Tough road. There were many mysteries then. There are very few mysteries today.
ping!
Importantly, the spiritual Christians not in community with others cannot take communion. This is vital.
This merely means that no prophecy contained in the bible was the personal opinion or interpretation of the prophet, but rather the direct world of God. This is made clear in the very next verse where Peter says, "for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God." The passage is assuring us that scripture is the word of God not the word of man.
It’s an ideology that says religious institutions are outdated and unnecessary.
I was beginning to wonder about this article, When I realized he was speaking of the Roman Catholic Church, I better understood the article.
“It’s an ideology that says religious institutions are outdated and unnecessary.”
This is an overbroad and misleading statement. I am a Christian, I attend a church, I participate in the fellowship of believers, but I am not “religious”, because religiosity is different from religion. Religiosity, which appears to be what Sorenson is advocating, is the practice of adhering to rules instead of to the two greatest commandments. I can be a believer, loving the Lord with all my heart, soul, mind and strength and my neighbor as myself, without being religious.
“In essentials, unity. In non-essentials, freedom. In all things, Love.”
I understand the argument, and would attend a local church if I could find one, but Reformed Baptist churches are as rare as hen’s teeth in this area. Not interested in sitting under preaching that condemns the doctrines of grace.
Christ also said this:
Mat 18:20 For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.
This is one of those “conscience” things. Should we sit under preaching we profoundly disagree with, and feign agreement and fellowship with beliefs we don’t share? I think not. Dishonesty in our worship is sacrilegious and doesn’t honor God.
Joh 4:23 But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him.
Joh 4:24 God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.
Thankfully God has kept His Word intact all these years. Where His Word is concerned, if any relative, preacher or denomination disagrees with it, I’ll side with God. Not men.
It is clear where the author is coming from.
I will continue to identify with the non-demoninational Christians, thank you very much.
A good start, IMO, would be to emulate what the few successful churches are doing. Please do not misconstrue this to mean getting away from the message and/or the gospel of Jesus Christ. Go to people of this world in their world. For instance, how come every church is not on-line? The Internet is an incredible opportunity to reach out to more people than ever before, and I only see some churches doing this?
The problem is not the scandals for most people that have left the various Christian churches, but the accommodation and promotion of behavior contrary to the teachings of the Bible. Homosexual marriage and toleration of open deviant behavior from the sodomite sects has driven many away. Abortion is another. I attend Baptist and Methodist churches. I give credit to both the Baptist and Catholic Churches for standing their ground.
“Spriitual but not religious” is an interesting turn of words. In some ways, I would call myself “spiritual but not religious”. But all I mean by that is:
1. The early church had no bibles, so the bible is not my foundation. It IS the Word of God in the way that my parents instruction on how to live a good life was the valid word of my parents. It also explains (from beginning to end) the sacrifice Christ made, why it was necessary, and what it accomplished. That is critical. But What is even more important is my prayer life. God can communicate with each one of us directly, but the bible is a very good additional resource.
2. I don’t go to church specifically to worship God. I do that in all facets of my life, every day. I go to Church to help and be helped by other Christians. Church is about “the church”. This help can often be using them as a sounding board to my ideas about my God and my relationship with Him as well as my interpretation of His Word as it should apply to my life.
3. I have some difficulty with every church I’ve ever attended. I spent 18 years at an AG church, involved in the orchestra, Discipleship Dynamics and even bus ministry. But they had some goofy teaching about tongues that I could never find support for in the Bible. I then moved on to foursquare, Christian and, finally, baptist. The latter because that is mainly all there is out where I now live. But that one has this completely unfounded teatotalling attitude. And it is not even the fact that they are teatotallers. It is the twisting of scripture that they do to support it and so totally judge those that disagree. And yes, it’s a dry county (well, now it’s moist).
4. I CRINGE every time I see an American flag in a church. There is a time and place for everything. A church is about Christians communing in the name of our Lord, not nationalism. They might as well show the label of the largest local employer.
Church is horribly flawed in the US, but the bible tells us to attend. And I honestly DO see the wisdom in that. But my wife and I no longer go every week and never went the three “official” times per week they are open.
As Christians we really do need each other. God expects us to obey Him by showing love (which is an ACTION) and compation toward each other as a Christian community. Without Church, that community does not exist. And not going because the church organization is flawed is a cop-out.
Written by a Catholic to a Catholic...Born again Christians who actually read and believe the scriptures will not fall for this Catholic propaganda...
He literally drew me, physically, away from church... I was attending an orthodox presbyterian church at the time and enjoying the teachings and fellowship and was actually on my way to membership..
But at the same time He drew me away from church, He drew me closer to Him..
And what I have learned in just these two years since is not learned in church, nor practiced in church (or the world)...it isnt earthly based..
It is like the earthly church and the worldly systems it follows is foreign to the what scripture says the Kingdom will be like..
And I have to admit, I prefer preparing for His True coming Kingdom reign than being a member of any earthly counterfeit following traditions of men..
People may leave the ‘church’ for different reasons.
I have Him as my reason..
that isn’t explainable to people who have been members of a church or denomination for almost their whole life...
I am one who has never been a member of any physical church., and the one time I was on that path happily, He stopped me...
HalleluYah!
The first dictionary I read on the meaning of religion was from one printed in the early 1900s and it said religion came from the word ritual.
Mathew 17
21 Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.
Meaning you don`t have to go any where to find the kingdom of God.
So I believe religion is just religion and may or may not have any thing to do with Christ.
I do not believe Jesus started any religion, ( he gave us the truth )some of it may have been started by the man Paul as he is the one most religious people get their ideas from.
I have nothing against going to fellowship meetings but I believe the only way to praise god is try to live the way Jesus said to live.
AFAICS, there are two different versions of “spiritual but not religious” Christians, with very different motivations and desires.
The first group consists of, to use Bellah’s term, Sheilaists. They want to believe what they want to believe, whether or not the Scripture teaches it, whether or not Christianity teaches it. They tend to be theologically and politically leftist, but they don’t see any need to spend time and money in any specific leftist denomination (ELCA, PCUSA, most UMC, etc.).
The second group is very different. What you often hear from the second group is that they want “a relationship, not a religion,” meaning they want an experiential rather than a liturgical approach to their faith.
Herein lies the dilemma. Let’s be honest: most liturgical services are formulaic, and can quickly become a dry habit. For example, I would be afraid to count the number of times I have recited the Creed, or the Lord’s Prayer, or sung the Gloria or the Sanctus, gotten to the end of it, and realized that I had done it mindlessly: I hadn’t purposefully offered it to God, and I hadn’t thought of the possibility of any response from God, I had just said what I said without thinking and without really meaning it—I hadn’t *not* meant it, I simply did it because that was what one did at that point in the service.
The liturgy, at its best (and I mean that in a positive sense), is a connection to the great cloud of witnesses, to the church throughout the ages, (as I put it in my lessons) from St. Clement to Kim Clement, all gathered before the Throne in praise, worship, adoration, desire for reconciliation and closeness, petition for the saints both present and future, to feel His presence, hear from His Spirit, receive blessings from His hand, and join Him in the wedding rehearsal dinner where He gives Himself to us.
But that is the liturgy at its best. For most Catholics, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Methodists, etc. at most times, it is instead a dry ritual, something that you do because The Church Boss says you’re supposed to do it. Now, to be fair, all of the above have attempted over the centuries to generate a desire for the experience of God within and beyond the liturgy. In the 20th century, for example, the Cursillo movement in all its various iterations (Emmaus, Tres Dias, Kairos, etc.) aided in bringing the presence of God into the work and worship of parishioners, even though one of its unintended effects was to bring about a separation between insiders and outsiders, those who had the experience and were therefore closer to God, and those who hadn’t.
To be frank, the liturgical churches have done a poor job of ensuring the experience of the divine presence in the daily/weekly practice of worship—but to be equally frank, the experiential churches have done a poor job of ensuring the sense of the historical drama of the faith, and how that leads inexorably to the present drama of the faith. To put it another way, liturgical churches connect people to the churches of the past without effectively providing the experience of I AM, the God of the eternal present, while experiential churches provide the experience of the I AM while creating the heinous illusion that God has been waiting 2000 years for churches filled with people who really want to know Him, and that it’s only now that He has them.
Personally, I desire to be one of those who bring out of their storehouses treasures both new and old. Will we ever form such a church before the Marriage Supper?
Just one more example of the totally corrupted word “church” used in place of the correct word “assembly” used in the New Testament.
There is a number of straw man arguments the author makes.
“Over the last several years I have encountered a fair number of Christians who claim they are “spiritual but not religious.” In other words, they do not identify with a particular Christian denomination, using the Bible alone to guide their faith. It’s an ideology that says religious institutions are outdated and unnecessary.”
and
“The issue is whether or not one can do this privately, reading only Scripture and coming to their own conclusions on theological matters, or whether one must submit to some authority outside of themselves.”
The pretense here is people are using ONLY “their own” authority and are not listening to any authority outside their own. In fact, in the area of human guidance non-demominational Christians can be following a number of human “authorities” of one denomination or more as well as theologians and pastors not particularly associated with a single denomination in their writing, AND with the one authority in scripture G-d. All the writer is really complaining about is the non-denominational are not listening to some “authority” he approves of.
“In Matthew 16:18, Jesus says to the apostle Peter, “you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.” Catholics believe that in this verse Jesus is bestowing on Peter a position of authority from which the office of the pope is derived. But even if the “spiritual” Christian has problems with this belief, there is no escaping the fact that Christ intended his Church to be both visible and authoritative.”
And for Christians who do not accept the Roman misinterpretation - formulated to serve the human institution given the emperor’s blessing, and for all non-demominational Christians “authoritative” does not have to conform to a certain denomination and “visible” is the spiritual Church made visible and known by the Christian life of Christian believers, in and out of any denomination.
Yes, it was when He gave the Law, but HE redeemed us from the curse of the Law so we're not under the bondage of a religious system any more.
But He did not start another one when He was here walking this planet, or even after leaving the earth.
Religion has driven more people from Christ than anything else the enemy has come up with.
The world doesn't need another system of religion for people to try to find their way to God. They need the new birth found in believing in Christ as in John 3.
The word religion actually means "to bind back". It speaks of the reality that man has been searching for the way to bind himself back to God - that's why there are thousands of religions. Christianity is the opposite of religion because it is not what man must do to bind himself back to God but what God has done to bind man back to Him. Religions teach man MUST do specific things in order to acquire the endgame - be it heaven, nirvana, happy-hunting-grounds. One religion teaches one thing and another teaches something different, but they ALL teach the onus is on the man to make himself worthy of God.
Jesus is God in the flesh and He died on the cross to pay for the sins of the world. God's requirement is FAITH. We don't earn, merit, work for or deserve heaven, we are given heaven as a gift by the grace of God and we receive this gift by faith. Christianity is the polar opposite of religion.