To Those Who Read My Blog,
Hi! It has been a while, hasn’t it? I need to be better at updating this thing…
So, let me just get you caught up on what’s been happening in my life before I get into the meat and potatoes of what I want to talk about.
I’m done school for the year but don’t know how I did. I have some things about this past year that I love. Men’s ministry and Swing Dancing are the two most important things I think. I have one huge regret. That regret is not spending enough time with my last Church.
Speaking about this Church, I left. I felt God telling me not to be in ministry this summer because I’m going to be in ministry this fall and winter at school. As my church is small and I have a bit of training it would have been hard for me to not do ministry there. I miss those people so much right now. I don’t know if any of them read my blog but if you do, I think about you all daily and you’re not far when I pray!
Well, seeing as I did leave my Church, I have been looking at other places. One was a Jewish Synagogue that I don’t think I’ll be returning to as they do a few things I am really against (tract ministry being one of those things :s ). I also went to a Catholic rally that happens every Tuesday night and it is here that I want to dwell as the focus of my blog post.
A guy came up to me afterward and immediately after finding out I was a protestant he said to me “You know in John 6 when Jesus talks about eating His flesh and drinking His blood? How is it that you can think that he’s speaking figuratively when he is so clearly speaking literally”. That bugged me for a while and I did not know why, but then it hit me today. It bugs me because how did this guy know Jesus was speaking literally? The reference is John 6:25-59 (though more so near the end). I find whenever Jesus speaks, He goes in and out of figurative language so it’s hard to tell when He is talking figuratively and when He’s not.
This guy I was talking to was referring to transubstantiation which says that the bread and wine actually become the flesh and blood of Christ which I am not against but don’t think is the way communion works. And that’s my point, really. This guy took an offensive approach defending his theology and saying that he was right. He also criticized my thinking by phrasing it as “how can you believe…” as in “how could you be so stupid as to even think that for a second”. He did not say it like that, but that’s the way it came across. I am sure that he left that argument thinking he won, I left that argument wondering why there was an argument at all.
The truth of the matter is that Jesus is special. He is special because He is mysterious and we can’t get Him completely figured out. We can get ideas about Him, and we can even say some pretty solid things about Him like the things proclaimed in the Nicene or Apostle’s Creed but some things are a mystery. One of those things being the mystery of communion. What does happen in the Eucharist? What is so special about it? Truth is, we won’t know until heaven. This guy might be completely on base and it might work out as transubstantiation… or it could be what I believe… consubstantiation. We won’t know until Jesus tells us and to say we got God figured out and are completely right in our Theology is just a pompous stance and a lie.
I guess where I come down with this guy is that he seemed to want to be right. I just want to be with Jesus. What are we pursuing? Are we pursuing a complete and thorough knowledge of exactly who God is and how He acts? Are we pursuing a perfect theology? I don’t think so. I don’t think God leaves room for us to do that. Instead we should just aim to hang out with Him and maybe He’ll shed some light on His workings, but if He doesn’t we can just chill with Him and wait until we are in heaven to know Him more.
We should celebrate our differences and take joy in them. If we appreciate one another then we do not separate ourselves. We can love one another fully. I think this is especially important for Catholics and Protestants (yes Protestants need to chill out a bit and take a humble stance of respect… we get things wrong too… I mean probably)
I don’t know. These are just my thoughts on the subject. If anything comes to your mind on this, please comment. If not I hope to write again soon as I have been a jerk and not writing at all! Talk to you all later.
-Joshua
5 comments:
I've just been reading through the Catechism of the Catholic Church (it's for work, I'm getting paid to read it), and I'm finding the same things you're finding. What rubs me the wrong way in particular is their idealization of Mary. Now, they don't deify her like some opponents of Catholicism say, but some of what they claim to be doctrine is extra-biblical, unnecessary for faith, and highly unlikely.
#499 of the Catechism says, "The deepening of faith in the virginal motherhood led the Church to confess Mary's real and perpetual virginity even in the act of giving birth to the Son of God made man. In fact, Christ's birth "did not diminish his mother's virginal integrity but sanctified it." and so the liturgy of the Church celebrates Mary as Aeiparthenos, the "Ever-virgin"."
I just think that's unlikely at best. There's no real theological necessity for Mary to be a virgin after she gave birth to Christ, only before. The Bible says nothing about her remaining a virgin (in fact the Bible seems to lean towards the other side of the argument). And do you really expect us to believe that Mary, as a married human, never had sex with Joseph?
I guess it's too easy to rag on Catholics about this. Protestants are just as guilty (what with the arguments between premillenialists and postmillenialists... does the literal interpretation of such a figurative book as Revelation really matter?). The only source of "right theology," in my opinion, is the Bible itself (and not interpretation of it). Not that we should throw out our opinions and interpretations, but we should be humble about them.
It really disheartened me when I read the Alberta Catholic grade 8 religion textbook, where the textbook discusses different rites among the one Church. Here is what it says at the end: "As Catholics we share communion with churches of every right that recognizes the authority of the Pope. We cannot share communion with people from other churches until our differences have been healed."
Is this the body of Christ? These organizations that refuse to associate with each other because of differences in doctrine? As Paul asked, "Is Christ divided?" (1Co 1:13)
Anyway, those are just the ramblings of a madman.
Hi, it really has been a while.
Joshua, I think your frustration is perhaps a little misguided.
It is important that we understand what we believe and why we believe it. What you believe has real, practical implications concerning how you live, how you counsel others, and especially for those of us who are going into full time ministry, what you teach as truth. Thus, is it not our duty to study the Scriptures and pursue the truth about God. Moreover, is it not natural to try to know AND know about a person whom you love?
We should aim to live perfectly according to the teachings of the Scriptures even though we can't do it. Likewise, even though we cannot have a perfect theology, we should still aim for it.
That being said, sometimes our theology contains beliefs that certain things are unknowable. That in itself is a theological statement.
Theology is not bad, but sin is, and your frustration is ultimately caused by sin. You encountered someone who is proud, and pride is a sin. It is oftentimes a very "respectable" sin, but we are all guilty of it, both you and I included. So yeah, I guess that means we ought to repent of our pride... and I'll just end on that note.
Andrew, you forgot to mention some of the other Protestant disputes like Arminianism vs Amyraldism vs Calvinism vs Pelagianism and fundamentalists vs everyone. I am disappoint.
Well said, Matthew.
And I know... it's just the premillenial/postmillenial argument was the first one that popped into my mind and seemed the most trivial: either way, Jesus is gonna come back. Revelation's such a figurative book, who's to say this "millennium" will even be a thousand years?
@Andrew, I was just trying to poke fun at some theological divisions and the fundamentalists, so don't feel like you have to defend your choice of examples.
@Joshua,
Josh Harris does a much better job than I on pp 85-86 of "Stop Dating the Church" of expressing how doctrine is related to loving Jesus and what a healthy use of doctrine looks like. You might want to check it out, I think you might agree with him.
@Matthew
Yeah yeah. I know. Gaining knowledge of God is in itself a form of worship. My issue is more so on the things that cannot be confirmed. We all know Jesus is the Son of God and that He is fully God and fully human but we disagree on whether His human flesh is what we're eating or if it is more of a figuritive thing. The truth of the matter is we don't know and although we should take a stance and say "I beleive this for these reasons" we should not take the "no this is the way it has to be there and anything less or different is heresy". Fact is doctrine can be debated over whereas dogma cannot. If doctrine can be debated over, then why do we hold so strongly to it as if to say it has to be like that? What if that piece of doctrine were proven false? Would our whole faith crumble? I think I addressed this issue before in another blog post.
And although I did not say it directly, it's pretty obvious I was talking about pride. You didn't need to point it out :P
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