Brain Hurdles

To those who read my blog,

Last week I talked about how it is important to accept people no matter what. This week, I am going to talk a bit about biases but the conversation will for sure go back to the idea of acceptance. For those who do not regularly follow my blog I’ll sum up what I said last time.

Acceptance is one of the most important things we can do as Christians. Jesus commanded us to reach out to everyone. It doesn’t matter if the person is steeped in sin, or if they aren’t the most socially acceptable (whether that be because of  looks, attitudes, or awkwardness) or if the person holds to a theology you don’t agree with. If the person walks through the church doors, you accept them. In fact, if they walk into your life, then accept them. In fact, if you hear about them, accept them.

One of the things that keeps us from accepting people is holding onto biases. When I first started attending Asian churches I grew suspicious of any white guy in the congregation thinking he was only there to get an “exotic” date so it was hard for me to accept white guys. And then I would look in the mirror and realize that, hey, I’m a white guy who is genuinely there to worship our amazing triune God! You should know that I don’t hold that bias anymore.

Biases have a way of creeping up on us and it’s hard to acknowledge them, let alone deal with them. Sure, these biases keep us from reaching out to people, but they do something else as well. They hurt us and help us while reading the Bible. For this reason, we need to do deeper study of the word of God, but first let’s look at how biases play out in our worship experience.

There are a lot of people out there who, when asked why they like their church, will answer, “well, the preacher just preaches the Bible”. That’s kind of a weird statement to make. Even the worst church I have ever attended used the Bible for preaching. It’s not an unusual thing. In fact, an unusual thing is for a church NOT to use the Bible. So what do these people actually mean? Well one thing they could mean (and I’ve run into this time and time again) is that their church is non-denominational which means it doesn’t have any rules imposed on it except for the rules imposed by the Bible. They only follow the Bible because that’s all they got.

Except, that’s not all they got, is it? Here is where I may get a little controversial. You see, I would not go to a non-denominational church. Not because there is no non-denominational church that is good (I bet a lot of them are good) but because if you don’t have something in writing telling people what you believe, then how will anyone know what you believe?

You might say, “but Joshua, the whole point of this is that they DO have something in writing… the Bible!”

Awesome. But the thing is, the Bible is FULL of grey area! Besides that, people get passionate about different ideas. Here is my denomination’s statement of faith:

“1 - God

There is one God,¹ who is infinitely perfect,² existing eternally in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.³

2 - Jesus

Jesus Christ is true God and true man.⁴ He was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.⁵ He died upon the cross, the Just for the unjust, as a substitutionary sacrifice, and all who believe in Him are justified on the ground of His shed blood. He arose from the dead according to the Scriptures.⁶ He is now at the right hand of the Majesty on high as our great High Priest.⁷ He will come again to establish His kingdom of righteousness and peace.⁸

3 - Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit is a divine Person, sent to indwell,⁹ guide, teach and empower the believer, and to convince the world of sin, of righteousness and of judgment.¹⁰

4 - Bible

The Old and New Testaments, inerrant as originally given, were verbally inspired by God and are a complete revelation of His will for the salvation of people. They constitute the divine and only rule of Christian faith and practice.¹¹

5 - Sin

Humankind, originally created in the image and likeness of God,¹² fell through disobedience, incurring thereby both physical and spiritual death. All people are born with a sinful nature, are separated from the life of God, and can be saved only through the atoning work of the Lord Jesus Christ.¹³ The destiny of the impenitent and unbelieving is existence forever in conscious torment, but that of the believer is everlasting joy and bliss.¹⁴

6 - Freedom from Sin

Salvation has been provided only through Jesus Christ. Those who repent and believe in Him are united with Christ through the Holy Spirit and are thereby regenerated (born again), justified, sanctified and granted the gift of eternal life as adopted children of God.¹⁵

7 - Christian Living

It is the will of God that in union with Christ each believer should be sanctified thoroughly¹⁶ thereby being separated from sin and the world and fully dedicated to God, receiving power for holy living and sacrificial and effective service toward the completion of Christ's commission.¹⁷

This is accomplished through being filled with the Holy Spirit which is both a distinct event and progressive experience in the life of the believer.¹⁸

8 - Healing

Provision is made in the redemptive work of the Lord Jesus Christ for the healing of the mortal body. Prayer for the sick and anointing with oil as taught in the Scriptures are privileges for the Church in this present age.¹⁹

9 - Church

The universal Church, of which Christ is the Head, consists of all those who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, are redeemed through His blood, regenerated by the Holy Spirit, and commissioned by Christ to go into all the world as a witness, preaching the Gospel to all nations.²⁰

The local church, the visible expression of the universal Church, is a body of believers in Christ who are joined together to worship God, to observe the ordinances of Baptism and the Lord's Supper, to pray, to be edified through the Word of God, to fellowship, and to testify in word and deed to the good news of salvation both locally and globally. The local church enters into relationships with other like-minded churches for accountability, encouragement and mission.²¹

10 - Life after death

There shall be a bodily resurrection of the just and of the unjust; for the former, a resurrection unto life;²² for the latter, a resurrection unto judgment.²³

11 - Second Coming of Christ

The second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ is imminent and will be personal and visible.²⁴ As the believer’s blessed hope, this vital truth is an incentive for holy living and sacrificial service toward the completion of Christ's commission.^25”

You can find that on my denomination's website (www.cmac.org) or by just clicking this sentence which will take you to the page in question. If you notice, there are a bunch of endnotes posted in the quote. If you go to the website, you can see that they are using the endnotes for Bible verses. Everything from their statement of faith is supported by the Bible.

Now, to make my point about grey area, look at point 8 which reads, “Provision is made in the redemptive work of the Lord Jesus Christ for the healing of the mortal body. Prayer for the sick and anointing with oil as taught in the Scriptures are privileges for the Church in this present age.”. Did you know there are some people who do not believe in healing that happens today? In fact, some of you reading this may even be asking yourself, “healing? That doesn’t happen!”. However, there may be some of you who read this and say, “Yup. I agree. It totally happens”.

I believe in healing because of two events. First, when I first began my walk with Jesus in the garden, my dad had a cancer scare. I prayed for my dad one night and as soon as I said ‘amen’, there was a lightning flash. Yes, yes. I know. That could be a coincidence but when that lightning happened, for some reason, I knew my prayer was answered. Sure enough, a week later I went to the doctor’s office with my dad and though there was cancer, it had not spread and the doctors got rid of all of it when they took a sample for their testing.

The second event happened a few years ago. I headed up prayer at my college’s youth event and I was praying over someone who had other responsibilities but couldn’t do them due to sickness. I prayed for her with a group of people and she became better. No lightning this time. No big event, either. She just got better.

I like both those stories in tandem because they illustrate how God works in the big (healing my dad of cancer is big in my opinion) and He also works in the small (a “mild” healing of someone so they could do their job). It also shows that God speaks in a loud voice (through lightning and thunder) and in a whisper (just letting someone get better)

However, I like these stories for another reason. I witnessed these things happen. I was with my dad when he got the news. I was there at the event when this worker got better. I prayed, God worked, healing happened. I like these stories because they influence my opinion of healing.

Some people never see God heal. I think that is a crying shame. However, they may not bother even asking God to heal anymore because, why would they? They asked and there was no miracle, so why would they assume that God heals?

So when I come to a passage in the Bible that talks about healing, I nod my head and say, “my God is so very great and He heals today!”. When someone who has not had an experience with healing comes to those passages, they may think, “My God is so great, He healed people to demonstrate His power when the Church was young”.

Both are valid statements that are shaped by experience. I would be more than willing to share my experiences with the person who does not believe in healing, but he could think that I am making it up, or it was just a coincidence, or any number of things. I wouldn’t mind either way. The person knows Jesus which is awesome. They don’t need my experiences to push them further into His love. I would want them to believe in healing and I believe it would only enhance their experience of God, but I would not push my belief on them.

You see, biases shape what we think and how we operate. A pastor who never had experience with healing may not believe it happens today and therefore would not put a time of healing into the worship service, whereas I, who do believe in healing, would definitely want it to be part of worship.

This is why I would not go to a non-denominational church. I don’t know what they believe and their biases could very well shape a completely different picture of God and may even shape a picture of God that I do not agree with at all! I want that statement which says, “Alright, this is what we believe. Every time we hire a pastor, they will be asked if they agree with this. If they don’t, we won’t hire them.”

Here’s another example: I once foolishly thought that AIDS was a judgment by God on people who are sexually promiscuous. You see, I never have left Canada and so I don’t know anything about the AIDS epidemic in Africa. A fellow youth worker was kind enough to tell me how it wasn’t just the sexually promiscuous who were getting the disease. It was also children who were born into it and also rape victims. People who should never have gotten such a fate were forced into having the disease because of circumstance and unwanted sexual activity.

In fact, there are probably a lot of people here in North America who were never sexually promiscuous but maybe had sex one time, or maybe sex was forced on them and then boom, they had it! My narrow thinking led me to deny people who were in tremendous pain.

I mentioned earlier that biases hurt and help. My bias toward healing was formed out of experience. If I did not have the first experience with my dad’s healing, I may not have been willing to pray for the second experience. My bias helped shape my idea of how the trinity works to bring about health.

However, my biases when talking about AIDS hurt my view of people. If I were to have volunteered at a hospital with AIDS victims at that time, I could seriously have hurt those people by being rude to them. Not because I believe being rude is a good thing but because I was letting my biases form an unjust opinion.