I think my dog Moses just had his first experience chewing tobacco.

I was trying to put together thoughts for a lecture I’m giving on Harry Potter in a couple of days at the Barrett Honors College at Arizona State University, and I decided to go outside, smoke a cigar (Oliva Serie V), and hope to catch a few earlier Leonid meteors from the limited view I have on the front porch of my house here in the city. No such luck with meteors, but several ideas for Friday’s talk came to mind.

Moses was sitting with me on the porch, and about halfway through my cigar, I heard him chewing on something. It was dark, but I’m pretty sure it was the end of the cigar that I’d snipped off.

It’s been almost a decade since the last time I waited up for meteors. I’m thinking about what would have happened if a soothsayer had approached me at that time and said, “A decade from now, you’ll be smoking a cigar and watching this same meteor shower from the front porch of your city street.” I’d have shouted “False prophet!” I’m sure.

Here’s the deceptive thing about the Fallen human condition. I’m no longer the legalist I was then. But the pride that serves as a foundation for legalism doesn’t go away when the pharisaical rules are stripped away. Instead, I can be proud that I’m smoking and drinking and cussing, and thanking God I’m not like those Pharisees, who think they’ll be accepted for their rule keeping. And so, paradoxically, I’m being just like the Pharisee in my quest not to be like the Pharisee.

What was Jeremiah saying about the deceitfulness of the heart?

Moses – the OT one, not my dog – is an interesting character. A decade ago, under that meteor shower in my parents’ backyard, if you’d asked me about Moses, I’d have told you all about how he’s an example of what might happen if you sin. Well sure, he’s that. He got all the way to the Promised Land, and then botched it with anger and disobedience. The funny thing about the New Testament, though, is that when it retells the story of Moses, it doesn’t mention that incident. It seems like that’s a pretty defining incident in Moses’ life, but that’s not how the NT talks about Moses.

Grace is a pretty radical thing, and it tears down our pride, whether that pride is a foundation for our moralism or our celebration of liberty from legalism. At the end of Moses’ life, despite all the lessons he’d learned, he screwed up, and he’s accepted and loved. At the end of my life, having traded legalism most likely for other, more subtle forms of prideful behavior, I’ll probably screw up like Moses did. I’ll be accepted, too. That, and only that, is the antidote for pride and the prescription for humility.

Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em. Just don’t be prideful about it. We need grace every bit as much as the Pharisee.

I’ve recently had the “abstain from even the appearance of evil” card played against me with regard to Harry Potter and Halloween (not by anyone who reads this blog), and I thought it might be time to dig out an old post on every legalist’s favorite verse.

From the “Recovering Pharisee Confessions” archive: A Bad Interpretation.

I write the following because I’m just as guilty.

Reformed believers are quite happy to be staunch defenders of the Reformation doctrine of justification by faith alone, and particularly of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness on the sinning believer. But I’ve come to believe that there’s another kind of imputation that many Reformed believers hold to just as tenaciously: the imputation of evil on anyone who disagrees with them.

It goes something like this. We’ll take the infamous “L” as an example. If someone disagrees with the “L” in TULIP, it is not simply the fact that the person has examined the Scriptures in question, applied the same hermeneutical principles, and come up with a different answer, a different interpretation. No, that person has “denied the effectiveness of the cross,” “abandoned the true gospel,” “preached a different Christ,” or any other number of harsh implications. In reality, they want to “trust in their own works,” “disparage the cross and Christ’s sacrifice,” and “disregard the plain teaching of Scripture.”
In other words, if you don’t line up on your theological points, you’re either seriously deluded, or you’re ignoring Scripture deliberately. You’re a teacher of a false gospel.
Let’s take another touchy issue. The regulative principle of worship. Sounds like a nice principle, right? Only do in worship what God has commanded. It gets sticky, of course, when Reformed folks reading the same Scriptures disagree on exactly what God has commanded in worship. Does God permit modern hymns, or are only psalms to be sung? Instruments or no? We disagree on these issues.
But the rhetoric gets ridiculous. “Anyone who is against exclusive psalmody denies the regulative principle. They just want liturgical anarchy.” *sigh  Can you say reductio ad absurdum? In reality, of course, there are tons of good biblical arguments for the writing of new covenant songs for worship, but we can’t admit that, can we? We must impute selfish motives: “You just want to worship God according to the imaginations of your own heart.” Nevermind the fact that there are a good number of faithful believers in Christ who don’t even think the regulative principle is a right reading of New Covenant worship.

One wonders where humility exists in all of this. I’ll take a personal example. I happen to agree with the Reformed/Puritan belief about the prohibition of images in worship, particularly images of God. And yes, I believe that applies to pictures of Jesus. In my only year as a part-time pastor, I took down all the pictures of Jesus that hung in the church I served, including the gigantic one right behind me in the sanctuary.

But a little humility has got to kick in here somewhere. I could, of course, impute all sorts of evil motives to those who worship with images. “They just want to worship God according to their own imaginations.” Or how about, “They don’t have enough of a heart religion to worship in Spirit, so they need assistance from pictures.”

But this would be arrogant folly. Second Nicea is against me (yeah, that’s an ecumenical council). A long tradition of church history is against me. Many steadfast Christians whose worship was more devout that my own and their devotion to Christ more complete have worshiped in churches with images. Better, in my opinion, not to impute evil nor assume that God does not accept their worship. Indeed, better to worship as I believe the Bible tells me to, but maintain humility concerning my brothers and sisters. I may be wrong. I may have a lot to learn from them, in fact.
I’ve changed theological positions on various issues enough times to know I’ve been wrong a lot, and will certainly be wrong again.

Back when Michael Spencer wrote “I Hate Theology,” I was a little rattled by the essay. I’ve always loved theology, and I’ve always engaged in all the rhetoric about how, if we just had our theology right and believed it, right actions would follow. I illustrated it well, and I convinced others of it. But now, his words hold a lot of weight with me. When theology gets it the way of obedience to Christ, of humility, of love, and of real ministry, I hate theology, too.

Jesus, of course, gives us the right model to follow. Take a look at Jesus’ ministry. Seriously, look at it. Read through the gospel accounts, and tell me this about the three and a half years we have recorded: Is Jesus concerned with going around and correcting the systematic theology of the day? Or is He calling the poor, the downtrodden, the demon-possessed, the prostitutes, and the tax collectors to gather around Him and have a meal?

You may say that’s a false dichotomy. Maybe it is. But I’ve spent a lot of time around a lot of different types of Christians. Want to know what I’ve found? There are a lot of Arminians, Emergents, and “liberal” type Christians who follow Jesus a lot closer than I do when it comes to the stuff that separates the sheep from the goats. What am I supposed to do? Go tell them that if they just fixed their theology, got Reformed, and started confessing Westminster, they’d be more gracious people, better followers of Jesus? And give them what as an example? Myself? No way! Would that I had the heart for the poor found in many of them! Various Reformed churches that spend all their time on the finer points of theology while battered women can’t find shelter? Certainly not! Would that we were more like some of our brothers and sisters, to whom we impute all sorts of evil, in following Jesus!

Let’s abandon the imputation of evil on anyone who disagrees with us, and lovingly embrace (without an air of condescension!) and be willing to learn from those with whom we disagree. We’ve all been wrong before, and we’ll all be wrong again.

I’m bound to get into a lot of trouble with just about everyone for this post. My really spiritual friends will lie about how they’d rather be “with their church family in a worship service” than watching the Super Bowl. Some of my Reformed friends will be mad that I’m suggesting we approve of football on “the Sabbath.” But I think it would be a really good thing to replace evening service (if you even have one of those evil things), just one time a year, with a Super Bowl party. My Reformed friends can even have beer, and my Baptists friends can have pop (soda, coke, whatever). Of course, given my schizophrenia on the whole Reformed/Baptist issue, I think that leaves me with a digusting can of O’Douls or something.* [Update: The schizophrenia is now over; I'm a Presbyterian now]
It used to be my sincere belief that, if we were really (and I mean really, really) good Christians, things like the Super Bowl wouldn’t matter so much. To not have a regular evening service would be to say that God wasn’t as important as football that night. (Because, clearly, God commands two worship services on Sunday…it’s in there somewhere). Besides, we might be tempted to get drunk by watching beer commercials, so we should avoid the televised event altogether. So good, moral Christians forget about the Super Bowl and go to church that night. It’s a sacrifice we must make, but if we really are Christians, we’ll be willing to make it. And as a Pharisee, since attendance at evening service was an important rule for true believers, I would be absolutely certain to tell you (or at least talk about you behind your back) that your desire to stay at home with your dad whom you rarely get to spend quality time with and watch the Super Bowl was misplaced, and you should invite your dad to evening service instead. After all, you can only honor God by doing religious things.

By no means do I intend to downplay the absolute significance of corporate worship. But the thing that Pharisees like me never realized was that it is, in fact, possible – and even right and good – to spend God-honoring quality time with family and with church family outside of the actual worship
service. God can be honored (I believe) by Christians getting together and enjoying the Super Bowl. God is not missing something He needs by our changing one evening service a year into a fun time of fellowship. Have we become so gnostic that only “spiritual” things can honor God? I’m afraid many of us have.

If you do, indeed, prefer to go to evening service over the Super Bowl, that’s fine. But let’s not look
down on others who miss evening service that night. They’re just as Christian, just as accepted in Christ, and believe it or not, they’re probably not home sinning. They probably just want some good time with family and friends, and events like the Super Bowl (once a year) provide excellent opportunities for such time. Would that more churches realized this and took the time to get together with other church members, family, friends, gather ’round the TV for a sports match, and
had some fun together.

*(Just for the record, I’m “Reformed,” not “Baptist,” on the alcohol issue, and I’ve never touched O’Douls and never will…but that’s another Recovering Pharisee Confession for another time).

Those of you who read regularly here know I’m an ex-fundamentalist who often takes a satirical look at my own past as well as the new fundamentalism masked as "conservative evangelicalism."  Jeremy Abel, an ex-fundamentalist himself and keeper of the "Living Among Mysteries" blog has this excellent post on the prejudices we sometimes hold as ex-fundies as well as the struggles many of us faced in knowing well-intentioned but seriously off-the-wall (and ultimately hurtful) fundamentalists. 

Recovering Pharisee Confession #2

I remember at a very early age being told (by other Pharisees, of course) that the Bible commands us to abstain from even the appearance of evil. If it is even possible that someone watching me might mistakenly interpret something I’m doing as evil, I should not do it. This is why we weren’t allowed to go to movie theaters. The church we belonged to used this reasoning:

If you’re going into a Movie 6 cinema, even to see a G rated movie, but on the other screens were playing a couple of R rated movies, and someone from church or a co-worker happened to see you walking into the theater, they wouldn’t know if you were going to see the G movie or the R movie, and so you wouldn’t be abstaining from the appearance of evil.

I’m not joking.

Now, my family knew the absurdity of this particular example well enough, but the principle stuck with me until just recently. This argument got applied to anything and everything. Let’s apply the principle to Jesus Himself, shall we?

Jesus’ first miracle was to turn water into wine at a wedding celebration. Jesus ate and drank with His disciples, and it would have included wine. Apparently, this was not “abstaining from even the appearance of evil,” since Jesus noted in Matthew 11:19 that people accused Him of being a drunkard. Looks like Jesus himself didn’t do a very good job of avoiding what others might interpret as sin.

The root of this problem is a bad interpretation of 1 Thessalonians 5:16-22, which says in a more modern translation (ESV):

16 Rejoice always, 17 pray without ceasing, 18 give thanks in all circumstances; for
this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. 19 Do not quench the
Spirit. 20 Do not despise prophecies, 21but test everything; hold fast
what is good. 22 Abstain from every form of evil.

Of course, the old KJV said “appearance,” which led to this whole misguided concept. There was nothing particularly wrong with that word being used; it was the way it was being read that caused the mistake. The verse, properly understood, would mean something to the effect of “every time evil appears (shows up), abstain from it.” Furthermore, the context is the judging of prophecies. The idea applied to our current church situation would be sort of like this:

“Don’t hate preaching, but always test the preaching. If it’s good, hold onto it. If it’s bad, avoid it.”

You see then how much different that is from “avoiding doing anything that someone oddball from your workplace or Pharisee from our church might wrongly interpret as sin.”

"Recovering Pharisee Confessions" is a series from my old blog that I’m transferring over here.  After the first four show up, stay tuned for new ones.