Blog on the Lillypad
Sunday, September 21, 2003
 | What Kind of Christian I am: My Observations I got an e-mail yesterday telling me I have a unique perspective. I do. One thing you learn in the martial arts is that what people say about themselves doesn't matter in the slightest. Truly skillful people may not say a word about their skill. People who think they are terrific fighters may boast and boast, but it doesn't save them from being trounced. There are people who rush to wear the red stripe in their black belt to show that they are masters, yet they can be defeated by people who are second degree black belts. Neither words nor appearance matter in martial arts. Only what is actually done matters. I've learned that again and again, and a few times in my martial arts studies, I have taught that truth to others. |
My Christian beliefs are built on the foundation of Scripture: the Bible, but my observations affect my attitude towards being a Christian, and my observations affect my choices in what I write.
One way in which I differ from most Christians is that I believe that we live in a meaningful universe, which was created to declare the praise and glory of God. Because of this belief (which is rooted in the Bible), I believe that the stars are meaningful. The ability to read them has declined since the days when the astrologers (or Magi) found Christ and presented Him with gifts that foretold His destiny. This decline is as it should be, for the written Word of God is a greater revelation of God to man; and Christ Himself---God With Us---is the greatest revelation of God. Yet, the stars are still the first revelation, and, yes, I try to learn as much as I can about reading what they say. Currently, as inaccurate as astrologers can be, they have always been more accurate that Christian Evangelicals and Christian Fundamentalists in predicting End-Time events. Always. The most recent notable event was the alleged Y2K situation, in which Christians were preaching catastrophe and the end and the Rapture, and astrologers correctly predicted a good time and a prosperous first half of the year 2000. Christians tend to forget the egg on their collective face for ignoring Scripture and running after Rapture fables, but I remember.
Another way in which I tend to differ from other Christians is in my point of view that we are totally depraved. Doctrinally, there is no difference. Anybody who professes Christ as Saviour ought to know and believe in total depravity. But Christians as a whole don't really believe it. Well, let me put it a better way: Christian evangelicals and Fundamentalists tend to believe that YOU are depraved, but they let themselves off the hook because, after all, now they tithe, go soul winning, teach Sunday School, read the Bible daily, believe in Calvinism, don't believe in Calvinism, have a Doctor of Divinity, have been baptized by immersion, have not been baptized by immersion, speak in tongues, have never spoken in tongues, etc.
Of course, totality is totality. If we are all depraved sinners, it doesn't matter what we do; we are still depraved sinners. I try to live by this ethic. Maybe to you that sounds pessimistic, but actually it's a tremendous lifter of burdens. It's like being told you have terminal cancer. But, the Great Physician says, "here is this pill which I will give you every day so that you lead a long life." OK, well, you'll always have terminal cancer. You'll never be healthy on your own. If you wander off from the Great Physician, you'll get sick, wither up, and die. So just accept this constant dependence on Him. But once you realize He can keep you living even with cancer, you start asking him for the strength to run 2 miles. He figures out a way to give you what you need, and you do it. As you go along with the Great Physician, He keeps finding ways for you to do these great things. In a lot of ways, you end up having a lot more fun than other people, and it's all because you have terminal cancer and the Great Physician has placed you in His care. It all comes from Him. And sometimes He says no, and sometimes His medicine is painful and you get mad at Him. But in the end, He gives you everything He has. In fact, one day you realize that He has given you Himself. This isn't a doctor-patient thing, it's more like being married to a great and powerful Emperor who has more powers than mortals guess. At this point it can even get a little frightening at times, but there is more often a tremendous wonder at Him.
But in all of this, there is no room for you (or me) to make any claims on our selves. My only claim is that He has greatly loved me (even when I didn't want Him to!). Because I know I'm a depraved sinner, I am quite free. I'm 43 and thoroughly enjoy reading, watching, and writing Doctor Who adventures. Why not? Sometimes my self-proclaimed spiritually mature Christian associates frown on this and think I should grow up. Grow up and be what? Less totally depraved? That won't happen. When I was younger, a young lady won some type of Christian Leadership award at BJU. I realized sadly that I would never win such an award. Three years later she broke up a marriage to live with a guy who used her. She was still expecting him to marry her when he left her to return to his wife and kids. But somehow, I'm the one who lived in a dream world.
At a church I used to attend, the congregation was very pleased to have discovered the doctrines of grace (Calvinism). I came under their tutelage and eventually became convinced of these doctrines. These people went out and harshly criticized brethren who did not agree with them, became openly antagonistic towards non-Calvinists, spoke evil of men in positions of Christian authority who lived godly lives, and thoroughly explored every device of mockery. I started along this path but was rebuked by Christ and stopped. I decided that studying martial arts was better for my integrity than attending career group with these people. Back in the 1980's they went on a campaign to preach about and pray for revival. Revival, to them, meant everybody believing their way. So of course it didn't happen. I've never yet seen God reward mockery and scorn, no matter how doctrinally correct a person is. For all I know, they are still praying for revival, not having realized that revival will break out the moment they openly repent of what they are and recognize the tremendous victory of grace in the lives of other brethren. But these people, I believe, are caught in a powerful illusion that says that because I understand doctrine, I am more righteous than my brethren. This takes us back to the original point of being totally depraved. Totality is total. No matter how brilliant my comprehension of doctrine, I am a sinner unable to make move myself up from being a total sinner.
Hand in hand with such illusions are the illusions that we have seen enough, read enough, survived enough, even proved out the Lord enough for our righteousness to matter. But it doesn't. It can't. Total depravity is total depravity. I can be (and am) crucified with Christ and risen with Him so that He works through me and continues to conform me into His image. That's the new nature, which is given to me but is exercised by faith in Him (like going to my Physician-Emperor and clinging to Him for what I need). But though I have this glorious union with Christ and this "resurrection nature," while on this earth I always have the old nature---that nature that by faith is crucified, but it comes down off the cross when I start relying on what I am.
Again, all Christians who have any education in the Bible would agree with this doctrine, but we don't live it. Some people don't even comprehend what it actually means, and they try to be good Christians by sheer effort. Sheer effort to be good doesn't work before you come to Christ and it doesn't work afterwards, either. Some people comprehend the doctrine but co-exist with it without applying it because they don't think it's as important as other things. And some Christians try to apply it, but being creatures of flesh, we fail. I don't live it consistently. In fact, I am incredibly inconsistent with it. So I have tried to position this truth more prominently in my everyday life. I try to come back to it as a foundational idea. God is completely pleased with me because of the work of Christ on my behalf. But there is no work of mine that impresses God one jot. I have to get on His page; He won't get on my page.
Anyway, it's this observation that prompts me to write about Grace and its power rather than Christians and their power. It's what prompted me to write VALKYRIES, one of the very few Christian books that depicts the converted main character realistically as a sinner. It's a book about Grace, not a book about a perfect Christian.
And, apart from my writing, my views on total depravity encourage me to live by a code that I can only call naturalness, although that term has been used in other ways to describe behaviors I don't approve of. But it's the best term I can coin. It means to live as close to being what I truly am as I can, and avoid illusions about what I should be or what I wish I were. Hence my decision not to promote VALKYRIES unless (or until) I can cope with doing so. To lead a simple, direct life seems wisest and safest for a person caught in a world of illusions and bound up in illusion itself by nature.
