Christianity in Black and White

In 1987 Anne and I rolled into the parsonage of Bacon's Castle Baptist Church as the freshly minted pastor of this rural congregation.  I had high expectations of changing the world one life at a time and ground zero for change was our community and most specifically our church family.  I grew up in Latin America and I had the privilege of growing up with great ethnic and racial diversity in a school with people from all over the world.  I had grown up reading about the black and white separation in our country, and the racial laws that divided our land just two decades before, but I had never realized how deep seated that divide really was until I moved to Surry.    The hunt clubs were divided by race.  The Masons were divided by race.  But what troubled me the most was that every Christian church in Surry was divided by race.  How could it be that the church that Jesus started, that reconciled Jews and Gentiles together in one body, one gathering, could be so divided by skin color?

Twenty-eight years ago I wrote a vision statement of what I believed God wanted to do with Bacon's Castle and one part of that was reconciling this racial divide.  I remember picturing a morning worship service at Bacon's Castle that was composed of black and white believers who loved Jesus and loved each other just as much.  Early on I prayed hard, and worked even harder, to bring that vision to fruition.  In the late 1980's, seventy believers from our church family joined me one Sunday as we went over to a sister church composed of African-American believers, and asked for forgiveness.  We went primarily to ask for forgiveness for the past racial sins of our church family; truly it was a blessed day as we were received with such a loving heart.  We did many things in those years to open the doors of Bacon's Castle to racial reconciliation--combined worship services, exchange of pulpits, praying together, and observing the National Day of Prayer together.  Today, almost three decades later, Bacon's Castle shares a great relationship with most all the Christian churches in Surry, black and white, and though we have a few African-American members, we have not been able to change the racial culture of our church.  Most of us are white-- of European descent.

Did you know that statistically only seven percent (7%) of churches ever manage to reach an ethnic/racial divide of 70/30%?  That means that only seven churches out of 100 ever have a congregation where three out of every ten members are different from the majority.  It's not a very high bar but even at that, most of us don't meet it.  Why?  Why doesn't it happen naturally?  After all, in the county where I live the population is racially about half and half-- half black and half white.  Most people say it has to do with culture-- the culture of the church.  Black and white Christians do things differently, so we're all more comfortable in what we know, and that keeps us separated.  That may be true, but isn't racial unity in the body of Christ more important than our comfort?  Isn't the gospel powerful enough to help us find a middle ground in how we do things?  Let's face it, the reality is that racial reconciliation isn't very important to us.  It's something that we think would be ok if it happened but not anything that we are willing to fight for, sacrifice for or pursue with purpose and passion.  We don't think that our present racially divided churches reflect poorly on the gospel or on our Savior Himself.

But I think it does.  I fact, I think our segregation as believers based on race is even sinful.  At least it is a reflection of our sinfulness and selfishness.  I believe we need to fight to change the status quo but the question is how?  How do we change this voluntary segregation?  Believe it or not I think I have the answer.

  

A couple of weeks ago I attended the funeral visitation for the mother of a pastor friend.  She was a godly woman and the church was packed for hours as people remembered her with praise and love.  There were persons from many different churches across the county—many churches that is except the white churches.  It stood out that I was the only white person at the service.  That struck me—why were there not more white believers there to honor this great and saintly, African American woman?  Only one reason—we don’t have relationships across this racial divide that are lived out socially.   Yes, we have relationships at work or in some civic organizations, and we even have them across churches, but we don't have them as friendship relationships that are lived out in our homes.  This pastor, whose mom had passed, has been my friend for almost thirty years.  We pray together almost weekly but when I mentally examined our relationship I realized that he and his wife have never been to my house for dinner and an evening of games.   Let me be honest, I don’t think we’ve ever had any African-American couple in our home for dinner and games.  It’s not that I wouldn’t want to—I think I'm being honest when I say I would want that!  But what hasn't happened is that Anne and I have never done anything intentionally to bring us together socially as friends-- it’s not been a priority.  

I said I believed I have an answer; here it is.  Begin to work on cross racial friendships by inviting folks to your home for a meal and games.  We love the card game "Golf"-- try it.)  It's just that simple-- we have to make an effort as believers to build friendships that cross those divides.  Let me ask you, if you are white, when was the last time you had any black friends over to share a meal and evening together? If you are black, when was the last time you invited any white friends over for supper and friendship?  If you are like me, it's probably far too little.  Some of you might honestly say, "I don't have any friends of a different race to invite."  Well, that's the point; so start with some acquaintances.  How about a neighbor that you know but don't know very well?  




This post has gone on long enough but if you happen to have read this far, and you happen to be a follower of the Lord Jesus, I want to encourage you, even exhort you, to pursue the tearing down of this racial divide in our local churches.  Do you remember Reagan telling Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin wall, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall?"  Let's tear down this wall of racial divide.  Fight for it.  Pursue it with me.  Join me in doing it one friendship at a time!




Three Really Good Things That Can Keep You From Heaven

It’s hard to believe that good things can keep people from knowing God and out of heaven, but it's true.  Some who claim to follow Jesus say we shouldn’t even worry about heaven.  I’ve recently heard the assertion that many of us who follow Christ only emphasize “heaven” and ignore the every day life of following Jesus.  Well I hope that’s not true, but to minimize the importance of eternal life is to reject much of what our Savior said.  Jesus often said things like this; “For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.”   It’s amazing how often Jesus spoke of keeping our eyes, our focus, on eternity.  Paul, one of the greatest Christian leaders of the early church, said that “if we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied.”

So heaven is important and you should want to be there as you close your eyes in death, but there are three really good things that can keep you out if you are not careful.

Growing up in Jesus' church is a good thing that can keep people out of heaven.  Honestly, growing up with godly, Christ-following parents is a blessing one can’t minimize.  Having the nurture of a Biblical, loving local church is priceless.  But just like with so many good things, there can be a down side too.   Have you ever heard the old adage, “You can’t see the forest for the trees?”  Is it possible that we can be so close but miss the big picture?  Too often our children grow up in church hearing all about Jesus yet somehow the gospel never takes root in their hearts.  It’s almost like we inoculate them to their personal need of a Savior and to the wonder of God’s grace.  Over and over again I hear adults who grew up in church confuse the gospel with moralism, where moralism is a belief that moral goodness, or at least moral relativism, i.e. ‘I’m better than other sinners,’ is the basis of God’s choice in salvation.  It is not.

This is why parents and churches should make the gospel clearly distinct from the call we make to moral integrity.  We need to view our children as sinners in need of a Savior and not as little saved people by virtue of their connection to our church family.

The ‘Sinner’s Prayer’ can be a good thing that can keep people out of heaven.  “Wow,” you say, “how can prayer ever keep someone from knowing God?”  Easy!  When we equate “praying a prayer” with salvation, we run the danger of deceiving people that they have come to know God and have been forgiven by Him, when in reality they have not.  Jesus never said, “Pray this prayer to be saved.”  Instead the Bible says, “Believe on the Lord Jesus and you shall be saved!”  Or it puts it this way, “But as many as received the Lord Jesus, to them God gave the right to become the children of God.”  Salvation is not a gift that comes by praying a prayer but by faith in the Lord Jesus.  So is it wrong to pray and ask Jesus to save us?  Of course not.  Prayer can be a great way to express faith but if we put too much emphasis on the prayer itself, we can make it a stumbling block to some folks.  I’ve heard people say, “Of course they are saved—they prayed the sinner’s prayer!”  I appreciate the sentiment but salvation is evidenced in faith that leads to a transformed life, not in a prayer someone once prayed.   Here’s how the apostle John put it;  “But if we claim to know him and don’t obey him, we are lying and the truth isn’t in our hearts. …if we say we are his, we must follow the example of Christ.” (1 John 2:4,6)  We should encourage people with assurance that comes, not from praying a prayer, but from faith in Jesus that leads us to love like Jesus, believe like Jesus and walk our lives as Jesus walked.

Baptism can be a good thing that can keep people out of heaven.  Baptism is an important act that Jesus commanded us to observe as a way of testifying to our faith.  It’s a great illustration of Christ’s work on the cross for us as we are united with Him in His death, burial and resurrection through faith.  But baptism often becomes a performance that people believe transfers salvation.  Many religious people call it a sacrament and actually, without qualm, believe it conveys salvation.  But even among those who find themselves in evangelical churches, too often their hope is in this religious performance.

One of the best ways to insure that baptism doesn’t become a stumbling block to heaven is to make sure that people clearly understand God’s gospel.  If people truly grasp the good news, they will never rely upon their baptism, or any other religious performance, to make themselves right with God.

So if relying upon church, a sinner's prayer or baptism can keep us out of heaven, what will open the door to heaven?  In a nutshell, only Jesus can.  In fact, in the Bible Jesus says that He and He alone is the actual door to heaven.   If you haven't found that door, check out the claims of Christ and just as importantly, check out the evidence for that which He asserts.

Don’t let a good thing keep you from the most important thing.  Nothing is more important that knowing God and being ready for heaven.

Can I tell you who to vote for?

Who are you voting for President on November 8th, 2016?  I can’t ever remember an election with so many candidates.  At one point the Republicans had sixteen contestants and the Democrats five, with yet another one in the wings quite possibly choosing to run.  So many choices so who should I support?

First, let me urge you to vote.  I’ve spoken with many folks over the years who are disillusioned with politics and so today they are disconnected from the political process.   I believe what too often what led them to that place was unrealistic expectations.  They believed that politics, and maybe more specifically a specific politician, was the answer to all that ails our country.  "If only we could get so-and-so elected," but then when we do he isn't able to accomplish much or worse, he disappoints us terribly.   When it comes to the political process what we need is balance.  On the one hand we need to realize that public policy and government is not the ultimate director for the trajectory of our country.  Don’t put your ultimate hope in any political leader or party.  On the other hand, we need to acknowledge that public policy and governmental leadership do make a difference.   Because of his policies and appointments, there is little argument that President Obama has affected the moral revolution in our land in substantive ways.  So, don’t put your ultimate hope in any leader but also, don’t throw up your hands in a ‘who cares’ attitude.  One of the great hallmarks of our country is that we are a government chosen by the people.  Let’s all be that ‘people’ and a simple way to do so is to vote.  

Ok, so who should you vote for?

Vote for someone who shares your same worldview.  Your worldview is that lens through which you see and judge everything that’s happening around you; it is the framework from which one views reality and make sense of life and the world.  If you see the world from a naturalistic and secular perspective, then vote for someone who will govern from an irreligious, materialistic point of view.  On the other hand, if you hold to a Biblical worldview, and believe that God not only exist but has actively revealed His will for the flourishing of humanity, make sure you vote for someone who sees through that same lens.  A person’s worldview will affect their decision-making in every area of life, from moral and social decisions to governmental structures and budgetary choices.  Obviously no two people will agree on everything but vote for someone who is at least looking at the world through the same lens as you.

Vote for someone who lives your same morality.  I’ll confess that our morality really flows from our worldview so in all honesty this is a nuance of my first point.   I’m mentioning it only because I’ve noticed that even when people claim to have a certain worldview, they operate with a morality inconsistent with that worldview.  I know that we all tend to prioritize moral judgments.  I continually hear that evangelicals, for example, elevate the defense of life, and particularly the unborn, to the exclusion of all other moral issues.  I accept the axiom that it is incumbent upon us to look at a great assortment of moral choices but I also know that we can’t get around evaluating and prioritizing the evil nature of those same choices.  For instance the Bible says that lying is morally wrong and so is murder but most all of us would say that murder is a graver moral evil than lying.  So vote for a candidate who sees moral issues most similarly to you and who has a track record of doing so.

One parenthesis here, if I may.  Though we rank moral evil, and at least at some level so does God in the outworkings of our world, the Biblical worldview says that one sin, any sin, all sin has the same devastating effect-- it separates us from a holy, sinless God.  So we may rank and prioritize sin but even the least of sins puts us in need of a savior and this is why Jesus came.  Jesus most assuredly came to reveal God to us but more specifically He came to offer His morally perfect life as a substitute for all of our moral failures.  The Bible says all of us have sinned.  All of us are liars, and cheats, and thieves and when we stand before God who is perfect and sinless, we will all be judged and condemned.  Jesus is the one who offered himself a Savior for us all.

Vote for someone who offers solutions with confidence and grace.  We live in a country with different worldviews and that division is great.  Vote for a leader who demonstrates wisdom in the solutions he offers and grace in the way he presents himself.  So many people tell me that a humble man cannot be president but honestly, in my Biblical worldview I believe that God gives grace to the humble leader.  Don’t confuse humility with weakness.  Moses was called a humble man yet he led the Israelites for decades.  Jesus, the Son of God, humbled himself.   These men and others have been powerful leaders but their lives and demeanor were peppered with grace and humility.  Listen to the candidates and vote for the one who you believe has wise solutions to many of the problems that weigh on us as a nation.

I know you thought I was going to name a name, but I’ll refrain.  Instead I challenge you to vote intentionally as I delineated above.  Vote wisely.  Vote with forethought and long-range vision. 

"Christians are such hypocrites!"

"Christians are such hypocrites!"  "The church is full of hypocrites!"  As a pastor I've heard those two statements quite a bit over the years.  Maybe you've said them or at least thought them.  I confess I've always wondered why people have said that when Christians have never claimed to be anything but flawed, failed and fallen people.  Our platform of belief begins with a foundational stone of our own sinfulness and wickedness.  However, the other day I had an 'a-ha' moment and I now think I understand why so many think of us as hypocrites.

As followers of Jesus we teach that we should submit to God's will.  We believe that God reveals His nature, character and will in the Bible so we seek to surrender ourselves to what God desires of us.  In other words, when Jesus called us to follow Him we believe He meant for us to live like Him, and more specifically, we believe it meant for us to follow the morality that God has delineated in the Scriptures.  We truly want to live the morality the Bible lays out for us.

But what I just said is really the second half of our message-- the outflow of the first and primary piece.  The central message of a Christian's faith is that he or she is selfish and thus a sinful person.   We are all morally flawed and thus rightly and consequently under the judgment of a righteous God.  You may manage to be more moral than me, but you still fall short of moral perfection-- especially morality as God delineates in His Bible.  Moral failure includes selfishness as lived out in lying, stealing, bitterness, lust and murder.  We tend to compare ourselves and say, "As long as I'm better than most, God will accept me, forgive me, because he obviously grades on a curve."  Unfortunately He doesn't grade on a curve; just one sin is enough to condemn us before this perfect, righteous, loving God.

So the Christian good news begins by understanding the bad-- I need help.  I can't earn God's forgiveness by being better than others.  You may have heard the old joke of the two friends who come upon a grizzly bear and one starts to put on his tennis shoes.  "You can't outrun that bear!" says one friend.  "I don't have to", replies the other.  "All I have to do is outrun you!"  That's not how God's justice works.  The 'grizzly bear' of God's justice will run us all down-- we need a Savior.

The good news the Christian puts his hope in is that God so loved him (and all of us) that He sent a Savior-- Himself.  Jesus as God came and lived a morally perfect life and then gave up that morally perfect life in exchange for my morally sinful and flawed life.  In dying for me, both physically and spiritually, Jesus became my Savior!  Because of Jesus all my sin is forgiven.  Not by my merit.  Not because now I'm perfect but because I trust in Him to be my substitute.  By faith I rely upon His love and His work for me.

Why would anyone believe that?  Really for one reason only.  Because the testimony of many a man and woman is that Jesus proved it by rising from the dead.  They killed him by hanging him on a cross and they buried Him and thought that was that, but history says it wasn't.  On Friday afternoon He dies and on Sunday morning He walks out of the grave.  The resurrection of Jesus, that truth and that reality, changed history without coercion and force.  That truth is still changing men and women's lives today.

We're back full circle to where I started from.  Because Jesus is now my Savior, I want to follow Him.  I want to live as God desires me to live.  I still fall woefully short.  I'm still capable, and even struggle with, wanting to be just as selfish as I ever was.  But nonetheless, God has given me a new heart and His Spirit to help me-- there will be a change.  Not a perfect change, but a change.  I will be more like Jesus.


But here's where I had the 'a-ha' moment-- people outside the church hear us talking about this change and our desire to follow Jesus and be Biblically moral men and women, and without understanding the primary piece, they think that being a Christian simply means seeking to live as moral people.  That conception is reinforced in their minds as they see Christians fight vociferously and politically for Biblical morality.  And then-- then they see us fail.  They watch us fail morally in about every way a person can fail.  They even see those Christians who have been most vocal about God's declared morality fail, or maybe I should say they especially see those who are most vocal fail.  And because they believe the Christian life is merely about living morally-- they see us as hypocrites.  Think about it for a minute; if you thought Christianity was simply about following a moral code, and you saw people who preach and promote that code fail often and openly, wouldn't you think we are all hypocrites too?

So I conclude this note with two challenges.  To the Christ follower I want to urge you to do your best to help people understand the heart of our Christian faith.  It's not about being moral.  We can't be moral so as to earn God's forgiveness or eternal life.  Jesus died to give us what we need-- He rose from the dead to prove He had succeeded.  Be careful not to confuse the message.

Finally, to the one who might be reading this and thinks all Christians are hypocrites, I want you to know that we all agree with you.  We live hypocritically of the morality that we believe God desires of us.  Even now as we follow Jesus we still fail.  We all too often lie, cheat, steal, lust and live selfishly even as we know that is not what God desires of us.  But please understand that is not our central message.  The primal truth we cling to is that in our moral sinfulness, Jesus died for our sins that He might give us freely, by grace through faith, the forgiveness we need.  It's not earned by living to some degree of moral perfection-- its simply received with a grateful heart.  If you've not understood the bedrock truth of the Christian faith, dig in until you do.  You may still reject it, but don't confuse it with mere moralism.