April 2017 - Being Biblical

By nick on Church, Greek, Theology - Leave a comment

Do All Speak in Tongues?

There is a commonly held belief that whenever someone is filled with the Holy Spirit, the initial evidence of this is that they speak in tongues. 1 Corinthians 12 is the key chapter on this issue, and I encourage you to read the whole thing in context. Context alone is enough to make it clear that Paul doesn’t expect everyone who is filled with the Holy Spirit to speak in tongues. He argues that the church is “one body” even though it has “many members”. He compares the different gifts people have to different parts of the body. He writes (verse 15):

If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body.

It’s a metaphor. The implication is that if someone says “because I do not speak in tongues, I do not belong to the church,” that would not make them any less a part of the church. God has given different gifts to different people, so that the church works together as a whole, just as he has given different functions to the hand and the foot, but they work together.
But in spite of the context being so clear, there is still some confusion. In part, this is probably due to people taking 1 Corinthians 13:5 at face value:

By nick on Ethics, Politics - Leave a comment

The Impotence of Secular Christendom

Perhaps the most immoral of all is the injunction to love your enemies. That I will not do. I know who my enemies are. At the moment, the most deadly ones are Islamist theocrats with a homicidal and genocidal agenda. I’m not going to love them, you go love them if you want. Don’t love them on my behalf, I’ll get on with killing them, destroying them, erasing them and you can love them. But the idea that you ought to love them is not a moral idea at all, it’s a wicked idea, and I hope it doesn’t take hold… What a disgusting order, to love those people! Destroy them.
– Christopher Hitchens

This is where the difference between Christianity and mere Secular Christendom shines forth. The Christian says wholeheartedly “we MUST love our enemies! The Lord Jesus loved us when we were his enemies, and he commands us to do likewise!” The secularist who has merely inherited the culture of Christian values finds this infuriating and intolerable.

As Islamic terrorism becomes a primary issue in elections around the world, we need to be reminded that secularism is impotent to address the problem of evil. Both the atheist-left and the atheist-right can offer no solution. A secular society that has inherited Christian values will be much better off than a society without them. But it is not sustainable. When attacked by true evil, the impulse of Secular Christendom is simply to return fire. Only true Christianity gives a basis for facing the evil in the world, addressing it with wisdom and force if necessary, and yet remaining determined to love the people who are doing that evil.