"For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is God's power for salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, and also to the Greek.  For in it God's righteousness is revealed from faith to faith, just as it is written: "The righteous will live by faith." (Habakkuk 2:9)"  Romans 1:16-17  (It should be noted that Habakkuk is talking about licentious living as opposed to righteous living).

Paul's great wealth of Hebrew studies shows in his letter to the Romans.  He quoted Hebrew Scripture throughout the letter, showing how the Old Covenant actually pointed to the New Covenant even as the Jews were looking in the wrong direction.

Throughout Romans Paul declared that Jew or Gentile, we each come to Christ in faith. The Gentiles are sinners who live outside of the law and the Jews are sinners who lived according to the law and both groups are in disobedience to God.

"There is no favoritism with God.  All who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law and all who sinned under the law will be judged by the law," Paul wrote in Romans 2:11-12.

The Jews trusted that their circumcision would protect them from the wrath of God, yet Paul warned they were wrong.  "On the contrary, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is of the heart – by the Spirit, not the letter. His praise is not from man, but from God."  Romans 2:19

In discussion this, Paul referred to Old Testament passages that agreed with what he was teaching.  Jeremiah 4:4 stated, "Circumcise yourselves to the Lord; remove the foreskin of your hearts."  Deuteronomy 10:17 also stated, "Therefore, circumcise your hearts, and don't be stiff-necked any longer."

More than just judging his readers, however, Paul shone a light into how flawed human beings might approach the faultless One True God.  The plan had always been there.  The Jews were to come to God by faith just as Abraham had.  Abram had nothing but God's word when he left his family in Ur of the Caldese and set off into the wilderness of Canaan.  God said, "I will make you the ancestor of many nations," but Abram was already an older man and his wife Sarai was past childbearing years.  Why would he believe God that he would father children in his old age?  Faith! Abram believed God and his belief brought him to where God could fulfill His promises (Hebrews 11).

Paul reminded his readers that Jews were no better than Gentiles just because Abraham had been their ancestor. "What then? Are we (Jews) any better? Not at all!  For we have previously charged that both Jews and Gentiles are all under sin."  Romans 3:9-10.

There are no favorites. Nobody can rely on anything other than Jesus Christ, "for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. They are justified freely by His grace through the redemption of Christ Jesus."  Romans 3:23-24.

Paul boldly stated that the presuppositions of both the Jews and Gentiles had been wrong.  The Gentiles had erred because they had not known God existed, while the Jews had redefined God to meet their image of Him.  The entire human race, no matter what their nationality stands guilty before God for the sin of disobeying Him.  Physical actions like the removal of the foreskin do nothing to change the guilty verdict.  Any presupposition we have to the contrary is immaterial because God so outranks us as to make what we want or think irrelevant.

What did that mean to the early church?  That is of profound consideration.  If all of us (the whole human race) are disobedient sinners in God's eyes, how is it that we can be saved through Jesus Christ?  Let us look at that and consider.

When I started this blog, God guided me to confront error where I found it.  I remain convinced that most nonbelievers (and some who claim to be believers) hold wrong beliefs about the Bible and God because they have never read the Bible. They rely instead on what other people have told them about the Bible. The problem with those other people is that they themselves may not have read the Bible or may be misrepresenting the Bible. Therefore, I resolved (with the help of my extremely voluntary research staff of spouse, daughter, friends and pastor) to try to represent the Bible as it is written and not as I would have it.

The genesis of this blog was in part because I was tired of answering the same falsehoods on comments over and over again and not seeming to get anywhere. Unfortunately, a recent debate on one of my columns has convinced me that having a permanent record of what I write won't always fix the problem. Some people simply cling to their presuppositions no matter what and will continue to insist they have the word of God in their heart, though they've never cracked the cover of a Bible.

So, I'm going to revisit salvation for a brief interlude, before moving forward once more.

First step in any journey is to lay aside certain presuppositions. I pulled my backpack out of the storage closet today because we're planning a day hike tomorrow.  As I inventoried the gear in the various pockets of my trusty companion in woodsmanship, I encountered my compass. This is an Alaskan compass, recalibrated to true north. As I have explained previously, magnetic north in Greenland does not affect hikers in the Lower 48, but for those of us living in Alaska, our compasses will point more east than north and that can be a 23-degree problem.  In the Lower 48, you can wait for dark and take a reading off Polaris, but since it doesn't get dark at night in the summer here, Polaris is not visible to guide us if we get lost. Our compasses must point true north or we're likely to end up dying of exposure under a spruce tree somewhere, if bears or wolves don't find us first.

My compass is a presupposition. The belief that it is right guides me as I explore the wilderness around my town. But, once, when I was hiking in New Hampshire, I presupposed its correctness and we ended up headed in the wrong direction. We corrected ourselves when our route no longer matched the map, but had we presupposed the correctness of our compass and ignored the map, we probably would have ended as front page news – Alaskans Lost in White Mountains.  How embarrassing! The spruce tree and the wolves sound more inviting!

What you presuppose is of primary importance!

Before I became a Christian, I presupposed that I didn't need God. I never really believed that there was no deity. I think growing up with the Alaskan wilderness so close at hand made such a presupposition almost impossible. Something clearly was having an incredibly creative moment when Denali was created.  I chose to believe my father who said God created Alaska. My father was a Christian seeker who did not live a Christian lifestyle, but who gave God the credit for His creation. My mom was an agnostic.  So, growing up, I presupposed that God was out there in the sweet by-and-by creating other worlds or whatever and not all that interested in what I was doing in my life, which conveniently meant I didn't have to live according to His rules. Fortunately for me, I encountered Francis Shaeffer's "Escape From Reason" just as I entered high school and that blew my presuppositions out of the water.  Not only is there a God, but He is personally interested in every human being on the planet, including me. Oh, boy!

My husband grew up presupposing there was a God and that you had to live according to how He wanted you live. He also presupposed that the Roman Catholic Church was God upon this planet and that the priests held the keys to God's kingdom. He believed this because the priests and nuns told him to believe this.  Baptized when he was a week old and sent to church and later Catholic School by his nominally devout Catholic father and his ethical Episcopalian mother, he received a message that Christianity was a communal religion that he inherited from his father and that he was expected to follow the forms and rituals of the Church if he wanted to eventually be saved. By age 20, he'd wandered from being a good Catholic boy and found himself wondering if the gates of heaven would ever open for him since he'd messed up so thoroughly.  Yet, his presuppositions were based upon what human beings had told him, not upon what the Bible he hadn't read said. When eventually he opened the Bible and began to read it for himself with a friend who is (20 years later) now a doctoral professor of New Testament Theology at a leading seminary, his childhood presuppositions were shaken. They, in fact, evaporated like dew in the hot sun.  God is not an ecclesiastical body. He is Savior and Lord and He wants more from us than rituals and church membership.  He wants our wills bowed to Him.  Moreover, God doesn't grant us salvation because our parents were members of a church or because they followed some dearly held religious rite, but because we have a personal relationship with Him. Christianity is very much a personal faith. And, thus, BJ's presuppositions were no longer valid. And, that required a response. Whenever your presuppositions are shaken, your life has opportunity to change because presuppositions are vitally important.

If I believe my compass is correct when it is not, I stand naked and defenseless before Alaska's capricious nature.  I will die!  Alaska rarely gives second chances to the foolish.  We are lucky that God does, but only if we respond to Him as He wants us to.  If my faith presuppositions are incorrect, I stand naked and defenseless before Hell.  In my vision of Hell, there is not a single tongue of fire. I would describe Hell as an Alaskan night when the temperature drops below minus-65 degrees Fahrenheit and stays that way for eternity.  Ouch!  An Alaskan winter without hope of summer.  Shoot me now!

Thus, presuppositions are everything!  If you presuppose there is no God, then you will likely refuse to acknowledge Him when He reveals Himself to you. If you presuppose that you don't need God, then you will likely refuse to acknowledge all evidence that you do need Him.  If you presuppose that God wants a formal, distant relationship with you, then you won't go looking for a intimate, personal relationship with Him.  Yet, your presuppositions can be wrong.

My compass was wrong. The map I was using was correct.  I altered my presupposition (my belief in my compass) because other evidence told me it was wrong.  And, that made all the difference.

I didn't think I needed God. BJ thought God was a distant deity Who let men administer His church.  We were wrong!  The evidence for our error was in the Bibl all along and it was through the pages of the Bible that we learned not only that we were wrong, but how to become right.  Presuppositions are our compass, but the Bible is our map and when our beliefs do not match the only solid evidence we have, we should adjust accordingly.

Thus, we move forward by looking back.

To all our readers --

BJ and I have spent the last couple of weeks engrossed in an ongoing debate with a sincere Roman Catholic on which we should follow -- the Bible or the Roman Catholic Church. For those of you who became tired of the debate, we're immensely sorry to have gotten distracted. We hoped that this fellow would actually open the Bible and encounter the Living God, but alas, he has insisted upon remaining apart from Christ.  We will continue to pray for him, but we have decided to ignore his posts unless he wants to discuss the Bible.

We are returning to our roots as Aurorawatcher was always about addressing what the Bible says and not what creeds or organizations may have said about the Bible.  There will be new articles this weekend!

“For as the body is one and has many parts, and all the parts of that body, though many, are one body—so also is Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. So the body is not one part but many.”  I Corinthians 12:12-14

 

“On the contrary, all the more, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are necessary.  And those parts of the body that we think to be less honorable, we clothe these with greater honor, and our unpresentable parts have a better presentation. But our presentable parts have no need of clothing. Instead, God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the less honorable, so that there would be no division in the body, but that the members would have the same concern for each other. So if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it.”  I Corinthians 12:22-26.

 

You’ll notice some gaps in the Scriptures I’ve posted. This is because I have already discussed the missing passages and also to give continuity to Paul’s subjects.  It is likely that Paul dictated this (some think to Timothy) over a period of several days or weeks and that he rambled a bit as subjects came to mind or news of Corinth arrived.  Thus, as you might have noticed, I try to group subjects together.

 

We are continuing the discussion of gifts.

 

I already dealt with the larger issue of denominations. Please refer to earlier posts on this subject.  Though it is the same passage, the topic could refer to the larger Church or to the congregation.

 

The Church is called the Body of Christ.  A congregation acts much like a body.  There are a lot of parts to my body.  I’m not sure what all of them are for and some of them are downright annoying.  There are parts of my body that are not attractive to me or anyone else.  This does not mean they don’t have use within my body, just that I might not want to show them off to squeamish people.  Nobody (normal) really wants to see my gall bladder, but it’s very useful in digesting fat, so I’ll try to hang onto it.  Paul understood this concept.  Some parts just aren’t lovely, but if we dress them up nicely, they actually have greater honor than the prettier parts of our anatomy.  You’ll have to use your imaginations to picture the anatomical parts we’re discussing.  Its basic function is pretty ick, but put some attractive clothes over it and it might stop traffic.  On the other hand, the most attractive unclothed part of our body might be among the least useful.

 

A congregation is like that.  There are different parts and they all have uses.  Some gifts are more showy than others. They are not necessarily the most useful part of the Body. The woman with the beautiful voice who sings a lot of specials has her place in the congregation, but she might not be the one you want to call when the sewer backs up.  You might call Red, who is the van driver and sometimes maintenance man who has trouble introducing himself to even one person at a time.  His gift is not showy, but it is necessary.  Both these people have a place in the Body of Christ that is honorable and necessary, yet their functions do not overlap.

 

We should honor the folks who clean the building and repair the sewer every bit as much as we honor and praise the singers, pianists and preachers, for they are every bit as much God’s tools.  So, do we?

For a Christian attending a Southern Baptist church to speak on spiritual gifts is usually not easy.  We Southern Baptists, adherents to the Bible that we are, tend to frown, downright scowl, at our charismatic brethren when we discuss this subject.  Somehow, when the subject of gifts comes up between the two camps, we focus on one very public gift and ignore all the others.  You’d be surprised how many churches I know that have gifts working in them.

 

“About matters of the spirit, brothers, I do not want you to be unaware. You know how, when you were pagans, you were led to dumb idols—being led astray. Therefore I am informing you that no one speaking by the Spirit of God says, “Jesus is cursed,” and no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit.”  I Corinthians 12:1-3

 

Not to belabor a point, but Paul was dealing with Christians just a few years out of idolatry. They really didn’t know what to believe, which is why wise counsel from elder Christians was vitally important.  Paul provided that when he was there. Now he was sending Timothy. Yet, he also wanted them to learn how a gut check works.  All Christians know God and we know how He works. When a false god/messiah presents itself, most of us are quick to recognize it. But, not all of us are that mature.  The Corinthians were not mature enough to wholly check their guts.

 

The above statement makes simple the case that the Holy Spirit never curses Jesus and anyone who does not know Jesus can say “Jesus is Lord.” This is a simple gut check when wondering if something is from God or not. When I hear or read someone say “well, I’m a Christian and I don’t believe the Bible,” I know they’re lying on one or both of those statements.  A true Christian cannot reject Christ’s message to us.

 

I don’t know if the Corinthians were asking Paul if gifts were from God or from the Devil. We know from reading Chapters 12 and 14 that the Corinthians were using some of the gifts in an incorrect and damaging manner, driving visitors from the church.  They were proud of their gifts, but their pride caused them to use their gifts incorrectly (see earlier posts).

 

“Now there are different gifts, but the same Spirit. There are different ministries, but the same Lord. And there are different activities, but the same God is active in everyone and everything.  A manifestation of the Spirit is given to each person to produce what is beneficial: to one is given a message of wisdom through the Spirit, to another, a message of knowledge by the same Spirit, to another, faith by the same Spirit, to another, gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another, the performing of miracles, to another, prophecy, to another, distinguishing between spirits, to another, different kinds of languages, to another, interpretation of languages. But one and the same Spirit is active in all these, distributing to each one as He wills.”  I Corinthians 12:4-11

 

Paul makes a very clear statement here.  There are different gifts, but they all come from the same Holy Spirit. These different gifts correspond with the different ministries of the Church.  Although these activities differ from one another, God empowers all of them.  Each person receives a manifestation of the Spirit to produce benefits for others.

 

Some are given a message of wisdom through the Spirit.  Some are given a message of knowledge through the Spirit.

 

I am not a theologian and I thus borrow heavily from a friend who is.  For the most part, these are my ideas with some instruction by my friend.  Wisdom is the practical application of doctrine to the Christian life.  This is aided by knowledge, but I know people who have memorized vast sections of the Bible without understanding the concepts presented therein.  To giving counsel and advice in perplexing cases, wisdom and knowledge must go hand in hand, but I’ve sat in services where someone would quote a Bible verse and someone else would put that verse into 21^st Century terms, so sometimes they go hand-in-hand in the assembly and not in the person.

 

The gift of faith (or perhaps more properly, the gift of faith in miracles – trusting God in any emergency, whatever the difficulty or danger) is a special province of some believers. I know people who could witness the end of the world as they know it, wipe the tears from their cheeks and say “God’s in charge, it’ll be okay, let’s get back to work.”  They are not deluding themselves because often their world comes back into equilibrium a long time before it does for those of us who worry, fret and rail against what has befallen us.  We could all learn from such faithful people.

 

Healing of the sick, by lying on of hands, anointing of oil or just with prayer occurs. I’ve seen it and there was no other explanation beyond that God did it.  My friend Martha should have died of inflammatory breast cancer weeks before she went into the doctor. The tests were conclusive. There was no hope.  One course of chemotherapy was recommended before the surgery to shrink the mass, but the tests indicated that it had likely spread throughout her body. Some Christians prayed for her the night before to give her strength and to acknowledge it was in God’s hands.  Martha went in for surgery and the doctors couldn’t find the cancer – not the original mass, not any secondary spread.  Even her surgeon said “it was a miracle” that he could not explain.  Nine years later, he still marvels at her continuing good health.

 

The working of miracles really encompasses healing, but according to my theologian friend, the words translated discuss the raising of the dead, restoring sight to the blind, etc.  I’ve heard of it, but the examples I’ve seen would fail the smell test under discernment, so I’m not going to comment on it beyond saying that Satan can work some “miracles” as well (note the Egyptian magi could not quite fake Moses’ miracles and it was enough to convince Pharaoh that Moses was just another court magician.  I still believe miracles happen, but I’ve never seen a legitimate one.

 

Prophesy is often thought of as foretelling the future, but it also applies to a special gift to explain scripture (see I Corinthians 14:24). I tend to think of it as hand-in-hand with the gifts of knowledge and wisdom.  Knowledge and wisdom allow one to better explain the scripture.

 

Discernment of spirits is a gift I know well, because it is a gift that God has given me.  Peter used this Holy Spirit-derived gift to discover the inward workings of the mind in the case of Ananias.  In my own experience, I generally can spot a liar about the time he says “Hello.”  This includes those people who consider themselves motivational speakers and those who claim to be preachers of the Word, but are just flim-flam artists. The current flak of Tony Campolo’s liberalism does not really surprise me, though I cannot think of one thing I disagreed with him on when I heard him speak 15 years ago. I just thought he was prone to play fast and loose with the Word of God.  I think my skepticism came from God.

 

Speaking in tongues and the interpretation of language is a subject I will take up at a later time.  I am not avoiding the subject, I just think such a controversial subject deserves more than a paragraph’s worth of discussion.  I’ve already dealt with it a little bit under discussions of order in the church service.

 

There were many spiritual gifts manifested in the church at Corinth and I will assume manifested in the Church universal.  Paul indicated that these were signs of the Holy Spirit.  These gifts were not distributed for the mere honor and advantage of those who had them, but for the benefit of the Church (be it the congregational assembly or the Church universal) – to edify (or build up) the Body and to advance the gospel.  Whatever gifts God confers on any Christian, He confers them that the Christian may do ministry with them, for common or spiritual reasons.  The outward gifts of God’s bounty are to be improved for God’s glory as well as to do good to other human beings. No one is gifted merely for personal edification.

 

Spiritual gifts are a trust put into the Christian’s hands, to profit those around us; and the more we profit others with them, the more abundantly will those profits be accounted to the Christian in the end, (Philippians 4:17). Spiritual gifts are bestowed that Christians may use them to profit the Church and promote Christianity. They are not given for show, but for service.  They should not be used in pomp and attention-getting, but for edification.  They are not meant to magnify those that have them, but to build up others.

As such, they are tools God's workers use in His fields and not pleasures He's given us to enjoy.  The enjoyment is secondary. If we're not using our gifts to reach nonbelievers, we are wasting our gifts.

Today we depart from the norm with a guest columnist who is not exactly a guest.  Aurorawatcher

 

Hi, I am BJ, Aurorawater’s husband. She and I collaborate on this blog, but I prefer to work in the background. She’s the writer; I think of myself as her research assistant.  But the ongoing debate with badcandie has brought me to step out of the shadows for a moment. You see, badcandie, I used to be a Roman Catholic.

 

At the risk of imitating Paul in Philippians, I’m going to tell you my Pharisaical history. I am the son, grandson, etc., of Irish Catholics from South Boston, which means my father’s folks are as Catholic as the Pope and probably think they’re even more Catholic than he is.  One of my aunts is a nun.  My mother was a liturgical Episcopalian when I was born, but she agreed to raise me as Catholic. I was baptized when I was seven days’ old and raised in Sunday school and catechism class.  Sister Mary Theodore said I was her best catechism student in 10 years.  I was confirmed when I was nine.  And, I was a very good Catholic. I really thought that I was eating the body and blood of Jesus when I took communion and I was careful to follow all the forms and practices of Catholicism.  I was an altar boy and, like most altar boys, I wanted to be a priest until I discovered girls.

 

Ah, girls! The downfall of many a good Catholic boy!  I discovered girls and beer right the start of high school. It’s my experience that Catholic School students know how to party and Catholic school girls are no more pure than public school girls. And upstate New York in the 1970s was a wealthy neighborhood where parents were gone a lot and we kids could have a good time.  A good, sinful time.

 

I felt guilty about my behavior.  I’d grown up going to church every week and I continued to do so.  Confession on Saturday afternoon with (we weren’t supposed to know) Father Mac and then communion on Sunday. Except the more I enjoyed my teenage life the less likely I was to make that Sunday morning service.  You see, sometimes between confession and communion I would sin and then I was guilty, so I wouldn’t take communion.  Father Mac started giving me penitence to do – lots of Hail Marys and Our Fathers – and that would keep me busy for a while, but then my friends would invite me to a kegger and there’d be girls there and … yeah, I wasn’t a good Catholic boy anymore.

 

This continued after graduation and for the most part I stopped going to church except when I’d get to feeling really guilty. I’d moved to Houston by then, so except for when I saw my dad (who still parties all week and cheats on his wife, but goes to confession on Saturday and communion on Sunday) I didn’t have anyone reminding me that I should do something about feeling guilty. You see, I felt guilty all the time, but I was no longer doing anything about it because I had come to the conclusion that I was on a great hamster wheel from which there was no escape. I would always go back to sinning and I would always feel guilty and I would follow that with confession and I would really do my Hail Marys and Our Fathers, but a lot of times Saturday night would interfere with Sunday morning. It was easier just to have the Saturday nights seven nights a week and not have to do all those Hail Marys (they add up after a while, when you’ve ceased to be a good Catholic, but truly want to be).

 

My 20^th summer, I prayed to God one morning after a particularly sinful night that He would help me find my way out of how I was living. Everything in the world seemed to conspire to prevent me from going to confession the week prior to happenstance putting me in a truck bound for Alaska to work post-Pipeline construction.   Not that Alaska is a particularly godly state, but the first person I met in Alaska invited me to church – a non-Catholic church.  She was a pretty girl and I wanted to get to know her (leer implied).  We agreed that if she came to Catholic church with me, I would go to her church with her.  Two things happened on that Sunday. One, she refused to take communion at the Catholic church.  She wasn’t mean about it or anything; she just said she didn’t feel right about it and remained in her seat. Afterward, at breakfast, she explained that the whole idea of the bread and the wine actually becoming the body and blood of Jesus felt like paganism to her and she “would not kneel at the altar of another god, even one that bears the same name as Jesus.”  That made me angry, but it also impressed me. She KNEW what she believed so much that at a moment of decision with a guy she liked pressuring her, she chose to follow God as she understood Him.  I disagreed, but it impressed me.

 

The second thing that happened that morning was going to her church.  I was a little blown away by the simplicity of the place – no statues, stainglass or dramatic paintings -- just a simple cross at the front of the chapel behind a plain wooden table with IN REMEMBRANCE OF ME carved on the apron.  On the table was an open Bible. I asked her, is that your altar? She actually had to think about it a moment while I asked “where are the statues?” Having just been to the Catholic church, she knew what that was about and explained that her church didn’t like a lot of distractions from worshipping God and no, that table was the Lord’s Supper table, the altar of God “is in our hearts.”

 

What can I say – congregational singing sounded awful to the ears of someone used to trained choirs and the preacher was talking about stuff I had never heard before.  That the girl I was with could find the scriptures in the Bible impressed me because I had never actually opened one before. The one Bible we’d had when I was growing up sat on the sideboard in the living room and I wasn’t permitted to touch it. It had gilded pages and fancy writing and was large enough to knock a burglar into a coma with, but we never read it. In fact, my stepmother told me that it was sacrilegious to read the Bible for ourselves. The priests would tell us what it meant.  The whole church service left me profoundly uncomfortable. They never said anything against the Catholic Church, but it was clear they didn’t worship the same and that seemed as if they were saying something against the Catholic Church.  And, they didn’t take communion at the end. Instead, they offered an “invitation” whereby new believers could come up and speak with the preacher.  Well, I’d been a Christian my whole life, I didn’t need to speak to a preacher about it.

 

It turned out the girl wasn’t interested in having sex with me and then I went to the “bush” to work, so I didn’t pursue anything right away.  When I came back, I ran into the girl again and she invited me to a Bible study up at the University.  I had signed up for classes and so it seemed like something to do.  I met Alan, the Baptist Student Union director, and we became friends pretty quickly.  He was a few years older, but liked to ski and play the guitar, things I was interested in.  It was through him that I began to hear more about Jesus and what the Bible said I should believe.

 

I could go into a lot of detail, but I won’t.  What ended up happening is that I opened that Bible and I started to read the Gospel of John. I didn’t get lucky with this selection. That girl I liked suggested it the same day that Alan suggested it and I took it to be a sign. I was still certain that the Catholic Church was the right church, that these good people I had met were sincerely deceived and that eventually, if I asked enough questions and argued enough, they’d come around.  The problem with that was they answered my questions and instead of arguing, they showed me what the Bible said.  At one point, I returned to the Catholic Church and confessed my sins. I realized that I hadn’t been out partying since I came back from the “bush”, but the priest was more concerned that I was going to non-Catholic Bible studies.  As he gave me more Hail Marys to do than I’d ever been given for fornicating, I suddenly realized that I didn’t feel at all guilty about my foray into non-Catholic studies.  I did, however, feel guilty about the last six years of debauchery.   Why did I still feel guilty about those when I had said a truckload of rosaries and even helped my dad reroof  one of the parish buildings for free?  Weren’t those sins forgiven?  Apparently not because I felt guilty, but now the priest told me I was even more guilty for reading the Bible than I had been for fornicating and getting drunk.  Something didn’t seem right about that.  It bothered me so much I couldn’t say the rosary.

 

That evening, I told Alan that and he told me that the answer to guilt was not saying the same ritualistic prayer over and over again, but turning my heart over to Jesus.  I didn’t that night (I went home and started my rosary penitence), but the seed had been planted.  I returned to that church the girl had taken me to previously and I listened to the pastor preaching.  I started trying to find the passages he was talking about and trying to figure out what they meant.  More and more I felt like I had been wrong – off on a pathway that didn’t make sense – for most of my life. Then, one Sunday evening, the pastor gave an invitation. He didn’t usually do that since Sunday evening in the winter was usually church members and he later told me that he had simply obeyed God’s strong urging to do so.  There was no music to hide the sound of my cowboy boots on the hardwood floor or my whisper to the pastor that I wanted to accept Jesus as my Savior, but I’d already moved before I realized that this was unusual.  I remember the sound of my steps echoing off the ceiling and thinking everybody could hear me (which they could) as I spoke with the pastor, but you know what, I didn’t care.  I wanted to be right with God and I knew that the rosary hadn’t done the trick and I’d said A LOT of them over the last six years.

 

I’ve given a lot of thought about what happened when I accepted Christ.  For the first 21 years of my life, I had been operating according to a system my parents had chosen for me.  It was a system that set up a lot of obstacles between me and God, between me and Jesus, but the rituals were very comforting.  I trusted, because I had been taught to trust, that my baptism when I was seven days old would protect me from going to Hell so long as I remained a good Catholic.  And, I tried. I really wanted to be a praise-worthy altar boy, though I think I really wanted that more to have the praise of the priest rather than any devotion to God.  We humans are born with a natural tendency toward sin and when I hit my adolescence, I stopped being innocent and started wanting to do what my flesh wanted to do.  And, as soon as I started willfully sinning, the Catholic Church could not offer me what I needed.  It could offer me works that I could perform to salve my guilt, but it couldn’t heal the damage I was doing to my soul.  All that ever happened in the confessional was the priest listening to what I said, asking for details, then getting embarrassed if I gave them, and then he’d give me so many rosaries to do and absolve me of my sin.  If he was actually washing them away, why did I still feel them?  I’d go out and do my Hail Marys and Our Fathers until I was in a trance and then, when I was done, I feel better for five minutes until a friend would drop by with a six-pack or a pretty girl would cross my path. Then I was back on the hamster wheel again.

 

The day I accepted Christ, I was freed from my sins. They were buried with Jesus, gone from me for good.  I haven’t said a Hail Mary since October 21, 1983, the night I walked that aisle.  That night, to me, Mary, the mother of Jesus, became a dead woman with an illustrious past and I recognized immediately that she had nothing to offer me.  It’s not her fault; she’s dead and the dead have nothing to do with the living (Luke 16).  I haven’t prayed to a saint since then either because dead men and women have no power to affect the lives of the living.  I do a lot of praying, but I direct my prayers to Someone alive.  Every day and in every way, I walk with Jesus, Who is as alive today as He was 2000 years ago.  When I do good works, it is because I love Jesus; not because I strive to win His favor, but because I already have His favor.  Rather than go to a child molester to confess my sins (and I later found out I did), I go directly to my Creator and Savior.  Although there are many men and women of God whom I admire, I put my trust of salvation only in Jesus.  Human beings make mistakes and have bad days. Jesus doesn’t.  This doesn’t mean I’m perfect. I still sin and I still must confess my sins, but I now confess them to Jesus and when I’ve done that, they’re actually gone; not just salved.

 

Catholicism as I experienced it was a religion of forms and rules and rituals.  I truly believed it, but it was truly only skin deep. Christianity is a faith that requires conscious contact with God through Jesus Christ and informs my lifestyle.  Rather than working on my outside to try to reform my behavior, it wells up from inside me so that my behavior is automatically better than it would be.

 

And, that’s really the difference between the religion of Catholicism and the faith of Christianity.  One is an outward system that our parents choose for us and the other is an inward relationship that our Savior died to give us.

That's why I am not a Catholic any more!  Once Jesus lived in my heart, I didn't need a priest to tell me how to live. I understand totally what Paul meant in Philippians 3:12-14 -- "Not that I have already reached the goal or am already fully mature, but I make every effort to take hold of it because I also have been taken hold of by Christ Jesus.  Brothers, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead, I pursue as my goal the prize promised by God's heavenly call in Christ Jesus."

 

Badcandie, there is absolutely nothing you can write to convince me otherwise. If I had died a Roman Catholic, my soul would have gone to Hell because Catholicism was all about me doing the right things to go to heaven and I – my sinful nature -- was the problem.  Roman Catholicism is about dead men trying to raise themselves from the dead.  Dead things can't give life.  What I needed was for Someone alive to call me to life and that is all about Jesus doing it.  His sacrifice is more than sufficient to wipe away my sins and that requires nothing of me more than just accepting that He’d done it.   Jesus’ salvation is the only reason why I am bound for Heaven today.  Many will call “Lord, Lord,” on the last day, and Jesus will answer “Sorry, but I don’t know you.”  I would have been one of those 23 years ago, no matter how many rosaries I’d said that day or in the past.  My faith was in forms and rituals, not in Jesus Christ.  Now that my faith is in Jesus Christ, the forms and rituals are no longer of any use to me. In this, I imitate Paul who left behind the forms and rituals of Judaism to follow Jesus Christ.

 

I know a few Roman Catholics who I consider to be Christians, but in all cases, they recognize that someone can come to Christ apart from the Catholic Church.  Their faith is in Jesus, not in the Church, and that makes all the difference.  So, I wish you luck and I hope you’ll run into someone like my friend Alan or hear a preacher who is open to God’s leading even when the call is out of the ordinary. As long as your faith is in the Catholic Church, however, you’re very likely going to miss Jesus when He knocks on your heart’s door because Jesus never was a Catholic and it is my experience that Catholics always expect Him to be.  They usually demand Him to be and they send Him away until He meets their expectations, which means they never give Him a chance.  I hope you're not one of those, but your posts read like that.  I’ll be praying for you!