Articles
Humor | Mormons | Pics | Articles | Links
My Missions Trip to the Philippines
My name is Chris Smith. I am 18, and entering my second year of college. This summer, my mom and I went to the Philippines at the invitation of a missionary named Michael O’Hare. For the past 8 years, Mike has been ministering in a city called Oroquieta. He has helped to establish a number of home churches that meet independently on Sunday morning and gather together for a corporate service on Sunday evening.
For the past three years or so, I have been studying the Mormon religion. I had a number of Mormon friends in high school, and I wanted to know how to talk to them. There is a growing Mormon presence in the Philippines, and the Christians there don’t know much about it. Mike had me give a seminar about what the Mormon church believes. I didn’t really encounter any Mormons in Oroquieta, but while we were waiting in the airport for a connecting flight I had the opportunity to witness to about fifteen Mormon missionaries. That made all my preparation more than worth it.
That wasn’t all I did while I was there. Mike arranged a number of opportunities for me to spend time with the youth, and he also arranged for my mom and I to speak in two different high schools. Almost all of them speak perfect English, so we didn’t even need a translator. The youth have their own home church. Mike particularly has a heart for youth. Unfortunately, most of them come from single-parent homes. Very few of them have a father figure in their lives. So a few of the boys have adopted Mike as their father, and even asked him to discipline them if he feels they need it.
I had the chance to go on a retreat with the youth. We went to a waterfall, where we could climb up some high rocks and jump off. It was absolutely beautiful. There was even a vine (not a rope, a vine!) that you could swing on, and drop into the water from about twenty feet in the air. It was a blast. We also went swimming in the ocean a few times, which was as warm as bath water. In fact, all the water there was really warm. And because of the humidity, you don’t even feel cold when you get out. I did plenty of other things with the youth, too, including pushing somebody’s car in the rain to try to get it to start and singing karaoke really loud and really badly for a really long time!
Mike, my mom, and I were probably the only white people within about thirty or forty miles of where we stayed, so people were excited to see us. They were very kind, and everybody treated us like kings. I felt bad to have all these people trying to give me food I really didn’t want (we were always full) when they were so poor that it is difficult for them to feed their own families! Speaking in the high schools was extremely embarrassing. I am not exaggerating when I say that they treated me like a rock star. The girls would literally scream when we walked by. Everybody stared, waved, giggled, and smiled. Once some of them knew my name, it spread like wildfire. Everyone shouted, “Hi, Chris! Hi, Chris!” In one classroom we finished presenting the gospel and then a student asked me to sing a song about Jesus. The request was met with cheers of enthusiasm, and I turned bright red. We made a quick escape.
The highlight of the trip for me was when we visited the mountain people who had never seen foreigners before. We stopped in front of their school near the village so my mom could take a picture of the children. These were like World Vision poster children, all skinny and dressed in rags, yet robed with an aura of innocent sweetness. They stood in stunned silence for a moment. Then as soon as they figured out that my mom wanted to take pictures, they all poured down the hillside like a cascade of falling children. They lined up perfectly, just like somebody had choreographed them. As we drove off to the village, we could see skinny little kids running after us in our fading cloud of dust. They followed us all the way to the village like good little marathon runners, boys and girls alike. When they got there, they just stood in a little huddled mass of kids, aged maybe 4 to 7 years old, staring with wide eyes and open mouths at these strange white-skinned people. I think it made their day when we introduced ourselves and shook all their hands.
The Philippines provide a wonderful opportunity. It is a land
of poverty and need, but also of amazing freedom to share the gospel. They
are especially ready to listen to Americans, because we’re white. And
American money goes so much farther there! The hundred dollars that would
make little difference in an American megachurch could probably fund Mike’s
ministry for a month. I learned a lot while I was there, and I think we accomplished
a lot, too. I hope God gives me the time and money to go back next year.
What Is A Christian?
Before someone can decide to be a Christian, they need to know what a Christian is. They must ask, “Do I want to be a Christian? How do I become a Christian? What is the difference between Christianity and other religions? And for that matter, why do I need a religion at all?” That last question is one voiced by more and more people today. Why religion? What good is it? Religion is something you believe that cannot be proven. It provides a code of conduct, a set of rules. By being a member of a religion and adhering to its strict codes, a believer qualifies himself for some promised benefit. In Hinduism, those who are good enough are born into a better situation in the next life. In other religions, paradise is the ultimate goal. There is, however, little guarantee that any of these rewards really exist. So before examining Christianity, investigators usually reject religion as a whole.
The general format of religion is simple. Religion says, “Here are the rules. Follow them. Here are true principles. Believe them. If you do well enough at it, you win a prize.” It soon becomes clear, when this format is examined, that there are inherent flaws. First of all, in many religions it is humanly impossible to perfectly fill the requirements. Second, there are so many different sets of requirements and sets of beliefs that it is nearly impossible to discern which is the right one. Religion also typically requires belief in some sort of “god” or gods. Most of these gods are pretty silly. They think or act or look like humans. The Greek philosophers correctly pointed out that if there is a higher being, he probably doesn’t look or act like us. They produced some of the harshest criticisms of primitive religions. Xenophanes wrote perhaps the most convincing secular description of what a deity should look like. He said that if there is a god, that god should be an all-encompassing, infinite, indivisible, omnipresent, benevolent being of spirit without any human desires or passions.
With that in mind, it seems that religion is an outdated idea. By Xenophanes’ standards, most religions have an outdated or illogical concept of God. So what’s so special about Christianity? What makes its rules, its beliefs, so much better than any others? Quite simply, Christianity is not a religion. Christianity is a relationship. A direct relationship with the very sort of God Xenophanes wrote about. It is true that Christianity sprang from Judaism, and Judaism had some fairly primitive beliefs that definitely fall into the religion category. So was the development of Christian beliefs influenced by philosophers like Xenophanes? At first glance, the Christian concept of God seems stolen from the Greeks. But it isn’t. A few hundred years before any philosopher wrote, the Jewish Prophets were already condemning Jewish “religion” and promoting a Christian-style relationship. Their ideas, which they claimed to have received directly from the mouth of God, were only much later echoed and confirmed by the philosophers. In fact, consistently through the Old Testament, God’s hand can be seen slowly steering his people away from “religion” and towards “relationship”. The philosophers merely opened people’s minds, for these ideas to finally really take hold. Then came the birth of Christianity.
Who were these prophets and what did they write? One of the first and most famous was King David. He was very into singing, dancing, and praying to God. He wrote in Psalm 51:16-17, “You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” Those are totally revolutionary ideas for a tenth century B.C. author in the unenlightened Middle East. The prophet Jeremiah stated in Jeremiah 8:8 that the Jewish law was essentially worthless, because the “lying pen of the scribes has handled it falsely.” This was an accusation later repeated by early Christians who also said that the purpose of Jewish religious statutes was mostly to compromise. The Jews wanted to perform rituals and feast like every other religion, so God allowed them to do those things as long as they would do them to Him only and not to other gods, and as long as they maintained a relationship with him. Jeremiah also wrote in 7:23, “Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Put your burnt offerings unto your sacrifices, and eat flesh. For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices: But this thing commanded I them, saying, Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people: and walk ye in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well unto you.” Sounds simple enough, right? Well it is. The revolutionary founder of Christianity, Jesus Christ was once asked what the greatest commandment was. He replied, “'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
The bottom line can be easily summarized. Religion as an institution
is fairly worthless. Religion as a relationship makes sense, at least philosophically.
Long before any philosopher defined what did and didn’t make sense in
religion, the Prophets of the Jews defined their own religion. By the time
their religion looked the way they claimed God wanted it to look, it was perfectly
acceptable by most philosophical standards. It was no longer really a religion.
It was a relationship, and one that most of us wouldn’t mind entering.
Reflections on Salvation
How does one become saved? It’s a question that thousands of people struggle with on a daily basis. What do I have to do to become saved? There are many different answers. In Catholic Churches, parishioners are told that they must be baptized, take the eucharist, go to confession. In Mormon churches, people are told that they need to be married in the temple, perform the proper temple rituals, and be initiated into the high priesthood. Protestants, in response, usually insist that salvation is by faith in Jesus Christ alone.
Salvation by faith alone is Biblical, but of course faith is a hard thing to measure. At what point do I have enough faith? And what, exactly, is faith? At what point, really, do I “become saved”? It’s a tough question, but the Bible seems to provide an answer in Romans 10:9. It says, “If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
This is where the sinner’s prayer comes in. We’ve probably all heard it at least once; it’s standard in just about any Protestant church. It goes something like, “Jesus, I know that I am a sinner. I know that you died for me and rose again. Please forgive me of my sins and be lord of my life. Amen.” It is a beautiful, short prayer. Pastors insist that if you just pray this prayer, pray it genuinely and from your heart, you will be saved. This is the confessing with your mouth part, right? If you pray this prayer and really believe in Jesus, you’ll go to heaven. Right?
What exactly are we supposed to confess with our mouths? Is it that we know we are sinners? No; that’s important, but it’s not the confession that Romans 10:9 requires. Is it that we believe in Jesus or that we accept his free gift of salvation? No, that’s still not what Romans 10:9 tells us to confess. Romans tells us very clearly to confess that Jesus is Lord. That Jesus is our Lord. Our personal Lord.
In a way, the sinner’s prayer does this. The sinner asks Jesus to be Lord of his life. That’s all well and good, but this request does not carry a great amount of conviction. It doesn’t sound very firm, very decisive. It makes it sound like the weight is all on Jesus’ shoulders. This just isn’t the case. It is our responsibility to decide—firmly—who will be our Lord.
A confession is a statement. It is not a request. The book of Romans calls upon would-be Christians to make a decision. It calls upon them to make a statement of loyalty. It calls upon them to say aloud, “Jesus is my Lord.” This is forceful. This is decisive. This is a powerful statement, and not one to be made lightly.
When Congress makes a law, the citizens follow it. They do not always do so perfectly. They sometimes break it inadvertently, and they sometimes just get too lazy to follow it to the letter. But in general, they at least make the attempt, because Congress is lord over citizens of the United States.
When we make the statement that Jesus is our Lord, we are committing
to follow his laws. We are committing to obey his will. That’s what
a lord is: a person who has complete authority over those who are subservient
to him. If we make the confession that Jesus is our Lord, it is no idle confession.
If we are not prepared to accept everything that that entails, we are liars.
“Whoa,” you might say. Hold on just a second. This Protestant
thing sounded easy when all it required was saying the sinner’s prayer
and believing in God. But now the very verse that made it sound easy—Romans
10:9—is making it sound like we have to completely surrender every aspect
of our lives to God and start obeying him! What happened to quick and easy
forgive-our-sins-and-let-us-get-on-with-our-lives? What happened to grace?
What happened to the free gift?
Many churches speak of two works of grace: salvation and sanctification.
Salvation forgives our past sins, and sanctification helps us keep from sinning
in the future. But there is only one work of grace, and it’s an all-in-one
package. When we confess that Jesus is our Lord and really mean it, he empowers
us through his Holy Spirit to begin to make our confession a reality. This
is grace! This is freedom! Though we have rejected God all our lives, he allows
us to come and be healed, to come and be sanctified. He allows us to change
our loyalties. He allows us to cast off sin’s yoke of slavery and become
full-fledged citizens of the kingdom. As citizens we’re expected to
obey the laws, but we have a freedom that no slave of sin ever experienced
before!
Jesus is our Lord. We should carefully ponder its meaning. We should weigh
the gravity of those words. We should decide, not whether we are capable of
following through with it—for the Holy Spirit takes care of that—but
whether we are willing. And then, when we have decided that we are indeed
willing, we should say it. We should say it out loud. We should tell our friends
and our family, “Jesus is my Lord! Do you have any idea what that means?”
A Biblical Model for Relationships
My old pastor, Rick Bazacos, says that since God is in me, if I make out with somebody, then God is also making out with them. I’m going to take that comparison in a different direction.
If God is in me, and my relationship with someone is broken, then to some extent the relationship of that person and God is also broken. Let me give a practical example. Let’s say Tom really respects Rick because Tom knows Rick is a godly man. When Tom looks at Rick, he sees a person who is living all the principles of Christianity. In a way, he associates Rick with God. Not that he thinks Rick is God (that’d be a tough one for poor Rick here) but that when he thinks of Rick, he immediately thinks of God and Christianity. That’s a really powerful thing. And it’s something Rick can be proud of.
Now let’s say Tom has made some mistakes, and hasn’t been real nice to Rick. So Rick comes over and says, “Hey Tom, you’re a big fat jerk. I’m tired of putting up with your stuff, so I’m just not gonna talk to you. I’m not going to associate with you at all. In fact, I don’t even want to LOOK at you anymore.” That hurts. Tom’s certainly not going to come back to this church. And not only has Tom’s opinion of Rick dropped, his opinion of the change God has caused in Rick has dropped. Tom starts to think, “gee, God didn’t change this guy so much after all. Not only is there a breach between Rick and Tom, but that also causes somewhat of a breach between God and Tom.
My firend Tami has a new fiancé. His name is Jeff. Tami is actually the reason that Jeff is a Christian. He saw God in her, and he was really impressed. He decided there was something real about this Christianity thing. Now, they are going to have a long and happy marriage. But just for the sake of argument, what if they divorced in a couple years? Jeff would probably never come back to church. That’s just the nature of relationships. He has learned to associate Tami with God and Christianity. When his relationship with her is broken, so is his relationship with God, especially until he gets to know God well enough that that relationship can stand on its own.
Now, I can already hear the rationalizing process going on in everybody’s brains. There’s a very big what-if question that needs to be answered here. “What if there is a person that I just can’t put up with anymore? They’ve messed with me one too many times, and they’re starting to screw up my life and all my other relationships. When do I cut my losses and put a stop to it?” I know I’ve had those kinds of people in my life. I’ve had broken relationships like this. I had a friend a while back named Dwight, and I really didn’t want to be around him. He started to be really obnoxious, and eventually I kinda gradually stopped calling him back or spending time with him. There was no big blowout, but I’m pretty sure he knew I was breaking the relationship. And on the two or three occasions since then that I have talked to him, he made it clear that he was hurt by that. I feel bad for hurting him. I know that he saw God in me, and I may have even hurt his relationship with God. But I also feel justified because it seemed like it was time for us to go our separate ways. So what should I have done? How could I have handled this situation any better?
Jesus gives us an answer. He says that if your brother sins against you, first you should go to him peacefully, without getting mad or yelling and screaming or anything and tell him about the problem you’re having, and see if you can get him to stop. See if you can bring harmony back to the relationship. If that doesn’t work, and the problem continues, Jesus says, alright then seek mediation. Take one or two other people. Take the pastor, take a mutual friend, take someone you both respect. A neutral party who isn’t going to favor either side. Talk it over, try to fix things. If that doesn’t work, the last resort is that you take the person and the problem before the whole council. Get together a bunch of elders from your church. In our church, we’d probably have to go with all the adults in the church. Go to conflict management at school. I’m serious, I know people think conflict management is for sissies or for people who want to kill each other, but this is a Biblical principle.
If the person just won’t listen, and they are still creating problems, and you’ve done everything that you can possibly do, then you can walk away from the relationship, right? Jesus says treat them like a tax collector. In Jesus’s time, everybody hated the tax collectors. They lied and cheated and stole. So doesn’t that mean walk away completely and don’t have anything to do with them? Does that sound like a Jesus statement to you? No. Who did Jesus spend most of his time with? The sinners and tax collectors! He ate dinner with them all the time. That doesn’t mean they were his friends. He was not close to them. He put distance between himself and them. But he didn’t hate them or treat them like they didn’t exist, either. He was always calling them to change their ways and come back. His door was always open to these people.
So how do we apply that? If the person refuses to repair the relationship, then it’s broken. There’s nothing you can do, really. Then you can kind of disassociate yourself from the person. But don’t hate them, don’t shun them completely. You put that distance between the two of you to prevent further conflict, not because you are angry or bitter. Make sure your heart is right before you do this. And make sure the other person knows that lines of communication are still open if they decide to be reconciled.
This is the Biblical model for relationships.