Religion Is Like Soap

I grew up in a religious tradition that believes Jesus Christ paid the penalty for our sins when He died on the cross, and that He was raised from the dead to demonstrate that He accomplished His mission. Trust in Him as your Savior and your sins will be forgiven. In a nutshell, Jesus Christ offers forgiveness of sins as a gift for which He has paid the price in advance. That's good news! If the message is true it is certainly something worth sharing with other people. Indeed, the folks I hang around with are constantly reminded that the good news is not only worth sharing, but we have a responsibility to do so. We must tell people what Jesus Christ has accomplished for us and freely made available for all who will trust in Him.

The process of doing this is called witnessing or evangelism. Evangelism is accomplished through a variety of methods. A Billy Graham Crusade is one example. Some participate in door-to-door evangelism. Occasionally you will see someone standing on a street corner preaching to the people passing by. Pastors and church leaders do it during regularly scheduled church services. Much evangelism is accomplished one-on-one, friend-to-friend, neighbor-to-neighbor. According to my tradition it doesn't matter how you do it, just that you do it.

Many people are offended with the very concept of evangelism of any kind. For them religion is . . . well, it's like bath soap. It doesn't make much difference what brand you use. Religions are basically all the same so any brand will do. You'll get scrubbed up, you'll look a little better, and you'll smell a whole lot better. (A friend once told me that the difference between us was that after he took a shower he looked beautiful again, and that after I took a shower I looked the same. Ya, he was a friend.)

These folks believe its wrong to say that one brand is superior to another. It's offensive, divisive, arrogant behavior. Common sense should rule. You'll never hear anyone say, “Wow, I switched to Dial and it changed my life. You should switch too and it will change your life.” That would be tacky, imposing your soap views on others. And you'll never hear anyone say that soap is true. It's just soap. The same goes for religion. We don't ask if it's true, we just want to use it to meet our needs.

What troubles me about the, religion is like soap, idea and the corollary that no one should ever share their personal beliefs with someone else, is that it makes religious faith weak and meaningless. It's not worth sharing. Like a half used bar of soap. You'll never find me going around the neighborhood offering to share it with my neighbors.

But lets assume that there is substance to religious faith. Would I not be a selfish person if I had a faith that was very meaningful to me, and helpful to me in living my life but I kept it to myself and was unwilling to share it with someone who might benefit from it? “What I believe is profoundly meaningful, but it wouldn't be of any value to you.” What?

I think our culture at large has accepted, and become very comfortable with schizophrenic, irrational thinking. We are comfortable living with contradictions. We are convinced that all religions are the same, yet if you study their basic concepts as stated by their founders, you will find that they are superficially similar but substantially different. We reject the idea of absolutes and affirm the idea that things are not true or false, just different, and that it is unacceptable to make value judgments. But when it comes to the actual living of life we constantly rely on absolutes and make value judgments every day. For example, if your employer pays the guy next to you more money for doing the same job you are doing you say it's unfair, not just different. Yes, we have learned to be comfortable living with contradictions. So with conviction we say, “There are no absolutes,” thus using an absolute to deny absolutes. No problem. Everyone does it. It's embedded in our culture.

Believe it or not, there are still a few people around who cling to the idea that there is truth and there are absolutes. Here's what I mean. There is broad acceptance among people around the world that Jesus Christ is, or was a great prophet and moral teacher. But have you ever read the words attributed to him in the New Testament? He made some outrageous claims! Take a look in the Gospel of John. It's the fourth book in the New Testament. There Jesus is quoted as saying, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Is that outrageous or what?

But there's more. On another occasion he said, “Truly, truly I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.” (5:24) That's the best news I've ever heard. The classic statement is found in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that He gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

There are many other verses that could be quoted which are outrageous by any standard. It seems obvious to me that anyone who considers Jesus a great prophet and teacher hasn't read His words. “I am the way!” That's it, “I am the way. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Is it possible to make a more focused, absolute statement than that? “Perhaps”, you say, “the words were placed in his mouth by his disciples and are not reliable.” Unfortunately the New Testament is the only record we have of his words. If it's unreliable then any understanding of Jesus taken from the NT is just a figment of someones imagination. It means we have no idea about what kind of person he was. And we have no basis on which to state that he's a great prophet or teacher.

But, if the New Testament record is reliable, if it accurately records what Jesus said, and if what he said is true, then it just might make sense to pay close attention to him and to his words. Maybe there's something to it, this trusting in Jesus, something of eternal significance for me, and something of eternal significance worth sharing with others.

I can't end this without mentioning another passage. It's in Matthew's gospel. Matthew is the first book in the New Testament. There Jesus says, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Mt. 11:28-30) Isn't that encouraging? And it is true!

Gotta wrap this up. Time to run a few errands. Wow, the list includes a stop at Walgreen's. They have Dial soap on sale and my wife has a coupon. We'll stock up. I think Dial is the best . . . Oh, Sorry! I almost forgot. You might be offended if I try to persuade you that Dial is superior to other brands. I would never knowingly do that, at least not with Dial.

(Scripture verses are from the English Standard Version of the Bible.)

Barbed Wire Fences

Some people defend the idea that the King James Version of the Bible represents the one true inspired Bible and all modern translations are perversions of the true text and are to be avoided. Seems to me like they are trying to build a protective barbed wire fence around the KJV, a fence that is unnecessary.

I've been reading some things on this topic recently and have come to a couple of conclusions which I will get to later. (You can check out the web site, http://faith.propadeutic.com/questions.html and also see http://www.bible.org/page.asp?page_id=1221 for Daniel B. Wallace's article mentioned below.)

We know the original languages form the basis for the English Bible. Also, most translations are revisions of previous translations. So there are “families” of translations. For example, Tyndale's translation became the Great Bible which became the Bishop's Bible which became the King James Bible. The KJV was revised in the United States and became the American Standard Version which became the basis for the New American Standard, the updated NASB, the Revised Standard Version, the NRSV, the English Standard Version, the Living Bible and the New Living Bible. I hope I've got that right. The point is there are a lot of translations available today many of which are revisions of previous translations.

There are more than 5000 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament and these too are grouped into families. Erasmus work was the basis for what became known as the Textus Receptus also known as the Majority Text which represents the Byzantine tradition. When the KJV was translated the Textus Receptus was virtually the only source for the translation. After Erasmus day other earlier manuscripts were discovered; the Western text (Latin influence), and the Alexandrian tradition (Egypt and Palestine) are two examples. Scholars began using these earlier manuscripts along with the later Byzantine texts. This became known as the Critical Text. So, to greatly oversimplify the process, we ended up with a Majority Text based on the Textus Receptus and a Critical Text that made use of all available texts.

Some people argue that the Textus Receptus/Majority Text constitutes the only inspired, inerrant, providentially preserved New Testament. Daniel B. Wallace in his article, “Inspiration, Preservation and New Testament Textual Criticism,” provides an excellent and detailed discussion and rebuttal of this viewpoint. He refers to Jasper James who concludes, “that no modern version of the Bible may be properly be called the Bible, that salvation and spiritual growth can only come through versions based on the TR, and that Satan is the prime mover behind all versions based on the more ancient manuscripts.”

Well, I'm a conservative, evangelical type. Sometimes people think I'm a religious person and ask me, "What are you?" When all else fails I tell them I'm a Billy Graham Baptist. Their eyes brighten and they mutter, “Oh, yah,” and I'm assured they know where to pigeon-hole me. I trust and rely on an inspired, inerrant Bible. I will never encourage people to use carelessly translated, sloppy, or heretical translations. But it seems to me that building a protective barbed wire fence around the KJV is unnecessary and motivated by fear of losing control of God's Word. I think the Lord ignores their efforts and His Word goes on in power, informing and transforming the lives of people who read The Book.

After my web surfing I brought up the Net Bible on my computer and pulled a number of translations off the shelf and compared a few passages. I was pleasantly surprised at the similarities among them and how the footnotes explained translation variations. Trust me, you can pick up any standard translation and immediately be confronted with God's Word aimed right at you. You won't be able to avoid His message to you.

It seems to me that in some substantial measure God's Word is self-authenticating. In a strange way I was reminded of our basement on 33^rd Avenue in South Minneapolis 60 years ago. Water continually seeped into it. My dad patched it, cemented it, and Bondexed it to no avail. We always had water in the basement. God's Word has a way of seeping in no matter what people might do to try to control it either positively or negatively. I am in favor of defending God's Word, but you don't have to build a fence around one Greek text to protect it.

God's Word is like red paint. Trying to cover it is tough because it always bleeds through. Read it in Greek, English, Spanish, Korean, whatever, you can't avoid the message. If you read it, God's truth will forever change your life and your destiny.

So the word for today is READ THE WORD. Become familiar with it from cover to cover (Your choice of leather, hardcover, paperback, vinyl, etc.). Let its truth seep deep into your mind and bones. I just got a copy of the English Standard Version. I'm excited about getting into it. jimstj

Oops, He Took A Tumble

I walked along the sidewalk in frot of my apartment. A little boy about six years old wearing a swimming suit burst out of the doorway of a neighboring apartment. His face was beaming with excitement as he ran lickety-split toward the swimming pool. Suddenly he tripped, stumbled a few steps and then fell flat on his face, hitting the ground with a great big thud. He got up slowly, dirt on his face and pieces of grass and sand stuck to his knees. He was crying and the tears made little furrows in the dirt as they ran down his cheeks. Then, to add insult to injury, at that very moment his father came around the corner and in a rather gruff way said, "It's getting late son. Time for you to come in."

There has never been a sorrier sight than that little fellow disappearing into the apartment. Life had dealt him a cruel blow. I must admit it took me a couple of minutes to recover from that shattering experience. But then I thought, "He'd better get used to it. It's too bad but that's the way life is and he'll take many more tumbles before it's all over."

We all experience disappointments and sometimes painful tragedies; health, kids, jobs, relationships, money. They can drive us to the brink of dispair. Fortunately help is close by. I am reminded of verses from the Old Testament Book of Proverbs (3:5, 6). "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and don't rely on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths." But someone responds, "The story was touching, but why do you have to start shoveling religion at me! Why offend my intelligence by offering me some mushy thinking that's just an escape from dealing with reality."

Well, if there is no God, then you share with me a satisfying way to respond when the big disappointments crash into my life. Convince me that I'm making a mistake by anchoring my life in what I consider to be the truth stated in the proverb. Give me a better, more realistic, life affirming alternative. In the meantime I am going to trust in the Lord with all my heart and expect, "The God Who Is There," to live up to His promise. I don't know what will happen tomorrow, but I'm ready for it no matter what it might be.

The day after I saw the little boy take a serious tumble I went swimming, and you guessed it, there he was happily splashing around in the water. He had finally made it to the pool. Yesterday's tumble didn't matter any more. It was not a permanent setback or defeat. His being there made me feel good. I was encouraged knowing we can move on after taking a tumble and I thanked God for that truth.