The Lord's Prayer Part 2 - Our Father Who Art in Heaven I

As we continue our study of the Lord's Prayer, based on the structure of Romano Guardini's book, it is time to examine the first petition of the prayer, "Our Father, Who Art in Heaven."  This will be the first of two parts exploring this petition, as there seems to be a lot packed into it.  So, we will begin.

The words themselves point us in the direction of heaven, as our gaze goes upward and our face seeks to meet that of another, God the Father.  It is a deeper dimension than that though, in that the movement of man's heart is compelled to find its way to the heart of God.  The ironic thing about this however is that  our sins have hidden His face from us (Isaiah 59:2) yet here is Jesus, God in the flesh, telling us all of a sudden to address God in such a way as to seek his face!  Why is that?   Quite simply, we must remember that "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God," (Romans 3:23) and that "there is none righteous, no not one" (Romans 3:10), because of what happened in Genesis 3, namely the Fall.  God is holy and righteous, and in his sight no wickedness or sin can share presence.  So, why did Jesus all of a sudden say that we can petition the Father face-to-face??  Here it is - "having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." (Romans 5:1).  As to how this happened, it was when Jesus died on a cross, restoring life to us through His atoning death and resurrection, and that blood we believe covered a multitude of sins (I John 2:2).  As Catholic Christians, we would take this a step further by saying that the piercing of Jesus' side in John 19:34 that brought forth water and blood symbolized our new life in Christ by the sacraments of Holy Baptism (the water) and the Holy Eucharist (the Blood) - as Adam birthed his bride Eve from his side when God took the rib (Genesis 2:21-23), so the new Adam, Jesus Christ, brought forth His bride, the Church, with the flowing of blood mingled with water from His side.  As we are now the Bride of Christ as the Church, we can also boldy approach the throne of grace (Hebrews 4:16), and this petition of the Our Father affirms that from the mouth of Jesus Himself.  However, this is not just a mere intellectual exercise, but rather we live these petitions in spirit because words are movements of the heart and of the mind.

We need to remember that God is a Who, and not a mere "what."  For many years, many of us have prayed the Lord's Prayer wrong, saying often at the opening petition "Our Father which art in heaven."  The reason this is wrong is that it reduces God, as so many false religions do, to the status of an abstract force instead of the person he is, and this depersonalization of God does violence to him as a being, a person - God is being qua being exemplified, a being totally transcendant yet personal at the same time.  When we correctly address God as a "Who" rather than a "which," it instills into our own being an awareness of someone above and all-pervading.  All we see in creation points to something else - creation is enveloped by something that transcends it, something mysterious yet profoundly familiar.  That someone is the Holy, the Divine - God!  In the Sanctus Hymn ("Holy, Holy, Holy") that we sing at Mass every Sunday just prior to the Communion of the Faithful, we profess this truth - "Heaven and earth are full of Thy glory - Hosanna in the Highest!"
That proclamation is also found in Scripture in two places - first, directly in Isaiah 6:3, and it is also found indirectly in Revelation 4:8.  Another place that affirms this truth in Scripture is Psalm 24:1 - "The earth is the Lord's and all its fullness, the world and those who dwell therein."   However, we must remember also that God the Father is not merely an authority we are touched by, but also possesses a countenance we are now called to look upon.  Being justified by Christ's atoning Death and Resurrection, we have that communion with the Father we need, but we must also remember some other things too.  First, God is not some touchy-feely goosebumpy thing, nor is he a big demiurge up there ready to whack us with a stick when we make a mistake either - God too has a heart, and it is to that heart which we are to turn.  In short, thanks to God's love for us that even cost him the life of his only-begotten Son, we can address God as a person rather than an abstraction!

Despite this fact though, we need to also remember Who we address and not take that for granted.  God's allowing us to approach him in this way is not a privelege or a right; it is a gift.  He first called us, addressing us as persons.  In doing so, he gives us a face (nature) with an inclination to turn toward him.  Therefore, in addressing God directly, we are capable of seeking His face.   We do this in such a simple way though that it is unfathomable to our human wisdom - the "Our Father" tells us in effect to simply address ourselves to Him who is in heaven, and our prayers will reach Him.  James 5:16 reminds us that "the effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much," and in Psalm 37:23 we are also told that "the steps of a good (righteous) man are ordered by the Lord, and he delights in His way."  And, finally in Proverbs 17:28 we are assured that "He hears the prayer of the righteous."  In other words, location is irrelevant, as He is omnipresent.  Time is irrelevant, because God transcends the time/space dimension we live in.  And, experience and state of mind on our part are irrelevant, because God is simply bigger than us!  Thankfully for us too, God has a great deal more patience than we often give him credit for, because I know that even my own prayers at times can be frantic, and yes, I am not too proud to admit that on more than one occasion I have fought with God - many times it was a one-way battle though with me doing the tongue-lashing, yet God always makes everything turn out despite my own limitations (praise be to Him for His mercy too, believe me!).  When God says "effective and fervent," he is talking about the prayer from the heart that sincerely seeks Him, and thankfully perfection is not a prerequisite for talking to God, which leads to the next point.  This righteousness - where does it come from?   In Romans 3:10 we are given the glaring reminder that "there is none righteous, no not one," and the reason for that is in Romans 3:23 - "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."  Yet, we are told about all these blessings that righteous men receive in the other verses we discussed, so what is that about??    2 Corinthians 5:21 gives us that answer - "For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him!"  Again, through Christ do we receive the righteousness to boldly yet in humility approach the throne of grace, and although our earth-bound thoughts often take things for granted, it is an immeasurable marvel to know that God is accessible from anywhere, anytime, and in any human condition we may find ourselves subjected.  Thus, that is why we can address God the Father as a person, and can do so simply.

Now, what about the "art in heaven" part of the petition?  First, although God is everywhere and in all happenings, He is also transcendant - he is not "in" his creation, as a heresy called panentheism teaches (via Jurgen Moltmann and others, this has also permeated some sectors of Christianity unfortunately) but rather is He who is alone in himself.  What on earth does that mean??  For some, it means heaven is a dimension, and although it is that, I personally would hold that it is also a real location somewhere in the universe too.  Guardini doesn't invest a lot of detail debating where heaven's location is, but rather he focuses on what it must be, and there are four things that he notes:

1. Heaven is infinitely pure and holy.
2. Heaven is absolutely calm and hidden.
3. Heaven is strange yet familiar
4. Heaven is beautiful and blessed.

Heaven is, in Guardini's explanation, the inaccessibility of God, His "otherness," but it is also our ultimate homeland, a place of origin.  So, that tells us what this invocation is to mean then.

We ourselves start from the place we are when we pray this petition, and in the hour we live and what we are engaged in.  The God we seek is in heaven, and distinct from all else. To address him, we raise our minds above the earth, and that is because God must be granted his 'otherness."  And, that leads to a discussion of some important issues.

We as human beings tend to think certain ways, and when it comes to God it gets us into some hot water.  Therefore, when we pray this prayer, invoking "Our Father who art in heaven," we have to come to the admission that God is not necessarily like things, time or ourselves.  We don't prescribe to Him what He is supposed to be like according to our preferences, yet we must agree that he is one who is of Himself.  That being said, we have to prepare ourselves for the fact that God is going to be different from our own expectations of Him.  I believe the Thomistic approach of viewing this, as prescribed by the late Fr. Norris Clarke in his seminal text The One and the Many (Notre Dame, IN:  University of Notre Dame Press, 2001) is the best way, in that it affirms that God is love, truth, etc., but on a far more greater level than we as human beings can understand.  We know that  He is all those things, but not how.  We know, for religious purposes, that God is supreme wisdom, love, power, etc., but we don't know the details (Clarke, p. 233-235).  Therefore, being we are created in the imago Dei, we hold that God has those attributes which we share, but that they are in the most pure form with God.  That being said, we need to now discuss some cautions Guardini deals with at the end of the chapter, as they are important.

Guardini notes on page 16 of his text that human beings have this propensity to defend themselves against God, and one of the ways we tend to do this is create God in our own image, making him innocuous by projecting man's own image upon God instead of seeking a true face-to-face encounter.  Much of this is embodied in the way popular culture views Jesus, God the Son.  Because He was human too, it is a temptation to try to paint Him like we want Him to be, and one of the most glaring examples was one  I came across a few years ago in a New Testament class of all places at my former university, and I call this one the "Caveman Jesus:"

I am not sure what on earth the artist had in mind for making this abomination, but to me it makes our Lord look like a boneheaded retard who can't tie His own shoes, and that borders on the blasphemous.  In the efforts of many to "humanize" Jesus and God, making them thus more culturally-relevant, this sort of thing happens frequently.  As Guardini correctly notes, stuff like this is not God,  but rather a projection of man's self upon God.  It is, in essence, trying to re-create God in man's image, and that is insulting to the Holy One who created the whole universe and everything in it.  Equally offensive though is this picture, which I call the "Hippie Jesus," and it is unfortunately a portrait that has shaped many's image of Christ for centuries:

Although generally we tend to be a little less offended at the second than the first, fact is neither of them I believe represent the true Jesus.  Will you go to hell if you have these pictures in your home?  Not at all - as long as you're not worshipping the picture, I think it is fine, although that first picture is just in bad taste!  It is time for us to maybe get back to worshipping God as He is, where He is, rather than trying to project our images onto Him.  The opening petition of the Lord's Prayer, "Our Father, who art in heaven," exhorts us to do just that - we are, in essence, praying "I want you God, as you are in yourself."  As God said to Moses in Exodus 3:14, "I AM WHO I AM," so should we approach God.  His Hebrew title YHWH, as a matter of fact, means simply that - "I AM!"  When Jesus came, the name He took for Himself at the Annunciation, Y'shua, actually also translates to "I am the salvation."   Jesus IS our salvation, and as part of the Godhead, it means that God too is our salvation.  Therefore, when we address "our Father, who art in heaven," we are addressing the very source of our salvation, as well as the fact that He in Himself is our homeland - and as Matthew 11:28-30 tells us, it is in this "homeland" that is God that we find our rest.  And, this concludes the teaching for now, but I hope it edifies your spirit.  

The Lord's Prayer Part 1 - "Thy Will Be Done"

Preface - I am going to be posting here for the next several weeks a series of studies I am doing at our parish church on Sunday mornings, and the first is an in-depth study of the Lord's Prayer using Romano Guardini's 1932 classic The Lord's Prayer (New York: Random House, 1958; republished by Sophia Institute Press, Manchester, NH - this is the English edition). When the parish embraced the idea of a weekly Bible study, I felt the need to "go back to the basics," and felt this book was a good place to start.

Romano Guardini (1885-1968) is one of the premiere theological masters of the Roman Catholic tradition, and as a theologian and philosopher, he has exerted a great deal of influence over many, including the late Pope John Paul II (then Karol Wojtyla) who actually wrote a graduate thesis in his younger years on Guardini's personalist philosophical position.  I was personally introduced to Guardini's material in a graduate Theology class at Franciscan University of Steubenville, and his orthodoxy, as well as his ability to bridge theology and philosophy, drew me to his work.  I now use it extensively in my own research.  

The material presented here is based on an outline of the chapter, which I will expound upon, much as I did when I taught this material to our parish class.  

The "Lord's Prayer," as it is often called, is a very integral part of our devotional and liturgical tradition as Anglo-Catholic Christians, and it is also viewed by the author of the text, Fr. Guardini, as a 55-word catechism.  In this series of studies on Guardini's classic text, we will be taking a phrase at a time from this essential petition, and examining it in detail for its theological richness.  The way the text is set up, Guardini felt it best when he wrote the book to start with the phrase "Thy will be done," as he calls it a "gateway phrase" to the rest of the prayer.  It is that now which we will talk about at length.

On page 4, Guardini says that we are exhorted to ask that God's will be done due to the fact it is something worth asking for.  It is precious for which we have to ask, as well as holy and salutary (meaning giving all due respect to Him of which we ask).  With that being said, it is important now to discern what God's will is, and in following pages Guardini states five things:

1. His holy intention - both for the world in general and for us in particular.
2. His eternal counsel.
3. The fruit of his wisdom.
4. The force of his stern decrees
5. The loving desire of his heart.

God's will, therefore, is the epitome of the divine glory and perfection, and our very existence is dependant on whether God's will is accomplished in our own life.  And, that leads to the evident tension which our own sinful nature ensnared us with at the time of the Fall.

On page 5, Guardini says that although the Christian prays that God's will be done, it therefore must be possible that his will may not be done.  What does that mean??  It is really quite simple - God gave humanity free will, and therefore at times human free will can come into conflict with God's will.  At this point, I want to reference a later Catholic theologian, Cardinal Jean Danielou, who in his classic 1965 text Prayer as a Political Problem (New York:  Sheed and Ward, 1965) notes on page 102 that Christianity doesn't merely consist of just "knowing" God, as any religion can have that as its objective, but rather that men know God truly.  This means discerning the will of God and following it.  As such then, Guardini continues, God's will is rightly called a "should," a probability rather than a promise.  In other words, here is what Guardini is saying - God's will is there, and it is the way God intended man to live, but the free will factor must be considered when dealing with humanity as persons in themselves.  Some things are God's will and don't require petitioning, for instance - the sun rises, the sun sets, and the natural laws of the universe are in operation because God willed them to be so - Descartes had it right when he said God is a God of science, for true scientific principle is part of God's creation.  What Guardini calls on page 6 the "character of inevitability" applies to this as well, and as far as the teaching of the Church goes, it is affirmed in the fact that what is called in metaphysics the Principle of Sufficient Reason, a dynamic principle, is formulated as saying that "every being has sufficient reason for its existence." (Clarke, W. Norris.  The One and the Many. Notre Dame, IN:  the University of Notre Dame Press, 2001. p. 21).  What that means is that God will is the sufficient reason for our existence, and God has spoken that will through two great "books:"  One is called by Fr. Norris Clarke "The Book of Nature," which has created things speaking to us directly, and the other is "The Book of Revelation," which is where God, through Scripture and the Holy Tradition of the Church's teaching (together called the Deposit of Faith, or Fidei Depositum) himself reveals to us his own inner nature and his free gifts and special plans for humanity (Clarke, p. 7).  It must be understood that Revelation perfects nature, but can only do so when this petition, "Thy Will Be Done," becomes the prayer of the heart, which is the whole premise of Guardini's point on this subject.  Also, Nature will never be opposed to Revelation (this is called philosophically the Principle of Non-Contradiction) because again, God created Nature, and it always bears evidence of his creative will.  Therefore, as Guardini notes, in the cases of the sun rising and setting, the seasons changing, etc., God's will is entrusted to the course of nature he created.  This is also affirmed in Scripture in several places, notably Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 and Matthew 5;45.

However, there is a difference when it comes to higher and exalted things, and none is more higher and exalted on the earth and in God's created order than man himself - God created us in his image (Genesis 1:27) and man was given dominion by God over the earth as part of God's intended will (Genesis 1:28-30).  However, when man fell and the sting of sin infected humanity, it became a possibility that man could actually obstruct God's will.  Therefore, in order to bring God's will to fruition, it cannot come through the compelling force of nature, but rather through something that arises in man's inner being - the origin of that must be in faith and revelation, and come from the heart, and intellect, is rooted in love, and must be freely accepted by man's free will.  The only thing that can make this work is a purity of heart and willful cooperation of man.  It means man has some conditions to meet as well:

1. A recognition of truth
2. Creation of noble works
3. A just order in society, etc.

A pure and willing spirit is not guaranteed by compulsion - as Guardini notes on page 8, providence and destiny don't take the same course with man as the rising sun and falling rain, but are linked to man's active willingness.   However, on the negative, this willingness can also be threatened by indolence, self-seeking, vanity, and apathy, and if it is, man is in rebellion against God's will and can obstruct it in his own life.  The freedom of the human heart and will, therefore, are what produce the nobility of character that allows man to accept God's will.  What this means therefore, is that the human will has both positive and negative:

1.  The human will harbors good, constructive, and elevating powers.
2.  However, it can also entertain corrupting, degrading, and disruptive forces.

Due to man's Fall, he is prone to evil and his free will often counters God's will, hence making God's will in danger of contradiction.   As a principle, the higher the nature of what God wills, the more it is imperiled.  Also, the nobler something is desired by God's will, the less assurance is evident that it will be done and the more frail the divine will appears on earth.  However, God has a plan regardless, and although the desire for his redemptive love on the part of his creation appears singularly ineffective, there is a slight possibility of its fulfillment.  The paradox of the Christian, therefore, is that he knows the way of the world, and although original sin was washed away in the waters of the baptismal font, the propensity to sin makes the Christian have a realization that in his own ways he can do things that can contradict God's will, which is why the grace of salvation is constantly renewed through a spirit that is responsive to God's Holy Spirit.  God doesn't force man to conform to his will, and never has - however, there are consequences we bring on ourselves when we don't follow the will of God.   This is therefore the paradox and struggle of the Christian life.

However, the hope is very encouraging.  For one thing, the self-will of man doesn't substitute for the will of God, and due to that, it is only through divinely-sanctioned grace that the mystery of God's will can be accomplished through (not by!) man.  Therefore, the accomplishment of God's will must be granted by the same God who demands its fulfillment, and only the free will of the Christian who prays the prayer, "Thy will be done."  It is the responsibility of the Christian therefore to understand the mysterious nature of God's will, including the truth that it can only be accomplished by the gracious gift of the same God.  God's will is not sent either as a lifeless force, but rather he infuses it with his power - we are given that when the Holy Spirit indwells us.  And, the power (called the "power from on high" in Acts 1:8) is what brings the salvation of mankind (via the Gospel message of Christ's mission - see Romans 1:16) to those who choose to believe and accept it.  The glory of God and the salvation of mankind, therefore, are one in that they are the same work of the Holy Spirit.  In time, the will of God will be the standard by which mankind will be judged - in the end, in other words, God's will prevails.  Therefore, the petition "Thy will be done," has a significance in that it assures the Christian of that restoration of what God intended us to be, and by bringing our will into harmony and submission to God's, we are assured of his ultimate salvation so long as we walk in that will and don't deviate from it.  Therefore, Guardini calls this petition the "gateway" because everything else rests upon how we respond to God's will, and therefore it is the axis of this prayer.  

R.I.P., Carpenter's Home

Sunday I was reading a story in the Lakeland Ledger that immediately got my attention because it is big news - the famed Carpenter's Home Church building is coming down after 30 years.  The story had originally been prefaced on February 17th, but the new one claimed front-page coverage.  This is significant not only in the history of Lakeland itself, but for many people it has a personal dimension, and I am no exception.

Much of what was taught at Carpenter's Home over the years was stuff I would not personally agree with, and there has been some controversy with the megachurch over the years too.  Despite that, however, a part of my own history has Carpenter's Home in it, and I wanted to talk about that here.  I was never a member, nor did I attend, Carpenter's Home - nonetheless, I am involved in its legacy.

First though, a little about the history of this famous and sometimes notorious church.  Lakeland has always been a sort of church-going "mecca" for decades, and for some reason the Assemblies of God has had roots here since the beginning - it has a college (Southeastern University), its district offices, several affilliated churches, and of course the largest megachurch in all Florida; Carpenter's Home was the latter.  However, Carpenter's had humble beginnings, as its history goes back to what was then the original First Assembly of God in Lakeland.  First Assembly was founded in 1921, and it met in a building on Lemon Street we now know as the "old stone church."  This is where my first intersection with Carpenter's history comes.   When Barb and I first came here in 1992 and I started my classwork at Southeastern, I was a member then of the Foursquare denomination and we desperately needed a church to attend.  So, upon looking, I found one - it was called Family Praise and Worship Church, and was pastored by Rev. Gene Pansler (the son of the former Vice President of Southeastern, the late Dr. Clarence Pansler).  Family Praise and Worship Church at that time met in "The Old Stone Church" on Lemon Street, so I got to know that building well.   Over the years, as First Assembly expanded, the property of "The Old Stone Church" was acquired by the Shelton family, and they were the ones who leased it to Rev. Pansler when he made the decision to affilliate with Foursquare and start a church here.  Unfortunately, the Foursquare congregation only lasted a few years until it closed, but its presence in the historic building kept it around for a while longer.  Unfortunately, no extant photos of it could be found to show here, and I am not sure if it even is still there or not, but it is significant to see that a functioning congregation of some sort lasted all those years.

Around 1964, First Assembly had grown to the point that it needed a bigger building, and it purchased a large parcel of land between Main Street and Rose Street just east of downtown Lakeland, and there it built a larger building.  Two years later, in 1966, its most notable pastor, Rev, Karl Strader, took the reins of the First Assembly congregation and it grew more.   Strader, who at 83 is still very active, also drew some fire because of his more "charismatic" teaching, which included among other things a great emphasis on personal prophetic ministry and other things the soon-burgeoning Charismatic movement would be noted for.  As a matter of fact, he was noted as a sort of "maverick" in the Assemblies of God (Stephen Strang, "Strader, Karl David," in Burgess, McGee, and Alexander, The Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements {Grand Rapids:  Zondervan, 1988}p. 833) despite his progress at growing a huge congregation which Gary White in his Ledger article Sunday rightly said anticipated the rise of the large megachurches later.  The growth was so phenomenal, as a matter of fact, that it compelled Strader and the church leadership to plan in the early 1980's a larger facility, and that is where the current building came into the picture.  The Main Street property was later acquired by another congregation, a Word/Faith church affilliated with Kenneth Hagin's ministry called Family Worship Center, and they too became a large church - they still occupy the property today, although since they have had to build two new large sanctuaries to accomodate their crowds too.

The immense 10,000-seat Carpenter's Home sanctuary

It was in 1985 that the new facilities, located in north Lakeland near US 98 North, were opened, and this facility was the biggest anyone had seen to this point - it seated 10,000 people.  In addition, a school (Evangel Christian School) was started, as well as a radio station (WCIE) and a large retirement complex (Carpenter's Home Estates).   This is the building which is also today being demolished.  Both Barb and myself had a lot of history with Carpenter's at this juncture too, as in 1986 at a concert Barb received what is called the "baptism of the Holy Spirit," with evidence of tongues.  Interesting enough, I was having a spiritual transformation of my own over 1000 miles away, when earlier in 1986 I was born again and baptized in water.  It would be three more years before I received the Pentecostal experience in a whole different way and another place, but all of that factored into how we ended up in Lakeland in the first place.  Carpenter's continued to have a few issues even in its heyday in the new mammoth sanctuary, as soon Strader attracted attention from the local Assemblies of God district for some of his more controversial teachings, and the result of those was a church split in 1989 from which sprang Victory Assembly - Victory acquired land a couple of miles away on Griffin Road and built a sizeable church of its own, which today is itself a megachurch.  Later, in 1992, a controversy surrounding a Ponzi scheme involving Daniel Strader (Pastor Strader's son) landed him in jail for a length of time and also affected the church's publicity negatively.  Then, in the same year, a controversial South African evangelist by the name of Rodney Howard-Browne began holding revival meetings there which evolved into the "Holy Laughter" movement, and this in turn created some problems due to its excesses.  To be honest, Barb and I attended some of those meetings in 1993, and I was not overly impressed - the theatrics seemed staged to me, and people were "falling under the power" more out of a Pavlovian response than they were to a real moving of the Spirit, and the general irreverence displayed for things holy was almost blasphemous.  This led to a slow decline of the famed megachurch in the late 1990's, and by 2005 the membership of the church had dropped to about 10-15% of what it used to be, compelling them to sell the facilities to another rising megachurch organization, Without Walls in nearby Tampa, which was founded in the early 1990's by Randy and Paula White (now divorced) who had Church of God roots.  Without Walls, however, soon was in its own decline, and by 2011 the great edifice stood vacant.  And, today it is slated to be demolished.  It is a tragic ending to the story.

I also share another part of my own story with Carpenter's Home, in that from 1995 to 1997 I worked as a security officer there.  Given the immense size of the congregation and the active schedule of concerts featuring a lot of superstars of Christian music, security became a necessity.  When I was hired on in April 1995, I was mostly assigned to the adjacent Carpenter's Estates (the retirement community), but did work some concerts and other events at the church too.  Carpenter's, despite its controversy and excesses, did provide a great service to many of us Southeastern students then, and although the job didn't pay much, it still was sufficient to pay the bills.  Many of my co-workers, as well as a couple of my ranking supervisors, were actually my classmates.  The experience of working there also helped me to meet a number of fascinating people, which was a blessing in itself.  However in time I moved on, and it soon became apparent that the church was declining and couldn't maintain the security detail it had, so it was later dissolved.

Carpenter's Home was also where I walked the aisle and received my Bachelor's degree in 1996.  For many years, it was a tradition for Southeastern to hold its commencement services at Carpenter's Home (Strader, to his credit, always supported Southeastern and its mission back in the day, which is why so many of us students were given good employment opportunities there too), and that continued to be the case I believe up to the early 2000's, when the venue was changed to Victory Church nearby.   Today though, I am not even sure Victory is the venue anymore, as Southeastern has itself in recent years seemed (at least to me) to disconnect itself from many of the local Assemblies congregations that once supported it, which is an unfortunate story for another time.

To give some concluding thoughts, Carpenter's was an institution in Lakeland for many years, and ironically had the congregation still been around today, I am sure they would have had quite the celebration for their 30th anniversary - Gary White, in the Ledger article, also made that observation.  The tragic saga of Carpenter's Home though is one that many should learn from, because there are lessons.  First, bigger is not always better - often, with large megachurches, they lose a lot of what made them into the great institutions they become, and as they do so, there is no place to go but down.   Second, excesses can do more harm than good, despite intentions and sincerity.   In my many years of involvement personally with the Pentecostal tradition, I can say honestly that I have seen it all - and, some of that involved some pretty bizarre stuff.  Excesses are a lot like a triple-fudge layer cake though - it may taste good, but if you indulge in a lot of it you will end up dying of some diabetic-related malady.  The Holy Spirit still operates today - God is immutable, and that includes the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Godhead.  But, we also need to exercise good discernment skills too, lest we fall into some potentially dangerous trap.   Pastor Strader now lives at the Estates he helped build, and by all indications he is still vibrant and active at age 83.  And, a remnant of Carpenter's still exists in Lakeland, just to the north of the original sanctuary - it is called Ignited Church, and is pastored by Stephen Strader, Karl's son.  Ignited doesn't draw near the crowds it used to, as it has a more modest facility and unfortunately is prone to some of the same excesses that brought down the original church - a few years back, Ignited tried to re-create the "Laughing Revival" of years previous by inviting an offensive, foul-mouthed, tattoo-covered bully by the name of Todd Bentley to conduct "revival meetings," but it was to no avail.   Bentley, like so many other charlatans, quacks, and slick-talkers before him, soon generated his own controversy and the "revival" ended with no fanfare or fizzle.  I only hope that Stephen Strader and his pastoral staff will learn to exercise a little more discernment regarding who steps onto their sanctuary platform, because the last thing Lakeland needs is another hyped-up "revival."  In recent years, Lakeland has become sort of a "burned-out" district in regard to religious phenomena - there are still solid churches and individual Christians of all denominations to be found, but they are not quite like they used to be.  It is sad really, because the once-great spiritual legacy this town had is something that could enrich those who learn about it.  However, with charlatans, showmen, and others faking revivals to put money in their own pockets, much of the newer generation here has grown cold - and Southeastern has even followed suit, because for all the talk of creating a distinct Pentecostal identity you hear on that campus, it has yet to be put into practice, especially with professors in the Religion Department there who have their own agendas and don't really concern themselves with the spiritual formation of the students they teach.  Is there hope for a true spiritual renewal in Lakeland, that can bring back some of the good legacy of the past?  With God, all things are obviously possible, but it's not totally up to God - people need to have a desire for it.  Maybe one day God will have mercy and make it happen, as there may still be hope for Lakeland yet.

This sort of concludes my own chronicle of the ending of a great legacy of a famous church in Lakeland, and the good thing is that many o of us who have had some involvement with the old Carpenter's Home will preserve the best of what it was.  God be with you until next time.

Some Theological Thoughts To Begin the Year

As I was writing in my personal journal last night, some things came to me that I wanted to expound upon and share.  It is kind of a new twist on a Scripture that many are familiar with, and today I want to talk about that a little, as some fresh insight hit me as I was doing my periodic journal entry.

Isaiah 5:20 is a prophetic and very stern warning from God himself through the voice of his prophet that says this:  "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil.  Who put light for darkness and darkness for light.  Who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!"  If we look over now in 2 Timothy 3, a couple of verses stand out here which could be a commentary by the Apostle St. Paul on Isaiah's dire warning.  Let's look at verse 5 first - "but having a form of godliness and denying the power thereof."   Secondly, let's drop down to verse 7 - "always learning but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth."  Finally, that second verse is complimentary to Romans 1:22 - "professing to be wise, they became fools."  The preceding verses give the foundation to the following commentary you are about to read, and I want to take things in a slightly different direction on this.

When  I was in high school, one of the major literary works I was required to read and memorize in part was a passage from William Shakespeare's classic play Julius Caesar.  It is found in Act 3, and is Anthony's speech after Caesar is assassinated by Brutus.  The famous quote is "the evil men do lives after them, but the good is oft interred with their bones."  I remember having to memorize that line from the play, and to this day I can still recite the whole first half of this speech.  However, there is an odd spiritual truth to be found in this quote that got my attention based on a few recent firestorms I faced during the month of December, and as I reflected upon those facts, something came together.  If we take Isaiah 5:20 as truth and a relevant warning for today (which I do personally) it means that oftentimes a good legacy may be given a tainted interpretation by a culture that is gazing through the lens of its own evil.  In other words, something that is in reality good is labeled evil by a culture which seems to think what is evil is good.  When 2 Timothy 3 opens, its very first verse warns that in the latter days perilous times will come.  First, we need to examine what the word perilous means, because it also pops up again later in Ephesians 6:13 in reference to the "evil day" in that verse.  The root of "perilous" is the word peril, which Webster's New World Dictionary notes comes from the root Latin word experiri, meaning "to try."  The definition of "peril" follows as being "a danger, exposure to harm or injury,   Looking back in my own published study of Ephesians as I discussed the "evil day," I noted also that a similar Greek word, parasku, meaning "a time of preparation or trial," is used, and I can see a connection.  So, based on that knowledge, I would posit that the "perilous times" noted in 3 Timothy 1 and the "evil day" of Ephesians 6 are one and the same in this case.  And, it is also where many theologians get the idea of the 7-year Tribulation (or a "trying time," if you will) at the end of days from.   So, in essence, if looked at in this context perilous times then denotes that Christians will be tested, and many will fail, hence "falling away," or apostasy.  In using Scripture to interpret Scripture, it is important to understand that one thing does build upon something already said, especially when it comes to multiple passages by the same writer (in this case, the Apostle Paul).  Earlier in the Apostle's epistles, Paul also notes an important need for discernment - Christians need to know what is what, especially when it comes to cultural trends and the truth behind much of what secular culture accepts in order to inform better so that the believer would not be deceived by things the culture says is OK.  One trait of the end-times generation, however, is going to be an increasing tendency to call virtue vice, and vice virtue - things that were traditionally considered good, in other words, would be called evil, and things traditionally understood as evil will all of a sudden be celebrated as good.  Let me ask you now this question - are we not seeing that today??  Take this whole "gay marriage" issue for instance - although homosexuality is nothing new as it has always plagued humanity, the difference is that it was rightly perceived as unnatural and even evil in the past.   Nowadays, it is celebrated as something good, and never in human history has a group practicing a sinful behavior been all of a sudden given the same status as an ethnic group!  And, it isn't just with homosexual activity either - other sins are equally touted by the entertainment industry - this Miley Cyrus character, with her filthy and shameless "twirking" on stage, was practically wooed and wowed by the press, while her practical twin, the no-talent twirp Justin Bieber, practically can do any stupid thing he wants and is still a pop icon (that situation prompted a very good joke from Michael Buble recently on his Christmas special, when he introduced himself as "the Canadian singer that didn't egg your house this year.").  Then, lets look at the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman incident and the Ferguson riots of recent note.  Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown were nothing but street thugs engaged in drug use, criminal activity, and just degenerate behavior, yet they are touted as "heroes" and the responsible cop who was within his legal jurisdiction to defend himself (in the Ferguson case) is made to look like the bad guy.  The stupid thing about all that was that it was turned into a race issue because Trayvon and Michael Brown happen to be Black - God forbid we hold them accountable for committing violent crimes, because as Al Sharpton shrilly whines, that is "racist."   The thing is, however, a lot of Black crimes, many violent and some against other Blacks, get little attention because of that fear of being labelled a "racist."  As Colin Flaherty says in his excellent chronicle of this stuff entitled White Girl Bleed a Lot (Washington, DC: WND Books, 2013), many Blacks are engaging across the country in mob violence and are partaking of a dangerous sport called "the Knockout Game," and its object is to find a defenseless White, Asian, or Hispanic guy, punch him in the face as hard as you can, and then proceed to beat the living crap out of the poor guy until either your arms get tired or he is rendered unconscious (Flaherty, p. 13).  But, our culture will call the victim "evil" and the perpetrators "heroes" largely due to a mentality that Thomas Sowell notes in his book Black Rednecks and White Liberals (San Francisco:  Encounter Books, 2005) - Sowell (who himself is African-American) could have easily addressed Ferguson 9 years before it happened when he astutely observes on page 250 of his book that the failure of any particular people to achieve is often transformed verbally into a denial of "access" or "opportunity" to them by others (in this case, it is repeated ad nauseum by race-baiters like Sharpton, Jackson, and their unofficial mentor, Black Liberation theologian James Cone - Cone's racism ranks up there with Hitler and David Duke, but he is touted as a "theological master" even in some supposedly "Christian" colleges while real theologians such as Francis Schaeffer and Romano Guardini are ignored.).  What that means is a shirking of personal responsibility, and especially in this current day, it has no relevance, yet it is bought into by agitators and politicians.  So, in the name of "deprivation," depravity is just sort of glossed-over as a bi-product of a supposed disadvantaged existence.   At some point, I have another theory as to why many Blacks behave as they do and fail to raise their kids right, because I see a direct correlation between bad Black behavior and the abortion industry, but that is a discussion best suited for another article in the near future.  For now, the argument that deprivation causes depravity, and therefore ought to be just shrugged off even by the victims, is a case of calling evil "good."   And, the consequence is that those who stand up against it will be labelled "racist" and "evil" by the powers-that-be, and hence Shakespeare's words take a sinister new meaning - a legacy labelled evil lives well after the person accused of it (take Robert E. Lee as a perfect example!) but their good attributes are often taken to the grave with their corpse and forgotten about.   Trayvon Martin, for instance, is a "hero" and martyr for one reason and one reason only - the color of his skin.  Yet, there are real martyrs of terrorism - many who died in 9/11, for instance - whose legacies have been forgotten for exactly the same reason - many people who were killed in 9/11 at the World Trade Center were just normal, hard-working folks who loved their families and wanted to make a good life for them, but because they have White skin they are not worth anyone's consideration.  So, while Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin's names have gone household, how many 9/11 victims can you name?  Probably, like myself, you know none, and that is sad.  It is almost as if Shakespeare spoke prophetically, didn't he?

This racial unrest has also created persecution against Jews, veterans, and other groups, and that leads me to another part of this discussion.  When I was a kid, I remember reading excerpts of a book by an Argentinian journalist of Jewish heritage by the name of Jacobo Timerman entitled Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number.  The book, written in 1981, chronicles Timerman's incarceration in an Argentine prison during the time of the proto-fascist regime of Juan Peron there, and he was imprisoned because he spoke out against things he felt were unjust.  In the prison, it was quickly discovered that Timerman was also Jewish by heritage, which led to a lot of persecution for that.  Again, over 30 years prior to Ferguson, Timerman almost prophetically details what has happened, and the potential danger it poses, as he writes the following:

If we cared to formulate a historical equation, we could say that the conditions do exist:  a profound political crisis, an economic crisis with an annual 170% rate of inflation that has lasted several years, impotence on the part of political parties to come up with a minimally coherent response, the incapacity of the Jewish community to face straightforwardly its own reality, a totalitarian mentality among the majority sectors of the population, with a serious tendency toward messianic beliefs.  If the outbreak of anti-Semitism has not until now assumed greater and more pronounced characteristics, this is because the balance of power within the armed forces has been under permanent debate in recent years, with the moderates weighing the potential international repercussions and concliding that these would be hard to withstand.  (Jacobo Timerman, Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number {New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981} p. 70)

Much of what Timerman describes applies to the volatile Argentinian political situation of the mid-1970's, but there are some things we need to think about today.  First, a profound political crisis - America, in 2015, is more divided than it has ever been, and people are discontented.  Second, impotence on the part of political parties - for the most part, in 21st-century America, Republicans and Democrats look the same, and say almost anything to get into office but then do little once they get there.  And anti-Semitism - there has been a rise in that recently on many college campuses, and also there is a general bias against conservative Christians, military veterans, and others which seems to owe a lot of its impetus to the current President, Barack Hussein Obama.  And, racial tensions - not since the 1960's in the US has racial tension been so high, but now it is the reverse - Blacks discriminating against others.  And, then the toltalitarian mentality among majority sectors of the population - call that "political correctness" these days, and the fact that anyone who has an opposing viewpoint from the majority is often subjected to character assassination and even outright threats.  Again, the distinction between evil and good has become blurred, and what is called "evil" by the majority driven by the totalitarian madness of political-correctness is often not evil at all, but it paints a bad stigma - the "evil" men do live after them, and the good is oft interred with their bones; good things are downplayed, recast as evil, and forgotten about, in other words (calling evil good and good evil).  I too have been a victim of this myself, ironically from those calling themselves "Christian."  If you make a stand for the Holy Scriptures or the historic teachings of the Church, I have learned that you need to be prepared to be labeled as a "Greek fossil," a "worshipper of dead white males," or accused of being "antiquated" and "lacking in critical thinking skills" because you make a stand for truth.  That is almost to be expected of the secular world, but of churches too???  However again, Scripture speaks about this when it tells us that many will fall away from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons, and indeed that has happened.  A lot of it, ironically, is not coming from the average layman either, but rather from academic elites - we turn again to 2 Timothy 3:7, which as you recall says this - "Always learning but never coming to a knowledge of the truth."  For many academic elites - even those who are professed Christians - this has become all too true:  many of them, in the name of "well-roundedness" (a term they don't fully comprehend, by the way) have become blind to the plain facts that are right before their eyes, or as Romans 1:22 says, they profess wisdom but are in reality fools.  Many of these academics are more enamoured of the letters predicating their names (such as Ph.D., etc) and are academic fundamentalists when it comes to the proper documentation of a Tourabian note in a dissertation, but they have no issues taking great liberties at practicing historical and doctrinal revisionism.  Many colleges that were once solidly Evangelical, as a matter of fact, now embrace Religion faculty that are openly Marxist (or at least Marxist-sympathizing) and anti-Semitic (many self-professed Bible scholars would not shed a tear if Hitler were resurrected and started murdering Jews again, and would probably give him a blessing doing it - they do so today with Islamic terrorists), as well as also promoting heresies like Universalism and proto-Nestorian doctrine that diminishes Jesus's divinity.  But, when you call them on these things that are clearly wrong, they make you look like the bad guy and you are slandered and maligned because you stand for truth.  I have come to a conclusion or two about that, and want to discuss that now.

Recently, I had a very heated discussion with a former classmate of mine at my old university I transferred out of due to the many issues I have discussed.  Although seemingly a nice and personable guy, this particular student showed who he really was when I confronted him about his personal relationship with Christ.  Curious enough, I hear a lot of theological and academic jargon (again, ad nauseum) out of this person, but he's never really said why he is a Christian.  He is also one of these people who actually entertains ideas in class that Jesus is still somehow imperfect (to me, even suggesting this is a risk of falling into heresy, and it also puts one's salvation on the line), which honestly raised suspicions about his own relationship to Christ when I heard him do that openly in class.  For confronting this guy about his Christian testimony, I was called "idiotic," "evil," (hmmm...I ask about your relationship with Christ, and that is evil??  Sounds like Isaiah's prophecy to me!) and essentially he told me he didn't want anything to do with me - that is a fine Christian attitude from a guy claiming to be studying God's word, isn't it?   Well, I gave him his wish - I promptly "de-friended" him on social media (which was the forum of this discussion) and the Holy Spirit reminded me of the verse about casting pearls before swine - if your own witness is just going to be tread underfoot and called "evil," then you move on and let God do the conviction, as it is not your job.  I sowed the seed, and it is now up to him to respond.  Despite a lot of academic accolades and his supposed "Christian" service, this young man doesn't have a true relationship with Christ, and it is my prayer that the Holy Spirit works in him. Sometimes too, it is good to just take a step back, smile sweetly at such people, and say, "wait and see."   This is one of several examples over the years of many I have encountered who have the form of godliness down pat, but lack the substance of relationship to make it come to life for them.  Many Christian college campuses, I have come to conclude, are nowadays potential mission fields, and in many cases the Religion students (and faculty!) are in need of the Cross - they have intellectualized so much that they confuse their "critical thinking" and "interpretive grids" with their Christian experience, and they are not the same.  In a lot of ways, they are in more serious trouble than the outright secularist Millenial who frequents Starbucks, listens to Justin Bieber, and wears skinny jeans (or ball-crunchers, as I prefer to call them).  And, it is this religious crisis I believe marks the "perilous times" of a great "falling away," where the distinctions between what is good and what is evil are so blurred that much evil is justified even in Christian circles today.  Which is why those of us who do have the relationship with Christ need to undergird ourselves and make sure we have fortified armor against these influences, lest we too be taken down by them. 

I have said enough for today, but what was said is a needed message for the times we live in.  Many reading this may labor under the same delusions that my former classmate professed, and if so, let me ask you - what is your testimony of Christ in your life??  Do you have a relationship with Christ, or are you just interested in using religion as a justification for some of your own presuppositions about certain issues?  Jesus is about transformation, and His message is radically countercultural - the "political-correctness" and postmodernism of today stands in stark opposition to the crystal-clear teachings of Christ and His Church, and no matter how some slick Biblical "scholar" in his fancy bow-tie, skinny jeans, and with a wagon-train of letters predicating his surname tries to reconcile and revise it to conform to culture, it will be an exercise in futility despite how correctly said "scholar" cites a Tourabian note reference or uses academic jargon to make himself sound more important than he is to intimidate the layperson in the pew of the church he identifies with.  No, academic jargon and predicating letters and degrees don't build the Church, nor do they have the authority to re-write Christian doctrine and Biblical principle the Church has accepted and authenticated as truth for over 2000 years.  I have quoted my own saying many times, which is an elaboration of a famous quote of the great theologian Tertullian, that the blood of martyrs and the sweat and tears of prayer warriors are what built the Church, yet theologians worshipping a train of letters predicating their surnames attempt to destroy it.   I have nothing personal against theologians, as I myself claim to be one, but a pitfall many theologians have is trying to box in and contextualize plain truths revealed to great martyrs and saints of the Church over centuries to "make relevant" their own perceptions of those writings to a culture they are too eager to conform to.  My own desire is to never forget where I come from, despite what my own academic accomplishments are, because I have a duty to uphold Church teaching at all costs, and it is not my place to re-interpret it to fit into the current agendas of this society. God bless you all, and may 2015 be a productive and blessed year for you. 

Liberalism at Assemblies of God University? Further Elaborations on a Recent Interview

Earlier last week, I had the privelege of being interviewed for an article regarding my own experiences recently at Southeastern University in Lakeland, FL.  The lady doing the interview was Chelsen Vicari, who works with the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, DC.   Chelsen is herself a very astute writer, and I personally highly recommend the book she recently published entitled Distortion, as she exposes a lot of the nonsense that has been going on in recent years in the name of "Evangelical Christian," and what she is reporting is actually something that needs to be said.   Chelsen was a great person to talk with, and she wants to expose the agenda of political/theological liberalism that is infecting many Evangelical denominations these days.  Therefore, upon finding out that I was an alumnus of Southeastern, she wanted to interview me.  The full interview can be seen at this link, http://juicyecumenism.com/2014/12/18/squishy-theology-assembly-gods-southeastern-university/, and you are welcome to read it for yourself.  I personally think Chelsen did an excellent job on the article, and she is to be commended.

However, as expected, a tsunami of attacks and opposition against what I said started to inundate my Facebook page when I posted the link, much of it from people I knew.  Momentarily, I will address some of those,  but first I want to give a little bit of the background of my story, as it will clear up any confusion.

A Brief Summary of My Testimony

As I mentioned (and Chelsen accurately noted) in the article, I was raised as a very conservative Holiness/Pentecostal Christian in Appalachia.   Although very conservative theologically though, nominalism existed even among old-time Appalachian Holiness faiths, and there are many people who identify with this tradition but are not as committed to its day-to-day practice - my mother was like that.  Although my mother had believed she discerned a ministry calling while she served in Okinawa during the Vietnam conflict, she never really followed through and eventually lapsed in her religious conviction.  And, by "lapse," I mean she essentially did what many old-timers would have called "backsliding" - she hasn't darkened the door of a church in years, and she also smokes heavily and drinks, despite the fact she is now 68 years old and her health is not as good as it once was.  However, although Mom is not by any means perfect, I owe her some credit in that she raised me to have a healthy respect for the authority of the Bible, and she knows what it says and at least does believe what it says, although she isn't a practicing churchgoer these days.  And, she also knows the difference between truth and error.  I say that because many people - even those who regularly go to church and some who even are pursuing theological training - cannot say they can discern the difference.  Of course, that is the whole point of the article we will get to shortly. Suffice to say, Mom raised me right, although she herself may have lapsed, and along with many godly influences in my life, it helped me to make an important decision when I was a mere lad of 16.

Although I grew up with strong convictions, as mentioned life sort of caused Mom to lapse in her own Christianity, and some bad choices and other circumstances also led to me being raised in what was abject poverty in my childhood.   I grew up in this small West Virginia town where almost everyone there was poor and on some sort of assistance, including our family.  Also in that small town, alcoholism, child abuse, and other ills were rampant, and compared even to some kids I grew up there with, I had it better in many cases - some of the neighborhood kids were treated like garbage by their families, and their parents would be quick to spend the last dollar in the house on booze while the kids went hungry.  Looking back on it, we kids in town had challenges to overcome, and being I still keep in touch with many of them today (thanks in part to social media), I am very proud of many of them and how they turned out, despite what many of us were subjected to.  In a sense, in my own particular case I have to look at it from the perspective of Romans 8:28 - "All things work together for good to those who love God, and are called according to His purpose."  I say that because I may not be the person I am today had I had it easier - God allowed that to make me grow and ultimately lead me to Him, and it worked!  I have shared my story before, but a summary bears repeating here because this is how God worked in my own life.

The town I lived in throughout much of my childhood and into my early teens was a rough place to grow up, and although I cannot say Mom was ever abusive to me - she really never was - it still was not easy, as Mom did drink a lot when I was a kid, and it wasn't always pleasant in other ways dealing with that.  Many a time we too went without food, and I was even forced on many occasions to go to extreme measures - raiding the neighbor's gardens at night, catching fish out of the creek, and on many days my meal was toast or a cooked potato.  By the time I was in my early teens, I was desperate for a change, and one night I made a promise to God that if he delivered us from that hellhole of a place, I would commit my life to him.  In the summer of 1985, God did deliver us out, and for several months some transitioning took place in my life that almost made me forget that promise.  That is, until we moved with my grandmother and step-grandfather to the town of Rowlesburg, WV that November.  Across the street from where we moved, my step-grandfather's sister and her husband lived, and at the time they were involved in a little Southern Baptist church that had started in town there a few years previous, and she invited me to go to church with them one night.  So, I did - and I liked going!  At around that same time, the local storeowner down the street, a Lebanese-American man and his wife Freda, were also alive and very elderly, but Freda also invited me to go to Mass with them at the local Catholic parish in town, St. Philomena's.  And, I went a couple of Sundays with her too.  However, the Baptists really reached out to me, and it finally got to the place that I began to ponder my own soul's condition, and it led me on a cold night in January to the altar at that little Baptist church, and at that altar a godly pastor led a shy, awkward 16-year-old kid to the Lord, and I was born again that night.  It is a journey now I have been on almost 29 years as I write this, with a lot of twists and turns yet I still remained faithful.

I took my newfound Christianity seriously too, and it wasn't long before I started thinking about a call to the ministry.  Upon graduation from high school in 1989, I was accepted into a small Baptist college in Graceville, FL, but during that summer something else happened.  Again, I told this story before, but it bears some repeating,  The high-test Holiness/Pentecostal faith that my mother nominally identified with when I was a kid was something that at times could be scary, especially for a little kid.  And, although Mom nominally held onto the ideas, sometimes in her lapsed state things got a little mixed-up and she would "preach" at me things that literally scared me out of my wits!  Fortunately, the Baptist pastor who led me to Christ and soon after baptized me, Rev. Olen Phillips, helped me, but in the process I also became appalled with some of the stuff Mom had put into my head, and was blaming the Pentecostal movement as a whole.  It was not the Pentecostals' fault - Mom just gave me some wild misinterpretations of what they said - and as I began to grow in my faith I came to realize that and also became open to the Pentecostal experience.  That eventually led to my own reception of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, and I spoke in tongues for the first time, at a little Pentecostal Holiness church in Brunswick, GA, on June 21,1989.  Eventually, after a couple of years at the Baptist college, I joined the Foursquare denomination and later finshed my undergraduate education at Southeastern University in the spring of 1996.

It is here now the story picks up and we get into the issues dealing with the article.

Southeastern University - the Before and After

I transferred into Southeastern back in the fall of 1992, and when I did so that year, one thing that impressed me with that campus was the degree of spiritual vibrancy that I found there.  It was not unusual then, for instance, for professors to feel the leading of the spirit, stop class, and pray for the needs of students.  Also, campus revivals were something more frequent then, as many students' lives were touched by the Holy Spirit, and God really worked on that campus.  Also back then, the teaching was sound - you pretty much knew that you were generally getting a well-grounded theological foundation when you walked into a Bible or Theology class on that campus, and often when you walked away from one of those classes you took more with you than just a letter-grade on a paper or test.  That was the Southeastern I knew in the early 1990's.

Somehow though, some strange things had transpired over the past several years, as the leadership changed and the rise of many new theological fads - notably the "Emergent Church" movement, which was at one time merely heterodox but today is outrightly heretical - began to infect many Evangelical Protestant denominations, churches and institutions (I left the Foursquare denomination, by the way, in 1994, and have in the years following become part of the Anglo-Catholic traditionalist movement).  Southeastern unfortunately was not immune from this.  I went through a period of about 14 years after getting my BA in 1996 where I more or less just worked and provided an income for my family at secular employment, and although I wanted to pursue my graduate education, I really had no way of doing that where we lived at the time.  So, in 2011, we decided to move back to Lakeland, and I thought maybe I could finally have the opportunity to pursue that Masters degree I wanted to get.  So, I enrolled, was accepted, and beginning in the fall of 2012 I started my graduate work at what had become Southeastern University.  I had expected some degree of change to have occurred in the years since I had gotten my BA, but not like what I found.  After being exposed to some coursework at SEU in the Fall 2012 term, it was to me as if I had landed on a different planet, and as I progressed in coursework into 2013, it got more bizarre - much of the specifics of that are covered in Chelsen's article, but if time permitted I could report other things too.  Whereas in the past spontaneous prayer for students' needs would be a common thing, it now got to the point where my wife Barbara had to literally pray over me before I went to class down there, given what I was hearing and up against.  During my time there, I largely just kept my mouth shut, observed, and took note of many things - for instance, hearing professors in classes going off on their pet agendas which had nothing to do with the courses they were teaching, a high level of theological and Biblical ignorance when it came to essential doctrines and rudimentary material (one professor, for instance, actually said in class that Jesus was celebrating a Passover Seder when he fed the 5,000 - I know Jewish religious customs, and as I recall there are no fish on the Seder!  Oddly, the professor was supposed to have a Ph.D. and should have known better, as the particular class he was teaching was New Testament Theology).  In time, it just got to be too much - my spirit and emotions just couldn't handle it anymore - and upon some consultation with the bishop of my church communion I transferred out of SEU and instead resumed my education at Franciscan University of Steubenville.  I am happy to report that studies at Franciscan have been refreshing - they have had their challenges, but they have been excellent overall, and I feel I have made the right choice.  That tells you a little of my perspective and where I am coming from.

It is now time to expose some of the attacks I have gotten against my stand on this due to the exposure it got from the article, and as I do so, I hope it clears up a lot for the readership.

Answering The Flak

As mentioned, when Chelsen published this article last week, I got a lot of feedback - some of it has been good, some not so good, and some just ridiculous.  I want to take some of those statements and respond to them here.  I am withholding names of the people, and am instead focusing on a few things that caught my attention.

1. "Just because you don't agree with it does not mean it should not be taught."   This was a comment by a classmate I had graduated with back in 1996, who himself had some liberal views of his own at that time.  There are some problems with a couple of phrases from this argument.  First, it is not about whether or not I disagree with something, although much of what I was addressing I do disagree with - rather, it is about being faithful to what the Church and Bible have historically taught, and much of what is being taught there now doesn't do that.  Also, about whether or not it should be taught; again, not the real issue.  It is important to know theological trends, and there is a difference between teaching about differing viewpoints and openly advocating for one while ridiculing others.  My issue here is what is going on - there is a sort of groupthink going on there at that campus, and if you sit in classes you are exposed to only one view, not many, and everybody at least acts like they all agree - that is the problem.  When a real issue arises or a dissenting voice is heard, it is often ridiculed.  If it were merely about teaching the fact that other views are out there, while at the same time stating the view of the particular school and denomination (rather than the professor's opinion) and why there is disagreement, I would not be even raising the issue to begin with. 

2. "Your conservative viewpoint is just as valid as a liberal one"  This is one that is commonly bandied about to avoid real debate and discussion, and essentially what this is really saying is "Oh, can't we all just get along, tiptoe through the tulips, and not be judgmental about everything?"  Fact is, every denomination - including the Assemblies of God, which is Southeastern's affilliating denomination - has doctrinal standards, and the duty of the teachers in such institutions is to uphold and instruct others in the doctrines their denomination holds.  Every professor at SEU - or at least they used to anyway - used to have to sign a statement pledging to do just that.  Problem is, in recent years I have heard some things that are contrary to the doctrinal statement of the Assemblies of God (called the "Statement of Fundamental Truths" I believe) and it essentially would be dishonest for a professor to put his signature on something saying he believes and upholds it while at the same time teaching something totally in opposition.  And, if I may be so bold, I have come to a shocking conclusion - many current Religion faculty at SEU these days are lying to get a paycheck when they sign those statements, and that is wrong.   

3. "We follow what we believe."  This statement follows a couple of sentences of prior discourse by its author leading up to it that essentially says "I can disagree with you, but we're all right, and nobody knows for sure."   In essence, the argument had to do with an interpretation of a Scripture passage in 2 Timothy 3 that talks about the "falling away" in the latter days of many calling themselves "Christian," and the author of the quote used the reasoning that liberals view conservatives as the "fallen ones" too and that both views are valid.  The guy who wrote this - and I went to school with him too - is obviously confused; what he is embracing is a radically pietist/mystical individualism that has led to many a cult leader wreaking havoc on the religious world and society as a whole in past decades.  Jim Jones, for instance, followed what he believed too, and we all know how that ended!  Daniel Applewhite, and his Heaven's Gate cult from a few years back, also followed what they believed - where are they today?   My Archbishop, Mark Haverland, addresses this very thing in his book, Anglican Catholic Faith and Practice (Athens, GA; Anglican Parishes Association, 2011) on page 63 when he says, "However, the seeds of failure are present even in those forms of Protestantism that are doing well in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.  For instance, the Southern Baptist (Convention - my add), the largest Protestant denomination in the United States in this period, is theologically committed to the individualistic ideas of personal inspiration in the reading of Scripture and the autonomy of the local congregation.  Over time, in the context of a secular culture that is hostile to religious truth and traditional theological perspectives, such an individual and local focus will produce the same secularization found in other Protestant bodies.  Likewise, the emphasis on the authority of personal religious experience found among the charismatics lends a sujective and individualist cast to their movement that will, in the long run, lead down the familiar Protestant path."    This has happened even to some vibrant spiritual movements in the past - remember Conrad Biessel and the Ephrata Cloister?  Biessel started out as a Sabbatarian Dunkard, but then became influenced by pietist mystic Jakob Boehm and later lapsed into esotericism due to his individualist pietism - the Rosicrucians and Mormons came out of a similar mindset too.  Also, as to secularism, let's look at how late Orthodox theologian Fr. Alexander Schmemann defines it - "the absence of man as a worshipping being."  The more the religious communities try to emulate the secular world, the more they lose their spiritual vibrancy and focus, in other words, as they begin to adopt the tactics of secular society.  So, to answer my friend's quote, no, we don't merely "follow what we believe," but rather we follow what the Church teaches historically.  We are allowed some leeway though in secondaries, but when it comes to the essentials, it has been already given to us.  As we grow in our faith, we will understand what we believe if we struggle, provided we humble ourselves and open up to the Church's instruction. 

4. "A good theological education requires that all sides are fairly given voice...even if we don't agree with their conclusions."   The individual who said this was originally an academic advisor at SEU before moving onto a program to complete his doctoral studies.  He misses this big-time though, as the true purpose of a good theological education is to prepare those who are partaking of it to more effectively communicate the doctrines and tenets of their faith as leaders in churches and other institutions.  And, although to be fair it should never ignore that "other sides" are out there, at the same time the purpose in educating about those "other sides" is to prepare the student to answer their differences and errors with the historic positions of their religious communion.  A second thought about this statement that is the sad reality at SEU too though is this, and it centers on the second part of the statement - "even if we don't agree with their conclusions."  The reality is that many students are not given the opportunity to disagree with anything being taught, as instead the "conclusions" are often presented as facts, and as I had seen many times at SEU, they are even "pentecostalized" - one student, although very intelligent and articulate, nonetheless ignorantly tried to say Jurgen Moltmann's "Theology of Hope" (or some called it "realized eschatology") was "Pentecostal."  Also, if all sides are given fair voice, I have to ask this gentleman something - how is it that on two separate occasions and by two separate professors I heard people like D. James Kennedy and Francis Schaeffer ridiculed, and Church of God evangelist Perry Stone called "dangerous," while the latter professor also extolled a known postmodernist philosopher by the name of Merrold Westphal, a man who believes Nietzsche is a "prophetic voice of Christendom?"  I would not say that is giving fair voice, would you??  The word for this is "double standard" -  the said professors say this essentially - "let's blast the more traditional viewpoint and extoll our more "enlightened" approach, shall we? "

5.  " I think your issue is more with Protestantism as a whole. If I just believe what the church teaches me, where is my discernment? Dont I get to decide what I believe. If Luther would have just kept his mouth shut rather than challenge what was being taught, we might all be Catholic today."   This argument was so absurd that it almost begged for a response, and so it is going to get it.  After going off on how "I'm OK, you're OK" we all are, despite our differences, in his earlier posts, this guy let his true colors be revealed by turning it into a Protestant/Catholic issue.   There are many, many things this fellow failed to realize, so we are going to rock his world now!

First, it is the whole Protestant issue, because this individual knows little about me or my positions.   For one, I think Protestants are fellow Christians, and I myself have a very rich Protestant past with many good things.  Second, I have studied a lot of Protestant denominations, and I know their strengths as well as their weaknesses - I have just published my own book, for heaven's sake, about small denominations and fellowships, and it is actually putting them in a very positive light!   The point of my position was not to make a Protestant/Catholic issue out of anything, as believe me, Catholics have their own issues with liberalism in some quarters which defy historic Church teaching.  Therefore, there is no anti-Protestant bias on my part at all - the point I was actually making about SEU is that it has moved away from its own roots, and in the process a lot of its own rich heritage has been lost in favor of a more flaky secularized agenda.  

Another issue is this statement "Don't I get to decide what I believe?"  If you are a committed Christian - Protestant, Catholic, or otherwise - the answer to that is an affirmative NO!!!  There are a set body of essential doctrines that transcend Catholic, Protestant, or other divisions which are commonly held and accepted by all Christians and are non-negotiable - the deity of Christ, the Trinity, salvation by Christ alone, etc. - and once you have accepted salvation in Christ, you have already decided to believe those things.  As Catholic Christians, this is also called historic Church teaching, and is upheld and authenticated by the Church and proclaimed by Scripture.  As an Evangelical, you would believe in Sola Scriptura, and if your denomination is historically Evangelical, many of your doctrines are going to come out of the plain reading of Scripture itself (although in many cases that more fundamentalist people want to admit, many doctrines common to all Christians owe their existence to the Holy Tradition of the Church, and they are concurrent with Scripture as understood by the Church - I personally don't adhere to Sola Scriptura as a Catholic Christian myself, but understand what it is saying.).  So, to answer that question, your decision has already been made when you either converted later in life, or chose to believe that which your parents taught - and, as part of the Church now, you are not in a position to change it.  

As for the Luther reference, Luther would be nailing a new "95 Theses" on the door of Bush Chapel on SEU's campus if he knew some of the crap being taught in the name of "Christianity" today.  Luther had his issues - and believe me, that could merit a whole discussion in itself! - but although the fruit of his efforts has not always been good, he was doing something legitimate.  Luther was addressing abuses that were being perpetrated in the name of the Church, and actually never opposed fundamental Church teaching.  Therefore, this argument on the part of my detractor is unwarranted to this situation. 

6. "Using one disgruntled person's perspective to cast aspersions on a University is irresponsible."  This is one person's attack on Chelsen's credibility as an author, and it was unfair to her and unbalanced.  Also - and I see this a lot! - this characterization  of me as merely a "disgruntled person" is so ridiculous that it is almost laughable.  To begin, I am not merely "disgruntled" - I have had other professors in my undergrad years I disagreed with as well but at the same time they were respectful and legitimate disagreements that both they and I appreciated, and it has nothing to do with disgruntlement.  I have raised some serious issues with this interview, and Chelsen also saw them as serious enough to warrant attention to write it.   It is not merely my personal kick to do this either - I would rather not personally, as I don't have time for answering attacks and I definitely don't have a personal desire to masochistically put myself out there just because I am "disgruntled."  This clueless person who wrote this statement doesn't know the  full story, and perhaps should go to the source (like they challenged me to do, I might add!) before making such baseless accusations.

I have dealt with six "gems" that I have gotten back, but there is much more - both comments on my FB posting of the article (which I had to end commenting on) and posts on Chelsen's article page have said some ridiculous things - I have been attacked as being "baseless" in my accusations (despite sitting in class and hearing a lot of this stuff), my faith has been attacked (some wag actually attacked the fact I was Anglican, even though the doofus failed to realize that I am not, nor have I ever been part of, the Episcopal Church - the Anglican Catholic Church, the communion I am part of, is a separate and much more Catholic and conservative jurisdiction),  and some students and faculty of SEU have tried to gloss-over the issue with a weak apologetic.  Alan Ehler, who is the Dean of the College of Religion at SEU (where a lot of these issues are happening) even felt compelled to respond and said something like this - "Southeastern University is affiliated with the Assemblies of God (AG) and upholds the AG's Statement of Fundamental Truths. (The statement can be found at http://ag.org/top/Beliefs/Stat... These include belief in the Trinity, including the deity of Jesus Christ, the final authority of scripture in all matters of faith and practice, and salvation as only coming through faith in Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection. All religion, Bible, theology, and ministry faculty are required to uphold these core doctrines in their courses"   On paper, that may be the case, but perhaps Dr. Ehler needs to shadow some of his faculty and find out what they are really teaching - I know the Statement of Fundamental Truths well, and although I have never been affilliated with the Assemblies of God personally, when I did my undergraduate studies at Southeastern years ago, they required us then to take a class in them to know them (as I was Foursquare in those years, I upheld them because essentially they were the same as my denomination anyway).  I have an issue with Dr. Ehler's statement in that he is resting on the assumption that all his Religion faculty at SEU are enthusiastically upholding what the Statement of Fundamental Truths said, and if that were really the case, this whole discussion would not even be necessary.  Fact is, the professors are affirming one thing when they sign a piece of paper to get their tenure, but teach something radically different in their classes.  Hence, the issue - I personally would not subscribe now to the A/G Statement of Fundamental Truths personally (as an Anglo-Catholic, we're simply a little different in that regard) but they do have a lot of good doctrine in them and if I were an SEU professor with Assemblies of God ministry credentials, I would take it as a personal responsibility to make sure I was committed to upholding what I affirmed with a signature.  To do otherwise is to lie, and last I heard, lying is still a sin.   So, to Dr. Ehler, I respectfully say, "wake up!"

Much more could be said, but frankly, I have other things to do.   However, I close by saying this - Southeastern and other colleges like it (it is not alone) have some serious issues to address, and they had better do so seriously because they are grooming the next generation of leaders in their denominational traditions.   I don't hate Southeastern at all - it is part of my history, and when I did go there as an undergrad I got a fantastic education.  But, I am concerned about the direction it has taken in recent years, and I only pray real, genuine revival - much like the revivals that mark that school's past - would come to that campus.  I also see SEU and other colleges like it now as a new mission field - students are lost, many of them don't really have a Christian experience of any kind, and this presents an opportunity for more traditional, conservative communions like mine; what a witness we could have on a campus like that!  A conservative Anglican priest in another jurisdiction, Fr. David Valentini, is even proposing a traditional Anglican campus outreach, and this is not such a bad thing to consider.   It is ironic though that many Evangelical college campuses these days are in need of evangelization themselves - Lord help us who name the name of Christ but don't bother to properly disciple the new generation!  I only pray that in the future, and before it is too late, SEU will see that it has some things to work on, and maybe a renewal can happen on that campus.  Therefore, we cannot hate SEU, but rather should pray for it; especially those of us who have that institution as part of our own history.