Month: February 2018

Genesis 22:1-19 – The Lord Will Provide

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment

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Abraham named that place “The Lord Will Provide.” And even now people say, “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.”

The biblical character of Abraham is synonymous with faith.  And for good reason.  God had told Abraham that he would have a son with his wife Sarah.  This wouldn’t be unusual except for the facts that the couple were well advanced in age, and Sarah was incapable of having children.  Infertility isn’t just a modern problem; it has always existed.  But Abraham believed God.  Years later and with a mix of patience and impatience from the would-be parents, the promise from God was realized.  Abraham and Sarah had a son, Isaac.

“The child of the promise.”  This was Isaac’s moniker – which makes the command coming from God so perplexing: Take your son, the child of the promise, and go to the mountain and sacrifice him there.  Huh? What the…!  But it only seems strange and super-weird to us.  We get no reaction from Abraham, no questioning, no talk back.  He just goes about the business of saddling up the donkey, chopping some wood for the sacrifice, and takes his only son with him on the journey to the mountain.

We can wonder what might be going through Abraham’s mind through all of this.  While you and I might try and figure out if we really heard God or not, Abraham had a history of talking with God.  He knew God’s voice as well as he knew his own.  Abraham was well down the road of relationship with the God he served.  We get an insight from the author of Hebrews into Abraham’s thought process, a line of thinking that is consistent with a person who has a regular habit of talking with God:

“Abraham had been promised that Isaac, his only son, would continue his family. But when Abraham was tested, he had faith and was willing to sacrifice Isaac, because he was sure that God could raise people to life. This was just like getting Isaac back from death.” (Hebrews 11:17-18, CEV)

Abraham didn’t try and figure out God’s mind.  He didn’t get into a debate with God about the contradiction of ethics he was being asked to do.  He simply obeyed. He reasoned that it didn’t matter if Isaac were killed because God could raise him from death.  This, of course, is not what happened.  It was all a test of faith.  Abraham knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that God is the Lord who provides.

You and I don’t always know why we are facing the circumstances we’re enduring.  We don’t always know what in the world God is thinking.  Yet, like Abraham, if we have a spiritual history of walking with God and hearing his voice, we don’t hesitate to respond.  We are convinced that God will provide.  Obedience for the follower of Christ is not a burden; it’s a privilege, even when we are being tested beyond our seeming emotional ability to do it.

Sovereign Lord, your ways are sometimes strange.  Yet, I know that everything you do is always right, just, and good.  It is to your gracious and merciful character that I know you will provide.  My allegiance is to you; in the Name of Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Logical Church Fallacies

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment

logical church fallacies

It’s that time of year again.  Winter is nearing its end, the hope of Spring is just around the corner, and the logical church fallacies come out to play.

I learned a long time ago that reason and logic often get thrown under the bus when it comes to church folk and their thinking.  We all have this nasty tendency to make decisions far less on measured logic and a whole lot more from our stubbornness.  Churches typically aren’t known as places of being into dialogue and change, and sometimes they’ll do some mighty tall mental gymnastics to keep things the way they are.

Identifying some erroneous thinking is kind of like my annual Spring cleaning.  So here we go with some of my favorites I’ve heard in the past year….

The Strawman

The reason this logical fallacy is called “The Strawman” is because there are folks who chronically tend to misrepresent, exaggerate, oversimplify, or just downright fabricate another’s viewpoint.  They set up a scarecrow to keep the status quo and oppose alternative views.  If you’ve ever heard some parishioner say something like “the pastor hates the organ; he always has praise songs in the worship service” or “the Sunday School Superintendent is trying to turn us into stark-raving Pentecostals since she doesn’t use the denominational curriculum,” then you’ve got a Strawman running amok in the pews.

The Bandwagon

You likely know this one all too well.  Church folk seem particularly fond of the Bandwagon fallacy.  It’s an appeal to a perceived popularity that is designed to shut down any sort of substantive dialogue.  “Everyone hated that sermon.  Nobody liked what the preacher said,” is meant to tame that crazy firebrand from proclaiming the Word of God as he/she sees it.  If we were at our better moments, we would engage in conversation around the points offered.  Instead, the Bandwagon Committee is formed to make sure ears are properly tickled and fancied.

Tu quoque

This is a Latin term which literally means “and you also.”  This fallacy is so ubiquitous and done with such frequency that we might take it for granted.  It’s the old time-honored saw of an appeal to hypocrisy.  The tu quoque is meant to discredit the opposing argument by not even acknowledging it.  Perhaps you have seen this one splattered in social media and around the narthex after a church service: “Don’t even talk to me about how guns kill people and how the government isn’t doing anything about it when we have legalized abortion and babies are killed every day.”  Whatever you think about abortion (I happen to oppose it) is not the issue.  If guns and gun control is the issue being discussed, then that is the issue to be dealt with.  Bringing up another issue gets us nowhere.

Ad hominem

Since we’re on the Latin terms, let’s keep it going with a fallacy which isn’t going away any time soon.  “Ad hominem” means “to the person.”  Rather than attacking the argument and engaging the issue, this fallacy just attacks the person.  This is especially rife when it comes to anything to do with LGBTQ issues.  Individual rights, justice, and treating persons with civility and respect don’t get discussed.  Instead, the person using the ad hominem just paints all same-sex oriented persons as having illicit and/or immoral thoughts and behaviors, thereby shutting down any sort of helpful discussion about the proper treatment of a group of people.

Appeal to authority

I’ve got to admit, this one really irritates me.  If I hear one more person characterize myself or a group of other Christians as people who “don’t hold to the authority of Scripture” I think I’ll scream… then scream some more.  The problem here is a blanket statement.  No actual biblical arguments are offered, just the appeal to biblical authority.  If an issue is exegetically and hermeneutically possible, then it ought to be allowed a hearing in the arena of ideas.  Not even engaging an idea or entertaining an argument based on generic appeals to biblical authority have no teeth.  It’s fallacious, not to mention offensive.

No True Scotsman

I just like the way this one sounds.  “No true Scotsman” is a way of reinterpreting evidence to prevent any kind of rebuttal or further debate.  In other words, it’s changing the rules.  Recently, when I was discussing with a local church elder about that church’s denominational ruling on an issue, he simply said to me, “Well, that’s the denomination’s view and not the Bible’s view.”  It was meant to shut down any discussion and not consider an issue he didn’t like very well.  But even though he didn’t like it, he’s a part of a group of people who decided together to hold to some common policies and procedures.  The proper approach would be to engage the issue and work through proper channels to see his view through.  But he wasn’t willing to do that.

Another example (I had a lot of these in the past year) is the congregant who was convinced the world was going to end.  When the blood moon thing didn’t align like he thought it would a few years back, he just reinterpreted things to accommodate more apocalyptic stuff into his homebrewed theology.

False Dichotomy

A better term for this is probably the “black or white” fallacy.  This sets up an issue as being an either/or instead of a both/and.  It has the design to shepherd people into a certain position without considering any alternatives.  I recently heard a guy make the following statement in a church attempting a discussion about war: “Either you support our military and our country, or you don’t.”  This was a black or white implication.  For him, to oppose war is to oppose our flag and our men and women in uniform.  But there are a whole range of conversations to be had around the issue.  To boil them down in such stark black and white terms is a false dichotomy.

I could keep going.  It was a busy year for me dealing with so many logical fallacies.  But more to the point: You and I need to be mentally vigilant as to the kinds of things we think, and the notions we listen to from other people.  Sometimes we simply don’t stop and think through what we’re saying, or what we’re listening to.  My hope is that we will slow down, think through issues with some sound reason, consider all angles, the consequences of our thoughts, and take the posture of a learner and a grower.

 

Perspective Changes Everything

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality BlogLeave a comment

perspective is everything

Today is one of my bad back days.  It’s days like today that remind me: perspective is everything.  You see, thirteen years-ago this coming May me and my family were in a car accident.  I was traveling on a highway in Iowa where we were living at the time, and a small car on a gravel road blew right through the stop sign without even slowing down.  There was nothing I could do.  I plowed into the rear quarter panel of the oncoming car, and it literally spun like a top off the highway and came to a stop.  Both the driver and his girlfriend passenger were not injured.

Two of my daughters were in the very back seat of our mini-van (which I had just bought only a month before), with my wife and dog as front seat passengers.  The car was totaled.  My girls were not harmed.  But my wife tore her shoulder’s rotator cuff protecting the dog and had to have an agonizing surgery to repair it.  My lower back was injured, but not in a way which surgery could repair.  To this day I live with chronic pain.  Some days it’s not bad, maybe a one or two on the pain scale.  But on my bad days I can barely walk across the room, and I need cane to get around.  Today is one of those days.

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I have played the scene of the accident in my mind hundreds of times.  I have thought time and again about what I could have done to prevent the accident.  But there was no way to avoid it.  I thought about the fact that if we just would have left a minute earlier or a minute later from my parents’ house from where we were visiting, all would be fine.  Yet, I know that kind of thinking is a fool’s errand.  I have pondered every possible scenario in my head and have gotten nowhere.

It also took me awhile to forgive the young man who was driving the other car.  He changed my life, and not in a good way.  Although his insurance took care of everything and he was very repentant about the whole thing, I was understandably mad for a long time.  I did, over time, come to the point of forgiving him.

Through the years I have learned to live with my limitations.  I have now accepted the pain as part of my life.  But, on occasion, I sometimes I can’t help but think of how my life would be today if I hadn’t been in that stupid accident.

About three years ago I was praying alone in the church for which I was a pastor.  And God brought the accident to my mind.  I said to God, “Lord, we’ve been through this accident hundreds of times together.  I don’t want to think about it anymore.  Why are you bringing this up now?”

I’m not sure I really wanted an answer, but God brought it up because he knew I was finally ready to get his perspective on the accident.  Out of the hundreds of times I went over that accident in my mind, the one perspective I never took was that of the young man – the other driver.  God invited me to take a different view, from the other driver.  So, I did.  I know that intersection like the back of my hand, so it wasn’t a hard exercise.

I put myself in the driver’s seat of his car.  I’m driving down the gravel road not paying attention to the fact that a stop sign is coming up.  I blow through the sign onto the highway and right in front of a minivan who slams on the brakes just enough to crush the rear quarter panel.  I spin out like a top and come to rest only a few feet from a huge Iowa grain elevator.

For the first time in my life I finally understood.  God had a divine appointment for me that day.  You see, if I had not come along just when I did, that young man and his girlfriend would have blown through the stop sign and struck that grain elevator.  It would have killed them both instantly.

perspective changes everything

Suddenly, my perspective changed 180 degrees.  Previously, I had always thought about myself and my family.  I always considered my hardship and my change of life.  But now I saw that God sent his servant to save two lives that day.  Had I not struck his car, causing him to spin and come to a rest unharmed, two people would have died.

Now, every time my back acts up, like today, and it effects how my life is lived, I’m reminded that it is a very small price to pay for the lives of two human beings.  Perspective is everything.

The biblical meaning of “repentance” is literally to have a change of mind – to see a different perspective.

The Bible invites us to view our lives with new lenses.  Our hurts and our pains, our sorrows and our sufferings, our changes and our limitations, are all part of something much bigger that God is doing in the world.  We are not always privy to his plans and purposes.  But his Word challenges us to take a perspective of the world, of humanity, and of ourselves that is counter to how we often think only about ourselves.

The thread of God’s moral perspective, his view of human ethics, runs through the entirety of the Bible.  The psalmist reminds us that this Word is good, sweet, and more precious than gold (Psalm 19).  The Apostle Paul reminds us that this Word is our wisdom to live by (1 Corinthians 1:18-25).  And Jesus, as the Word made flesh among us, lived that loving and gracious Word with perfect moral and ethical goodness.  The temple, as the place where God’s Word was read and observed, was not to be adulterated with the view of making a profit – which was why Jesus drove out the money-changers (John 2:13-22).  Later, after Jesus died and rose from death, his disciples gained a new perspective.  They remembered their master’s words and affirmed them as being the Word of God.  They believed.  Their repentance and faith changed the world.

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God is inviting us to take up his Word and see our lives, the lives of others, and every event and situation through that lens.  We are to see Jesus, not only as a great teacher, a moral and good person, and a loving healer – but also as Lord and Savior.  In a very small way I suffered so that someone else could live.  But Jesus suffered sin, death, and hell in our place so that you and I could live – so that we might have the eternal life of enjoyment with God forever.

Allow the Word of God to shape your lives and form your thinking today and every day.  You might not always know what God is doing, but you can be assured that everything he does is just, right, and good.

May you know Christ better in this season as you reflect upon our Lord’s great sacrifice on our behalf.  May you know the love of God the Father, the grace of the Lord Jesus, and the encouragement of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Psalm 105:1-11, 37-45 – Remember the Lord

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment

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“Look to the Lord and his strength; seek his face always.  Remember the wonders he has done, his miracles, and the judgments he pronounced, you his servants… He remembers his covenant forever, the promise he made, for a thousand generations…” (New International Version)

Every day I read in the psalms.  There are two reasons I do this: first, the psalms are the church’s prayer book.  They are more than reading material; the psalms are meant and designed to be owned for us as prayers; and, second, I need their reminders – a lot!

Remembering is a major theme throughout the entirety of Holy Scripture.  It’s just part of the human condition, fallen and forgetful as we are, to lose sight of what has taken place in the past.  Today’s psalm invites us to seek the Lord through remembering all the good and wonderful works he has done.

For Israel, remembering meant continually having Passover in front of them.  God redeemed his people out of Egyptian slavery and into a good Promised Land.  They were to never forget God’s miracle through the Red Sea, his protection over them from other nations, and his provision of food and necessities in the desert.

We are to remember because we are made in God’s image and likeness.  God remembers.  God has an ongoing reminder in his divine day timer: fulfill the promises I made; keep the covenant I initiated with the people, even when they’re stinkers and forget who I am.

God doesn’t forget.  He always keeps his promises.  For the Christian, all God’s promises are remembered and fulfilled in the person and work of Jesus Christ.  Deliverance from sin, death, and hell; the gift of the Holy Spirit; and, ongoing presence and provision are given to us graciously and freely by the God who loves and cares for his people.  For us, remembering means coming to the Lord’s Table, entering into the once of for all loving sacrifice of Christ on our behalf.

One of the reasons I write and journal about my life and Scripture is to remember.  Sometimes I forget.  There are times when I’m overwhelmed with life and it feels as if God has forgotten me.  In such times, I look back into my journal and see what God has done.  And I peer into the psalms and see that God is active in his big world, always attentive to working what is just, right, and good in his people.

I randomly opened my journal to an entry made on May 6, 2016.  May your journey with Jesus in this season of Lent cause you to remember the Lord Jesus, to have him always before you:

“Now We Remain” by David Haas –

We hold the death of the Lord deep in our hearts.

Living, now we remain with Jesus, the Christ.

Once we were people afraid, lost in the night.

Then, by your cross, we were saved;

dead became living, life from your giving.

Something which we have known, something we’ve touched,

what we have seen with our eyes;

this we have heard; life-giving Word.

He chose to give of himself, become our bread.

Broken that we might live.

Love beyond love, pain for our pain.

We are the presence of God; this is our call.

Now to become bread and wine; food for the hungry, life for the weary,

for to live with the Lord, we must die with the Lord.