Seagoon, a question

[Lizking]

On another board, a person who purports to be a deeply religous person advocates putting the church before the family.  I do not agree with this, FYI, but am interested in your opinion.  


We have spoken on voice (even though I took all your "money"), and I read your posts here and respect your opinion.  Since I despise cross posting, I won't link it, but would like to private you the thread link and get your opinion.

Thank you for your consideration.

[Gunslinger]

just to give my .02$ the bible talks extensivly about raising good christian children and honoring they father and mother.  To me a church isn't a building nor the preacher it is the congregation.  Your family makes up that congregation so I don't see how you can put the Church first.

Seagoon will probably have some good insight in this....please post cause I'm interested in the question too.

[Heiliger]

Originally posted by Lizking
On another board, a person who purports to be a deeply religous person advocates putting the church before the family.

Can you please post a quote or link so that the context may be taken into consideration?

[Lizking]

Well, my thought on it as a person who believes in the concepts, if not the ritual, is that first you must  be secure in your personal  morals, then your familial responsbilities, and only then can you assume the duties and responsabilities of your church.

This other person seems to think that you must fulfill church duties, then your family and personal responsabilities.  My response to him is that that is the difference between a cult and a religion, i.e. the ritual takes precedence over the practice.  Seagoon seems to have a firm grasp on reality, so I am interested in his opinion.

[Gunslinger]

Originally posted by Lizking
 Seagoon seems to have a firm grasp on reality, so I am interested in his opinion.

I would agree that he is one of the few of us that do......myself not included....sometimes

[Seagoon]

Hi Lizking,

Sorry about the late reply, spent all day at Presbytery 3 hours away in Charlotte and then had a Pastoral Visit in the evening.

Lizking, this is a good question, and one on which we aren't forced to speculate because Christ addressed it directly and unambiguously:

Matthew 10:37 "He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.
 38 "And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me.
 39 "He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it.

We even see this principle lived out in the case of the Apostles who left jobs and family in order to follow Him:

Luke 18:28 Then Peter said, "See, we have left all and followed You."
 29 So He said to them, "Assuredly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or parents or brothers or wife or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God,
 30 "who shall not receive many times more in this present time, and in the age to come eternal life."

Why was following Christ more important than duties to parents? Well if Jesus was only a man, it wouldn't be, the fifth commandment requirement to honor mother and father would take precedent. There is only one to whom we owe greater honor than all others, that is God. Christ can only command a higher allegiance than parents or family or country if He is who he claimed to be: the Messiah, God Incarnate. C.S. Lewis pointed this out in his famous "Lord, Liar, or Lunatic" argument in Mere Christianity:

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to." [C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillian Publishing Co., 1952): 55-56.]

Obviously the Pharisees thought that Christ was either a Liar or a Lunatic, which is why when He used the great divine self-reference "I AM" (ego eimi) (Exodus 3:14 "And God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM." And He said, "Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you.' ") they sought to stone him:

John 8:58 Jesus said to them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM."
 59 Then they took up stones to throw at Him; but Jesus hid Himself and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by.

I heard a great modern day example of this principle being lived out from missionary friends working in Morrocco in 1997. They had been holding a bible study attended by a few young Muslims. One of them, a young woman came to faith in Christ and declared she wanted to become part of his body, the church, and be baptized. Her parents absolutely forbade her to do so, and her father and older brother warned her that if she was baptized, they would kill her themselves (apostasy from Islam is a death penalty offense according to the Quran [Sura 4.89 etc.] and Sharia Law). She talked it over with my friends, and ultimately asked to be baptized saying that "The Apostles said "We ought to obey God rather than men." and I will do the same, for I believe that Jesus is God and he said that those who believe in Him should be baptized." She was baptized in a local house church. A few days later, her father and brother slit her throat and left her body in the gutter outside her house.

John 11:25-27 "Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. "And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?" She said to Him, "Yes, Lord, I believe that You are the Christ, the Son of God, who is to come into the world."

- SEAGOON

[Sandman]

Hmmm... are the church and Christ synonymous?

[Leslie]

I have a question.   the other day I went to get A haircut and my barber and I discussed the evils of the world, and then she said if she and I got married, I would be a fornicator and she would be an adultress.  I have not hought about her in that way ever.  Though I think she finds me attractive, she is as knowledgable about the Bible as Seagoon, and does present advanced knowledge about the Bible and I believe she is a true servant of Christ.  I've gone to her for my haircut for 20 years, and often recieve a Bible lesson when I go there.  She's the best barber I know.  




Les

[Lizking]

No they are not, Sandman.  OK, Seagoon, I do not agree with you, or the other gentleman.  I have seen first hand the result of putting the church before family, and it invariably ends badly.

[culero]

Originally posted by Sandman
Hmmm... are the church and Christ synonymous?

ding ding ding, we have a winnar!

culero (sees that nail as having been smacked on the head)

[oboe]

Christ and his first followers would certainly have been viewed as a cult, would they not?   In fact I think after Christ died and ascended to Heaven, the remaining followers formed a group called "The Way" and sort of kept to themselves, waiting on Christ's return, which sadly, they misjudged by centuries at least.

So much of what Christ said is dependent on our interpretation.   What exactly does it mean to put Christ above all?   Is it the same for everyone?    Does he really want fathers to abandon their families, sell all their possessions and wind up living out of a car somewhere?

I'd heard that story about the young Muslim woman before - in fact it seems to have all the characteristics of an urban legend.  Seagoon, do you know personally the missionaries involved?

[Eagler]

Originally posted by Sandman
Hmmm... are the church and Christ synonymous?

depends on the church

my belief is that "Christ" is a state of consciousness we strive to attain through correct living and thought as outlined by all the great faiths of the world. There are several names for this state and as many paths to get there. It is the blind ignorance of some who think their way is the only way which results in the throat being slit of the woman in the story..

[Torque]

Religion, the original infomerical.

[Seagoon]

Originally posted by Sandman
Hmmm... are the church and Christ synonymous?

Howdy Sandman,

In a way, yes. Let me explain.

The New Testament Greek word for church is Ekklesia meaning assembly or "called together ones." In Christ's teaching the church is distinct from the world and consists of those who have been called out of the world and joined to Him through faith [in biblical teaching, the world is a perishing condemned mass, to be saved is to obtain unmerited mercy and be translated from being a worldling to a citizen of the kingdom, from being one of the damned to one of the redeemed - for instance in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, the World is variously "the city of destruction" and "Vanity Fair"]  Jesus said that it was his desire to build a church against which the gates of hell would not prevail (Matt.16:18) and indicated that this church would be an organized body that opened the gates of heaven via the preaching of the gospel and the formal reception of those who repented and believed (Mark 1:15) and which exercised church discipline to remove unrepentant sinners from the midst of the body (Matthew 18:17). Christ stated that all authority in heaven and earth had been given to Him by the father (Matt. 28:18) and then in the great commission he gave delegated authority to His church to "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, "teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." Amen." (Matthew 28:18-20)

The Apostles identified the church as the "body of Christ" (Eph. 5:23-33) which emphasizes the believer's spiritual union with Christ and the way in which all believers enjoy communion both vertically with their savior and horizontally with one another. The apostles always emphasized that Christ was the head of the church, and that we were simply members of his body. It should be noted that Christ emphasized that the visible church in the world would be a mixed assembly consisting of both wheat (true believers) and tares (false professors, hypocrites) and that this situation would continue until his return when the final division would be made (Matt.13:30, Matt. 25:30).

Finally, there is an organic connection between the idea of the church and the "Kingdom of God" which Christ preached. The two are not the same, but the church is an integeral part of the Kingdom. NT Scholar J. Gresham Machen explains:

" 'THE KINGDOM OF GOD'

One further conception requires at least a word. What is meant by 'the kingdom of God'? This conception is evidently related to the conception of 'the Church', but the two are not identical. The kingdom of God is simply that place or that condition where God rules. As the kingdom of Caesar was the territory over which Caesar held sway, so the kingdom of God is the realm where God's will is done. In one sense, of course, the kingdom of God embraces the whole universe, for nothing is beyond the reach of God's power. But in the New Testament the term is used in a far deeper sense; it is used to denote the realm where God's will is done, not of necessity, but by willing submission. Wherever human hearts and wills are in true accord with the will of God, there the 'kingdom' has come.

In one sense the kingdom of God belongs to the future age. It is never realized fully upon earth; there is here always some lurking trace of sinful resistance. Nevertheless, in the New Testament the kingdom is by no means always represented as future. Though it has not yet been fully realized, it is already present in principle; it is present especially in the Church. The Church gives clear, though imperfect, expression to the idea of the kingdom; the Church is a people whose ruler is God.

Entrance into the Church is not to be obtained by human effort; it is the free gift of God through the Lord Jesus Christ. No other gift is so glorious. If we are members of that chosen people, we need fear nothing in heaven or on earth."

[J. Gresham Machen, The New Testament: An Introduction to its Literature and History, p. 304]

- SEAGOON

[Seagoon]

Originally posted by Leslie
I have a question.   the other day I went to get A haircut and my barber and I discussed the evils of the world, and then she said if she and I got married, I would be a fornicator and she would be an adultress.  I have not hought about her in that way ever.  Though I think she finds me attractive, she is as knowledgable about the Bible as Seagoon, and does present advanced knowledge about the Bible and I believe she is a true servant of Christ.  I've gone to her for my haircut for 20 years, and often recieve a Bible lesson when I go there.  She's the best barber I know.  

Les

Hi Les,

Sorry I'm getting to all this so slow. But all the charitable, counseling, and family work the church apparently doesn't do has been taking up bags of time of late. One day I may even get one of those day-off thingees for real. Anywho, I'll take my tongue outa my cheek.

Les,

I'm not sure what the biblical impediment your haircutter sees that would make her an adultress and you a fornicator. Is she married? (Are you?)

I can only guess that because one of you is divorced she is taking a view that remarriage is absolutely impossible which is clearly not the teaching of the bible (note the exceptive clause of Matthew 19:9 and the  breaking of the covenant bond that results from irremediable desertion in 1 Cor. 7:15.)

If a prior divorce is the issue, you might want to take a look at one of the few things I've written for publication in a theological journal:  
What is the Reformed Doctrine of Divorce?

Hope this helps.

- SEAGOON