The Emperor Has No Clothes

We are all familiar with the children’s story about a ruler who is conned by a crooked tailor into “seeing” special clothes that only privileged people were capable of seeing. On the day that the emperor wore his new clothes for the very first time the town folks either saw these special clothes or at eh very least pretended to see the special clothes. All, except one small child who exclaimed “Look! The Emperor has no clothes!” and with that everyone saw the naked truth of just how special the Emperor really was!

Today I feel like that small child! I know a secret about the emperor that very few know about. If I share my secret – while the world would continue to spin on it’s axis – in some circles their world would grind to a halt.

Some would never believe the truth and for others 5their faith would be sorely tried.

This blog is going to be my therapy session as I make a decision on how to proceed

So what are the effects of pointing out the truth?

The emperor in this case deceived himself in believing the lie about his sin but the emperor is no more, only his reputation.

Many would not believe the truth. So what! We are still commanded to speak the truth albeit in love. Ephesians 4:15.

Some less mature believers might question their faith or at least their faith in their leaders. I don’t want to be a stumbling block for another’s faith. 1 Corinthians 8:9.

It would be sweet revenge! But I’m commanded to for give – and I thought that I had.

Who would benefit from my “unburdening” myself?

Just me – it’s not supposed to be about me. No, rather it’s about God!

Can I trust God to do the right thing? I think so after all he is holy and just as well as lovingly merciful and a dispenser of grace.

So let’s see, we are commanded to love like Jesus. We must love and forgive if we want forgiveness. Matthew 6:12. We are told that love covers a multitude of sins, this for all believers not just me personally.1 Peter 4:8.

Almost 30 years ago I learned the truth about the emperor and I’ve kept the secret for all this time. I’ve hung onto1 Timothy 5:4 as a promise. Since I trusted Father this long, I guess I can trust him the rest of my life.

Pssst – want to hear a secret??

Pastor Val

Elvis is IN the Building

One of my favorite rumors about Elvis is that he is alive and well and has been spotted in a laundry mat in Kalamazoo Michigan. Thirty years ago a couple overheard a conversation I was having with friends about a new pool that Becki and I were enjoying. We suddenly became their best friends. I couldn’t figure out why they were rushing us until they started asking about our new pool and when we were going to have friends over.

I have to say that I laughed in their face I realized that the only reason they were interested in us was our “new pool.” You should have seen their fallen faces when they found out we were talking about a kiddy pool that was a foot deep. It had been so hot that week that both my wife and I had at times “laid out in the pool” and that is what these “new friends” had heard.

Rumors can run rampant and people can be hurt by unfounded rumors. So what are rumors? Webster defines a rumor as currently circulating story or report of unverified or doubtful truth. ^[1] One of the synonyms for rumor is gossip and another is innuendo. Rumors spread like wildfire, for fallen human beings love to savor discreditable information about each other, and denials of rumors are not always if ever believed. What then can one do if one finds, like Nehemiah, that malicious rumors are circulating about oneself?^[2]

Nehemiah did a number of things. First he strongly denied the rumor and second he asked God to give him the strength to ignore the rumors and stay focused on the task God had given them. He prayed that God would free him and the people he led from the fear that paralyzed from doing the work that God had ordained for them to accomplish. Finally he purposed to leave his reputation in the Lord’s hands. You can check out the story in Nehemiah chapter 6.

I’ve seen the wreckage that unsubstantiated rumors can do to a church and how it can split congregations and destroy lifetime friendships.

What does God’s Word have to say about gossipmongers and rumorers?

¹³ A gossip betrays a confidence, but a trustworthy man keeps a secret.
Proverbs 11:13 (NIV)

²⁸ A perverse man stirs up dissension, and a gossip separates close friends.
Proverbs 16:28 (NIV)

¹⁹ A gossip betrays a confidence; so avoid a man who talks too much.
Proverbs 20:19 (NIV)

²⁰ Without wood a fire goes out; without gossip a quarrel dies down.
Proverbs 26:20 (NIV)

²² The words of a gossip are like choice morsels; they go down to a man's inmost parts.
Proverbs 26:22 (NIV)

²⁹ They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips,
Romans 1:29 (NIV)

²⁰ For I am afraid that when I come I may not find you as I want you to be, and you may not find me as you want me to be. I fear that there may be quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, factions, slander, gossip, arrogance and disorder.
2 Corinthians 12:20 (NIV)

¹¹ In the same way, their wives are to be women worthy of respect, not malicious talkers but temperate and trustworthy in everything.
1 Timothy 3:11 (NIV)

¹³ Besides, they get into the habit of being idle and going about from house to house. And not only do they become idlers, but also gossips and busybodies, saying things they ought not to.
1 Timothy 5:13 (NIV)

³ without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good,
2 Timothy 3:3 (NIV)

³ Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good.
Titus 2:3 (NIV)

¹⁰ So if I come, I will call attention to what he is doing, gossiping maliciously about us. Not satisfied with that, he refuses to welcome the brothers. He also stops those who want to do so and puts them out of the church.
3 John 1:10 (NIV)

God hates gossip and slander. Now he still loves the sinner but He wants them to STOP what they are doing and repent.

So what should you do if you hear something that bothers you? Go to the source and check to see if there is any truth in the rumor. A simple conversation can stop rumors on their tracks. Unsubstantiated rumors can prove to be not only untrue but also dangerous. You remember what they say about what assumptions make you…

I assume you know that one!

Pastor Val

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^[1] Soanes, C., & Stevenson, A. (2004). Concise Oxford English dictionary (11th ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

^[2] Packer, J. I. (1995). A passion for faithfulness : Wisdom from the book of Nehemiah. Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books.

Weeds In Our Lawn

When I was a kid I was paid by my grandparents to dig up dandelions out of their yard. In the beginning I was very young and I would pull the tops off. As I got older I learned that you needed to pull out the roots, too or the weeds came back. Grandpa had tool that looked like a long goofy screwdriver with a forked blade on the end that he wanted me to use. I have to admit that even with the “professional” tool I rarely got all of the root so the dandelions just grew back.

Today’s church is a lot like my grandparents yard. Sometimes the weeds just keep growing back because we rarely get to the root of the issues. These weeds sometimes aren’t even sins they are just divisive attitudes that… Oh wait, those are sins, too! Hummm…

Often the problem is that we can quote lots of verses of Scripture (or we have a pretty good topical Bible) but we have a hard time applying the truth or even recognizing that the passages we quote are often pointed back at us more then others.

The question for today is: Does the Bible have a strangle hold on the truth? In other words can truth (or at least portions of truth) be found outside of the Bible or is the Bible the only repository of truth?

The short answer (much to the chagrin of some ultra conservative Christians) is Truth can be found outside the Bible – but the Bible is fully true and Jesus is the Living Truth.

For example the entire story of Jesus, his words and deeds are not contained in the Bible (nor for that fact are they contained in any other book) The writer of the fourth book of the New Testament in his self titled book the Gospel of John says that

²⁵ Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.
John 21:25 (NIV)

Other instances of truth are the scientific laws of the universe that are not found in Scripture but are still equally true. The writer of one of the smallest books of the New Testament is Jude. In his book aptly named Jude he quotes from Enoch an apocryphal book written during the 400 silent years between the two testaments. Is the quote true? Yes! Another instance is that the author of a major portion of the New Testament is Paul. Paul quotes writers of his day in the Scripture because the information is true.

A great way of establishing a dialog with someone who is not a follower of Jesus is to find an area of common interest where you can establish a dialogue as Paul did when he was in Athens and he conversed with them about an altar that they had to an unknown god. Paul used this altar to present the claims of Jesus and the Gospel of His Kingdom.

A final thought in truth finding is that one needs to realize that all people still carry the marks of divine creation in them. Oh to be sure we are all broken, but in our brokenness we care shards of God’s original intent. Just like a broken and cracked mirror can still reflect an image. It just can’t reflect every part of it accurately. Even now followers of Jesus and non-followers reflect broken disjointed images of the creator. Occasionally we will stumble on a great truth that just for a moment gives us a fleeting glance of the Truth of God and His image reflected in a fallen creation.

Instead of frightening us or reflecting poorly on us – it helps to remind us of Imago Dei and that one day He will restore all of creation back to His original intent.

Here’s hoping that one day we will do a better job reflecting the true nature of our Savior!

With God’s help

Pastor Val

Verify, Verify, Verify

My youngest daughter was home over the Thanksgiving holiday and one night we got into a discussion over an article I had read on-line. The article was on the discovery by genetic scientists who had discovered a way to create embryonic stem cells from skin cells.

What made this discussion all the more fascinating is that my daughter is in her second year of her PhD program at Duke. Her field of study is molecular genetics and microbiology. So she is much more versed on the subject than this doctor of theology. She had a hard time believing that someone had been able to devolve a cell that had already been determined in it’s life cycle to be a skin cell. This could be a major break through for science and for medicine, to say nothing of the theological implications.

My daughter questioned my source and was dismissive of the claims that are made and stories that are reported in the media today. She like many of us has little respect for the way stories are reported. Often in an attempt to be first with the news or trying to simplify the story important data is left out or not thoroughly vetted.

She wanted to know my source and the source that the news reporter used before she was willing to accept this new information. I told her that I often found interesting information on the Drudge Report. The article was listed and it came from a decent source but she googled the story and found that it had been reported in a number leading scientific journals.

As fascinating as this discovery is, I was more fascinated by my daughter’s desire to know the truth and to verify my perception of the truth. My daughter is becoming a true scientist. I hope that she is also a true Berean. That when she hears preaching she will demand the same proof from reliable sources.

As soon as it was night, the brothers sent Paul and Silas away to Berea. On arriving there, they went to the Jewish synagogue. 11Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. 12Many of the Jews believed, as did also a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men.
Acts 17:10-12 (NIV)

My hope is that each of you, too, will be like the Bereans in your lives today.

Dr Val

PS If you’d like to read more about skin cells devolving into stem cells check out this article.

http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2007/1120/1

Addendum To The Truth In Labeling

It has occurred to me that there are times when we don’t hide our character issues but rather we choose to give up our rights in order to effectively minister to others. This deals with the weaker brother issue.

When the human writer Paul spoke to this issue he wanted us to be willing to give up our rights for the sake of those we seek to serve. The one exception was when this issue was a doctrinal one. For example, Paul continued to eat with Gentiles believers even when Jewish Christians complained that the Old Covenant indicated that devote Jews were not to have dealings with Gentiles. You see the New Covenant’s teaching was clear that God had broken down the walls separating Jews & Gentiles; Bond & Free; Male or Female. Those who were devoted followers of Christ became New Creations. As such they had a whole new set of relations and responsibilities.

In the past I have from time to time refrained from certain practices in some people’s presence because I did not wish to offend them. But I did not chaff at this choice, nor did I complain that my rights had been violated. I choose to willingly give up something that in reality was not nearly as important as my ability to effectively minister to the flock.

When live by my convictions, I did not hide them nor ignore them. Rather I taught what I had learned from Scripture. Praying that God would give my flock maturity to accept a teaching that was from the Lord but not from their tradition.

That’s the biggest problem with living by Grace. It is so much easier when all I had to do was live by a set of rules that man had made (often good men with the best of intentions). When faced with living in the grace that our Lord has given us, sometimes I find it harder to always know what is right. I find that I am “forced” again and again to seek the Lord’s leading.

I have also found that sometimes and in certain seasons the Spirit chooses to deal with my life in different ways than in my neighbor’s life. We must not expect that the path our Comforter decides to lead us down to be identical to others paths. Often paths diverge only to converge again down the road. Due to our own individuality we are often taught different things at different times. But the goal is always the same to be conformed to the Son’s image.

Here’s looking at Him

Dr. Val

Truth In Labeling

The government requires that the information on the labels of our food tell us exactly what is inside the package. When the label doesn’t tell the truth its possible that people could suffer an allergic reaction and in extreme situations die.

Wouldn’t be great if pastors came with labels. When pastors candidate and don’t tell the truth about their doctrinal positions, belief systems, or Christian practices their churches suffer and in the process pastors get hurt, too.

I recently ran across an article about a young pastor and his wife who were transplants from the liberal East Coast to the prairies of the conservative Midwest. The wife writes the letter sharing their frustrations and struggles serving a community with a different belief system then theirs.

But do the people who fill the pews each week really know us, my husband and me? . . . The painful, real life answer, here in the reality of our life, in the midst of the prairie winds, is no. We find that we can not [sic] be completely and wholly authentic with our church. Being in ministry, in this traditional context, allows us no such opportunity. That makes us appear to be hypocrites, to be people who tear down the notion of church rather than build up and edify all that Christ showed us it was and is to be. But, to us, the reality of life is that we live each day as a balancing act that we have to uphold in order to “fit” and to “minister” effectively. . . We were called to this church family, and they are completely unlike us. They were pre-fabricated before we came; they had their presuppositions, their lifestyles, and their ideologies set in place. We weren’t friends with them first. We were jammed into a place where we had never been before, We weren’t friends with them first. We were jammed into a place where we had never been before, in the midst of their already formed relationships.Many of our lifestyle choices, presuppositions, and ideologies do not correspond with theirs, nor that of the church affiliation. Do I think alcohol, in moderation, is wrong? Do I think smoking is bad? Do I think “bad” words are wrong? A resounding “no” to all of these. Do our congregation members know we think these things? Again, I say no.

As the preaching minister (and spouse) of a conservative rural church, we are not afforded the opportunity to be real and authentic. It would scare people; they would call us heretics, they would more than likely run us out of town and take our livelihood with them. We have been called here, for whatever purpose, and have not been afforded the opportunity or been led to be somewhere else, that more fits who we are. . . .

We have no where [sic] to be real anymore. The isolation begins to grow. We will continue to walk the balance beam, to know when to hold back, to know when to not say more or share more. We will continue to walk along on this journey, feeling somewhat empty because we can not [sic] find somewhere that we can truly call home.

http://www.theooze.com/articles/article.cfm?id=1386 accessed 11-10-2007.

You can’t help but feel for this wife and her husband. I know the feeling of being trapped in a ministry where you don’t fit. It is disheartening, discouraging and often debilitating.

Yes, I know that this couple believes that God called them to this ministry. I can’t help but wonder if these folks missed something. It appears that they were more interested in finding a place to minister rather then finding the place where God wanted them to be. They were willing to obfuscate the truth of their Christian walk to gain the opportunity to minister.

Therefore, since through God’s mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart. 2 Rather, we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God. 2 Cor. 4:1-2 (NIV)

Believers are commanded to speak the truth to members of the body
16 These are the things you are to do: Speak the truth to each other, and render true and sound judgment in your courts; Zechariah 8:16 (NIV)

25 Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body. Ephesians 4:25 (NIV)

I understand their desire to minister and the temptation to omit some of their personal convictions to gain a ministry. It’s easy to fall into this trap.

Having to hide your true beliefs will not only be chaffing it will ultimately cause you to hate your ministry.

My most effective ministries have been those that I owned up to my potential doctrinal differences, Christian convictions, ministry goals, and values.

I remember one such ministry where during the interview process I was asked my position on using contemporary praise and worship music in the services. I thought to myself “Oh brother, here we go. This should shut down this interview pretty quickly!”

After explaining why I would use contemporary P&W music I sat back and waited to here their reaction. The search committee chairman eagerly exclaimed, “Great! When can you start?”

Over the next 9 years when some people questioned our use of this style of music I was able to remind them that I had been honest with them from the beginning. I had not hidden anything from them and had no secret agenda. . I ministered in integrity and I believe that God blessed our ministry in a miraculous way.

17 A truthful witness gives honest testimony,
but a false witness tells lies. Proverbs 12:17 (NIV)
14 Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, Ephesians 6:14 (NIV)

Sometimes it’s hard to be true to your convictions.

It’s tempting to shave the truth so I can get busy ministering (forgetting that I am ministering where I am while I wait for Father to launch me into His next place to serve.

I am waiting on the Lord to open a new ministry in His time and like in the past, I’m going to be true to what God has taught me. I’m looking forward to sharing with you and the new ministry he has in mind for me.

Until then I’ll try to continue to speak the truth in love.

Dr. Val