Face Beside the Veteran

Several years ago I participated in a ceremony to honor a group of veterans. These guys were all very deserving and all very humble about their service — some of their stories were pretty amazing. While I stood at the front, and the service members were being recognized amid a lot of celebration and ceremony, my gaze was drawn to the face of a wife of one of the veterans. I will never forget looking at the face of that wife and seeing the tears in her eyes that quickly pooled and ran down her face. 

There are many women that were and are like her.  Women who stayed home, cared for the children, often alone without family or friends who were far away. They took the meager paycheck of a service member and paid the bills. Volunteered in schools, churches, and many other places in the community. When children not old enough to understand asked the inevitable question of when Daddy would be coming home, she quieted their restless hearts never exposing the same question and fears in her heart. Sometimes she sat with children far too young to even fully grasp the absence of their father and shared with them pictures of a father that they did not yet even know. Then at night, when it was far too quiet and lonely for one so tired, I wonder how often she prayed out to God for her husband who was thousands of miles away and hope that her quiet sobs would not awaken the young. 

While I am sure almost all eyes were on those we were honoring, and deservedly so, my eyes could not turn from that face and the intense pride and love that was evident there. As she stood she grasped the hand of her loved one and held that which had been denied to her so many long and sleepless nights. Yet, she asked no remembrance, she coveted no glory. She was content that by her side was her true love and in our honoring him she demonstrated such sincere pride. This lady became the face I see when I think of veterans.

Communition... an Idea but not a word.

This past Sunday, we celebrated Communion at church.  Over the past few years, Communion, or the Lord’s Table as we sometimes call it, has taken on a wholly new meaning in my life.  I find that Dr. NT Wright expresses one aspect of of communion so well when he said:

“The Eucharist is not just about “me and my salvation.” It is a necessity, a part of what enables us to be God’s new creation people. We taste the new creation on our tongues, in our lips, in our mouths, in our bodies, so that we can go out and do the kind of work in the world that helps bring in the kingdom, God’s new creation.” See here.

This sets the idea of only an individual symbolic act on its edge and challenges us to reflect on the real presence of God in the life of the church.  We tend to view communion as an individual act, but we were told to do it as a gathered people.  We shouldn’t lose the idea of communion being something more than thanks just about me and God.  It is perhaps something that I shouldn’t hold too tightly as individualistic.  Instead, it is something we celebrate as a community of believers gathered together.  In that context, to reduce it down to an individual act seems inconsistent with its institution and the Pauline references/directives.  We need to recapture the idea of Communion as a communal act whereby we gather to worship God in the act of yesterday and promises of tomorrow through our eating and drinking together in the now.


So, I am going to coin a new word, not for usage but for its idea.  That word is an amalgamation of the Body of Christ (the Church) and the body and blood of His gift to us -- communition...  Let's join together in celebrating His grace.

Apologetics Can't Save You

The Christian community goes by many names, sometimes we are called the church, the Bride of Christ, early in our history we were called the followers of the Way.  One name that we really never use to refer to ourselves by is ‘family’.  However, it is one of the names we most often live up to, unfortunately, it is as a dysfunctional family.  Seldom does any family take such joy at attacking their own as the Christian family.  Unlike most highly dysfunctional families we seem to take the greatest joy in airing our differences in the most public of ways.  Maybe that is a good thing.  The non-Christian community surely can’t accuse us of hiding behind doors to work out our issues (although I wish more idifferences were worked out instead of the constant festering that we end up with).

Apologetics can be defined as reasoned arguments or writings in justification of something, typically a theory or religious doctrine.  Specifically, Christian apologetics use a variety of methods to defend the tenets of the Christian faith.

Some Christians take issue with any idea that reason can be a tool utilized by Christians.  However, I feel this is based on a faulty view of apologetics as well as salvation.  A very common argument that is raised is “has anyone ever been saved by apologetics.”

The answer to that question is an unequivocal and emphatic, “NO”. I am not aware of any person that has ever been saved through apologetics. Then again, I am not aware of anyone that has ever been saved through discipleship, evangelism, prayer, or any other category of works. We are by grace saved through faith. The efficacious work of salvation was done by Christ in his life, death, and resurrection. So, apart from Him, we are not saved by any work of man (apologetics, evangelism, prayer, etc).

I am actively involved in an apologetics ministry — so, obviously I will be a proponent of the discipline. I discovered the discipline of apologetics several years ago when I was challenged by an atheist about my beliefs.  I was being challenged as we find in 1 Peter 3:15: “But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect”.

Are there bad examples of apologists? Yes. I probably initially served as a bad example of an apologist. I was primarily focused on winning the argument. It was actually because of a statement Greg Kouklmod Stand To Reason  made that I was became aware of the specific harm that attitude was causing. Greg says in his book, “Tactics” that we should be involved in a dialogue not to win an argument but to win a brother/sister. If at the end of my part in the discussion a person is unwilling to consider the truth of the gospel because of an additional offense that I have attached to it by my method, then I have offended the gospel. Let’s be realistic, the gospel is offensive to the non-believer, let’s not add to that by our poor presentation of it.

If the gospel is true, then the non-believer has to deal with their response to that truth, no matter how offensive that truth may seem. But, if they can choose to not respond because I am a jerk, then I have added unnecessarily to the offense of the gospel.

Let me expand that a bit more — are there bad example of other areas of our faith — say evangelism? Do the members of the Westboro Baptist Church provide a bad example of evangelism when they protest at the death of a US servicemember? We all recognize the bad practitioners of the discipline, yet we still can separate that from the overall call to evangelism that we each have. We strive to practice good evangelism, we should strive to practice good apologetics.

Sometimes apologetics may be focused on the validity of rational arguments, but they may also be applicable to helping someone deal with emotional issues. Unfortunately, in many of our churches we have left the mind outside the sanctuary and decided that we will only deal with the emotional side of faith. There are numerous problems with this approach (just as there are with a rationalistic/head only approach some equate to apologetics).

It is time we bring the mind back into the church.  We need to understand apologetics as a call to both evangelism and discipleship.  We need to be true to the examples of the apostles in presenting clear and cogent reasons for theor faith. And always doing so in a manner that brings honor to Christ as our reason and Truth! 

Maybe it is time for those who would attack apologetics to  consider that we can’t be true to 1 Peter 3:15 nor the call of Christ on our lives if we don’t engage the mind and that apologetics provides an avenue to reach yet another demographic in our culture.  We need to quit acting so much like that really dysfunctional family we sometimes are and maybe realizing that working together might just allow us to celebrate some bigger reunions.

Abandoning Faith

After many years I have made a decision.  I am abandoning faith.  Faith doesn't do anything for me.  It leaves me with this lost and empty feeling.  I understand many may cling to it, but that is not something I can do with any sincerity.  As I read through many articles and publications, I just can no longer identify with the word as it is used by so many today.  Faith for me has travelled the same path that noscrible travelled so long ago - namely of being a lost word.   For those not aware, noscrible went out of vogue back in the mid-1600's.  The term meant knowable or well known.  So, in a sentence it would have appeared as:  It is noscrible that no amount of training can make up for experience in the field.

I came to this realization about the word faith through listening to so many who have adopted usage of the word which is unfamiliar to my own experience.  For many, faith is a belief that is not based upon proof or evidence.  Instead faith is something that simply seems to represent a deep desire or wish.  I first noticed this most prevalent among atheists.  They would dismiss Christian theology saying that it was based upon faith in a fairy tale becoming true.  That wasn't so hard for me to dismiss, they were simply exhibiting their own wishful thinking upon others.  Their usage didn't differ too much from what Dictionary.com offers as a definition for faith:

2. belief that is not based on proof: He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact.

That alone would not have been enough for me to abandon faith.  However, I then began to see a disturbing trend among my believing friends.  They would use faith in a not so dissimilar method.  Faith was just something you had to have.  When you came to the end of reason, you just had to have faith.  The question that crept into my mind was "faith in what"?

I find it impossible to develop a faith in something that is unsupported by evidence or proof.  I can't on, whim just believe in something that has no real support.  To me, that would be like having faith that I will win the lottery but not having a ticket in my possession to said lottery.

A personal accomplishment of which I am personally proud was the earning of my parachutist's badge or "wings".  These wings were earned through the satisfaction of the requirements set forth by the United States Army Airborne School based in Ft. Benning, GA.  Three weeks of intensive learning and physical fitness.  It culminated in the exiting of an aircraft while in flight on five successive attempts.  This is affectionately known as "Jump Week".  The exits occur under a small variety of conditions, hollywood (meaning simple rig of main and reserve), combat (a weapon case strapped to your leg and a rucksack that ends up dangling under you on descent), and night time (occurring during darkness -- which must be distinguished from the other jumps where it is dark because you clinch your eyes tightly shut).  In my case, we got to avoid the night jump because of anticipated bad weather!

Jumping out of an inflight aircraft is something that should naturally be hard to do.  Someone believing they can fly should seriously be evaluated for psychiatric counseling.  However, the first two weeks of jump school are designed to instill within you a confidence in the equipment and techniques employed.  You learn how to don the equipment, preflight jump routines (which includes that all important step of connecting your static line to the cable), exiting the aircraft, checking for the proper deployment of the main, descent technique, then the all important Parachute Landing Fall (PLF) which is designed to bring you safely (though not gently) into contact with Terra Firma.  An improperly executed PLF can result in executing a Mars-lander type landing without the benefit of the large airbags.  This is neither comfortable nor desirable.

After completing the two weeks of ground training, we were ready for jump week.  From the donning of equipment to the gathering of our parachute up after a successful PLF, each move was practiced and performed countless times.  Was there an adrenaline rush that accompanied our preparations for our first jump?  Oh yeah!  Again, we were getting ready to do something unnatural.  However, we also were placing our trust in equipment and techniques that had been successfully tested time and again.  After all the preparation, I stood in an inflight aircraft with my static line firmly secured on the jump cable.  When my time came, I simply did what I had practiced what seemed to have been 1,000 times.

The pinning of wings

Flinging yourself into space is somewhat exhilarating.  Flying in an aircraft that is about 1,800 feet in the air one second, then the next hurtling away from the aircraft is a really different experience.  One moment the noise of a C-141 Starlifter gives way to the rush of wind as your body tenses into it, eyes firmly closed (personally simulating a night jump) and your hands gripping your reserve parachute (because there is nothing else to do with them).  The next sound you are aware of is that wonderful pop of nylon as the static line deploys your main!  There is that initial thought of "hey, this works."  Which is immediately followed by the thought, "If I didn't think it worked, why did I jump?"  But, I did think it worked.  It had been proven time and again.  I wasn't making a "leap of faith", I was making a jump with confidence in what had been proven.

What does this do with my abandoning faith?  By common usage, I did not possess faith in the equipment and techniques of the Airborne School.  What I possessed was something proven by time and experience -- it was trust.  So, it would be incorrect to say I had faith in my equipment and training, in today's usage I would more accurately say that I had trust in the equipment and training.  Faith as a word in usage today is inadequate.  So, I am abandoning faith as inadequate to the task.

That brings me to another important use of the word trust.  I trust in God.  This trust is based on my studying of scriptures and my own personal experiences.  Just as I found a parachute was adequate to returning me safely to the ground, I have learned that I can trust in the promises of God as recorded in scripture.  This is based on a historical examination of the texts based on techniques that have been applied to many other documents across the ages.  It is based upon the same standards that I would apply to any other report of events that were presented to me.

You see, it is not that I have lost my faith in God, it is that I find faith inadequate again to the task based on modern day usage.  I trust in God because I have found Him to be worthy of that trust.  My trust is not based in some fanciful wish that things would be different than they are but instead in a confidence that the world is as described in the bible and the solution to the problems of the world can only be found in the person of Jesus Christ.

For a completely unscientific analysis of words, I thought it would be interesting to do a little research.  Many will define faith as belief in those things we can't know.  What I decided to do was a simple word count -- how many times do the words faith and know appear in the bible?  With all of the discussions about how Christians have faith, it seems that it would be a very popular word.  In the KJV, I found that faith appears 247 times in 231 verses.  That is a pretty high number!  Next, I did the same search for the word know.  Know appears 763 times in 717 verses.  That is completely unscientific but I think it does say something about the difference in the word faith and know and could give us pause in how we describe our Christian experience.

So, because of this I am abandoning faith.  Instead, I am resting upon the truth that we can know the reality of the biblical claims as verified by historical methods and our own experience.  In its place, I am adopting the more descriptive term of trust.  Instead of "faith in God" and the implications of that within modern day usage, I will instead express my trust in God.  

The God of whom we read about in the old and new testaments and who 2,000+ years ago stepped into His creation as a small baby.  Who walked this earth as a man, took the sins of the world upon himself as he ascended to Mount Calvary.  Suffered on the cross to the point of death and then overcame death itself as witnessed by his disciples and recorded in the works collected as the New Testament.  It is he whom I trust to deliver His promises as He has continually demonstrated through the ages.  It is the same God who I have experienced in my own life as He calls me into a life of living not for myself but for Him.  So I am abandoning faith and instead moving to a more descriptive word, trust.  Just as I trusted my equipment and training to leap into the air from the relative safety of the aircraft, I can trust the God of Scripture and the witness of the Holy Spirit with my life and service to what is true and beautiful.