The White Man's Religion?

Many African-Americans have an aversion to Jesus and to the Bible claiming that Christianity is the “white man’s religion”.  They also have beef with the Bible saying that it supports or condones slavery.  The slavery aspect is an interesting one because every civilization had slaves in some form or fashion.  The Egyptians, who many African-Americans turn to as their alternative when seeking to discredit Christianity, enslaved the Israelites!  Many turn to Egyptology or other mystery religions because of this perception that the Bible condoned slavery and that whites used it to keep Africans in America enslaved.

That is partially true.  Whites did indeed use the Bible, fear and intimidation and violence to keep slaves subservient.  But what no one seems to mention is that they were wrong.  As a Christian, I have no problem in honestly saying that many of those men who owned slaves were not real Christians nor did they use the Bible for its intended purpose.  Rather than being transformed by it, they manipulated its words and played on the fact that many slaves were illiterate.

As for the Bible condoning slavery, as I mentioned before every civilization held slaves.  Slavery is a reality that existed throughout the history of mankind.  What we need to understand is this: The Bible HUMANIZED slaves and their treatment.  Those who were enslaved to the Israelites were not treated as animals.  God mandated in the book of Leviticus that they must be treated fairly and not harmed or abused.  The American concept of slavery was ghastly.  Lynching, beating, rape, torture and death were all components of the American system of slavery.  Freedom was not a reality for most slaves.  However, the Bible in the Old Testament pronounces that every 50th year was considered the year of Jubilee and all slaves, whether indentured or not had to be set free (Leviticus 25:10).  Many sold themselves into slavery to pay off debts.  American slaves were captured in Africa or sold from Africa, often against their will.  No one could have predicted the horrors of American slavery and the utter dehumanization of the African people when the first slave ships landed here.

Even in the New Testament, although slavery still existed, the humanity of slaves was evident.  Paul writes the following in his epistles:

1.       Masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair, because you know that you also have a Master in heaven (Colossians 4:1).

2.       Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to curry their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord.  Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. (Colossians 3:22-24).

Paul writes these things with the understanding that the slaves would be treated fairly by their masters.  He also warns those who own slaves to provide them with what is right and fair.  In American slavery, there was no such thing as right and fair because masters did not regard their slaves as human beings but as chattel.  They did not heed this warning because of the racism and the hatred in their hearts for the slaves that they owned.  It’s appalling but we cannot blame the Bible for their misdeeds.  I blame them.  The instructions in the Bible are clear.

In another place, Paul tells those who are enslaved- who were probably more indentured servants than slaves because many sold themselves into slavery to cover debts- to be free if you are able to be free.

1 Corinthians 7:17-24 “Nevertheless, each person should live as a believer in whatever situation the Lord has assigned to them, just as God has called them. This is the rule I lay down in all the churches. Was a man already circumcised when he was called? He should not become uncircumcised. Was a man uncircumcised when he was called? He should not be circumcised. Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing. Keeping God’s commands is what counts. Each person should remain in the situation they were in when God called them.

Were you a slave when you were called? Don’t let it trouble you—although if you can gain your freedom, do so. For the one who was a slave when called to faith in the Lord is the Lord’s freed person; similarly, the one who was free when called is Christ’s slave. You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of human beings. Brothers and sisters, each person, as responsible to God, should remain in the situation they were in when God called them.”    
                                                                                                               

Clearly, the Bible is not advocating for slavery or even condoning the harsh treatment of slaves while it does recognize the existence of slavery.  Paul is telling slaves here that if they could gain their freedom they should absolutely do so.  He is also, in the same thought, telling men to be content with their standing in life.  How is that possible?  Because Paul understood that God can work through our situations but there are also some situations that warrant release i.e. slavery.  This does not sound like a justification of inhumane treatment to me.  What is sounds like is a secret that American slaves were not privy to because of their inability to access true Christianity.  What they experienced was a tainted version of the truth and therefore many are turned off by it.  The same thing happens all the time in the church.  People get turned off by inauthenticity!  I don’t like it.  But much credit belongs to those slaves who endured the horrors of slavery and still believed in God because they did indeed find the TRUE God and He brought them through!  They sang about Him, they prayed to Him and they knew that massa’ was not in the least bit representative of Him.

I don’t subscribe to the notion that because of the evil inflicted by slavery that Christianity somehow should be discredited.  What men do in the name of God is not always what God has called them to do.  God did not call for Africans in America to be brutalized and dehumanized.  Men chose to do that and use God as a cover.  Christianity did not start in America!  There were Christian churches in Ethiopia long before colonial times (Ethiopia).  There were Christians all over the world before whites got into the slave trade.  Christianity is not the "white man's religion".  It can't be because it was started by a Jew named Jesus who was born in Bethlehem, hid out in Egypt, raised in Nazareth and was the Light of the WORLD, not just a select few.  Don't be snowed over by these claims of Christianity being white.  Do your research.  Those images of a milky skinned Jesus are not accurate [What did Jesus look like?]. Those depictions are just that, depictions.  No one has an accurate depiction of Jesus but the Bible says that his feet were like burnished bronze (Revelation 1:15) and his hair was white like wool not His skin. 

We must also understand that regardless of what color Jesus was (not race because he was clearly not African nor was He Caucasian), the main issue is that His blood ran red!  It is His blood that breaks down every dividing wall of race or class.  His blood ensures that we understand that both male and female are equal in His sight.  He broke down the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile (See Galatians 3).  Here is where our focus should be, not on the color of His skin!  What is most important is that Jesus died for the sins of the WHOLE WORLD!  Every race, color, creed, ethnicity or whatever box you want to check.  That's more important than someone's perceived superiority complex.  I thank God that He is not as shortsighted as men are!  Grace and peace be with you all.

What I Learned from VBS Last Night

Vacation Bible School has been a blast.  The Cave Quest theme deals with man being in darkness and Jesus being the light of the world.  The church has been transformed into a cave, especially the upstairs!  The workers have been phenomenal.  Last night, I was sitting outside observing the outdoor activity.  It involved two people having to walk through a gauntlet and cross over three hurdles all while being pelted by wet sponged, shot at by assailants carrying super soaker water guns and having buckets of water dumped on them at various points along the path.  It was a real eye-opening experience.  Without consultation from the coordinators, I quickly figured out what this event was representative of. 

Of the two people walking, one of them was blindfolded and the other was not.  The un-blindfolded person was to act as the guide for the blindfolded person.  They helped them maneuver through the gauntlet and all the while they were also taking the exact same punishment.  My spiritual eyes were opened immediately and I thought "Wow, that is the exact same way that Christ walks with us!"

What did I learn?  Here are my thoughts about that event and how we can apply it to our lives:

1. We NEED a guide in the Christian life.  None of us are equipped to walk the narrow path alone.  We have Jesus and we have the Holy Spirit to assist us.

2. We WILL be attacked along the way.  The water guns and the sponges were indicative of the fact that the Christian life is not a perfect life.  We will face challenges every day of our walk.

3. At NO POINT does Jesus leave our side.  Through the obstacle course the guide and the blindfolded person were joined at the hip and the guide could not leave them.  It is the exact same way in the Christian life.  Jesus said in Matthew 28 that He would be with us even to the ends of the earth.  The Moses said to Joshua, "Be strong and courageous...He will never leave you nor forsake you." (Deut 31:6)

4. There is an END to the attacks.  The obstacle course had an end point.  So do troubles in our lives.  David said that weeping endures for a night but joy comes in the morning.  We know that God can bring good out of bad and therefore we endure until the good comes.

5. We MUST walk by faith and not by sight.  We will not always know what is coming around every corner of our lives.  We must have faith in Christ to see us through our difficult moments.  Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.  Faith is not blind, it is based on God's promises.  We must hold on to those promises even if we do not see them at the moment.

I believe that VBS this year will have a transformative effect on our church and on the youth that we are reaching.  I pray that God would illuminate the minds of everyone involved.  I know that He definitely illuminated my mind last night.  God's grace and peace be with you. 

How Do I Know that Jesus is Real?

Our Vacation Bible School opened with a question to the first group of children.  “How do you know that Jesus is real?”  I was sitting in my office but the presenter was loud enough for me to hear.  The silence was too.  That’s a hard question for a child.  Some adults still struggle with this question!  Atheists stake their eternal future on the supposition that He is not real.  The wheels in my head started turning because this is a question that an apologist must answer succinctly and honestly.  How would I answer this question if someone asked me?  The presenter answered from the perspective of looking at creation and understanding that the things that we see didn’t create themselves.  We know that the Bible tells us that all things were created FOR Christ and BY Christ.

We know that Jesus is real from what the Word of God tells us.  If the Word of God is the truth and God cannot lie ever then when His Word says that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, raised in Nazareth, performed miracles to validate His identity as the Messiah, died at Calvary and rose again on the third day, we believe it to be the truth.  That is called faith.  The Word of God is not a set of books thrown together but the message within it is cohesive and the authority comes from God, not from the people who compiled the books.

Contrary to what many believe, faith is not blind.  Much of what we believe from the Bible has been archaeologically and historically verified.  The birth of Jesus was not recorded as a story but as a historical event because the book of Luke has been verified and trusted as a historical document.  The same can be said for the book of Acts that clearly depicts Jesus walking with His disciples after His resurrection.  His crucifixion and His impact on the world has not only been written about in the Bible but in other non-Christian sources.  Namely, the Jewish historian Josephus wrote about Jesus and discussed how His movement, what we now call Christianity, did not die after Jesus no longer walked the earth.  That is the true test of whether Christ worked for God or whether He was simply a figment of people’s imagination.  Thousands of years later, people are still following Him and the numbers are being added to daily.  

As with any supernatural reality, He must also be experienced.  There is no way to quantify experience but that does not make it any less real.  You can’t bottle experience in a flask or measure it with a ruler any more than you can count the number of bubbles in a bar of soap.  There is an old song that says that God is real because I can feel Him in my soul.  Many a skeptic turned Christian will attest to this.  Lee Stroebel (The Case for Christ), Antony Flew (There is a God) and Frank Morrison (Who Moved the Stone?) are notable former atheists who converted to Christianity after some experience that they had.  For Stroebel, it was his quest to find out if Jesus was real; for Flew, it was an epiphany after years of staunch atheism; for Morrison it was a sudden realization that as he sought to disprove the gospels, he couldn't.

Certainly, Christ can be experienced.  Every believer has experienced Christ at least at the moment of their conversion which is evidence that points to His reality.  Paul’s experience was different from Peter’s.  Peter’s was different from Levi’s.  The woman at the well experienced Jesus in a different way than those whom she went to tell but they all experienced Jesus!  Which brings up another point, we cannot discount the witness of others.  A witness in a courtroom is used to corroborate a story through their testimony.  Witnesses are credible and necessary to establish facts.  The woman at the well, after experiencing Jesus ran and told her fellow Samaritans, "Come see a man who told me everything about myself!  Could this be the Christ?"  We must witness to others as to the “realness” of Jesus!  We are witnesses to His realness and we must tell others.  This is how the Gospel is spread and proliferated, by word of mouth.  We have evidence that Christ is real and we have to convey that evidence to others. 

Just Skip the Beginning

There are times in life when we just want to get to the good stuff.  Sometimes, we eat dessert before dinner.  Sometimes we rush people through their conversations to get to the meat.  Sometimes we are not interested in the details because they may get in the way of our conscience.  Or, they may remind us of some uncomfortable truth that turns our ideas on their heads.  For instance, if I found a million dollars on the side of the road, I have two choices.  I could say I have no idea where it came from and keep it or recognize that it came from somewhere, it's not mine and therefore I should seek out the owner.  If I dismiss the fact that it's not mine that gives me a clear conscience to keep it.  Who cares about the details of where it came from?  I am only interested in spending it.  The origin of the million dollars is just as important as my possession of it.  I know it did not simply materialize out of thin air and I know it belonged to someone else before I found it on the side of the road. 

In a debate with a Darwinist, this is the exact dilemma that they face when they begin discussing evolution.  They want to discuss diversity without considering origins.  Darwinism stems from Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.  The theory of evolution at its core states that every living species is derived from the same common ancestor, a single celled organism.  Natural selection is another Darwinian concept that says that extant species genetically develop specific traits and characteristics that allow them to survive in their environments.  These traits are developed by mutations in the genes of a given organism. 

According to those who support evolution, they say that it has nothing to do with origins.  That is another subject, a totally different area of study known as abiogenesis.  They contend that you can skip the beginning and go directly to discussing the diversity and complexity of life and that evolution allows us to explain this diversity.  Here is a gaping hole in evolutionary theory.  How can we skip the beginning?  Doesn't it matter where the species that we are describing came from?  Apparently not. 

Many also argue that evolution itself is not random. I beg to differ.  Absent a creator, the origin of all species had to occur randomly.  If the belief among evolutionists is that there is no God and therefore nothing to guide the process, then how else do we classify it?  Further, if abiogenesis is really how the first organism came into being, then that would mean that every organism randomly evolved from that first organism before natural selection could ever occur. 

How is this random?  If abiogenesis is how the first organism came into existence then the chemicals that made that organism up had to have randomly combined to even form one amino acid let alone the proteins or DNA which codes amino acids for proteins.  Sure, the chemical elements can be found on asteroids and meteors but amino acids aren't nor are proteins.  The elements are there but the parts are not assembled.  If there is no assembler, then how else, other than random, do we classify the process of the elements becoming molecules with specific bonding and structures?  Not to mention, where did the life of the first organism come from?  There is no evidence of life evolving from non-living material, anywhere.  Scientists have tried to duplicate/simulate conditions and only got a few amino acids; hardly a living being or even a bacterium (Prebiotic Chemicals?).  Glycine found on a comet (Rosetta Comet) won't cut it when we have to answer the fundamental question of where life begins or how extremely complex and purposeful molecules are derived through random collisions of atoms.  To have the ingredients for life but no life is not enough.  I cannot put the ingredients for five star meal in my kitchen, blow the kitchen up and expect that a desirous meal would come from that process!  Unguided processes are random.  Point blank.  The lottery is a random process- unless it's rigged.  The probabilities for winning are extremely low which is why you see 2-3 winners out of millions of players.

If this random process of making amino acids, proteins, peptides or even DNA, which is a totally different type of chemical from proteins, was successful, now that single celled organism would have to become every single species on the planet.  This would necessitate inter-species evolution i.e. one organism becoming something totally other than itself!  How so?  How else could every species originate from one common organism?  Evolutionists say that this is an aberration and that this is not how evolution works.  However, in order to discuss how evolution (speciation and diversity) does work, we cannot dismiss this fact. 

The formation of different species from the original organism too must be random because there would be nothing guiding the genetic mutations necessary for the original organism to become some other organism.  That's to say there is nothing to tell the original organism what to become.  Random, unguided mutations is the language that even evolutionists use yet they contend that the process itself is not random.  Really?  Here is another hole, evolutionists will not dare say that multiple species occurred at the same time, but rather that they each evolved slowly over time; they also contend that from each of the new species, variations of that species were derived.

Is there microevolution i.e. can there be advantageous changes within a species?  Absolutely.  There is no denying the evidence that there were and still are different humans who walked the planet at the same time.  Every one of us came from somewhere.  I believe that we came from Adam's seed but that's another issue.  The fossil evidence is there to suggest that human beings have indeed changed over time.  So has our environment and our living conditions which, according to evolutionists, have everything to do with evolution. 

But  Is it possible from one species to become another?  I don't think so and this has not been proven experimentally, ever.    But this is precisely what had to have happened in order for the diverse array of species that we currently see to exist, if evolution is taken to its logical conclusion.  There is debate over the whole man from ape theory as well as the common ancestor between men and apes.  Apes have 48 pairs of chromosomes  and humans have 46 pairs.  The debate rages over whether or not telomeres were somehow (no real explanation) fused together which evolutionists use to argue for how apes evolved into humans (Telomeres) and how the two chromosomes pairs are somehow missing from humans. There is no way around this unobserved inter-species evolution and this is where the Darwinian concept breaks down in the eyes of many scientists (for arguments against the theory of evolution, see "Icons of Evolution by Johnathan Wells" "I don't have Enough Faith to be an Atheist by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek" "Darwin's Black Box by Michael Behe" or "Signature in the Cell b Stephen C. Meyer"). 

We can't just skip over the beginning and not have an answer for it.  That presents a major challenge for Darwinists but according to them, the origins don't matter.  We can indeed skip the beginning and start discussing diversity.  How is that possible when there is a 400lb gorilla in the room screaming "where did all life come from in the first place?"

There is an answer.  He is an inconvenient truth and a thorn in the side of many who do not agree that there is a creator.  God created everything that we see.  While many do not accept this or claim that He is a bigger mystery than evolution, He is indeed a knowable mystery.  He cannot be studied empirically in a lab, he cannot be proven using science but He can definitely be experienced.  He also left His calling card throughout this orderly universe.  He gave the species the ability to adapt.  He designed the genetic switches that allow DNA to code for different proteins within a particular species.  He made human beings in His image, not from apes.  He made each animal, bird, creeping thing etc. after its own kind.  That those things are able to "evolve" is no mystery and that's something I do not disagree with.  But to say that without answering or even entertaining the vital question of where they came from is quite disingenuous.  The impossibility of a random unguided process leading to the vast array of complex organisms, humanity with all of its own complexities and don't forget our intellectual complexity and everything else that we see is mind-boggling.  It takes a lot more faith to believe in an unguided random process than it does to believe that God created everything in my humble opinion.  But, we don't need those details getting in the way of our theories, now do we?