Author Archives: alanconrow

How accurate do your beliefs have to be to go to heaven?

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On Facebook the other day a friend posted a link to the poem “When I say am a Christian”. The poem was attributed to Maya Angelou. After reading the poem, I was deeply moved and just about to “share” the link. But then my eyes caught a glimpse of a “related article” by snopes.com. I clicked on the snopes’ link and to my disappointment learned that the poem was not written by the late Maya Angelou.

Now the posting from my friend was a harmless mistake. But that got me thinking, what did Maya Angelou actually believe? Did she go to heaven?

Turns out Maya Angelou was part of the Unity Church. You can watch her talk with Oprah about it here. And you can find out what the Unity Church believes here…

If you clicked on the links above,  you many have noticed that what the Unity Church believes about Jesus is very different than what orthodox Christians believe about Jesus.  But does that matter?

How accurate does a person’s  beliefs have to be to go heaven? Or to put it another way, what exactly does a person need to believe about Jesus, in order to be saved by Jesus?

In the Bible

In the Bible, there was one person who surely had a minimal understanding of who Jesus was. Yet we know that  he went to heaven. The man met Jesus the last day of his life. He was one of two criminals sentenced to death, and crucified next to Jesus.

The story takes place in Luke 23:32-43. Luke writes:

32 Two other men, both criminals, were also led out with him to be executed. 33 When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him there, along with the criminals—one on his right, the other on his left. 34 Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” And they divided up his clothes by casting lots…39 One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” 40 But the other criminal rebuked him. “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence? 41 We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.”42 Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” 43 Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

On the last day of his life the nameless criminal put his faith in Jesus and was promised entrance into paradise.

But what exactly did he believe about Jesus?

At the very least the criminal had three beliefs about Jesus:

1.  Jesus was a sinless man sent from God– Don’t you fear God (v.40)…We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.”(v.41)

2.  Jesus was a king Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” (v.42)

3.  Jesus was able to save him –“Jesus, remember me…”(v.42)

There was a lot the criminal did not know about Jesus. He didn’t know that Jesus was the second person of the Trinity. He likely did not comprehend the duel natures of Jesus. He likely knew none of Jesus’ parables. Or Jesus’ teaching concerning the Old Testament Law.

In the moments just before his death all he knew was that Jesus was the Messiah (God’s holy “sent one”), the Lord (king over of all) and the Savior (the one who could save him from the consequences of his sin).

This was all Jesus had revealed to him. But it was enough to ignite his faith, and cause a response. It was enough for the criminal to be welcomed into heaven. (v.43)

 What about Maya and us?

I don’t know if Maya Angelou believed that Jesus was the Messiah, her Lord, and her Savior. I pray she did. Because without trusting in the divine authority and saving work of Jesus, we all are like that criminal hanging next to Jesus on the cross- a condemned man about to face the  judgement of God, for the sins committed against God.

But the good news is that Jesus cares about condemned criminals (like you, me, and Maya).  And he is eager to invite even criminals into paradise.  That’s why he has revealed himself to us as the Messiah, the Lord, and the Savior.

For if these beliefs are the only beliefs we have about Jesus, they are enough to cause our hearts to repent.  Thy are enough for us to put our trust in him.  And they will be enough for each of us, on the day of our death, to hear his words, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

 

 

 

When debate is unnecessary…

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I love a good debate. But sometimes debate is unnecessary. Sometimes just letting another person talk will expose the absurdity of their beliefs.

Such is the case in this great exchange between comedian Jon Stewart and biologist and notable atheist Richard Dawkins.

 

Even if I was not a Christian, I think there are at least four assertions from Richard Dawkins I  would  find incredibly hard to swallow:

1. Life progressed from a self-replicating gene (of unknown origins).

2. We exists, simply because of statistical  probability (“a stupefying rare event”).

3. All religion is destructive.

4. Morality is constructed (and we’re more moral than we used to be).

 

Call me crazy but I think it makes far more sense to believe four counter assertions:

1. An all-powerful God created life.

2. We exist because God made us for himself to enjoy him and his creation.

3. Religion when it reflects the heart of God is good.

4. Morality is a reflection of the character of God and how he has ordered the world.

 

Richard Dawkins is attributed with saying, “By all means let’s be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.”

Yes. I could not agree more.

 

 

 

Jesus’ Response To Our Post-Chrisitan Culture

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Today there is a widening gap between the Christian worldview and the surrounding culture. This tends to make a lot of Christians nervous. We don’t like that things are no longer the way they used to be. But even in our “post-Christian” culture Jesus still has a way for his followers to not only influence the culture, but to redeem it, and bring people to faith who live in it.

What is Jesus’ plan?

His plan is to engage the “post-Christian” culture in the same way he and his followers engaged the “pre-Christian” culture.

Robert Lewis in his book, The Church of Irresistible Influence: Bridge-Building Stories to Help Reach Your Community,
details this plan well. He writes:

The New Testament church shared many cultural similarity with our own. It too lived in a world filled with skeptics. For a number of reasons, the lifeless gods and goddesses of Greeks and Romans became less and less a prevailing force in the lives of the ancients. As economic prosperity flourished, the souls of every day men and women increasingly descended into a meaningless poverty.

Enter the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, the living proof of God. Enter Christians who embraced the Word and, like their Lord, lived it out in word and deed–proof positive to a once proud and now decaying culture that there was, in fact, a better, nobler life. Proclamation was more a matter of essence–in life and death–than it was an enunciation of words. Believers stood firm, often with great sacrifice, in good works anchored by the exhortations that now flow from the pages of the New Testament:

Let Everyone See Your Good Deeds

In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven. (Matthew 5:16)

Love Your Enemies, Do Good to Them

Do unto other what you would have them do to you. If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even  sinners do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full.  But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High , because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. (Luke 6:31-35)

It Is More Blessed to Give

In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” (Acts 20:35)

Overcome Evil with Good

On the contrary: “If you enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head”. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.(Romans 12:20-21)

Do Good to All People

Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people. (Galatians 6:9-10)

 Created to Do Good Works

For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (Ephesians 2:10)

Do Not Grow Weary of Doing Good

But as for you, brethren, do not grow weary of doing good. (2 Thessalonians 3:13)

Be Rich in Good Deed

Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life. (1 Timothy 6:17-19)

 

The method should be clear. They way Jesus and his followers engaged their cultural was by doing good–lots of good.

What was the result of the early church’s relentless focus on doing good for all those around them?

Robert Lewis tells us:

With lives intertwined with proclamation and incarnation, those first believers effectively penetrated the empty hedonism of the ancient world. And no matter how reactive the pagan world–first with skepticism, then with isolation, and finally with the sword of brutal persecution–these bridges of proof, anchored in good works, convinced more and more to walk over into eternal life. It is estimated the early church grew at an astounding 40 percent growth rate per decade.

Quoting historian Michale Green, Robert Lewis then points out:

The link between holy living and effective evangelism could hardly be made more effectively. In particular, Christians stood out for their chastity, their hatred of cruelty, their civil obedience, good citizenship…Such lives made a great impact.

 

Robert Lewis wants readers to understand that we are not the first Christians to live in a culture that does not share our beliefs.  This may be a change that at times is hard to accept. But we have no need to worry. Followers of Jesus can still impact the culture and even call people out of it. The way this will happen in our “post-Christian” world is the same way it happen in the “pre-Christian” world–by DOING GOOD to all those we encounter, and serving the the cities we live in.

This has, and is, and always will always be, Jesus’ response to the culture.

 

 

 

 

 

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Excerpts from The Church of Irresistible Influence: Bridge-Building Stories to Help Reach Your Community
pp. 41-45

 

St. Augustine on Praising God

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 ‘You are great, Lord, and highly to be praised (Ps. 47:2): great is your power and your wisdom is immeasurable’ (Ps. 146:5). Man, a little piece of your creation, desires to praise you, a human being ‘ bearing his mortality with him'(2 Cor. 4:10), carrying with him the witness of his sin and the witness that your ‘resist the proud’ (1 Peter 5:5). Nevertheless, to praise you is the desire of man, a little piece of your creation. Your stir man to take pleasure in praising you, because you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.

‘Grant me Lord to know and understand'( Ps. 118:34, 73, 144) which comes first– to call upon your or to praise yo, and whether knowing your precedes calling upon you. But who calls upon your when he does not know you? For an ignorant person might call upon someone else instead of the right one. But surely you may be called upon in prayer that you may be known. Yet ‘ how shall they call upon him whom they have not believed? and how shall the believe without a preacher?'(Rom. 10:14). Thy will praise the Lord who seek for him'(Ps. 21:27).

In seeking him they find him, and in finding they will praise him. Lord, I would seek you, calling upon you– and calling upon your is an act of believing in you. You have been preached to us. My faith, Lord, calls upon you. It is your gifts to me. You breathed it into me by the humanity of your Son, be the ministry of your preacher.

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Except from Saint Augustine’s Confessions p.3

10 Things Jesus Never Said To His Disciples

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Jesus last supper1.  Excuse me guys, I gotta go do my “quiet time”.

 

2.  If I don’t come back from this…, well, you’ll know what to do.

 

3.  Yeah, I don’t get the Holy Spirit thing either.

 

4.  Oh my gosh, synagogue is boring.

 

5.  You think your Father is mean…

 

6.  You guys are really making me re-think my selection process.

 

7.  So when you heard “follow me”, you took it literally? Well this is now awkward…

 

8.  Did you just called me God? Whoa, careful there. Just a good moral teacher here.

 

9.  I thought about getting a MBA, but becoming a Messiah just sounded cooler.

 

10.  Yes! You have to pay me. What? You think I do this for free?!

 

Is the call to follow Jesus a bait-and-switch?

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Is  the call to follow Jesus a bait-and-switch?

At times it can feel that way.

Yesterday I was talking with my daughters about what it means to be friends with Jesus. At first I told them to be friends with Jesus is to be invited to his party. I was thinking about how Jesus invites people to his wedding banquet (Matt. 22:8-10; Rev. 19:9). But then the famous words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer went through my head,“When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”

What is the relationship between the invite to the party and the call to die? Is Jesus just trying to entice people?

In his classic book, The Master Plan of Evangelism Dr. Robert Coleman offers us some help. He writes:

Following Jesus seemed easy enough at first, but that was because [the disciples] had not followed him very far. It soon became apparent that being a disciple of Christ involved far more than a joyful acceptance of the Messianic promise: it meant the surrender of one’s whole life to the Master in absolute submission to his sovereignty. There could be no compromise. “No servant can serve two masters,” Jesus said, “for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon” (Luke 16:13). There had to be a complete forsaking of sin. The old thought patterns, habits, and pleasures of the world had to be conformed to the new disciplines of the kingdom of God (Matt. 5:1-7:29; Luke 6:20-49). Perfection of love was now the only standard of conduct (Matt 5:48), and this love was to manifest itself in obedience to Christ (John 14:21, 23) expressed in devotion to those whom he died to save (Matt. 25:31-36). There was cross in it—the willing denial of self for others (Mark 8:34-38; 10:32-45; Matt. 16:24-26; 20:17-28; Luke 9:23-25; John 12:25-26; 13:1-20).

This was strong teaching. Not many people could take it. They liked to be numbered among his followers when he filled their stomachs with bread and fish, but when Jesus started to talking about the true spiritual quality of the Kingdom and the sacrifice necessary in achieving it (John 6:25-29), many of his disciples “went back, and walked no more with him”(John 6:66). As they put it, “This is a hard saying: who can hear it?”(John 6:60). The surprising thing is that Jesus did not go running after them to try to get them to stay on his membership roll. He was training leaders for the Kingdom, and if they were going to be fit vessels of service, they were going to have to pay the price.

Coleman shows us that yes, Jesus calls us as his followers/friends to the party. When we accept this invitation we experience “the joyful acceptance of the Messianic promise”.  But at this point we have not followed Jesus very far. To keep walking with Jesus is to continue to hear his call to give up more, and to die. Why? Because, Jesus wants every follower, every friend,  to not just be a Kingdom watcher, but a Kingdom leader.  And such leadership only happens when we do what our Leader has done,–surrender our desires, die to self,  and become obedient to the will of God.

So we see, the call to follow Jesus is not so much a bait-and switch. Rather it is simply a call to follow him–both to the party and in living like him.

 

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Excerpt from Dr. Robert Coleman’s  The Master Plan of Evangelism pages 50-51.

Butterflies and Hope

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The other day I watched a video on the life cycle of butterflies with my six year old daughter, Adeline. I was reminded just how amazingly mysterious metamorphosis really is.

Curious, I did some research to find out how science explains this process. Turns out there’s some debate.

In an interview with NPR, biologist Bernd Heinrich, contended that one animal (the caterpillar) is reincarnated into another animal (the butterfly). As he put it, “The radical change that occurs, does indeed arguably involve death followed by reincarnation… the adult forms of these insects are actually new organisms.”

Yet others, like Ferris Jabr, tell us something else is happening. In Scientific America he describes the process of metamorphosis as a caterpillar digesting itself and then maturing into a butterfly by activating certain previously unused cells. He writes:

First, the caterpillar digests itself, releasing enzymes to dissolve all of its tissues. If you were to cut open a cocoon or chrysalis at just the right time, caterpillar soup would ooze out. But the contents of the pupa are not entirely an amorphous mess. Certain highly organized groups of cells known as imaginal discs survive the digestive process. Before hatching, when a caterpillar is still developing inside its egg, it grows an imaginal disc for each of the adult body parts it will need as a mature butterfly or moth—discs for its eyes, for its wings, its legs and so on.

Did you get all that? Yeah me neither.

But here’s what I did get.  Whether through “reincarnation”, or “imaginal discs” there is something still kind of magical about the whole thing.

And this gives me hope.

Hope in a God who creates moments that are fun, magical, and mysterious. Moments that display his art, his work, for all to see, yet will largely go unnoticed. Moments that are just for his enjoyment.

Hope in his creation. That there is still so much more to be explored. And there is still so much more worth exploring. Hope that there are so many more magical moments to be discovered.

Hope that there are still things worth staring at. That there are moments worth watching over and over again. That there are still simple creations to marvel at, because their wonder never goes away.

In some strange way watching a video on the life cycle of butterflies with my six year old daughter gives me hope.

I hope it gives you hope too!

Here’s the video, enjoy!

3 Good Reads For Parents

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If being a parent has taught me anything, it is that I am not a parenting expert. I have become far more hesitate to give parenting advice after having kids than before I had kids. But thankfully there are people who research parenting stuff for a living.  And I am happy to share with you some of their best articles. Here are three helpful articles I came across this week.

 What Should I Do When My Kid Says, “I’m Not Going to Church”?

A statement like, “I’m not going to church” no longer has to result in conflict between parents and kids. Instead it can be an opportunity.  This great article will show how that is possible.

Moving from YOU SHOULD to SHOULD YOU?

I like any article that encourages parents to pull an intellectual Judo move on their kids. In this article, Jonathan McKee does just that.  With this little move you’ll no longer resort to lecturing your kids on what not to listen to, watch, or even wear. But instead you’ll empower them to use their own reasoning skills to make wiser decisions. 

When Children View Pornography and How To Respond

By the time your kids are in middle school there is a very good chance they have been exposed to pornography. This is a sad but well documented fact. Parents must know how to respond.  These articles provide parents with helpful information on what to do when their kids are exposed to pornography and to how protect them in the future. A must read for every parent.

 

I hope you found these articles helpful. Share your thoughts in the comments section. And let others readers know what parenting articles you have found helpful?

Dallas Willard – On Being A Student Of Jesus

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Who teaches you? Whose disciple are you? Honestly.

One thing is for sure: You are somebody’s disciple. You learned how to live from somebody else. There are no exceptions to this rule, for human beings are just the kind of creatures that have to learn and keep learning from others how to live. Aristotle remarked that we owe more to our teachers than to our parents, for though our parents gave us life, our teachers taught us the good life….

It is one of the major transitions of life to recognize who has taught us, mastered us, and then to evaluate the results in us of their teaching. This is a harrowing task, and sometimes we just can’t face it. But it can also open the door to choose other masters, and possibly better masters, and one Master above all.

The assumption of Jesus’ program for his people on earth was that they would live their lives as his students and co-laborers. They would find him so admirable in every respect—wise, beautiful, powerful, and good— that they would constantly seek to be in his presence and be guided, instructed, and helped by him in every aspect of their lives…

The effect of such continuous study under Jesus would naturally be that we learn how to do everything we do “in the name of the Lord Jesus” (Col. 3:17); that is on his behalf or in his place; that is once again, as if he himself were doing it. And of course that means we would learn “to conform to everything I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:20). In his presence our inner life will be transformed, and we will become the kind of people for whom his course of action is the natural (and supernatural) course of action.”

 

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Excerpt from The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God pp. 271-272