CYPRESSWOOD CHURCH OF CHRIST

October 19, 2008

www.geocities.com/adon77373/cypresswoodbulletin.htm

http://geobme.blogspot.com

www.cypresswoodchurchofchrist.com

PRAYERS AND PETITIONS:

God’s will for our congregation Various relatives, friends, and co-workers

Our nation, military, and leaders The persecuted church

HEALTHY BODIES, FAT MINDS

“For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come” (1 Timothy 4:8).

We are a health and exercise conscious people. We like food but not fat. We look for quick fixes to lose weight, yet want to eat all our favorite foods no matter how many calories involved. Whole industries of weight loss and exercise have arisen in the last several decades. Yet we still like food. We go to the doctor to keep well, a good thing, but get aggravated when he tells us we need to lose weight. Not to downgrade any of this, Paul does state that exercise has its limits.

It is the Hebrew writer who states a little something about food, not what we eat, but what we are fed spiritually. In commenting about their lack of spiritual growth, the writer tells the Hebrews that “You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil” (Hebrews 5:12-14). He goes on to tell them to move beyond the basics, the ABC’s in the New English Bible, and the elementary teachings in Today’s New International Version. They needed to move from baby food to meat and potatoes.

There are three categories of food that we can use to relate to our spiritual lives. The first is baby food, the milk of the word. This is found in the young, whether in youth or in new converts. They need to know the basics. When I first became a Christian, I spent time looking and studying the basics. I looked at the plan of salvation and the organization of the church. I spent time understanding the history of churches of Christ. But I also had a desire to know more. It is fine to go over the basics every once in a while but as a steady diet, it becomes a problem. We do not feed our children milk and baby food year after year. We want them to grow and they need other foods to do so.

Many people are comfortable with baby food though. I have read preachers who say that we need to go back to the basics; that doing so would prevent many of the problems we are having today in the church. But I submit that the reason we are having those problems is because we have fed people too much baby food. People want to hear what they are comfortable with because anything else is questionable. A preacher classmate of mind told me of a situation he was in. After each sermon, an elder would come up to him and say, “That’s just the way I always heard it.” Time after time he would say that. Then one Sunday, he came up and said, “That’s not the way I heard it.” Shortly after that my friend moved. We have all heard the stories in one form or another. ‘I learned this when I was twenty and I haven’t studied it again in the last thirty years; no need to do so.”

The problem however is that baby food does not cause mature growth. Many faced with difficult situations or ideas have trouble dealing with them. We won’t study difficult texts that challenge our theology because we might find that we were wrong in some way. When we read through the book of Job, we see Job and his friends having a theology that stated basically that it is the good who are blessed by God and the sinful who are cursed. After Job’s sufferings, he realized that something was wrong with either himself or his theology. The experience challenged him unlike his three friends. In the end, God tells Job to pray for his friends, for they did not speak what was right about God.

Then there is spiritual junk food. We all like a candy bar every once in a while but a steady diet of bad food is unhealthy. Spiritual junk food is in the same category. This is seen in the following illustration. After a guest preacher had finished speaking, a sister walked by and said, “What a great gospel sermon!” What did the preacher preach? He spent his time talking about how others were wrong and we were right in our traditions, that we had the right forms and did them in the right ways. To her, gospel was justifying her beliefs, not the good news of Jesus Christ, something that was not stated in the sermon at all.

Spiritual junk food is seen in how we speak about others we do not agree with, labeling and ridiculing them because we do not agree with them. It is seen in gossip, misrepresenting views, in guilt by association, in the elevation of traditions above scripture. Church politics become more important than what scripture teaches and how to relate to one another. He who yells the loudest is the winner, as if winning and losing were the basis for fellowship. We preachers have been guilty of feeding too much junk food to our people, then get upset when they question some of our menu choices. This has caused far more problems than many would admit.

What is needed is the meat and potatoes of the word. As we mature in Christ, we are challenged by scripture and by life. Events, culture, and people question us and we look into scripture to see what has been written. Here are some examples that might challenge us.

We might be challenged by how we see God. We know that no one can see God and live yet in Exodus 24, Moses, Aaron and his sons, and the seventy elders of Israel saw God and lived. God cannot be approached by sin because of His holiness yet the Accuser comes into His presence in Job 1 and 2, and something that is really challenging, God came in the flesh in Jesus into a sinful world. Many find God harsh in the Old Testament in comparison to the loving Father of the New Testament. We have a view of God that He is loving yet when we read Amos 4, we are challenged by His judgments on Israel.

There are those who are afraid to question God yet Job and David are among those who did so. We read the laments of the Psalms and see the Psalmists challenging God to answer or to do something including killing one’s enemies. People ask questions of the text. After Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden, they entered a more difficult land. What was going on in that land? Were there other people there? We are challenged to look at suffering in different ways, rejoicing in it (Romans 5:1-5). We are to pray for our enemies; so when was the last time a preacher suggested this and then prayed for Islamic extremists? What does it mean to take up our cross and follow Jesus? Should we emphasize the plan of salvation or the Man of salvation? How do we see events such as war, weather situations, and any number of other things?

Jim McGuiggan ask other questions that are food for thought. God told Israel not to harvest the edges of their fields but doesn’t explain what the edge is or who the poor are. He forbids work on the Sabbath but doesn’t define work. Who are the aged that we are to respect and what is modesty? We are to obey the government, but in everything? Who are the weak? Jesus said two prayers at the Supper but must we do that? Covetousness is forbidden but not explain in full (1). Many of these are disputable but must we separate if we do not agree on exactly the form we are to follow? Or can we agree that there are different ways of looking at it and work out our unity in the Spirit (2), realizing that we do not have to agree on every little detail?

These are but a few of the challenges we face, many that will not be answerable. God has revealed some of Himself to us in scripture and through Jesus, but there is still much that is mysterious of Him. This should not been seen as discouraging but as wonder. We have a God who is beyond us and we worship and praise Him for that.

We learn and grow by study, by asking questions of others, and reading, as well as by experience. I have enjoyed our Bible classes because we are open and willing to ask questions and discuss them. Not everyone is able to handle such and prefer to be lectured to by a teacher. Like physical growth and exercise, this can be tough. There will be challenges to our faith, challenges to our beliefs, some of which will cause heartaches and pain. Christians who are strong can work their way through these with God’s help, but it requires a healthy diet. So exercise and eat right, and enjoy the Christian walk.

George B. Mearns

(1) Jim McGuiggan, Interpretation and Unity, copied 8/4/2008 www.jimmcguiggan.com