Texas Holiness Association

Ran across this photo in stuff from my parent's home.

Texas Holiness Association merged into the Church of the Nazarene in 1910.

It is my understanding that my maternal grandfather was actually licensed initially in The Texas Holiness Association.

Perhaps he is in the group somewhere. I did look at it under a magnifying glass but saw no one that I thought might have been him.

Book: Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God

Cazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God
by Francis Chan

Francis and Lisa Chan founded Cornerstone Community Church in Simi Valley, CA in 1994. He writes some about his biography in the book but otherwise I did not find a lot about him from the web.

There is a web site for the book, too: crazylovebook.com.

Chan talks about how many Christians become so without really having a clear understanding of God's character and the resulting, "crazy" love that He displays towards us.

Moreover he says that if we really grasp God's character and love that there is really only one valid response on our part. That is our unrestrained, "crazy" love for God.

He goes on to discuss this idea in several different ways. The chapters are relatively short and easy to read and appreciate. He uses a good many Scripture references and intersperses them clearly and artfully. On my Kindle the default font size was rather large but easily changed.

There were for me several notable and memorable places in the book.

One chapter discusses the parable of the soils and Chan writes "Don't assume you are good soil." I smiled when I read that for several reasons. We do often find it easier to associate ourselves with the hero than the villain.

Another chapter discusses what it means to be lukewarm and Chan declares that a lukewarm Christian is simply an oxymoron -- not possible.

Yet another place he says that a Christian life really should not make sense to non-believers. I smiled again.

I think I most enjoyed the little examples of actual people who have sold out entirely to the Lord. I think Chan does those particularly well.

In thinking about the book now that I have finished I realize that I did not really enjoy it as much as I had expected before I began reading. Partly I think that's because of high expectations.

I do agree with so much of what Chan says though and much of what he does is well done I think.

When I read something like this though I always worry that some might feel a need for greater human works than greater faith. Chan does not say this by any stretch. But I do worry about it.

It is a worthwhile read I think.

Differences, Respect, and Role Models

Recently I stumbled across another Internet shoving match. One person noticed something that appeared on another person's blog and posted something negative about it with a link back. The link back let the 2nd person know so he read what had been written. Then he (the 2nd person) posted about that.

Then readers of each blog divided into supporters of each respective author and began a war by blog comment. Members of each group defended their own favorite blog author.

These things happen all the time both in real life and on the Internet. It might be argued that the Internet makes things worse for several reasons including the fact that it is hard to properly communicate nuance by posting alone. And there is a certain anonymity in Internet communication that perhaps causes people to be a lit more uninhibited. But really I am not sure there is that much difference having been involved in both kinds myself.

A few years ago I became friends with this fellow and we met once a week to pray with each other. We chose a church about half-way between our jobs and met during lunch hour in the chapel. The pastor gave us permission. I remember he told us that he had never had anyone ask him something like that. He called us "men of prayer" which at the time seemed a little strange to me since I was barely keeping my head above the waves of the spiritual ocean.

Over several months my friend and I became very good friends and shared many things with each other. We were in the same age range but he had been a believer much longer than had I.

One day we were discussing some Christian doctrine. I do not recall now what it was but it was relatively obscure and certainly not fundamental. I held a different opinion than my friend but I refused to change my mind. It was an issue that people held different positions about.

Finally he grew exasperated with me and told me he no longer wanted to pray with me and in fact was not even certain I was a believer.

And we never did again pray together or even see each other. I tried a few times to contact him only to be rejected. So I let it go. That's been a long time ago and I still feel badly about it.

Another time I was in a group study and I held a position that was different than the one held by the rest of the group. My position was quite common but just not in that particular group. But the group members became increasingly upset that I would not conform to their way of thinking. So the meetings became painful for me because there was always this pressure for me to change. So I quit going.

A few years after I became a believer in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior I was very interested in learning about Systematic Theology and Bible languages and Bible history and so on. So I enrolled in courses at a local religious college that offered such subjects for study.

The college was of a completely different theological perspective than what I had come to believe. So there were plenty of opportunities for conflict.

But at that college there were two professors in particular that I came to regard and respect so highly that I still to this day value their contributions to my life and education.

That was regardless of the vast theological differences between us. It was entirely about the way they treated me and listened to me and made me feel valued and that my opinions were important and worthwhile even if not theirs.

I learned several things from these two men.

One was that I did not really understand their positions on the subjects about which we disagreed. I started out thinking I understood. But after much time spent in dialogue and discussion I found out that what I had thought they believed was much too shallow. The opposite was true as well in that what they thought I (and my side) believed was not really what we believed. We each only saw shadows of the others' thoughts. That was a tremendous revelation to me.

Another thing I learned was that I didn't understand what I believed myself nearly as well as I thought I did. Moreover, I found out I was not very good at explaining it to someone else.

And yet another thing I learned was that it took some time for all of us to get to the point where we actually listened to each other with a view of understanding what the other guy believed. When we first started out we were really only interested in presenting our own side and winning points. That made it really hard to actually listen. But finally we broke through all the nonsense and then we actually made headway.

I also learned that there is a big difference between some with a little knowledge and someone that has really studied a subject. I think we live in a time when people seem to think that any opinion is as good as any other regardless the disparity in study. Each of my professors had about 20 years of study against my novice efforts. I was at that "understood enough to be dangerous" level.

I think you have to first start out respecting the other person and that includes whatever ideas he or she might hold. It is not natural to do that for me or most of us humans probably. We like to start out thinking that those who are like me are the "good guys" and by definition those with other ideas must be "bad guys." That's not respect.

I did not change my mind. They did not change their minds. But we definitely had more appreciation of the others' viewpoint. And in my case I actually finally understood why they believed as they did.

Today I hold pretty much the same viewpoint that I held back then.

But when I meet someone who has differences with me those two men are my role models.

I don't always measure up to the standard they set but I look back over my life and see that I've moved a lot further their way.

I have to more to write on the Role Model subject tomorrow.

Post-Christian United States?

I noticed two stories about religion on Yahoo's news front page on Tuesday, March 10, 2009.

The second one carried the title: Survey sees a drift away from religion in America. That article goes on to discuss the results of the American Religious Self-Identification Survey (ARIS). The first line is 'Christianity's hold on many Americans is slipping, losing out not to other faiths but to "no faith."'

The first article I noticed was in the Opinion section of Yahoo which I often disregard. But I guess it was the headline that grabbed my attention: The Coming Evangelical Collapse by Michael Spencer. Since I am one of the group that self-identifies as evangelical I am always interested in its collapse.

The Yahoo link points to the Yahoo article which is taken from The Christian Science Monitor. That article is a piece from a more extensive post by Michael Spencer on his blog, InternetMonk.com. (Cool name for a blog I thought.)

His blog post is The Coming Evangelical Collapse (as if you could not guess).

I found it to be a thoughtful and easily read piece. It stirred up a lot of interest around the old Internet ending up on The Drudge Report among other high traffic sites.

I liked Spencer's blog so much that I've added it to my own blog roll. I will definitely follow his blog for a while at least.

The ARIS survey is interesting to me for several reasons in addition to the fact that more people identify with no religion. One is that 76% of us identify ourselves as Christian but fewer than 70% of us express belief in a personal God. Some 34% of us describe ourselves as born again which is largely understood to be the same as evangelical.

That born again (or evangelical) group also has the oldest of us comparatively with "old" meaning over 50 years of age. This goes along I suspect with the general aging of our population.

Spencer says that within 10 years evangelicals will be halved in number and that many of the ministries that now exist will cease to function or be changed so drastically as to be unidentifiable. Further he believes that there will be rising anti-Christian intolerance that will be startling in both quantity and quality.

He then proceeds to mention seven (7) reasons he believes this will occur: identification with political conservatism; failure to pass on our beliefs to our offspring; current church structure; inability to withstand secularism; good will become bad and viceversa; lack of confidence in Scripture; and, inability to raise money.

I found the comments on Spencer's blog to be as interesting or more so than his article. I am interested particularly in the comments of those who identify themselves as non-Christians and who have such negative opinions about evangelicals.

I agree with much of Spencer's statements about evangelicals. And I definitely can imagine the results he predicts. Whether they happen or not I have no idea.

But really I think we already are in a post-Christian era in the United States. I say this because even among those who claim to be born again there is such widespread difference of opinion as to make any kind of unity nearly impossible. More importantly I think there is so much ignorance of Scripture that wearing the Christian label really means very little in terms of practice. So while there may still be numerical majority by a significant degree I think in fact we have already reached the place where non-Christian influence is more important in most areas of life.

Clearly the Republican party is disassociating itself from the Christian evangelical community and the Democratic party was never interested in the first place. The RNC chairman, for instance, is publicly pro-choice. The recent decision to fund more experimentation on human stem cells is surely another sign of deteriorating influence. Certainly it seems likely that the evangelical view of marriage will be overturned as well.

It is very interesting to me to contemplate what the United States will look like if we become increasingly non-Christian and more secular.

I suspect there will be more restrictions on the tax status of churches, particularly the evangelical mega-Churches. I think there will eventually be a removal of references to God at nearly every public level including currency and the pledge and nearly all aspects of government.

I would not be surprised that evolution is mandated to be taught exclusively as truth in private schools and home schools as well as public. I think education will be increasingly critical of historical Christian influence. I suspect home schooling will be eventually abolished or so hampered as to make it impractical. I would neither be surprised to see new churches disallowed unless they meet certain standards such as repudiating certain doctrines and embracing others.

Sharing one's faith is likely to be more and more discouraged in all venues and labeled as proselytizing or cultural terrorism.

I think these things are not so far fetched.

There already is emotional persuasion to forgo some Christian ideas. Really it is not so hard to imagine that escalating to physical persuasion as well. And it will be excused I think by pointing to the supposed bad that Christians have inflicted on the advancement of culture.

It is not so easy to tolerate ridicule for whatever reasons. There are plenty of people who view themselves as victims of Christianity that would happily turn the table. In that event there surely will be many who will choose to embrace some other religion, or none, rather than remain. That's especially true as the hostility increases.

So there will probably be fewer and smaller evangelical churches. I wonder what will happen to all the church buildings? I wonder if other religions will modify them for themselves?

If the number of evangelicals is halved there is surely no need for as many big ones as there are now.

I wonder if there will be blatant discrimination in the private workplace and government, too? I wonder if there will be a kind of religious don't ask don't tell policy first?

No, it does not seem that implausible.

Book: Ten Prayers God Always Says Yes To

Ten Prayers God Always Says Yes To:
Divine Answers to Life's Most Difficult Problems
by Anthony DeStefenao

I have my Kindle 2 sitting up against the screen of my lap top and taking the picture with my iPhone. Really can anyone get more geeky than that?

I did not think I would like this book beforehand and really had not intended to even buy it. But someone said nice things about it and there was a Kindle version and so I bought it. Saying I wasn't excited about it though would be a considerable understatement.

Not sure what I actually expected but what I got was different and surprising.

I knew from the first chapter that I was going to like the book because the first chapter set a tone that I found both true, familiar, and uplifting.

So it is not surprising is it that I should enjoy having my own belief reinforced? Now I do read opposing points of view and I do examine my own biases from time to time. But there are those fundamental truths that simply are incontrovertible. And, yes, I know we all have them and I know there is a group of people that holds the exact opposite of mine when it comes to God and prayer. And those folks won't enjoy this book nor will they appreciate it in the least.

The difference between enjoy and appreciate is another blog subject that I think I will address at some future date.

I am debating with myself about whether or not to list the ten prayers. I've compromised with myself and will list the chapters:

1. I Wish I Could Believe
2. Why Should I Get Involved?
3. What's In It For Me?
4. I Can't Take It Anymore?
5. Am I A Terrible Person?
6. This Stress Is Killing Me!
7. Okay, I Admit It: I'm Afraid
8. Sometimes Being Smart Just Isn't Enough
9. Will I Ever Be Happy Again?
10. Why Am I Here, Anyway?

Each chapter then has an associated prayer that DeStefenao says God always answers "yes." For instance, first chapter, "I Wish I Could Believe," is the condition that is addressed by the prayer "God, show me that You exist."

DeStefenao states in the Acknowledgments section of the book (near the end) that his background is Catholic but that he tried to make the book acceptable to all Christians and to people of all faiths.

I think he did pretty well and I found the book both enjoyable and helpful.