(I dont recommend Church Hopping. Its difficult and destructive to your Christian life. Not having roots and good Christian friends is a bad thing. But its what I did and I dont regret it. Kids, dont try this at home)
Often Church Hopping is a seen as a negative and it usually is. I think in the end, it comes down to how you choose (there is that word choice, dont you hate that sometimes?) to see the world. Do you choose to see that glass as half full or half empty? (I have always wondered why I had this glass representing my life in the 1st place. If it were up to me, I would have chosen a large bucket. Then used that old saying of carrying your lunch to school in a bucket in 3 feet of snow, uphill both ways.)
Ok, back on track.... sort of. The point is that how you choose to see the world, people and situations, is up to you. You can choose to see things in a positive light (Glass half full),
or you can choose to see the world, people and situations as all bad and negative (Glass half empty). I choose to see my old Church Hopping days as a very positive thing. Why you might ask? Well, it gave me a pretty good perspective on what different facets of the Church believes and does.
For example, I was raised Southern Baptist. The Baptists believe in Once Saved Always Saved (OSAS for short).
Baptists dont believe that most of the gifts of the Spirit, like speaking in tongues, are for today.
There are a few others, but for the most part, no other denomination believes in OSAS. Non-Denominational Churches and Charismatic type Churches believe that the Gifts of the Spirit are for today. Most of these hone in on Speaking in Tongues. Some of these Churches, that believe in Speaking in Tongues, believe that this is a sign that you have been Baptized in the Holy Spirit.
(There are many Church's that I have not been too yet. I would really like to visit them sometime. On my list to visit is, Islam, Catholic, Mormon, Jehovah's Witnesses, Lutheran, Methodists, Jewish, Masons. Some will think it odd that I want to visit some of these Denominations and cults, but I look at it as an opportunity to expand my knowledge of their actual practices and beliefs, which often differ from what is taught in text books.)
The main thing I wish to look at it OSAS. But before I do this, we need to look briefly (Maybe, If I can keep it short) on why there is such division in the Church. Why do we all believe so differently? The main reason why there are so many denominations and Churches that have such a wide variance in beliefs lies in how they interpret the Bible.
I wrote another blog that covers some of this subject called "What was God thinking when he wrote the Bible?"
For those that dont want to read that entire blog, or want the cliff notes, I will summarize it here.
- The Bible was not written in English. It was written in Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek. This meant that it had to the translated. And it has been translated, a lot!
- Many words that were used by the original authors of the Bible dont translate well into English.
- Many other words dont have a direct translation into English at all.
- The Bible is open to interpretation. Different denominations, and even Church's within those denominations, interpret the Bible differently.
This is a pretty short list and summary. But I think these are the main reasons why so many dont agree. People that dont agree, separate. The ones that believed along the same lines, came together and formed denominations. (A similar story to the Tower of Babel. In the Tower of Babel, people separated because they spoke different languages. People that spoke the same language, congregated together to form people groups.)
ok, I can finally move onto my main subject, which is OSAS. Baptists, and others that hold to OSAS, take a lot of flack for their beliefs. They see this as persecution though, so it does not really bother most of them. On the opposite end of the spectrum, are those that do not hold to OSAS. These people and denominations believe that you can lose your salvation. They believe that your salvation must be worked out on a daily basis. The funny thing is that they also take flack from those that believe in OSAS and they also see it as persecution.
Both sides get very very defensive and angry when challenged.
In fact, I find that this anger permeates almost every single disagreement among the denominations. Everyone thinks that what they believe is right and the others are wrong. Some even go as far as to believe that they are the only ones that will make it into heaven and the rest of us are doomed (Being doomed is a phrase that I borrowed from a very good friend of mine that lives in India).
I find this all very interesting, sad, and amusing all at the same time. The only thing that Jesus prayed exclusively for the Church was that we would be united. I think that if Jesus knew what was going on with all these denominations, arguing and bickering, he would turn over in his grave. Wait... he is not in a grave. So I guess that would be" Jesus would turn over in his life". And of course Jesus did, and does, know what is going on.
To be fair though to our modern day denominations, division in the Church is nothing new. The Christian Church has been divided since the very beginning. There have always been arguments and disagreements among believers. If you research the history of what it took to come up with our modern day Bible, you will be in for quite a ride. Some books were approved (Canonized), and others were left out as forbidden. Other books just didnt fit in well with the story and flow of the Bible so they were omitted) By I digress yet again, so I will leave that one as it is for now.
The problem is that we think like humans and not like God. God wrote the Bible using both perspectives.
“As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."
Isaiah 55:9
He wrote certain things from his view and certain things from ours. All we tend to think about is ourselves and how we see things from our puny little point of view. If we are to really understand what God was trying to tell us, we need to broaden our minds and hearts.
The OSAS crowd has several scriptures that they point too that they say is solid proof that once we are saved, no matter what we do, we will always be saved and can never lose this salvation. There are a lot of them, but the main one that I want to use is this one.
John 10:28.
"I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one can snatch them away from me"
A curious thing (That I think proves my point) is that both the OSAS crowd and those that dont believe in OSAS, use many of the same scriptures. They just interpret them differently. ( I am getting tired of typing that out. So I will call those that dont believe in OSAS, "YVYCLYS". Which stands for "Yes Virginia, you can lose your salvation")
The main reason why the YVYCLYS folks say that the OSAS crowd are bonkers is that their reasoning does not make any sense at all. Logically, if you are saved no matter what, you are free to go out and kill, rape, and do anything else that you want. No matter what you say, do, or think, you will go to heaven. Usually when approached with this argument, they will use this scripture.
1 Corinthians 3:15.
"But if the work is burned up, the builder will suffer great loss. The builder will be saved, but like someone barely escaping through a wall of flames."
Like so many other things, the problem is not with God and His Word (The Bible). The problem lies with us. We need to re-read these versus from a different perspective. From God's view, we cannot lose our salvation. No one, or nothing, can snatch us out of His hand. Period !!!
Once God saves us, that's it. From God's point of view, its all over. We are saved and sanctified. Our next stop is heaven. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.
God will never leave us, but we can choose (There is that word choice again!) to leave him. He will never let go of our hand, but God is a gentlemen. We are free to make the choice to let go of his hand!!
So there you have it. From God's perspective OSAS is true. Once God saves you, you are saved forever.
But from our perspective, we can choose to leave God, go out and kill, murder, rape etc..., and therefore lose our salvation.
Post Script Notes This idea of Perspective is not new. I borrowed it from Star Wars. In this particular Star Wars episode, Luke has just found out that Darth Vader was his father. Yoda and ObiWan had always told Luke that his father was dead. Luke confronted them and asked them why they lied. Their response was that what they said was true..... from a certain point of view. Their point of view was that the emperor seduced Luke's father to going to the dark side. So the good man that was Luke's father died and became Darth Vader. ObiWan went on to say that Luke would find that many of the truths that they held to, depended greatly on their own point of view.
Another part of Star Wars
Now ultimately, it was true that the Jedi would prevail, but not for several episodes. In the now, it meant that the chosen one would fall to the dark side. The dark side would grow so that the Jedi (Good) and Dark Side (bad) would be more equal in power (Balanced).
All of this made me wonder if what we thought we knew about the Bible was all correct. An old Bible professor of mine once told me that, at any given time, what we think we know is about half wrong. The other puzzling thing to me was all the different view points and interpretations of the Bible. All of them convinced that their interpretation and view is the correct one.
I am a child of the movies. I love movies. They are like modern day prophets. Everything that has come to pass as always shown up in movies 1st. Space flight, Landing on the moon, Lasers, Unmanned drones, Organ replacement, and on and on. It all showed up in the movies 1st. So if you want to see whats coming, go out and watch a movie.
All this brought me to a conclusion. God gave us the Bible. As he gave it to the authors, it is the inspired word that is without error. So the only logical conclusion is that the problem is with us, how we translated it and interpreted it.
All of the controversies that we are so adamant on fighting about can be resolved if we look at them from a different perspective. God wrote the Bible to dummies. Dummy is another word for sheep. God wrote the Bible using mostly simple language that we can understand. But at the same time, he wrote it so that truths would be hidden from those that dont need to know.
1 Corinthians 2:7
"No, the wisdom we speak of is the mystery of God--his plan that was previously hidden, even though he made it for our ultimate glory before the world began."
and
Matthew 11:25
At that time Jesus prayed this prayer: "O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, thank you for hiding these things from those who think themselves wise and clever, and for revealing them to the childlike."
Understanding the Bible is simple.
Do you really think God would have made understanding him and his word sooooo incredibly difficult that it would take super intelligent Bible scholars to figure out? Thats not the Jesus I read in the Bible. Jesus was against the established religious order that thought they knew it all. His words were aimed at the simple, the unlearned, the poor and the downcast. It defies logical thought and reason that he would write a Bible that was so far beyond anything that anyone could understand, that it would take those very religious leaders that he hated to interpret it correctly.
To understand the Bible, you just need to understand a few simple things.
- The NT part of the Bible Bible was not written to us. He had us in mind of course, and it does relate to today and us as well, but it was written for an audience of mainly Jews in the Middle East some 2000 years ago.
- God wrote the Bible to a people that did not have a great understanding or intellect.
- The Bible is written mostly in the language of K.I.S.S. Keep it Simple Stupid
- God wrote some things in the Bible using our perspective
- God wrote other things in the Bible using his perspective
- God wrote other things in the Bible from both perspectives.
- God lives outside of time. Therefore to him, the past, present, and future are all the now.
Well, I think thats about it. I went on longer than I intended or probably should have anyway.
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