A number of Christian leaders have received their fair share of public mockery mostly from fellow Christians for speaking up about the Christ they know. You may think that such Christians may be from other denominations but this is not necessarily the case. I have listened to friends and journalist lambasting many Christian leaders for what they believe is not the Christ they know. However, is this kind of mockery justified or out of place?
Since my concern is mostly about how Christians condemn fellow Christians, the basis of this post will be from Scripture. Although all scripture is inspired by God, I'd prefer to use a scripture that is not reported but directly from God. Does it make a different? No but maybe for someone who is very theoretical. My scripture of is:
John 14:12-14 NIV
Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.
Wow! Very loaded indeed. Surprising as it may seem to some this is Jesus speaking. Let's work on this scripture a little bit. Jesus opens by saying that believing in Him is the foundation of replicating his work on earth and even doing more than He did. He closes by reinforcing that He will do anything, yes anything, we ask in His name. He explains further that all these wonderful giveaways is so that the Father will be glorified in Him. In other words the answer to the prayer must bring praise to Jesus and as a result reveal the glory of the Father.
Can we then pray for the fall of the cedi against the dollar to stop and / or reverse? Well, to answer this I will need to ask more questions especially to those who will laugh at Christians who will pray like this. Do you know how God intends on answering all your prayers? Do you pray about things you don't fully understand? What is a miracle? For a number of Christians today we know exactly how we need God to answer our prayers. For some as well we do not pray that much in the name of God has given us brains to think. We are no more children before God but adults.
We can never stop being like children before God. I would argue that the only attitude accepted in prayer is that of a child. One thing I love about my wife is her ability to thank God for even the thing we can explain by logic. The beauty about being like a child before God is that you don't need to know how He will fulfill your request to ask. Your prayer is predicated on one unshakable faith that God is Able.
My answer then to the previous question is that yes a child-like Christian can ask God and He will answer but an adult-like one cannot ask in the first place. Why will God answer such a request? Very simple, let's take it through the test in our scripture above. Does the answer point to the Son thus glorifying Father in Him? Yes! How? The prayer left the logistics to Jesus so he can show off :-).
What Jesus do you know? The one who can heal Malaria without you going to the hospital or the one who uses the doctor to administer your healing. Both are the same Jesus. The difference is about the Jesus we know. Then why laugh at someone's knowledge of Him? Is it OK for a lady to ask God for better body features? Again, what Jesus do you believe?
Next time you hear about other Christians praying in a certain direction don't be quick to condemn. Ask yourself what Jesus do they know. A further question may be: do I need to know this Jesus?
Mind your reading OnePlus @ work...
7 comments:
Hi Henry,
Since you've chosen to write, I guess you should also be ready to defend. ;-)
I find your framing of the discussion in simple terms of "what Jesus do you know" as an inadequate way to look at the issue. Yes, there may be different ways by which people choose to "know" that Jesus, but certainly not all of them will be correct. In fact one of the most difficult lessons I've personally learnt in the study of the scripture and following Jesus is that no matter how earnest and sincere we are about our attempts to understand scripture, simply adopting the wrong approach to it is more than enough to lead one to inadequate, if not outrightly flawed interpretations of scripture.
By your measure above, we can say that the Jesus that Lutheran church in Germany knew was quite ok. This Jesus "encouraged" them to harbour hatred for others and to join in Hitler's war of hatred without blinking an eye and asking if they are following Nationalism or the kingdom of God. You can say the same for John Calvin who gladly condemned Servetus to be burnt at the stake for holding "heretical" views of Jesus, where Jesus clearly showed a different way to deal with your enemies.
There is a Jesus that serious theological and historical study will reveal, who is totally different from the ones I mentioned above, and to some people's surprise might be quite different from the one that dominates our own mindsets today, if we indeed are willing to be diligent in seeking him. So a simplistic statement like "What Jesus do you know" as a means to defend some Christian leaders is neither here nor there. It simply becomes an appeal to emotion and to individualistic interpretations of Scripture, a trait of postmodernity which is already wreaking havoc on Christianity, than to the Jesus that critical study will reveal.
As for the specific issue at hand, there isn't much space to share my thoughts, so I'll leave it here.
Cheers.
Hi Edem,
Did you receive my reply?
Cheers,
No I haven't. Shouldn't I be seeing it here on the blog, or did you intend to send me a private message?
Hi Henry,
I agree with you to some extent that we should have a great deal of respect for others world-view especially when it comes to religion.
We also do have to be careful to discourage dishonesty. One pastor was asked to pray for the falling cedi which eventually fell by a 100% of its value. In the long run it was dicovered that the government had exceeded its borrowing limits by a 100% and illegaly too. Is there a correlation between the two 100%. Yes very much so!
So they knew what they were doing but they were asking for prayers.
We Ghanaians have a tendency which is of course from our human nature. We disregard doing right but expect the right results. That is childish.
God will do right for those who do right. Yes he will extend his grace for sinners but he will not favour sinners over those who do wrong.
We sometimes argue over God in the manner we do because we do not like to read the Bible and do what it says we should do.
If we however believed that God loved us we would obey and by obeying have eternal life.
We want to say we do believe but we then refuse to obey. That is a huge problem,
From experience telling yourself that God loves you goes a long way to encourage good behaviour. But we are taught that good behaviour will not take us to Heaven.
The Gospels say these explicitly and the Epistles explain it further that faith must be expressed by love which manifests as good works. And it is our fruit we will be judged by.
Why then do we continuously preach that it is not by our works that we are saved.
Its like telling people to report at the hospital, go to the doctor for a prescription and believe they would be healed.
No matter who you are you will have to swallow the bitter pill. The pill in the Church is to believe God loves you, and be inspired by that belief to help your fellow humans. By so doing you are trusting and obeying such that God will give you His saving Grace.
That is the Gospel and anyone who preaches other than this is toying with Jesus.
Bro, the app just messed me up. Let me try and recap.
I think you overstretched what I was saying. This can be done for any argument to debunk it. In the scripture provided there is a guide. This guide as outlined in my post is that ultimately whatever we ask good for and by extension believe and do should bring the Father glory through the Son.
There have been definitely many doctrines that totally deviate from the bible. This is not the context of this writing.
The premise of this is that we see in part and so is our understanding. I do not think anyone can claim that they know God entirely. However today I see a lot of criticisms without prior enquiries. Most of such are as a result of intellectualization of everything. Let's keep in mind that most of the apostles were not in their time the most sophisticated academics.
The gospel for me is very simple and ought to be that way so the most simple folk can experience Jesus in His fullness. I am in fact of the opinion that the gospel should be easy to understand for especially children.
In the end there are things about Christ we can learn from each other but your prejudice towards me or vice versa can mean we can never bless you. This is definitely not Christ's intention.
Hi Nii,
The truth is that the church today is not perfect and far from it. I was very critical about how we have diviated from the ancient paths until reading Acts with more perspective. Varying doctrines will always be among us. We may only notice it more today because communication is so easy in a globalized world where technology is almost ubiquitous.
This is how I look at such prayers: you have the opportunity of petition an all-powerful but loving Father. Being a father I can understand that my baby does not understand everything hence my answer to my child will always be to fulfill what is at the centre of the request and not the contents of the request. He knows we do not know what we ought to ask.
In other words, an evil minded person can run the economy down and ask me to pray for an uplifting. My honest prayer to God would be intervention and if in agreement with others establish the stabilization of the economy.
It is God who knows that for anything to happen the wrongdoing must be exposed and the right people must be put in charge of the economy. This is why we petition God. He knows better than us how to solve the situation.
Salvation is truly free but we accept grace to walk in it. Being steady at the plow is definitely very important to Christ as well. Ultimately the love of Christ when we truly encounter it changes us like it did Saul.
That was exactly the point I wanted to make with my submission. One can say why one thinks it is okay that we pray for the economy of Gh/the cedi to improve etc, but when reduced to "its dependent on the Jesus you know", you open yourself up to all sorts of weird interpretations to support a position because "that is the Jesus I know".
That said, I'm interested to know what you mean by "keeping the gospel simple", and in fact, what you define as "the gospel" in the first place. Many people don't realise that what one believes is "the gospel" largely affects how one views Jesus and the world, and especially on how one views praying for the Ghanaian economy et al. So do enlighten me.
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