Seminarys and Bible colleges are part of the problem

Like everyone I have been busy. We just put grandma on a plane back to Washington last Sunday and since then have been busy shipping things for ebay.I continue to try and sell things that I really don’t need in the hopes that the house will sell and we will then have much less to move. If the house wont sell I am enlarging the piggy bank a little. I am surprised at how much time can disappear while " trying to sell things."

I have been using my blog the last 20 days as a place to put more information and pictures for things on ebay and have just not been able to devote time till to it. Nor have I wanted to put anything else on there about the issues with the economy that people might see while I am trying to get them to buy my stuff.

So I have been too occupied to pull my pants up and do any emailing. But my time has come and my pants are up.

We just started reading Revelation and this verse stood out….

Rev 1:5 And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood,

…the prince of the kings of the earth… the NKJV says :ruler over the kings
If you approach all topics in life from a humanistic viewpoint and you don’t know …. that’s what you are doing……you are now part of the problem. What about when you are training people to be manning the first aid station, but you have taught them techniques that will lead to infections?!?

I can see that Seminary’s and Bible colleges are a big part of modern Christianity’s…. “condition”. Just the fact that Bible colleges and Seminary’s cannot see that they have limited the scope, the jurisdiction and the application of Gods word to what is a narrow slice of life. In effect they have swiveled the cannon down and fired a hole in the bottom of the boat. Unfortunately they have trained well and are able to get off quite a few rounds a minute.

We could pass a questionnaire around to those who have received formal training concerning biblical ministry. See what topics were covered in school.

Now, by implication , without anyone ever saying…….. "God and the Bible is concerned, with these things, but, not with these things"……. wouldn’t you leave the college/seminary with that understanding? Before you would even get to seminary you would already have been conditioned for this narrowed perspective ,just from the narrow range of what you have been exposed to in church. Yes this is a broad brush, and praise God that today, more and more, its changing.

(Ken Ham a number years ago was introducing materials for churches that addressed this problem. He had noted that the world had distorted Gods truth about reality and was distressed that the churches were preoccupied with telling bible stories to the kids instead of truths about Gods universe. He helped me to first realize how badly we were missing it in the church aauuuughhhh!)

Last week I came upon this article from the Pearcy Report from dec 3 . Julia Duin is a reporter for the liberal Washington Post religion section and she wrote a book….
Quitting Church
An Interview with Julia Duin By John W. Whitehead
“I have sensed for several years something is not right with church life, especially with evangelical church life.”—Julia Duin
“It is no secret that the percentage of Americans in church on any given Sunday is dropping fast,” writes author and journalist Julia Duin in her book Quitting Church: Why the Faithful are Fleeing and What to Do about It (Baker Books, 2008)….
Based on extensive interviews around the United States and abroad, Duin has pinpointed the disenchantment felt by evangelicals worldwide with church. In fact, in recent years, many have found more frequently that churches are not relevant to their lives….

That last sentence …”that churches are not relevant to their lives” I bet could be expanded (that is once you get them to turn off the self focus) to reveal that people are noticing how truncated the Christian viewpoint has become. That it is not perceived, how it is relevant to more of life. I think it gets expressed as ”that churches are not relevant to their lives.”

On last Sunday Rob touched on the passage about how The kingdom of God is like leaven that leavens the whole loaf. Luk13:18-21 Do we see? How it is like leaven, and how it can, leaven the whole loaf? Or is this one of those poetic verses to us? Where does your mind see the Kingdom of God ending? Here and no further….

We should get real nervous with even the idea that God has a limited jurisdiction. That the King of Kings and Lord of Lords ( just think about that name!) and His unchanging eternal word are silent, or that the one… "who is and was, and is to come"… doesn’t care about economics, governments, mathematics, etc, etc.

Who among us could say out loud, “ Jesus is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, but not over.....?” I don’t think any of us would. But by my sheer inability and constant surprise at areas of life that I am just starting to see, how to make the application of his word to. I know I have been guilty of this thinking . ….. and as a man thinks, so is he. Prov 23:7

Men we are charged by God to do this…..

Eph 6:4 And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

This speaks of a way of life, and of a way of thinking ( an eschatology) that is based on His perspective. This then is part and parcel of what is commanded of us in….

Deu 6:5-9 And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittestin thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.

May God give all of us his grace to embrace this. He can make us able through his Son. Let us call on him to do it through us!