Monday, September 22
A pastor mentioned that, during Puritan times, if someone in the congregation nodded off during the sermon, the somnolent could be whacked by a roving usher. The pastor joked that perhaps we should return to our heritage. If one is to hold to the sola scruiptura of rigorous Protestantism, in what passage is such a use of force called for? How about pastors introducing or suggesting ideas nowhere called for in the pages of the Bible being beaten with a rod?
Where does it say if you are committing a sin when Jesus returns that you will be punished for that throughout all of eternity if you otherwise embrace Christ as Lord and Savior? And why is that moment any different than at the moment of a traditional death? What if you see a car barreling towards you and the moment before you die you shout “HOLY SH-T”? Even Paul admitted that he did that which he did not want to do.
A pastor remarked that there is no greater service than Christian service. The pastor than limited Christian service to those instances where one directly shared the Gospel. But given that we are not solely spiritual beings, shouldn't service intending to meet these other needs if those are the specific fields one has been called to address as one's vocation also be considered Christian service? Do you really want a Christian fireman to be exegeting the Scriptures to you when he should be putting out your house fire? Wasn't one of Protestantism's initial goals to correct this kind of errant perspective that had crept into medieval Christianity?
Saturday, September 20
Would Graham Have Preferred To Meander Down The Canterbury Trail?
A Harvard University Press biography of Billy Graham claims that, if the world's most famous Baptist had his life to live over again, he would consider becoming an evangelical Anglican.
Such a spiritual and ecclesiastical path would have a number of things to commend it.
Foremostly, to be baptized into such a church, one would not necessarily have to be dunked underwater.
Anglicans also accept sprinkling and pouring as appropriate modalities of this primary Christian rite.
To Baptists, it is immersion or nothing at all.
Though identifying as Protestant and distinct from Roman Catholicism, Anglicanism is not so hostile to the other form of Western Christianity so as to forsake that which it is still capable of teaching the believer despite the shortcomings that have taken root in that particular theological expression over the centuries.
Some Baptists, on the other hand, are energized by little more than just how much they can stick it in the eye of the Church of Rome.
by Frederick Meekins