Ism’s Bother me. Not so much because people use them, but because they generally disarm me from continuing on in what I was just saying, and it is hours later when I think to myself, “wait, that has nothing to do with what I was talking about”, followed by 2 days of debate in my head, only to end up at the impotent “I should have said…” moment. Every now and then an ism will give me a different perspective on an issue, but for the most part I have seen them used by religious and political leaders to castrate disagreement, keep their authority intact and maintain the status quo in the presence of logic and fact that contradicts the views, not that they hold, but the views they promote.

Much of what I write about usually begins when I observe an event and I realize that this event actually addresses an ism that I have succumbed to but just never been at ease with; the event is a physical manifestation of words I have tried to form in response to an ism that just didn’t ever sit right with me. Other times, I can sit and picture the ism in my head and spend hours having conversations with the ism giver, using logic and “walking through” the ism to its various conclusions that, more often than not, put the ism under. While one school of Greek philosophy makes subjectivity and greyness the breeding ground for isms and “subjective truth” in our culture, Greek logic is indispensable in examining them as well.

The Western religion that calls itself Christianity has lots of isms. I have never identified myself as a Christian not because I am fearful of persecution or deny Christ, but because the definition means very little today- I allow others to decide whether to call me a Christian. The few true followers of Christ I know call me a Christian (though I question it at times), every Muslim I have been friends with calls me a Christian, and most atheist and non Christian friends call me a Christian. I seem to get along well with disciples I know from Australia, Nigeria, Malaysia, and China. My ex wife divorced me when I got converted because, much to my surprise, she said I changed immediately and had become a Christian. All of these people called me this because of the one word that kept coming out of my mouth, the word “Jesus.” I have not pointed people to church, doctrine or the right thing to do unless I have directed them to Jesus as well.

The only people who, in their court of law, would not convict me of being a “Christian” are Western Christians. When we opened our bibles on an ism, the debate as to whether I believed the entirety of scripture ended quickly. It seems to me that the more I focus on the ENTIRE Bible and ALL of the words out of Jesus’ mouth, the more the jury of the Western Church convicts me of not submitting to their televised beliefs, tenets of faith, and confessions- in other words, “isms,” and I acknowledge that I am guilty as charged. Those who place a greater value on their beliefs over the truth for the sake of their religion’s survival are to be pitied- “But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.” Note that God’s wisdom is First and foremost pure, followed by peace, not the other way around.

Prayer, Christian generosity, financial support of the clergy, and keeping your tongue in line with God’s word are foundational if the true Spirit of Christ is the starting point of these actions; this foundation has been replaced, however, by the Spirit of entitlement and selfishness prevalent in our Western culture- the same Spirit Paul rebuked 2000 years ago. I have been asked to “be in agreement” with people so that they can get certain material things, and upon asking them where that is found in scripture have received the response that the preacher said it is biblical. People use the verse, “Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven”, while ignoring the next verse admonishing them to gather in his name- Jesus is to be the constant object and center of our gathering and worship, not the promises we try so hard to “stand in faith” upon: “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them Paul himself addresses this “spiritualizing” of fleshly things as mocking God: “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.” Reading the chapter around that verse, and then the entire letter to the Galatians, only strengthens the context that the Galatians were trying to add doctrine to an already pure Gospel. Jesus, the name above all names, was already experiencing the “Jesus and…” religion that is emphasized today. I have often been taught to exercise my faith, to venerate and worship it, that the strength and soundness of my “faith” is what really counts, while placing my trust solely in Jesus’ work on the cross- is made secondary.

The umbrella ism under which most impure doctrines are defended is, “don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater”. I assume the baby is Christ and pure religion, and the bathwater is what we have set him in, not out of ignorance, but out of willful censorship of scripture. I have never heard anyone say, however, “Let’s take the baby out of the bathwater, dry him off, and toss the bathwater.” People want to keep the filthy bathwater, and use the fact that the baby is still in it as their means to find some good in it. Jesus himself said that the leaven of the Pharisees weaves its way through the whole mix, suggesting that you can’t mix the pure with the impure and still have the ability to separate the two when needed. Why do people think that they can knowingly filter the deluge of spiritual poison they consent to in their relationship with Christ, when in the physical world they would avoid a barrel of Kool Aid if it had a drop of cyanide in it?

We have been redeemed, the ability to correctly judge teaching is commanded, and is available to every disciple of Christ. “Judge not that ye not be judged” is not a reason to avoid judging, unless you are one of the “thou hypocrites” Jesus was addressing. A true disciple is not one who calls himself a Christian, however (even the Mormon’s and Jehovah’s Witnesses call themselves Christians.) We have a bible which, in its entirety, is available to guide us. We also have a culture which does everything it can to color our way of reasoning, keeps us from having convictions, and rewards us for tolerating two opposites as having absolute validity. This promotion of moral ambiguity permeates religion, politics, race relations, economics, family structure and business ethics- basically everything. I think GK Chesterton summed it up best 70 years ago:

“What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert–himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt - the Divine Reason. . . . The new skeptic is so humble that he doubts if he can even learn. . . . There is a real humility typical of our time; but it so happens that it’s practically a more poisonous humility than the wildest prostrations of the ascetic. . . . The old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which might make him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which makes him stop working altogether. . . . We are on the road to producing a race of man too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table.”

We must pray and be in agreement and not doubt that Christ gives us wisdom to deliver us from our love of the bathwater, and our willingness to keep the baby immersed in our doublemindedness: “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord. A double minded man is unstable in all his ways”

Christianity is about a real relationship with the man Jesus of Nazareth. Knowing about him does not equal knowing him, or more importantly him knowing me. There are days I wonder where he went, am I saved, do I just know about him. I am not willing to throw my eternity on some man’s false assurances that it is the Devil making me think this way, I can’t find that in the bible! I have listened to pulpiteers berate simple bible churches, boldy proclaiming that their ministry and the accompanying Spirit has given them a greater revelation, while hundreds clap and shout their “Amen”’s. I seek Jesus and only him. He is the fulfillment of the law and the prophets, in him the fulness of the God head dwelt bodily, when He said,”it is finished” I know he meant it- he needs nothing added to his glory- he is the ultimate in revelation, and the Bible speaks to this fact! I know him at times, and other times he is as mysterious and un-graspable as my wife. Maybe I am a normal Christian, I shouldn’t envy others who have the absolute certainty of Christ’s presence. But I really want that, I want to hold the baby, not cover myself with the bathwater that I have known for years is dirty, and I hope he knows that too.

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Last evening the Canadian skater Joannie Rochette competed in Vancouver’s Olympics, but the story behind her performance is what drove the viewer not to merely watch, but immerse themselves in this moment: her mother died 2 days before the routine.

It would have been tempting for the network to make a grand production of the tragedy by producing interviews with friends or a short story of her mother but they tastefully did not. She walked onto the ice, fighting back tears, and skated. Silence. No commentary from the announcers, just sweet tearful silence as the crowd dwelt in her strength and sorrow. At the end, one of the commentators attempted to speak through his tears.

I stepped back and reflected on 2 fronts last night, recognizing how both myself and Western culture have a need to improve upon reality by embellishing it, making everything shinier than it actually is when an occasional genuine moment would suffice. While Christ’s true body is not swayed, most of what people today call “the church” is awash with the deception. “But unto you I say, and unto the rest in Thyatira, as many as have not this doctrine, and which have not known the depths of Satan, as they speak; I will put upon you none other burden. But that which ye have already hold fast till I come.”

I will be the first to admit that I embellish. A bunch. Watching the movie Big Fish, I imagine (and hope) that my funeral will be similar. The story is about an aging man who always has to tell grand stories about his life, dismaying his son who just wishes he could know who his father really is. At the father’s funeral however, the son meets the people who lived through the adventures his father fabled about and realizes there was an element of truth to the stories. The son comes to appreciate that while he was trying to get to know his father, he never just loved the man for being a story teller, a “Big Fish in a little pond.”

I have been blessed with a wife and two daughters who know that I am a storyteller; I embellish and stretch sometimes. They know there is an element of truth when I tell them stories about punching sharks while scuba diving, but their enjoyment and laughter in these moments is that they know they will eventually learn that it wasn’t a Great White but a toothless nurse shark. This is merely my opinion, but I think that as long as long as someone really knows me, and that I know me, this is not a character defect- it is up front and out there, the caution signs are in the open and my family knows what they are walking into. Rochette’s performance Tuesday night reminds me however, that there probably is a much deeper story to be told and observed if I would just shut up sometimes and live silently- that I’m really not that big of a fish, that not everyone likes fish to begin with, and that some people do like fish and don’t need a lot of spices to cover up the taste. While embellished adventures of my life abound, I have found that when I share the tragic death of my father, the joy of a good marriage- the few deep unembellished life-changing events of my core- people are content and changed by that.

Sir Francis Bacon comments on man’s fallen state in his essay entitled “Of Truth”: “… men love lies, not when they bring pleasure as with poets, not to gain advantage as with the merchant: but for the lies sake… The mixture of a lie adds pleasure. (paraphrased)” It sadly has been my experience that quite a few men, including myself, live this way in many areas of life. They promote what they have bought into for years, the fear being that questioning the status quo they have surrounded themselves with may expose the reality that everything they have built upon was for naught. The wonderful thing about reading the works of Paul in the New Testament is that I can tell he had already questioned it all, and found that the Gospel made absolute sense to him.

So much of the core organization in today’s religious infrastructure (worship, giving, fellowship, specialized ministries) did not exist in Christ’s time or the early church’s, though I have heard it taught time and again (despite historical proof to the contrary) that it did exist as it is today. When the evidence is brought forth it is not discredited (because it cannot be), it is simply either ignored in order to avoid any attention, or the motives and means of it’s being brought forth are discredited in an attempt to quash it. As Bacon said, the mixture of a lie adds pleasure. Simply put, man’s core sin nature dictates today’s doctrines and preaches in its pulpits, much of it being deemed heresy up until 200 years ago.

Christ doesn’t need embellishing, but as members of Western culture we have been conditioned that we need to supersize him with extreme bibles, fresh anointings, and power principles; Churches teach that speaking in tongues is THE evidence of the baptism of the holy Spirit, blotting out the scripture “Be still and know that I am God”; We do not allow him to live silently and deeply in our souls because we seek a manifestation rush; The simple defintition of the word “Radical” (meaning at the root, or core)- as in “Radical Christian”- has been changed (it now means outspoken, bold and loud) to meet our need for lies.

I needed Rochette to skate last night, but more than that, this carp just needs to swim and be content in the simple waters of Christ.

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