Sitting on my Toilet

I looked over my notes and realized I’ve jot down many points over the last few weeks for few different pots, and yet haven’t really produced any.  I am going to start with this one – a rant, or more like frustration over how my experience has been with the Christian-ese (that is to include every Christians, church leaders, theologians and basically people with lots of acronyms by their name).

1. I finally dove into figuring out what this Calvinist vs. Arminianism is.  Quite interesting.  After reading through few articles and few YouTube clips of pastors defending why one is better than the other, my conclusion is….huh? Along with each pastor and theologians gives their view point, obviously they will mention their church is this way or that way.  One pastor even gone to the point of mentioning “We are Calvinist, John Calvin is one of my role models.  But if you are not, we still love you and our church welcomes you.”  I just wonder at what point do doctrines and theology becomes a dividing point and people no longer follows the spirit’s leading and begin to follow the theories and interpretations of a theologian?

2. Contemporary church, baptist church, traditional church, health-wealth-prosperity gospel, seeker friendly church, sensational church, charismatic church….what else did I miss? So churches are tapping into the business strategies of marketing and finding ways to be receptive and relevant.  Along came the bashing between churches.  I finished reading John McArthur’s book and I was quite disturbed.  He claims that a lot of Christians today are actually headed to hell because there are too many seeker friendly churches or messages that says, if you pray the simple prayer, your salvation is secured.  And yet, his point was that following Jesus is about denying yourself and pick up your cross (which is true) and if you didn’t have that relationship, on the last day, “Lord, Lord, Lord” but “I don’t know you”.  So is salvation through grace through faith or by works? Then there is the stab at the prosperity gospel. Or how about the stabbing at any churches that isn’t traditional? What about worship band that adopts electric guitars and drums etc?  Then there is always the funny part, whenever one church or pastor describe the other side is by using the false prophet verse.  Wow, everyone is calling each other false prophets, then who is real? Do we want to make people coming to Christ harder so that we can feel like we are in this exclusive club?

3. Mixed with the first two points, then there is the individual Christians.  The moment they hear something along the line of above, they inherit their view point without even going through their own brain.  I thought Christianity is about having a personal relationship with God and be leading a life to bring glory to Him, through the leading by the Spirit? So then when one person adopts any of the above view point, does it confirm with God’s revelation to you? Or is it simply judging based on what the world says? Let’s see how this is often manifested….oh your church plays contemporary worship songs.  oh your church’s pastor has a tv program, hmm….is your church prosperity focused? (I have no clue how that association happens, but ok). The message is to uplifting, it should be more self denying. They sound like one of those new age church.

I am sure most often the messages by the pastors/theologians and even the individuals mean well.  They are simply sharing their convictions or view points and doing it the best way possible to extend God’s kingdom.  At least I hope that’s where they are coming from.  But here is something else to consider, if we are part of this one body, shouldn’t we come together in unity to bring focus, synergy and build momentum together to expand the kingdom instead of taking a stab at each other? Yes, Jesus did mention about false prophets and we should be mindful about that.  But just because someone is doing something different, doesn’t mean that they are one.  What makes you think you are not? Most importantly, as individuals following Christ, growing each day by the spirit, I hope that we can all develop our own personal relationship and be able to hear from God, so that we can each play our important role in this one body.

At the end of the day, there is one message and one truth.  It’s written in the bible.  What is God revealing to you today?

I have to admit, with all these things going on, I can’t help but finding my thoughts firing whenever a preacher is preaching because in my mind, I am constantly checking ‘hm…that didn’t make a lot of sense, according this one pastor from another church’ or ‘hmm…was that biblical?’…you know what happens after all that? Instead of hearing from God, I ended up get all fed up analyzing and protecting myself from in case a wrong idea gets into my head.

The war is waging. If we are distracted and fighting amongst ourselves, Satan can simply sit back and relax because we are no threat to him.  Instead of advancing, we might just well disbanding the whole army.  Perhaps that is why you don’t see many spiritual attacks in the form like demon possession here in the US – it’s not needed.

That’s it.  Done with my frustration.