useless chains?
Since people “give things up” for lent, I want to preach a series- “Giving up the Myth: Breaking the lies that bind .” What are some common myths Christians believe? And how does it affect them, the church and the world? I’m looking for little stuff & BIG stuff! examples—
little myth: we become angels when we die.
BIG MYTH : Christ is only one of many ways to God.
So….what myths are out there? What are we suckers to believe?
Hmmmph…myths…that is kind of a hard one to tackle. Personally, I have established my beliefs very personally. I live by them; but, many times, I have a hard time actually finding a place in the Scripture that actually makes the statement verbatim.
I have been having an interesting discussion with Sharon Aukamp about our different beliefs regarding baptism. (That is a fairly long and involved story and outlook…I do not think that is what you are after…)
One that kind of pops to my ming is “Forgive and forget.” From my understanding, this is not stated outright anywhere in the Bible. Yes…we are supposed to forgive; but, I have always thought that entirely forgetting contradicts learning.
I am not sure if I am expressing myself very well on this issue. I believe we are supposed to forgive the transgression of others and along with this forgiveness evaluate if we do not have the same transgression…in some form…within ourselves.
By forgivness, I mean not to hold it emotionally against the person; but, I believe you should learn from every event…especially the upsetting ones. You can use it to learn about yourself…you can learn to note what triggered this within the other person and avoid it in the future…you can learn what matters need to be dealt with in your friendship.
Even emotional and physical pain can hold great learning potential. Think about it…aren’t the things that you really have learned throughout your life…the important and/or worthwhile things…things that you screwed up the first time? By screwing things up, it is not always a personal reaction or action. It could be an emotional response or a certain conversation with someone.
I think you should forgive…do NOT hold any type of grudge…but, learning from an event or encounter has the potential to bear much fruit.
Len,
It looks like a challenging series for Lent. Another of the “lies” is that which declares God has a plan for oyur life that was set before the creation of the universe, and you need to discover what that plan is and get on board or you may miss God’s plan for you. That is a variation of Calvinism and the doctrine of predestination.
God is still a Creator and God is creating through you. Join with God in the adventure and participate in determining your life and destiny.
Art
Wow…this is big. There are so many things that us Christians can find ourselves practicing. We get ourselves so tied up in different practices, like when and how we do communion, what we do with our money as a church, how we should dress etc. We even take God’s Word and dig-in so deep into passages until the simple little thing that God wanted to tell us has been interpreted into something He never even would have thought of! And all these things change from denomination to denomination, from church to church.
This creates a big problem for the Body of Believers in Christ. It causes the Body to become judgemental. People start saying, “Well, they do modern-worship and we sing hymns!” “We have a read and respond section in our bulletin and they don’t!” And i feel the whole time this is happening, God is looking down on us and saying, “YOU ARE MISSING THE POINT!”
Paul warned us about this…In Colossians 2:13-18 it says, “…God made you ALIVE with Christ. He forgave us all our sings, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; He took it away, nailing it to the cross. …Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to religous festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath Day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.” It’s like Paul is saying, “We were dead! We were ugly! We were distgusting, but Christ loved us so much that He set us free! Do you not realize how exciting that should be for us?! Why should anything you else do matter?”
It’s a pretty big deal that these little myths can creep into our churches. It is so dangerous for the Body, and i wonder if little questions that are asked about Heaven like “will we have wings” are a slap in God’s face. I mean, sure, all the things in Heaven are going to be sooooooooo awesome, but…shouldn’t just the PRESENCE of God be more than enough?
So i think we need to watch as a church what we are worrying about and what we are letting ourselves believe. Let the church be nothing more than a place to come and celebrate, and gain wisdom in Christ for His glory. Let it be a Jesus thang, lol. And it takes a lot of work for a lot of churches to realize, “Wow…it’s not about us.” But, it can be done, with the proper view of the power of the cross. The FULL power of the cross.
-Swifty
This is a response to the 3/31 question. My faith, my acceptance that Jesus is the Son of God, who died on the cross for my sins, who rose again, so that I may follow a risen Savior is based soley on the Word, the Truth.
I’ve always connected reality with today’s world, the good, the bad, and the ugly of life as it is now. My car is real but it could break down tomorrow. I can say that Jesus is real to me but He is not going to break down tomorrow. My car is not Truth; it’s going to the junkyard someday! Jesus’ Words are Truth and never change; that’s where my heart is.
Myth: God gives us freedom to worship him however we choose.
We must temper our pronouncements about our freedom in Christ (freedom from sin and the freedom to be able to worship God) by the knowledge that “not everything is beneficial” (1 Cor. 6:12 and 10:23). We must also remember that God punished Nadab and Abihu for offering unauthorized fire and that Saul was castigated for sacrificing improperly. God does explain how we should worship him. Colossians 3:16 is particularly important to musical worship, and it destroys all notions we may have of worship as mere emotion. We cannot teach and admonish each other if we are singing vapidly, in our own little me-and-God worlds, or simply emoting (which, as one of my professors puts it, is like dancing around your wife shouting “I love you, I love you, I love you). There are many ways to worship God, not all of them congregational. Religious paintings like Giotto’s or Albrecht Duerer’s, cantatas like Handel’s Messiah, and poetry like Gerard Manley Hopkins’s are all forms of worship, but none of them are suitable for congregational use. God gives each of us talents to use, but he calls us to sing as a congregation.
Often this subject becomes an issue because people become inured to the ugliness of popular music or forms of representation (“art” is too strong of a word for some pictures, for example). Popular music becomes “their music,” and hymns becoming the “old-fashioned people’s music.” What about God’s music? Also, you do not need popular/Christian rock songs in your service to attract people, even young people. People should be attracted to our churches by the truth of Christ and our doctrinal fidelity, which includes worshipping according to biblical guidelines. They should not be attracted because of our trendiness—because that means they are being attracted to something ephemeral and extrinsic to Christianity.