And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”
- Matthew 4:18
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"Do you think God minds if we use dirty tricks and gimmicks to get people to experience his presence?"
"What do you mean by dirty tricks?"
"Like, mood lighting, finger food, catchy songs to lure people to church. Comfy chairs. Jokes at the beginning of a sermon."
"I've never really thought about it... but there is a verse that goes: 'So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God'... And there's another one in Colossians that says, 'Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.' So I think, what God is concerned about isn't the nuts and bolts of how we do church, but rather where our hearts are at. Why we're doing it, and how we go about it. Like if your heart's in the right place, whatever you do is no longer a dirty trick, but an offering. It becomes sanctified, consecrated by grace. Does that makes sense?"
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"That's a good question... I mean, to me the real proof has always been how scripture, applied to real life actually works -- in a very tangible, observable, practical way - faith changes things. People, relationships, lives. I think the spiritual world, and the intangible realm of interpersonal relationships has an internal logic to it, a lot like the physical world - and it holds up, it has a remarkable integrity and consistency to it. And if you test it rigorously, the data will corroborate the fact.
Let me explain. The bible lays out certain principles on how to live your life and how to treat people, and you find that if you put them into practice - it produces a noticeable, palpable, significant effect on the people and things around you (and most noticeably and importantly yourself!) And you may dismiss that as anecdotal or unscientific, but how did the early scientists test their theories? They didn't have as much fancy math back then, so they went out and made a statement... if blank is this, then blank will behave like this - and then put it to the test. They started with a hypothesis, and then tried it out for themselves to see if they could prove or disprove it. Take Newton and his cannonball experiment. Crude, primitive, simplistic, prone to inaccuracy - but repeatable, measurable. Or Archimedes and his bathtub. Pythagoras and his... I don't know... triangles. What I'm saying is, through such unsophisticated empirical trials we managed to derive and extrapolate the laws that govern the physical world - and the reason we accept them as true and reliable is because these laws have demonstrable concordance. They agree with each other.
Now there are parts of the bible that stand out as being seemingly contradictory to the rest of it, parts that seem explicitly to say the opposite of a statement or belief espoused elsewhere - but I humbly suggest maybe that's not a problem with the material but with our interpretation or understanding of it. Take quantum physics. It says that light behaves both as a particle and a wave - and we don't know why or how or when it chooses to be it. You go 'whaaaaat... how on earth is that possible.' But then you come up with theories to explain it, some more outlandish than others. You find a way to reconcile our current understanding with this thing that seemingly refutes it. But you don't throw away the laws of physics we already have. You know, you wrestle with it - concede that we don't have all the facts and that our understanding of the physical world is incomplete. And we use this data to refine our understanding, to get a fuller picture of the reality we're sketching out with our clumsy methods. I think it's good to adopt this beginner mindset when it comes to the spiritual, or to the bible. The laws we have aren't wrong - our understanding and definitions of them are simply not complete. Which is not to say they are useless, you know. We've sent people to the moon with what we have."
- Dr. Tsion Ben Judah, Taste and See
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For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial passes away. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I set aside childish ways. Now we see but a dim reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
- 1 Corinthians 13:9-11
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"Paul puts it another way when he says, 'If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a ringing gong or a clanging cymbal.' You know that verse?"
"Yeah, it goes: 'If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have absolute faith so as to move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.' ...."So what you're saying is that - mood lighting that's not motivated by love is a waste of time."
"You got it."
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