Sermon Notes April 23rd 2022

Can You Be a Conservative Christian?    April 23-2022

If I were to ask you if you were conservative or progressive, most of you, without thinking, would answer? Conservative. That’s part of Christianity, right? Well, no, not really for more reasons than one.

For starters, in your mind those words are political, right? Also, no, they are philosophic words that have been purposefully hijacked by politics. Words change over time, out of necessity and there’s nothing particularly wrong with that. Think about the word ‘album’ for instance the meaning has changed in the past 50 years, and it’s not a bad thing. Some words though, have been hijacked, purposefully misused to catch people. Conservatism and Progressivism are such words, they have been used to make ‘camps’ of people to pit against other camps of people and keep the political machine rolling. Today, I want to talk about these two terms, not for their political meaning but, rather for their philosophical meanings. I think you’ll be surprised at some assumptions that you have. Also, I want to show you that today, the day after the Passover festival has specific importance, or significance to these two words.

Just last evening ended an annual festival commemorating God’s deliverance of the children of Israel from their 430-year slavery in Egypt. We’re all aware of the story, God spends at least 80 years preparing the circumstances to free Israel. It really does start that early in the story because the birth of Moses and his being taken in by Pharoah’s daughter is a GIANT part of the story.

In summary, the story is that God miraculously frees this entire group of people, a nation within a nation. He’s going to bring them to a promised land, a beautiful and rich land, and He’s going to make them a special people, HIS special people. He leads them out, and across the sea, performing miracle after miracle, and then, just a matter of days later, at the threshold of the promise land, the stop.

God, enraged by their rejection and curses them to wander for 40 years and die in the wilderness. What an ending, don’t you think?

That strange and abrupt ending to the story leaves a lot of questions. We know about the holy days of course, we’ve practiced the remembrance of first half of the story, but do we understand WHY it ended the way it did? We know, or at least we think we know, about the strange rituals we practice and the symbolism. We know about the weird bread and the symbolism. One could even exaggerate a little bit and say we understand ALL the details; but do we understand the point of the story?

Back to our two words, conservative and progressive. While the world is certainly changing, the majority of religious people from most faiths consider themselves more-or-less conservative.

The word ‘conserve’, means to keep, to protect, to hold. That’s the technical idea of conservatism. 

The practical application of conservatism, however, as in politics, is different. Today the word means something like, ‘a desire to get back to the good old days’. Not far from Merle Haggard’s lyric, ‘back when the country was strong…’.

The application of conservatism in politics is to ‘get back to basics’. 

This idea, this use of conservation is a fundamental aspect of the ideology the Churches of God profess. Terms like ‘apostolic Christianity’, ‘back to basics’, and even that term we know so well ‘the trunk of the tree’ are this type of conservatism. 

A snippet of 1 Thessalonians 5 is often used as a proof-text for this belief, when Paul said, ‘hold fast to what it good’.

Today I challenge you to explore this topic with me to see if the idea of conservatism is a biblical concept. 

I want to ask you a series of questions today, with no intention of giving you the answer. I can’t tell you the answer because that would be the literal definition of propaganda. Instead, I want to ask you these questions, highlight some biblical stories and hopefully cause you to formulate an opinion.

The Title, if you like those, is -Can You Be A Conservative Christian?-

The first question I’ll ask today is:

1. What part of human society do you want to conserve?

The most common points of conservatism in the US have to do with things like returning the US to a Christian republic. Christian prayers in school, the ten commandments posted in public buildings and court houses, Judeo Christian ethics in the justice system as well as business practices, etc. 

Of course, we would love all those things, we agree with those concepts but there is a problem. Have such things ever existed? Some of them have been tried, some of them had some success but, has society ever been so good that it’s worth saving? Has it ever been perfect?

Do you know the 10 commandments were still on display in marble within the Supreme court in 1978 during Roe V. Wade?

Do you know that even to this day, adultery is illegal, and the punishment includes jail time, in Washington DC?

As for Judeo-Christian ethics in business, have you ever noticed the last names of the founders of the countries’ largest corporations and businesses?

ASSUMING Ezekiel 28 is talking about the fall of lucifer, that I must remind you is only an assumption no matter how convincing of one it is. If that is about the introduction to the Devil, is that before or after man creates society?  I don’t think relying on an assumption is even necessary in this context though. Has ANY society actually been righteous? 

I’m not at all suggesting nothing good has ever happened, but has enough good happened to say, ‘this is the pinnacle of righteousness, we shall henceforth do likewise’? 

When Paul says, ‘Prove all things and hold fast to what is good, does he not imply that that which isn’t good should be let go?

So, just what part do you want to save? If you only want to save the ‘good bits’, you cannot do that by staying in the same place. Instead, you have to progress.

2. Where is the Ultimate Good in the Christian adventure? Is it behind you or in front of you?

While I am of both a ‘Kingdom Now’, and a ‘Future Kingdom’ persuasion, there is CLEAR biblical evidence that ULTIMATE GOOD is something we have not YET attained. Ultimate Good is something in the future. What do you do if you’re in a place that’s NOT where you want to be? Do you not leave that place and go towards where you want to be? 

What about in your own life? You have problems don’t you, things that you know are wrong that you are wanting or trying to fix, right? Have you attained all knowledge and skill? Well obviously, not! You must grow more. The answer to your problems is always to be found in front of you, not behind you.

You have to take what you’ve ‘known’ and add to it and sort through it. Even the human existence is a process. You are born as an infant, tiny, unable to walk, unskilled with your fingers, unable to control your urges… then you grow... the process of Maturity. We understand that about people don’t we… What about God? 

Does that pattern we were made after not do the same thing? Tell me, If God were conservative, as we use the word, would we exist? Didn’t He have it all without us; weren’t those the Good old days? Did God not once exist BEFORE all sin?

3. Are we supposed to ‘prove ALL things’ or ‘prove some things’’?

Most of you know I’m a big psychology buff, for those that don’t it’s one of my favorite subjects. 

It is an indisputable fact that new knowledge is impossible to avoid. The universe is not a vacuum, and you therefore cannot avoid coming into possession of new knowledge and as sentient beings we have to do something with that new information. 

At the beginning of the 20th century Religion, Education, Politics, and Business were all in motion. They had momentum, things were the way they were, and they had been that way for about a century. Then WW1 happened, then the Great Depression, Then WW2, Then the Nuclear age, then The Cold war, etc. The entire world changed; NEW information existed. There were things that existed that did not exist before. Masses of refugees and displaced peoples, Remnants of physical oppression, new diseases, new memories, new animosities (think of new feelings towards Germans after WW2). New technologies! Society now had new information, new circumstances and it all had to be processed. 

Despite the clunky, and very imperfect way it was implemented, fields like Business, Politics and Education all processed this new world and adapted to fit the new situation. The same can’t be said of Christianity. In fact, Christianity seemed to double down, because during this time fundamentalist groups of every flavor sprouted all over the globe; something we, here in this room are products of.

If we’re going to use 1 Thessalonians 5:21 as a proof-text of anything, let’s actually give it our attention.

What does it mean to ‘prove all things and hold fast to what is good’? First the statement implies that all things must be considered. Second it implies that distinction between good and bad should be made, Thirdly, it implies that you keep what is good and discard what is not. 

In my last message I made the case that the Bible was written in a language we don’t speak, a couple weeks ago Blake mentioned the bible was written FOR you but not TO you. I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but the Bible was written in a different time and place and culture.

There are things that did not exist then that do exist now. Those things need to be reckoned with. 

That DOES NOT MEAN we should become the church that allows everything and does away with the concept of right and wrong. It doesn’t mean that we should be accepting of everything that comes along as being ok.

What 1 Thessalonians 5 does mean, is that we cannot stay the same. We have to process every new situation, every new circumstance, and pick out what is good and dispense with what is not.

If we just hold on to what we currently have or what we had in the 30s, or 80s, or whatever the good old days are for you, we’ll be ‘holding fast’ failure.

Let me show you how that is.

Here’s two examples of things that churches of God, specifically from Herbert Armstrong have been conservative with, I think you’ll see the problem.

First, the concept of discernment. 

Discernment is the ability to tell the difference between things, or the ability to distinguish between things. All joking aside, we are horrible at it. It’s a skillset we were not taught. Mr. Armstrong had a quaker background and lived during a very black-and-white era. It doesn’t take a whole lot of reading from his letters, booklets and autobiography to learn that the man was NOT a preacher of Nuance. In his writing, at least, there is only good and evil, left and right, right and wrong, etc. Today we call that Dogma and it’s humorous, we make caricatures of cowboy’s saying, ‘its my way or the highway’. 

Because of, or at least in conjunction with this black-and-white view, we were NOT taught about discernment.  The problem is that while Right and Wrong are eternal concepts, the world we live in is not static and is constantly changing. 

The ‘world’ of Mr. Armstrong is NOT the world of today. So many things exist today that did not exist when the Worldwide Church of God made ‘determinations’ on what activities were right or wrong. Even the concept of asking the ministry or HQ to make a determination, which is in many cases what we were taught, is the antithesis of discernment. 

Rather than discern, we were taught to defer to authority. Nearly 100 years later and the scattered COGs are somewhat identifiable by the degree that they defer personal decisions to authority. 

We have conserved the black and white world view.

Hebrews 5:11

11About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.12For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, 13for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. 14But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.

The author of Hebrews is saying in effect, I’m trying to teach you difficult and important things and despite your training, you can’t discern! 

Conserving a belief that every decision of importance needs to be deferred to authority and that the answer is black and white, is an obstacle to being a Christian. You here in this particular congregation are less than most practiced in deference to authority, but I know so many of you on the webcast who, like me, have a background in very authoritarian groups.

  

Because we have continued to fail at discernment, here’s another thing we have conserved to our detriment.

Over the last couple of years, because of the type of projects I've been involved with, I have found myself working with a lot of homosexuals. Because of our working relationship, I have spent a lot of time in conversation with them. As is my custom conversation nearly always strays from work onto more important things. Curiously, I’ve found a common thread. This may not be a global universal, but it’s a yet-unbroken rule in my acquaintances. 

In all my experience, they have many things in common, but 3 stand out.

1. A religious upbringing and a desire to be moral

2. They were unimpressed with churches and found them impotent. Unable to make a desirable offer. Peter following christ.

3. They rebelled against ‘normal’ because of the blatant hypocrisy of religion.

Now, it’s easy for us to think, ‘oh that’s interesting.’ and then shelve it and never think about again. Because we were taught NOT to discern. 

Obviously, the Bible says homosexuality is a sin, so...that’s that. 

I really, really want to challenge some assumptions we have about this subject. 

We, in the COGs, and Christianity in general exhibit blatant hypocrisy about this subject.  For some reason we think some sins are worse than other sins. Is Homosexuality a sin worse than adultery? Is it worse than having children out of wedlock? Is it worse than slander? Is it a worse sin than forcibly divorcing people? I ask that because have the COGs, and by extension We the patrons EVER been without sins of our own? Obviously not. Yet we really appreciate grace, and patience towards us. Those of you who have children, when one of them does something wrong do you write them off as lost?

Do you know, that in all my dealings with COGs, not a one that I am aware of has any sort of project to reach to this part of society? In fact, most have just doubled down on the ‘the bible says it’s wrong’ line and make tv and radio shows that only offer condemnation of the sin and no hope for the sinner. Have we not, in practice, decided to preach the Gospel to the whole world, ‘except...’?

There is a trait you can see about God that’s consistent through all the stories about Him. That is that He speaks in YOUR language, not the other way around. For instance, the first Pentecost after Christ’s death, Peter is preaching and the whole crowd here’s in their own language, not the other way around. 

There’s a denomination or two today that want to ‘speak in tongues’ as if there is a special language that God speaks in, but that’s entirely unbiblical. God speaks in YOUR language. He also gives instruction and correction that fits what you know and understand. God interacts with you in YOUR culture. I think we’ve seen that so many times in the past few sermons. 

What about the homosexual community today in the year 2022? Do we write them off as lost souls?

Now, does that mean we institute a come-as-you-are policy of no-judgement and rip the pages out from our bibles that deal with the subject? NO! Of course not, we have to discern! We have got to progress from black-and-white to something like full color. We have to practice judgement and discernment in dealing with this new phenomenon. Be warned, we WILL get it wrong from time to time. There certainly will be times we’ll be able to look back along the way and say ‘that could have been handled much better’

... but we still have to progress. There’s a large and growing group of people that need to be reached and if WE don’t learn to reach them, they MIGHT be lost in this life, and it WILL be on our hands.

That’s just two things, what else are we conserving?

4. Last question: Why did Israel wander in the desert for 40 years?

I said there was a connection between today, the day after the Passover festival, and this topic of Conservative vs Progressive; here it is.

God led Israel out of Egypt, not by their might but by God’s divine interference. They were freed from Slavery, not just of labor, but hunger, infanticide, and poverty. The night before they left every first-born of man and animal died in the land, except theirs.

By the symbolic blood of the Passover lamb, their physical lives were extended, by NOT being ended. They were the exception, not the rule.

That could have been the whole story, but it wasn’t.

God freed them and brought them directly into a desert. That’s not an accident of bad planning. It's more that any time you leave the ‘known’ you must cross a desert. 

They, like Abraham had to leave the known world and go somewhere that they DIDNT know. The first thing you see, if you’re attentive, when you seek something new is ignorance. Think about when you get a glimpse of a new hobby or sport that catches your attention... what do you know about it? Nothing right? You’re painfully aware that you don’t know enough about it, so you research it and slowly you know something new. It is a fact of life, that in between where you are and where you want to be is a desert. Just like he did with Abraham, God led Israel through the ‘waters of baptism’ as Paul reckoned the Red Sea, through the desert to the mountain of God. There, God offered them new understanding. He offered them a covenant, the same covenant in fact He previously gave Abraham.

But they rejected it. They said, ‘we don’t want you to talk to us, we want you to talk to Moses and then he can talk to us”.

So frustrated, God offered them a different and far inferior covenant, which they grudgingly accepted.

So, they spend a few days building all the devices of the covenant, and then march out ready to get what was theirs.

Mere days after leaving slavery, experiencing miracles, crossing the desert, meeting and talking to God, they arrive at the threshold of the promised land.

There they are, Freed, Sanctified, Led, Promised and what do they do?

They stop... and send in spies.

Despite miracle after miracle, and proof after proof, they send in spies because they’re not sure it’s safe to go forward.

The spies go in and search the land and they find it is, indeed, a land flowing with milk and honey, there’s food and healthy land. There’s abundance and majesty, but there’s also giants, and walled cities and beasts.

So the spies, save two, give the people a bad report and say, ‘we can’t do it’. It’s interesting that they didn’t say God can’t bear it, they said ‘we’ can’t bear it. So, all the people have a mental breakdown. They lose all hope, they lose all perspective, all history, all anticipation of greatness... they just break down.

3 times, in just a matter of days, Israel rejected God. 1st at the Red Sea when they made a delegation to Go back to Egypt, 2nd At Sinai when they refused a 1-on-1 covenant and instead chose to have Moses an intermediary, then right at the border of the promise land.

God says in effect, ‘that’s it’. 

That’s why Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10:5 “for God was not pleased with them and left their bodies scattered in the wilderness’.

That’s why they spent 40 years in the desert. It was not the plan; they wandered because they rejected the plan.

What about you and me today? The day after the Passover festival. We’ve experienced the symbolism of Our debt being paid, we’ve experienced the symbolism of leaving Egypt, we’ve experienced the symbolism of getting rid of sin and putting on righteousness, we’ve also participated in the new covenant by taking part in Christ’s life and death that includes the command Love our human brothers the same way he did, and go into the world and preach the Gospel unto every creature. He prayed the night before he was crucified right after instituting those symbol of bread and wine, that we not be taken out of the world, but that we be protected and empowered. 

Will we do it, or will we just stick to what we know?

Despite all the good that come from our history in the churches founded by Mr. Armstrong, there is a very strong feeling taught in the COGs that the world is a dangerous place and that we need to isolate from the world and stay together. No matter how much we as individuals here believe it, we were all taught a HEAVY diet of isolationism, we were also taught that the Kingdom of God was something only in the future. We all see the world more-or-less from that assumption. 

Some have gotten past that, but not all. I have friends who are terrified of the world. To them it’s just too dangerous to mingle in the world, someone might offer you an idea that will lead you astray. Well, you know what? 

The world IS a dangerous place. There ARE giants, giants of political and financial strength and influence. 

There ARE high walled and fortified cities, like culture, politics and bureaucracy. 

There ARE beasts of subtle ideas and distractions, but that’s not all there is.

Are there not also fields ripe for harvest? 

 John 4:31

31Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” 32But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” 33So the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?” 34Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. 35Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest. 36Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. 37For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ 38I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”

Is the field we need to harvest not the world? Matthew 28:18

18And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. 

And what does it say at the end of that verse?

And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

The wandering in the wilderness happened because Israel would not progress. They were content to be miserable so long as they didn’t have to change.  So many groups today want to hold on to the past. They say things like ‘we just need to prepare the bride’, or ‘we need to stick to the trunk of the tree, because if you go out on twiggy doctrines, you’ll fall out of the tree’, and we just have to hold on to the truth once and for all delivered. That’s NOT the offer that was presented to us today. 

We have a mission, that mission is to be in the world. Not of the world, but IN the world, producing fruit IN the world.

Just like Israel who was supposed to cross the Jordan and be a model nation; not by our might, but by grace, our debt is paid, our chains loosened, we are figuratively at the threshold, and our mission and promise lie just on the other side... 

Are we too scared to accept it?

Matthew 25:14 

Have you ever heard the business expression ‘you have to spend money to make money’? That servant that ‘immediately went out and traded’ his master’s money took a massive risk. Think about that for a bit, because this is no small concept, that man risked losing his masters money on the faith that the master was MORE interested in the ‘doing business’ than the money.

The other servant who buried the money missed the entire purpose for his existence! He existed, as a servant of the master FOR THE PURPOSE of doing work for the master… HIS JOB was to do the master’s work. 

There is work to do. We have the tools, we have the money, we even have the assurance that God IS with us. We have the down payment of the Covenant, the Holy Spirit. 

Numbers 13:30

"...and Caleb quieted the people in the sight of Moses and said 'let us go up into the land at once, for we are well able to take it."

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