Category Archives: Theology

May 2, 2012

Idolatry: the Tragedy of “Following my Heart”

By Rob Karch

God knows the depravity of my heart and wants to save me from myself:

Numbers 15:39: And it shall be a tassel for you to look at and remember all the commandments of the Lord, to do them, not to follow after your own heart and your own eyes…

A few weeks ago a woman in our church shared how she had followed her heart for several years, and how it completely ruined her. She shared how she finally rejected the advice to “follow her heart” and began to follow Jesus instead.

The Bible calls following my heart “idolatry.”

But wait, you say, I don’t bow down to stone statues like the ancient cultures did. How can you say I have a natural tendency toward idolatry?

What is and idol? Justin Buzzard’s recent blog post spells it out:

 An idol is anything more important to you than God. Therefore, you can turn even very good things into idols. You can turn a good thing like family, success, acceptance, money, your plans, etc. into a godthing–into something you worship and place at the center of your life.

 This is what sin is. Sin is building your life and meaning on anything (even a good thing) more than God.

Tim Keller’s explanation helped me understand this:

And why is that a bad thing?

If I don’t track down and kill that idol, it will ruthlessly bleed me to death. Again, Justin Buzzard:

Americans think freedom is found in casting off all restraint and being masters of our own lives. What we are blind to is the reality that everybody has a master. We all worship something and whatever we worship is our master. Idols make bad masters. They enslave. Until you identify the idols in your life you will feel enslaved, tired, and unhappy and you won’t know why. You will feel this way until you discover the only master who can set  you free: Jesus. Jesus is the one master who will love you even when you fail him. Your idols don’t do that. 

Justin then lists 4 common idols and how to identify them: 

CONTROL. You know you have a control idol if your greatest nightmare is uncertainty.

APPROVAL. You know you have an approval idol if your greatest nightmare is rejection.

COMFORT. You know you have a comfort idol if your greatest nightmare is stress/demands.

POWER. You know you have a power idol if your greatest nightmare is humiliation.

How do I destroy the idols in my life?

Tim Keller addresses this question, beginning at the 52:00 mark:

  1. When the idols are opposed, it’s dangerous: idols are violent. Idols are empty, things of my own making. But at the same time, they wield enormous power in my life! Principalities and powers use idols in my life to control and  kill me.
  2. Jesus went to war against the principalities and powers, and they brutally murdered him.
  3. I have to see and know what Jesus has done for me. This understanding will liberate me from the grip of idols in my life, and direct me toward the one who died to give me freedom: Jesus.

1 comment   |  tags: , , , | posted in Happiness, Jesus, Theology, Worship

January 27, 2012

What am I afraid of? And what can I do about it?

By Rob Karch

What are you afraid of?

We are all afraid of something, without exception:

  • I’m afraid of failing.
  • I’m afraid for my children.
  • I’m afraid facing cancer.
  • I’m afraid of being abused.
  • I’m afraid of hurting others.
  • I’m afraid of losing my job.
  • I’m afraid of being influenced.
  • I’m afraid of dying.
  • I’m afraid my life doesn’t count.
  • I’m afraid of conflict.
  • I’m afraid of not having enough money to go around.
  • I’m afraid of being single for the rest of my life.
  • I’m afraid of being married for the rest of my life.
  • I’m afraid I don’t have what it takes.
  • I’m afraid of speaking in front of people.
  • I’m afraid of being in crowds.
  • I’m afraid of being alone.
  • I’m afraid of the future.

In a broken world, we cannot love fully without fear of and for those we love. Conversely, fear is one of the primary obstacles to giving and receiving love fully. Either way, we’re stuck with fear in this life. But does that mean we should be passive and let these fears dominate our lives? One of the most-repeated commands throughout the Bible is “fear not”. Obviously, fear is not what God desires for us.

So what do we do? Do we simply repeat “fear not” a dozen times and hope our fear disappears? Before attacking fear, let’s try to understand it.

Six realities about fear (from Ed Welch):

  1. The Bible speaks often of fear: Everyone has fears. Fear is normal in a broken world.
  2. Fear is expressed differently in men and women: Women generally relate their fears to real-world situations more easily than men. Men generally express their fear through anger, depression, and addictions, not always realizing fear can be one of the root causes of these symptoms.
  3. Fear is primarily a spiritual phenomenon, and secondarily a psychological one. Therefore, the solution is not simply to condition my thoughts or actions, but to trust.
  4. Only the God of the Bible can calm my fears. He is in control.
  5. Prayer is the medium by which we make known our fears to God and receive His peace.
  6. We need the church, our brothers and sisters, to pray with us, and continually reveal the truth of the person of God.

After some reflection on the substance of fear, how can I attack the fear in my life? How can I help someone walk through their fear, honestly helping them and not denigrating their fear?

Five ways to attack our fears (or walk with someone as they attack theirs) (from David Powlison and Jacob Mathieu):

  1. Listen: What, exactly, are you afraid of? (my children’s future, my health, my reputation, lack of money, lack of comfort)
  2. Reflect: What is under your control and what is out of your control?
  3. Read: According to the Bible, who is God and what has He done? (Example: Isaiah 40, Psalm 71, Romans 8).
  4. Pray: Pray together, express our fears to God and ask for His peace (Phil. 4:6-7)
  5. Act: What can you do today that is under your control? (Matt. 6:34)

In 2012, let’s not be passive about our fears, but attack them.

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in Reflection, Theology

January 16, 2012

Drug-Using Polygamists…

By Rob Karch

Do you know what a Mandrake is? It is a plant found in the middle East. Here is a Wikipedia definition:

Mandrake roots

The parsnip-shaped root is often branched. This root gives off at the surface of the ground a rosette of ovate-oblong to ovate, wrinkled, crisp, sinuate-dentate to entire leaves, 5 to 40 centimetres (2.0 to 16 in) long, somewhat resembling those of the tobacco-plant. A number of one-flowered nodding peduncles spring from the neck bearing whitish-green or purple flowers, nearly 5 centimetres (2.0 in) broad, which produce globular, orange to red berries, resembling small tomatoes. All parts of the mandrake plant are poisonous.

Do you know what a Mandrake plant does? Again from Wikipedia:

Parasympathetic depressant, hallucinogen, and hypnotic. Most hypnotics produce low alphoid and spindle alpha brain-wave activity, similar to that found in REM sleep, or the dreaming state. This rhythm does not allow deep sleep to occur although it does lower brain patterns into a dreamy visionary mode, known in magic as an astral plane experience. Mandrake root causes delirium and hallucinations. In high doses, it can even send the user into a coma.

What does this have to do with anything?

Today, while reading through the full-on childbearing competition between Rachel and Leah in Genesis 30. I came across this text:

14 In the days of wheat harvest Reuben went and found mandrakes in the field and brought them to his mother Leah. Then Rachel said to Leah, “Please give me some of your son’s mandrakes.” 15 But she said to her, “Is it a small matter that you have taken away my husband? Would you take away my son’s mandrakes also?” Rachel said, “Then he may lie with you tonight in exchange for your son’s mandrakes.” 16 When Jacob came from the field in the evening, Leah went out to meet him and said, “You must come in to me, for I have hired you with my son’s mandrakes.” So he lay with her that night. 17 And God listened to Leah, and she conceived and bore Jacob a fifth son. 18 Leah said, “God has given me my wages because I gave my servant to my husband.” So she called his name Issachar.

Here’s what struck me: God listened to Leah. She was in the middle of a less-than ideal situation: married to a dude that never took a premarital class or read a book on how to love his wife. She’s taking various drugs trying to medicate through the situation, getting pregnant to try to get his attention; introducing other women to him in an insane servant/wife-swapping situation (Bilhah and Zilpa’s situations are even worse), she prays… and God listens.

And God is working through these drug-using polygamists to build for Himself a people for His glory.

There is hope.

No matter how bad the situation. No matter how horrendous the sin. No matter how messed-up my life is… God not only listens, but He can even build something beautiful, for His glory, that will last for generations.

This doesn’t mean drug-use or polygamy are all right. But it does mean that when I cry out to God He is capable of breaking through the worst situations imaginable and making something beautiful.

Thank you God for examples like Genesis 30.

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April 7, 2011

Why the outrage when the Qur’an is burned… but not the Bible?

By Rob Karch

You’ve probably seen the same reports I have about the burning of the bible in Afghanistan… and the lack of a response by Christians (at least not a violent one accompanied by mass protests and death threats, etc.).

Certainly, the fact that Christ has a lot to say about loving ones enemies explains fairly adequately the (lack of) a response.  We can say with confidence that any call by a “Christian” for a violent response would be roundly, publicly, and nearly unanimously condemned by other Christians. (Much as the Christian community publicly and vehemently condemned oh what’s his name (the pseudo preacher dude) down in Florida a while ago.

Inversely, much of the Islamic rhetoric we see and hear and read so much about marches to a drumbeat of violence against those who do not hold to these extreme “ideals” (though every Muslim I personally know does not personally hold to these doctrines of violence and is not afraid to speak against it, so it would be very wrong to put all who claim to be Muslim into one basket).

But there is a much deeper reason for the contradictory responses to what appear to be similar actions (Bible burning and Qur’an burning), a reason that cuts to the very fabric of Islam and the heart of Christianity, and why Islam is fundamentally incompatible with the reality of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

I’ve seen this reason hinted at in various places. The best explanation I’ve found is over at the Desiring God blog where John Piper quotes Andrew Walls:

Christian faith must go on being translated, must continuously enter into vernacular culture and interact with it, or it withers and fades.

Islamic absolutes are fixed in a particular language, and in the conditions of a particular period of human history. The divine Word is the Qur’an, fixed in heaven forever in Arabic, the language of original revelation.

For Christians, however, the divine Word is translatable, infinitely translatable. The very words of Christ himself were transmitted in translated form in the earliest documents we have, a fact surely inseparable from the conviction that in Christ, God’s own self was translated into human form.

Much misunderstanding between Christians and Muslims has arisen from the assumption that the Qur’an is for Muslims what the Bible is for Christians.

It would be truer to say that the Qur’an is for Muslims what Christ is for Christians.
(The Cross-Cultural Process in Christian History, 29)

Then John Piper goes on to explain in greater detail:

Did you catch that last line?

The parallel between Christianity and Islam is not that Christ parallels Mohammed and the Qur’an parallels the Bible. The parallel is that the Qur’an parallels Christ. The giving of the Qur’an is in Islam what the incarnation of Christ is to Christianity.

If this is so, then Qur’an-burning is parallel to Christ-crucifying.

But ponder the implications of this. On the one hand you might say this goes a long way to explaining Muslim rage. Yes. But more importantly it goes even farther to show the deep differences between the two religions.

In the process of being crucified, Jesus rebuked the use of the sword (Matthew 26:52) healed his enemy’s amputated ear (Luke 22:51), prayed for the forgiveness of his murderers (Luke 23:34), and sent his followers out to love their enemies and do good to those who hate them (Luke 6:27).

So the Qur’an has been burned and the Christ has been crucified…

Even in the crucifixion of Christ, Jesus condemned the use of force by his disciples… making it evidently clear that He is more than capable of protecting himself.

And that is who we worship, the Creator and Sustainer of the universe. He who was crucified once and for all. This message liberates us to live like lambs  going to to the slaughter. Loving our enemies, especially when we are wronged in the process.

31 What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 33 Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34 Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 35Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written:

“For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”[j]

37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[k] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:31-39

1 comment   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Missions, Reflection, Theology, World

March 8, 2011

Video: Tim Keller on Morning Joe

By Rob Karch

He talks about his new book “King’s Cross” I’ve already quoted it here: (What kind of religion is this?)

Tim makes a few comments about Jesus’ identity and his 2,000+ year-long impact that are worth listening to:

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Theology, Video

February 23, 2011

Photos: Forum on the Gospel and Culture in Québec

By Rob Karch

Ed & Diane Marcelle

Monday, my friend Ed drove up from Albany to talk to a bunch of dudes passionate about church planting in Québec. His talks were incredible. The first touched gospel and culture. The second explained the motivation and theology behind  the Acts 29 network.

As us guys discussed, Martine and Diane hung out elsewhere. At the end of the day, everyone was encouraged.

One quote from the first talk:

Our Gospel must encourage the church to live differently and to reach out to the community around us.  We must faithfully preach and teach the Scriptures and then as people go out into the community. Living out our faith in tangible ways will undergird our voice to speak into the community and speak of issues of faith.

Thanks for investing in Québec Ed!

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February 11, 2011

Conspiracy? Did the Early Church Fathers Silence Some Early Church Writings for Nefarious Reasons?

By Rob Karch
Nag Hammadi Codices

Here are the thirteen bound volumes of manuscripts found buried in an earthenware jar at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945. Their discovery has produced endless controversy over what books should have become part of the New Testament.

“…when the many manuscripts and movements usually categorized as Gnosticism are examined closely, various clusters of characteristics can be identified, but the only element common to all is that each is remarkably heretical, which is how they were quite properly judged by their contemporaries–not just “one heresy but a swarming ant-heap of heresies,” as the distinguished Simone Pétrement explained.

Purely as a matter of faith, one is free to prefer Gnostic interpretations and to avow that they give us access to secret knowledge concerning a more authentic Christianity, as several popular authors recently have done. But one is not free to claim that the early church fathers rejected these writings for nefarious reasons. The conflicts between many of these manuscripts and the New Testament are so monumental that no thinking person could embrace both.

Cities of GodConsider that some Gnostic ‘scriptures’ equate the Jewish God with Satan! Should those who defended conventional Christian teachings stand condemned of bigotry for not siding with such views? In addition, many of the Gnostic scriptures are obvious forgeries, easily recognized as such by the early church fathers, just as they ought to be today, in that whoever wrote them tried to deceive readers into believing they were the work of famous figures of first-generation Christianity-Peter, James, Mary Magdalene, Pilate, or Thomas, for example–or someone claiming extraordinary status, such as being the twin brother of Christ.

Whether the Gnostic teachers were ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, that they were heretics vis-à-vis conventional Christianity cannot be disputed.”

-pp. 141-142 “Cities of God,” by Rodney Stark

1 comment   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Reading, Reflection, Theology

February 8, 2011

Video: How the Gospel Helps Us Overcome Pornography

By Rob Karch

How does a gospel-saturated person (mainly a guy, but not always) deal with the constant influx of sexualized images, billboards, etc.? How does the gospel lift us out of base, twisted, and death-giving desires, in order to behold the goodness, wonder, beauty, and glory of God, through Christ?

As a church, we must, must, must have an answer to this question. If not, lives, marriages, families, and churches will (continue to) crumble.

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Reflection, Theology, Video

February 5, 2011

Video: February Buzz – Clearly Communicating the Gospel

By Rob Karch

From time to time I’ll share a few thoughts from our living room about what God is doing here in Québec, in my life, or in the church.

Thanks for praying!

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , | posted in Church Planting, Québec, Reflection, Theology, Video

February 3, 2011

Are Christians Guilty of O.T. Eisogesis? Most Jews Fail to See Jesus in the Hebrew O.T.

By Rob Karch

*”Eisogesis”: subjectivism. Reading into text something that isn’t there at all. Greek. Same root as exegesis with different prefix. “eis” means “into.”

This question is ably answered by Michael Rydelnik in his book The Messianic Hope. It’s a quick read (190 pages) with hundreds of footnotes (pointing to a plethora of resources for extended study).

His treatment of Rashi’s influence on the interpretation of messianic prophecy is eye-opening… if not shocking. Here are a few slices of chapter 8:

The Messianic Hope by Michael RydelnikIf the messianic hope is so evident using a literary reading of the Hebrew Bible, why is it that so many contemporary exegetes fail to recognize it? (p. 112)

…

Perhaps one answer to this question can be found in the work and influence of the great Jewish biblical commentator, Rabbi Shlomo Yitzkhaki (1040-1105), most commonly known by his acronym, Rashi. His interpretive methods along with the approaches of the medieval Jewish commentators whom he influenced, ultimately found their way into Christian commentaries. Is it possible that Rashi’s more historical approach ultimately affected the way Christians interpret messianic prophecy? That is the question that will be examined in this chapter. (p. 113)

…

Rashi was unique as an interpreter. He became beloved and revered for his unique ability to combine traditional derash with innovative peshat. Moreover, he wrote for the common person, making the Bible accessible to the entire Jewish community. Beyond making the Scriptures understandable, Rashi included an occasional application or homily, showing a pastoral concern for his readers. But as will be evident, Rashi’s greatest impact would be to transform both Jewish and Christian interpretation of the Bible, particularly in the realm of messianic prophecy. (p. 117)

…

The central effect of Rashi and other medieval Jewish interpreters on post-Reformation Christian interpretation was a less messianic understanding of the Old Testament. Rashi and the other medieval Jewish interpreters, arguing from a historical understanding of peshat, advanced a nonmessianic understanding of a number of key messianic texts. Afterwards, Christian interpreters adopted their views as the true peshat of those passages as well, leading to a demessianized understanding of the Old Testament, as is evident even in contemporary Christian interpretations of the Hebrew Bible. (pp. 122-123)

I’d recommend this book to anyone serious about understanding the Old Testament. It is well worth the $13.00 on Amazon

1 comment   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Reading, Reflection, Theology

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