. I would pray and read my Bible. I would do all the religious stuff. Then I would live exactly like the rest of the world and feel guilty and condemned for doing so! I didn't have any idea how to practice Christianity. This went on for years and I must have rededicated my life to God and promised to do better a billion times. I was baptized at least a dozen times. I was trying to live the Christian life.

Things got continually worse and I began using drugs. I used for decades taking amounts that were extremely toxic and lethal. My drug of choice was the antihistamine benadryl or diphenhydramine as it is called generically. I would take up to 3,000 mg of it at one time when the typical dose is 50 mg. At one point I was taking 3600 mg at one time just to keep from having a severe histamine reaction. There is no withdrawal to speak of but the body becomes accustomed to the large doses of the toxin and your natural resistance to allergens shuts down. Once the drug is stopped you feel like you have been put into a gas chamber and CS tear gas has been released. You have a severe attack of hay fever multiplied exponentially.

I used the drug for decades but never really lost track of my religion. I went to church regularly and did all the right "religious stuff". I still had no idea how to be a Christian. Then I used for the last time on Sunday February 8, 2009. I don't recall what I used. I just know that the next day I went to a popular 12 step program and begged for what they had. A man took me under his wing and taught me what he had done to stay clean. He taught me how to work the 12 steps. By the time I was halfway through the steps I realized that the steps were all drawn from the Bible. They were Christian living wrapped up in a non-Christian package! They taught all of the principles of the Bible: faith, love, forgiveness, repentance, religion, character, dependence on Holy Spirit, everything. What is more the 12 step programs did not just tell you the things to do they actually showed you how to do them! At last I had found the key to practicing what I preached!

I no longer attend 12 step programs but not a day goes by that I do not practice the 12 steps. Now I do them as a routine part of my Christian practices. The primary thing I learned from the 12 steps is total and complete reliance on Holy Spirit. Without His help and His power I could not possibly live the Christian walk. Christianity is an impossible on human effort. It is a partnership between humans and God. The textbooks I have been studying reiterate that fact.

I have also been reading a textbook on Biblical Hermeneutics. Hermeneutics, which the spellchecker here does not recognize, is the art/science of Biblical Interpretation. Again the book taught what I had suspected all along. The Bible is a very old book or collection of writings composed thousands of years ago. In order to properly understand it we must throw out our modern biases and read and try to understand what the author who wrote it was saying and interpret what he was saying the same way the ones hearing it when it was published would have heard it. Where it says for example "Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain" Deuteronomy 25: 4 repeated in I Timothy 5: 18 we have to understand what "treading out the grain" even means. Some people today have no idea about the culture or technology that was available to Moses who first wrote this passage. An ox was used to pull a wheel that rolled over and over wheat, barley and so forth to separate the grain from the shell. If we did not know that we may assume it means the ox (if we even know what an ox is) is walking loose in the wheat field and we are to let it run loose. The people of Moses day would have understood Moses to be saying that the ox should be permitted to eat as it pulls the wheel that grinds the grain.

Graduate Foundations 500 is a class that teaches you how to be a graduate student. I had a similar class in junior college that taught good study habits, time management, etc. It was one of the best classes I ever had. For example it hammered home the idea that in order to properly learn material from class I would have to spend an average of three hours studying at home for every one hour I spent in class. If a class met twice a week, I would have to spend six additional hours studying the material for that class alone. Being a student is indeed a full time job. In graduate school you usually take two or no more than three classes at a time or 6-9 credit hours. For each online class the recommendation is to spend an additional 19 hours studying the material and completing assignments. Graduate Foundations is a writing intensive class and each student is required to write a term paper using the writing format of their profession of choice. I am a student in Regent University's School of Divinity. Scholars and researchers in this profession use Turabian format AKA Chicago format to write papers. Formats are very important because the papers you write use citations and material from research papers written by other professionals. If they are not given proper credit for the work one could be found guilty of plagiarism which is a crime and ethically just wrong. As writers we all understand copyright violations and being misquoted. Turabian Format, APA format, and MLA format make sure that people writing term papers in college are not found guilty of these violations. Graduate Foundations 500 teaches all new graduate students how to use the formats of their respective fields. I was basically a psychology student in my undergraduate career. Every paper I wrote used APA format. Most undergraduate professors allow students to use the formats of their respective majors, regardless which format the professor's field uses. I used APA all the way through. Now I have to learn Turabian. If I become a professor, which I hope to do eventually, I will also have to learn MLA. Graduate Foundations is about writing.

Prompt: "Start your entry today with the words: “I used to believe...”

I used to believe that living the Christian life was totally impossible. I didn't think anybody could do it. You see my mom had nine children so sometimes she would exaggerate things to keep us in line. When I became a Christian she made a statement to the effect that I had to be absolutely perfect from then on or I'd surely die and go to hell. I spent the next 20 or more years trying to live up to that ideal and falling well short of it. I lived in guilt and shame for the longest time because I had misinterpreted scripture just as my mother did. There is a passage in the King James Version of the Bible which literally reads "Be ye perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect...", Matthew 5:48.

I misunderstood this scripture. I did not realize that in Elizabethan English or King James's terms, the word "perfect" had a different meaning than it has today. To the King James interpreters the Greek word "telios" which they translated as "perfect" means "mature". It did not have the same connotations as "perfect" does today. I thought Matthew 5: 48 meant that I was to be perfect and without sin. Of course I fell well short of that mark and kept beating myself over the head with the fact that I fell short. I didn't need to go to hell because emotionally I was already living there!

This went on for decades until I broke down and told an elder in the church that there was just no way I could be a Christian. I was going to hell no matter what I did so I was just going to surrender to it and enjoy whatever debauchery I wanted to indulge in before I went. The old elder looked at me with compassion and asked "What makes you think you cannot live as a Christian no matter what you do?"

I explained to him my interpretation of Matthew 5:48 and he nearly cried. After he composed himself he told me about the differences in Elizabethan English and modern English. I was relieved to find that I did not have to be sinless and God was not keeping a tally sheet of good VS bad as I had thought.

It took a non-Christian or group of non-Christians to teach me the basics of Christian living. I was into drugs at the time and sought the aid of a popular 12 step program to quit them. A "sponsor" in the 12-step program, along with the whole group, taught me how to "work" or live the steps. It did not take me long to realize the principles of the 12-steps are all based on the Bible. I learned the steps and how to live them. One of the very first steps teaches total reliance on God. Since then God and I have walked hand-in-hand. Of course, I still fall way short of the mark and sin every day either by doing something I know is wrong or by not doing something I should. The difference is that now I know I will never be perfect in this lifetime. Instead I continually grow toward perfection.

"Prompt: Endure and Let Go. Use these terms in your Blog entry today."

As I was saying in the entry just prior to this, I had to learn to endure and let go of a lot of misconceptions and screwed up notions in my life before I could begin to trust Jesus and grow in the grace of Holy Spirit. I had some really wild ideas that nobody but God Himself could have lived up to. I set myself up for failure.

I like the phrase "endure and let go." It reminds me of a slogan that was hammered into my head by 12-step text thumpers. That slogan was "Live and let live."

What it came to mean to me was that I must live my life and let others live their lives. Often my life and that of others are going to overlap. Sometimes those overlaps are not positive, uplifting experiences. In fact, they often are not. Let's face it. Humans are self-centered creatures. We live in a fallen world that does not come anywhere close to the utopia that God created it to be. Sin entered God's utopia and man's focus was taken off of God and put on himself. This inward focus often means that people do each other harm. That harm may be intentional or it may simply be the result of the fallen state of the world. Either way life can be difficult. It gets even more difficult if I am unable to forgive and live suspecting everyone of everything. If I expect to be screwed over every time I turn around that is likely what I am going to get.

I prefer to live in love. I try to extend trust to everybody and see the basic good in humanity and the world. I trust Holy Spirit and when the storms of life rage, I trust Him to get me through them. Nobody ever boards an airplane and then exits the plane if turbulence strikes and the ride gets bumpy. Instead they grit their teeth and allow the crew to fly the plane. So it is with life. I expect turbulence to come along. In fact, there are days when the "turbulence" is more like Hurricane Katrina. I don't exit the plane! I gri my teeth and trust my Pilot (Holy Spirit) to get me through it. He always does.