Free-Range Baptist

[Steve Lortz]

I have come to think of myself as a free-range baptist. I believe in baptism. I don't believe in cages.

If somebody says he knows what God can or cannot do, or what God will or will not do, or who is or who is not "going to Hell", then it tells me that person is in a cage.

People unwittingly get into cages when they try to put God in a cage. It doesn't work that way. People who try to put God in a cage wind up putting themselves in cages, instead.

Love,

Steve

Edited October 7, 2012 by Steve Lortz

[geisha779]

I have come to think of myself as a free-range baptist. I believe in baptism. I don't believe in cages.

If somebody says he knows what God can or cannot do, or what God will or will not do, or who is or who is not "going to Hell", then it tells me that person is in a cage.

People unwittingly get into cages when they try to put God in a cage. It doesn't work that way. People who try to put God in a cage wind up putting themselves in cages, instead.

Love,

Steve

We should at the least know what His character and nature is so when we are told something opposed to it.....we can recognize it. That comes in handy btw, when approached by cults looking to recruit new members. Call me caged, but I do think God's attributes and nature are shared so that we may know Him. I wonder why He bothered to tell us about salvation and hell if it is not to know?

Oddly enough, I am caged enough to know God holds me responsible for what I believe and say.

Edited October 8, 2012 by geisha779

[Steve Lortz]

If any man thinks that he knows anything, he knows nothing as he needs to know it. If he loves God, then he is known by God.

Love,

Steve

Edited October 8, 2012 by Steve Lortz

[waysider]

I wonder if cannibals think free range Baptists taste like chicken.

[geisha779]

If any man thinks that he knows anything, he knows nothing as he needs to know it. If he loves God, then he is known by God.

Love,

Steve

But, the people who know their God shall be strong and do exploits.

Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error

And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

That I may know him and the power of his resurrection........

This is fun! I have a hundred more!

Steve, I love you, I really do and I am sure you have a really great point, but I am not sure what it is. Don't you think that in order to love God, we must know Him?

With God all things are possible....that is in the context of what? Salvation? Yes? Does that mean God will do anything? No. There are certain things we should know about God, so that we don't get tricked. Just because all things are possible with God....should we assume God will do something opposed to His Holy nature....that he ever could? No. Even the verse you posted is in the context of discerning!

So while I agree that it is foolish to cage God in.... it is wise to know the Lord our God so that we can love and worship Him as we should. :)

Please carry on, I am sure you have a point to make and I don't want to be too rude. . . .

[Steve Lortz]

My "knowing" would have inflated me like a Macy's Thanksgiving Day balloon if I thought I could cram the Creator of the heavens and the earth and all things that in them are, the Father of Jesus Christ, the Raiser from the dead, into a stuffy little box I had made.

Love,

Steve

[geisha779]

My "knowing" would have inflated me like a Macy's Thanksgiving Day balloon if I thought I could cram the Creator of the heavens and the earth and all things that in them are, the Father of Jesus Christ, the Raiser from the dead, into a stuffy little box I had made.

Love,

Steve

Well Steve, knowing God has just the opposite effect...it does not inflate us....it humbles us. That is what keeps us grounded from flights of fancy and random musings about the Almighty. There is a difference between caging God in and believing every voice we hear could be from God because we can't cage Him in.

Jesus came to declare God....to make Him known.

Can you name one immutable truth about God? Can you name two? I bet you can. I bet if we really thought about it we could name many. Is that boxing God in? He doesn't change does He? Immutability is what sets Him apart....isn't it? If He changed He wouldn't be God. He doesn't need to change He is perfect.

Edited October 8, 2012 by geisha779

[Rejoice]

Well Steve, knowing God has just the opposite effect...it does not inflate us....it humbles us. That is what keeps us grounded from flights of fancy and random musings about the Almighty. There is a difference between caging God in and believing every voice we hear could be from God because we can't cage Him in.

Jesus came to declare God....to make Him known.

Can you name one immutable truth about God? Can you name two? I bet you can. I bet if we really thought about it we could name many. Is that boxing God in? He doesn't change does He? Immutability is what sets Him apart....isn't it? If He changed He wouldn't be God. He doesn't need to change He is perfect.

I agree with you geisha. The problem is that human beings always want to tell others to love/act/accept God identical to their OWN personal understanding. What if we all just shared his glory and greatness, and then stopped worrying about how they want to love God for themselves. Sheesh...the denominations would melt away---what a concept. Jesus said, "except you be as little children..." children do not care how others perceive, know, and love God.

Edited October 8, 2012 by Rejoice

[socks]

I often refer to my own religion as "Chaos Christianity" Steve, the ultimate no-box brand but it's more of a reverse engineered way of labeling my own perception of an ordered universe that is beyond my complete comprehension.

I see in the bible's history a description of "domains" that are transitioning and changing over time. This isn't quite the standard administration-dispensation approach of Darby and Western Evangelicals as it trickled down to me though but is more that I am seeing an unchanging God through the eyes of a changing creation.

I can see however that God is huge, eternal, has ways above our ways and to quote from Dune has "plans within plans" and perhaps a Big Master Plan that I can understand parts of but only to a small degree. Of course I also realize I don't know what I don't know so there's always that limitation.

But to paraphrase Geisha I do know what I do know and that's not insignificant. It isn't and I think that while I would maintain that meekness is the only reasonable response for mankind to have to God we are still expected to go to Him and establish our side of a relationship -

That requires a kind of and a degree of stability and reliability. We know that God describes Himself as the Gold Standard in Stable and Reliable, so it doesn't seem unreasonable that God would extend some of that and that our perception of God would be based on that - put another way God HAS to be the GS when it comes to consistency and stability.

If we exist in a universe where anything can happen, where God can do anything He chooses at any moment and then do anything else completely different in the next moment repeatability then becomes very very important.

Life is repeating and consistent, seemingly like molasses in winter slow sometimes in it's consistency but on a larger scale may be playing out in ways I can't comprehend, yet that doesn't lead me to conclude that comprehension isn't part of life. We're always in our Wonder Years though, it is important to remain open to the magnanimous diversity of God.

It would seem that God intends for us to know and understand quite a few things about him and our own lives, and to have a kind of "world view" that will allow us to "work out our own salvation" with Him. I wouldn't call it a stuffy box though, unless you're using that to mean you don't want to limit God. I'd agree but I think that God has placed His own order and agreements on Himself as evidenced by this creation we live in and go to Him from.

[chockfull]

I have come to think of myself as a free-range baptist.

As long as you don't put all your eggs into one basket.

[geisha779]

If we don't have a basic or simple knowledge of Jesus Christ, what is the point of ever learning? We can't get to God without knowing Jesus Christ. He is how we know God. This is how God chose to declare Himself to human beings. In the person of Jesus. So, when we see Jesus, we are seeing God. When we are calling out to Jesus, we are calling out to God. It will always be like this.....God will always be before us in the person of Jesus Christ. There is no one else, no where else, no other way.

There was such a fear of orthodox theology instilled in us in TWI, and a real suspicion of historic Christianity. This played to a natural confusion about things. At least it did mine, I guess I shouldn't speak for anyone else. I would rather have discounted the things I didn't understand, like Jesus' divine nature, than admit I didn't know or could not see it. If it didn't make sense to me, how could it be true? So, in that regard, I think we can sometimes put God in a box.

With that, there was a temptation to go beyond what is written, and it is not difficult to make unwarranted leaps with unassociated text when we use it to support an idea or concept we think we see in scripture. This can have us jumping from one thing to the next with no grounding.

A caviler dismissal of the obvious conclusion in favor of a more convoluted explanation is a temptation when we feel we can't even trust established theology enough to consider. For example, when we see the term prayer and Spirit in one verse, the temptation may be to make improper syllogisms. VP did this when he gave us a list of benefits concerning "manifestation" of the Holy Spirit. Because we see praying in the Holy Spirit in Jude 20, are we to assume this means in SIT? No. When VP made this assumption he over generalized and over specified at the same time. Quite a feat! His approach also included a caviler dismissal of the obvious meaning in Romans 8 which says that it is the Spirit who does the groaning and it is not in words which can be expressed. That verse takes us out of the picture, as tongues is supposedly a language where we do express. What is the difference between what VP said about how others interpreted Jude 20 as getting the spirit into the meeting, and what he did with the same verse? There is no difference. It is an unwarranted leap. He did the same thing he accused others of doing and simply came up with an interpretation which supported the idea he wanted to express. He didn't even consider a more accepted understanding of this verse. He held up an improper reading of Jude 20 to contrast his understanding and convince us these were the only the two options. It is a real trap and one we should avoid by not going beyond what is written.

There may be other temptations when we are leery of the more simple conclusion and that is to swing to the opposite end of the spectrum and conclude we can't know. Both are extremes. Knowing our God and what His nature is ..... is why we worship Him. It is how we are designed. We are made to worship God. Not only that, we are to share this and a common like faith in Him. It is not about distrust, or about our standing on the edge held back by what we think we know or can't know......it is so much greater than that.

Don't lose the joy in knowing God .Don't miss the joy of knowing God by going beyond what is written. :)

[Steve Lortz]

...

If we don't have a basic or simple knowledge of Jesus Christ, what is the point of ever learning? We can't get to God without knowing Jesus Christ. He is how we know God. This is how God chose to declare Himself to human beings. In the person of Jesus. So, when we see Jesus, we are seeing God. When we are calling out to Jesus, we are calling out to God. It will always be like this.....God will always be before us in the person of Jesus Christ. There is no one else, no where else, no other way.

...

Do you realize this is EXACTLY what I Corinthians 8:6 says? If the Alexandrian apologists of the 2nd century had held to a Stoic rather than a Platonic cosmology, I Corinthians 8:6 would be understood to mean exactly what you've written! But those apologists didn't. They assumed Platonic definitions for "cosmos", "spirit" and "logos", and failed to recognize what I Corinthians 8:4-7a implies about the relation between spirit, logos and the cosmos. Consequently, confusion multiplied, and instead of cutting through confusion, the councils of the fourth and fifth centuries ossified the confusion, "condemning" fellow Christians to hell and burning them at stakes for disagreeing over arguments that are INCOMPREHENSIBLE.

Does Jesus require YOU to come to an understanding of I Corinthians 8:6? NO! It is manifest that He has already taught you that truth.

Has Jesus called me to come to an understanding of I Corinthians 8:6? YES, He has! The very same Jesus who saved you, and whom you worship so beautifully! He put the desires in my heart that have led me, through my whole life (including the brief 11% of it I spent involved with TWI), to this time and place with the set of skills I have in order to do the job that He has set before me.

Is my thesis (of which my analysis of I Corinthians 8:6 is only a part) going to revolutionize Christianity? I sincerely doubt it. It will probably be bound and set on a shelf in the university library to slumber with all the other theses. If I wrote it up in a popular style as a book, it wouldn't sell, and multitudes of talking heads would rise up to denounce my heresy. I could start another cult, but I've already had enough of that crap!

But I think that someday, Jesus is going to have another job for somebody else to do, and that person will need to read the stuff I'm writing in order to do that job.

I've had fun writing this! I've had Duck Soup on in the background.

Love,

Steve

[geisha779]

Steve,

I don't know how to say this to you without coming across as harsh....it is not my intent okay? It took me longer to write that out than it did to see that in scripture and it changed my entire theology. This is the core tenet of Christianity and with very few exceptions any Christian will tell you the same thing I did. They may word it differently, but the meaning will be the same. There is absolutely nothing in what I wrote that would shock anyone or cause any controversy or confusion except in a cult.

I am not sure what you are on about in Corinthians 8 or what you believe you have uncovered, but you have got to start trusting some bible teachers. You could have got that in 5 minutes of reading Carson, Sproul, Piper, or Geisler. It doesn't get anymore elementary or basic than what I wrote. I have no idea what heresy you have unearthed that the "talking heads" are coming for you about. I can only speculate, but please, I really don't want to know. The talking heads, I assume, are bible teachers, Pastors, and the Lord's servants?

Really, I am not sure what confusion you see or controversy from the councils, Lord knows I have heard plenty of talk about the evils of the councils, but everyone already knows what I wrote. It was me who didn't see it for years because I was in a cult, but this is all over the scriptures and how we already understand Jesus. The only thing I avoided saying is the obvious......

Just so that I am clear....as I have a tendency to couch things here so that they are palatable to most readers and I don't want to turn every thread into a debate about the trinity. I believe that Jesus Christ is God incarnate, God in the Flesh, The Son of God, eternal not created and in Him the Father is revealed. I did not always believe this, in reality I despised this truth. I mocked it, I denied it, and I believed something entirely different about Jesus. I changed my mind as I saw it unfold before me in scripture. Now, it is more obvious to me than anything else about the Lord.

I am well aware others differ, but because of my earlier post and your response I felt I needed to clarify this.

Edited this morning for some clarity.

Edited October 11, 2012 by geisha779

[chockfull]

Just so that I am clear....as I have a tendency to couch things here so that they are palatable to most readers and I don't want to turn every thread into a debate about the trinity. I believe that Jesus Christ is God incarnate, God in the Flesh, The Son of God, eternal not created and in Him the Father is revealed. I did not always believe this, in reality I despised this truth. I mocked it, I denied it, and I believed something entirely different about Jesus. I changed my mind as I saw it unfold before me in scripture. Now, it is more obvious to me than anything else about the Lord.

Hmmm. Now I'm beginning to see the root of our differences, beyond the fact that you are implying you like to argue but in a fashion to make it palatable to most readers.

So of all those terms - Jesus being God incarnate, God in the flesh, Son of God, and in Him the Father is revealed. All of those terms do not preclude the Trinity. The only one that does is "eternal not created".

[geisha779]

But to paraphrase Geisha I do know what I do know and that's not insignificant. It isn't and I think that while I would maintain that meekness is the only reasonable response for mankind to have to God we are still expected to go to Him and establish our side of a relationship -

I like that....and chaos Christianity! You do have a way with words, a lovely heart and very cute grand-kids. How do you worship a God you don't know right? He is immutable. We can know his attributes, they are articulated in scripture. One of the best books I have ever read and read and read is The Knowledge of the Holy. A.W. Tozer goes through the attributes of God one by one. It gets pretty heady at times, but, the subject matter demands it.

Steve, it is online if you want to take a peek. Really awesome read. . . . if you Google it..... it is the first thing to come up! Let me know what you think if you do have time to look at it.

Edited October 18, 2012 by geisha779