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21 June
Indianapolis
My research took longer than I expected last night. The concordance section at the back of this little Bible, which matches up specific
words with the places where they are used, is far from comprehensive. They sell ones that are called "exhaustive," and they are the size
of dictionaries. I guess mine still has plenty of energy. I have a low-carb concordance.
While I’m waiting for Hewlett Packard to figure out what they want done with all these computers – I could probably find a place to sell
them myself, make enough money off this one trailer to go live comfortably in Mexico for a spell—let me jump back into the main
thread of yesterday’s sermon. (my notes are not too exhaustive either, so I’m going to do some paraphrasing.)
This message, being as it was Fathers’ Day, was directed primarily at fathers, considered heads of household in traditional Christian
churches. (I have no answer for that, other than that I just plain don’t believe in it, in practice or in theory, and no one has ever
explained it to me in a way that didn’t sound like a worldly military chain-of-command system that I inherently don’t trust –but that’s
neither here nor there.)
The primary exhortation of the sermon was to "build your house (home, family) upon the foundation of Jesus." He listed "four pillars"
for that house:
1. Fear of God: This phrase has caused so much needless confusion. When preachers use "fear of God" in a sermon, it seems like 85%
of the time they follow it up by explaining that "fear" means "awe and reverence" of an unfathomable power. So why not just say "awe
and reverence?" Or do some people know that you can score big points with the Fear card, and that’s OK with them? Anyway, he made
it clear what Fear of God means, and I liked his explanation.
2. Mercy: Not God’s mercy to us, that’s a given. He meant for us to share God’s mercy with others. A timely theme.
3. Trust: absolute trust in God, "not your pastor, not in men, but God."
4. Happiness: JOY! The Christian life should be joyful! Not gloomy over everyday circumstances, but lifted up over them. Here here!
He explained that a solidly built house with these four pillars will help you weather the inevitable storms of life, etc etc. It was the pastor’
s energy and enthusiasm that got my attention more than the message. The message itself I’ve probably heard a dozen times, in ways
that were no less convincing. In my concordance I traced the idea of "building your house on a rock" to a passage near the end of
Jesus’ famous Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 7:24-25:
"Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his
house upon a rock:
And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not; for it was
founded upon a rock."
With an exhaustive concordance, one could probably find many further references and allusions to these words among the Epistles. It is
one of the fundamental themes of Biblical Christianity in fact, to build a house upon a rock. In Psalms, there are at least four references
tying that concept of "the rock" to God: "the Lord is my rock" (18:2), "thou art my rock and fortress" (31:3), "lead me to the rock that is
higher" (61:2), "God is the rock of my refuge" (94:22). And in I Corinthians 10:4, Paul asserts the notion that "the Rock was Christ."
It is then, of course, a common Biblian extension of this idea to say that one must build a house upon the Word of God, meaning the
Bible. Which goes back to page one of these writings: the Bible can initially make our faith stronger --less shaky, built on a firmer
foundation—by giving us something tangible to consider. I don’t deny that, or deny the value of it, especially in reaching those who are
only open to believing what they can perceive with the senses and grasp intellectually. We read the Bible, learn of Jesus’ miraculous
birth, His sinless life, the miraculous healings He performed, His inscrutable teachings, the horribly shabby way He was treated by those
mean old Jewish leaders, the whole ordeal of the crucifixion, the resurrection, how He appeared to a few dozen people shortly
thereafter; we read the many assertions He made of His divinity; we consider the authority of these eyewitnesses of all these events who
wrote about them in the New Testament; we know that these people were writing without an agenda (well…um…oops, we don’t know
that…but we do know that they were guided by the Holy Spirit as they wrote, and the Holy Spirit never guides anyone to lie or
exaggerate or mix legend with history or express himself through symbols and allegories…um, wait, Jesus Himself did that, so He does
so the last part at least…why don’t we just forget this part and get to the clincher, OK?). So, since we know that the Bible was written
by the absolute authority of God (cough, cough), and that it proclaims, without any monkey business, that Jesus Christ is Personally the
one and only Son of God, then you have only three choices (and this is an actual Biblian teaching [link]):
1. Jesus Christ was a madman.
2. Jesus Christ was a liar.
3. Jesus Christ was exactly what He said He is.
Most people, having gone through all the rigmarole, naturally choose Door #3. And well they should, given only these three choices. As
I’ve maintained all along, if you have inclinations toward Christian belief, and you desire the easiest, most accessible way into a
definitive knowledge of (or maybe, "familiarity with") your eternal nature, follow Christ and take your Bible with you. Build
your house upon that Rock. Align yourself with any of several dozen denominational interpretations (I counted over 50 different
Christian denominations in the Ashland-Medford-Grants Pass phone book); find the one that suits you best and immerse yourself in that
family. Understand that there may be some elements of those denominational interpretations that, for whatever reason, don’t sit right in
your gut when you hear them. But a Biblian faith does not quibble with little issues like that, so be prepared to have them smoothed over
by others if you bring them up. Remember always that third pillar of your House on the Rock: trust.
I’m very serious about this. This is a viable option for the Christian. If the rest of these writings are a heresy to you and you need to
reject these ideas, please at least know that I am sincere in wishing you a strong and vital faith under the Bible-believing fold. I don’t
share that faith, and I have found that there is baggage along with it that I am not willing to carry. But you might; it might not be so
heavy for you, and that would be good in my eyes. May Godspeed your Biblian journey to Awe and Reverence of God, Mercy, Trust
and Happiness.
"So, what part of the pastor’s message did speak to you then?" you may be wondering. It wasn’t actually anything he said. In clarifying
what it means to "build a house upon the Rock," and how that corresponds to the Biblian teachings of most churches, it also helped
clarify what the alternative is. Say you don’t feel pulled toward, or called to, the idea of building a house on the Rock, but you do feel a
strong call to follow Christ, directly, with no intermediary. Is that an option?
Yes. Not only is it an option, but one might consider it the "higher calling" of Christ, straight out of the Gospels. The idea of a higher
calling is prominent in P&K, and I am not ashamed to say that the presence of a higher calling is the only thing that encourages me to
pay attention to the Gospels at all.
For remember, Christians, what Jesus was said to have proclaimed about Himself in Matthew 8:20, shortly after coming down from
"the Mount":
"And a certain scribe came, and said unto him, Master, I will follow thee withersoever thou goest.
And Jesus saith unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man hath not
where to lay his head."
That is not only a quote, but a common sense conclusion from reading about Jesus’ three-year period of ministry. He had no home in
the literal sense. He was a wandering minister –and as we know, according to J.R.R. Tolkien, "not all who wander are lost." Jesus made
his only home in God, the I AM; but this was not a place to "lay his head," physically or spiritually. He needed to be able to do whatever
He was called to do, whenever He was called to do it, and wherever that entailed Him going. Clearly he did these things, and that’s why
God was able to use him so spectacularly.
That this is expected of those that would "follow thee whithersoever thou goest" is made clear later in Matthew 16:24:
"Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and
follow me."
This has huge implications for P&K, and I won’t even try to tackle them here. But you can probably see where I am going with this,
Christians. This is not about building any house, literally or figuratively; there is plenty of instruction regarding building that house
elsewhere, but it isn’t in Jesus’ most radical call.
And where exactly does Jesus’ way lead us? John 12:24-25:
"Verily, verily I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat (in most translations, "a seed") fall into the ground and die, it abideth
alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this
world shall keep it unto life eternal."
Did he just say we should voluntarily fall into the ground and die, like a deer jumping before a semi truck going 65 miles per hour? I
don't know, did Jesus advocate cannibalism when he told us to eat his flesh and drink his blood? Symbols, man, symbols. But what
does this symbolize? A seed, a hard, self-contained life form in a shell, goes into the ground and dies, and brings forth bountiful life: a
plant which produces more seeds, which themselves go into the ground, bringing forth a small field, etc.
What is He instructing us to give up in the second verse, to have life eternal? Our "life in this world": the ego. The fake ID we carry
around from birth. He that loveth the ego will die when the body dies; a seed which sits on hard ground, refusing to go in because it
is afraid to die, will abideth alone as a seed, bear no fruit, and eventually rot. Our ego, our shell, is what prevents us from bringing
forth much fruit. Jesus says, "Let the ego die, and in doing so you shall find your eternal life, far far greater than the pittance of a life
you had as an ego. Trust me. I did it myself."
That’s why Biblians are missing such a fabulous Christian message in rejecting The Last Temptation of Christ: the whole picture of
Jesus’ temptation on the cross was not about sex, it was the temptation to go back to being a seed, an ordinary feller who "built his
house" and lived there and died there; a good, hard-working family man perhaps, but not a whole lot of fruit for those who follow. In
overcoming that temptation, Jesus embraced the death of the seed, and the fruit, if you follow the story back to the Gospels, is
universal: Jesus died so that all would know eternal life. Some fruit!
But we have to follow Him to know that eternal life here, now. We have to be ready to deny our seedhood, take up our cross and
be "crucified" to our ego, our "life in this world." The fact is, Jesus learned to "deny himself" long before the crucifixion, and that’s
what I was getting at earlier by saying He had no home. No house…no shell…no ego. And God used Him to deliver the most important
revelation of all.
To be a Christian and not respond to that call is to say "Yes Jesus, I believe you are the Christ and I have faith that you died to give us
eternal life; I’m not really willing to go as far as you did to bring that eternal life to the world, but that’s OK. You did all the hard work,
and I’ll get to enjoy eternal life after this one is over. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!" And that is OK, it’s not harming anyone. But
I say that you are robbing yourself of the fullness of eternal life by clinging to life as a seed. Otherwise you would know, without
intermediary validation, that eternal life is here and now. You can build yourself a house on His promise of endless afterlife, a
comfortable place to lay your head, but in this House upon a Rock you will stay, a seed evermore, and eternal life will lie beyond the
horizon.
A woman I spoke to briefly at the church yesterday asked me where I was headed, after I’d told her I was just passing through town.
"Indianapolis," I said. "Oh, I’ve been there, that’s a scary place," she replied. I said, "Yeah it is," jokingly, and probably not for the same
reasons. Then she said, "Of course this is a scary place too." I said, "Joplin?" and she said, "Yeah." Then I realized this was no joke.
This woman really was living with a lot of fear –of what exactly it was never made clear, but she felt unsafe wherever she went. I don’t
want to make a bigger point of this than it is, or suggest that she speaks for all Christians in some way. But there is some interesting
symbolism here: If you build yourself a nice, strong, secure house on your Rock of Faith, be it in the Bible or the Word Himself…might
you become afraid to leave it? Might the "open road" that God built for you have to end at your property line? Might your house soon
become a prison? Sure there are many other Biblical notions to the contrary, but somehow the preservation of your seed life seems
to remain the strongest force, and the idea that you were being risen up to a life without fear gets lost behind it.
"Well cannot a Christian do both?" you ask, "build a house on the rock and be a seed that goes into the ground?" I won’t say definitively
"no," but I offer this parable, Matthew 13:3-6:
"Behold, a sower went forth to sow;….some (seeds) fell upon stony places (a Rock?), where they had not much earth; and
forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth: And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and
because they had no root, they withered away."
Now like I said, this is nothing definitive; I’m not going to confuse symbol with substance and proclaim that Jesus said you can’t follow
Him if you build your house on Rock. But consider the principles behind the symbol: a seed won’t grow deeply if planted over a rock. It
springs up forthwith, like a new Christian turned on by the promises in the words of the Bible, but unless it takes root somewhere off
the rock, it will wither. The Christian who would be called to follow Christ, the higher calling I spoke of earlier, must at some
point leave his house or his seed will not take root. Translation: he must let go of the ego.
It is my very forward opinion (all are free to dispute this) that in 21st century America we have way too many churches who don’t
understand this higher calling; way too many churches who teach a Christ of self-preservation rather than self-sacrifice. Yes, we’
re supposed to love our neighbor and all that stuff, but not because, beneath the shell of the ego, we are our neighbor, but because this
will bring increase to our "spiritual bank account." I’ve actually had people tell me this in church, with a straight face. Rather than teach
how to deny the ego for the gain of the Spirit, using the exemplary teachings of the very Man they purport to worship, the churches of
today are preserving egos in some kind of spiritual cryogenic fluid, and promising nice fat bank accounts for them when they are
"reawakened" on the other side of heaven’s gate.
And teaching us to build comfortable little houses on this side.
Could this be the fundamental reason behind the observations of the young Indian Christian that Phillip Yancey spoke with regarding the
church of the West? I’ll repeat them here:
"You seem to say that the West in general is receptive to a saint, someone like Gandhi who stands apart from culture. But
is the church receptive? You have said that American Christianity has never produced a saint who follows along the lines of
Gandhi…You seem to imply that if a Gandhi rose up in the American church today, he would not be taken seriously, would
perhaps be laughed at and rejected. And yet those same Christians say they worship Jesus Christ. Why don’t they reject
him? He lived a simple life (an extreme understatement), preached love and nonviolence, refused to compromise with the
powers of this world. He called on his followers to ‘take up a cross’ and bear the sufferings of the world. Why don’t
American Christians reject him?"
Is it possible that Gandhi –raised in the Hindu East and educated in the Christian West—through this cross-pollenation of two great
spiritual traditions came to understand and put into practice the higher calling of Jesus better than any American Christian?
I am going to say something next that is so matter-of-fact and so odd-sounding but plainly true, that it has probably never occurred to
you. It had never occurred to me until yesterday. And that is: Jesus Christ was not a Christian. I mean this literally, in that he was not
a follower of Himself, and this is pretty important to remember. In order to listen to God, he followed no man's concept of who God is.
Jesus was a doer, not a follower.
But I am also saying, somewhat figuratively, that Jesus may not have jived with some of the ideas about his teachings that were put into
place by men after he was gone. Toward the end of his life, having had a chance to witness some of the things done by the people who
carried his philosophies as the banner for their political movements, Karl Marx proclaimed, "I am not a Marxist."
That is the spirit in which I mean that. Jesus of Nazareth was not a follower of any established religion, and lo, were He to appear on
earth today in a human body again and look around at what the churches are doing in His name, I believe He would say, "I am not a
Christian."
I’m not trying to say he would disavow all of it, go around turning over tables and whatnot, because churches do plenty that is in the
spirit of Christ, reaching out to the community and supporting each other, "caring for widows and orphans" etc. What I mean is, when
Christians ask themselves that question "What Would Jesus Do?" the honest answers would not resemble many Christian lives. Jesus did
not spend his Sabbath mornings saying "Yeah!" and "That’s right!" and "Amen!" in unison when prompted. He didn’t pray to the Father
for things like Better Jobs, Raises and Promotions, Benefits, Sales and Commissions et al. He didn’t write checks to support church
missions, believing in the back of his mind that they were simply transfers to his personal "spiritual bank account." Jesus fasted. He
meditated. He prayed to be of better service to humanity. He spent his entire ministry time giving to others. He gave love and
comfort to the afflicted. He challenged the proud and learned. And yes, He ultimately gave His life to be the ultimate symbol of self-
denial before God; He showed us the way to the eternal Life. For that we owe Him our deepest and most sincere gratitude, and the
chance to see His teachings lived out in this world. He deserves to be a living Savior, not some frozen spirit Popsicle we can lick
whenever we need a taste of eternity to get us through our day.
I know, Christians, I have offered a lot of problems today and not many solutions. I believe the solutions are there, in the Bible, but to
best draw them out I will be going outside of its authority for a while –off the Rock, you could say—into the spooky realm of Other
Religions. If this is too syncretist for you, if you think that a follower of Christ has nothing to learn from Krishna, well, tough. Go read
another C.S. Lewis book. I’m sure a little Clive Staples will prepare you for another Sunday morning of "Yeah!" and "That’s right!"
"Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men. For as much as ye are manifestly declared to be the
epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in
fleshy tables of the heart.
And such trust we have through Christ to God-ward: Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of
ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God;
Who hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit
giveth life."
Hey, I didn’t say it! Paul did. (II Corinthians 3:2-6) --HC, still Indianapolis
© 2004 by Hermit Crab
a Fish Out Of Water production
Next -- Chapter 13
