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Community Matters

July 5th, 2011 | Posted by mikeharder in Community | Green Hills Church | Musings - (Comments Off)

Everyone needs friends. This is an known fact of life. However, Christians need to prioritize Christian friendships. Following Jesus is tough to do alone. This Sunday I taught a message on Community and the need to pursue Christian relationships. I hope that it is encouraging.

 

You can subscribe to our podcasts here: http://greenhillschurch.org/#/sermons

There is a link to itunes on our media player.

 

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The Reason for God Study Guide Chapter 5

June 27th, 2011 | Posted by mikeharder in Community | Green Hills Church | Musings - (Comments Off)

I am posting a study guide for Tim Keller’s The Reason for God that I created to lead my small group through. I hope it is a blessing.  This chapter is a great read particularly in light of the recent controversy with Rob Bell’s “Love Wins”.

Reason for God Chapter 5

How can a Loving God send People to Hell

Ice Breaker:

What are your thoughts on Hell?

Study Questions:

  • What was your favorite part of this chapter?
  • What made you struggle in this chapter?
  • What did you learn about God in this chapter?
  • What did you learn about yourself in this chapter?

Idea 1: A God of Judgment simply cant exist:

  • 80% of Americans believe you should get your beliefs on God independent of any church or synagogue.
  • Moral truth is relevant to individual consciousness
  • What do you think about C.S Lewis saying Magic and Science were twins. One died and the other lived. 16th and 17th century.
    • they are both about subduing reality and are willing to do even terrifying things to do it.
    • Ancient wisdom was trying to conform the soul to reality and used, knowledge, self discipline, and virtue.
    • Ancients:  there was power outside ourselves that we conform to. You need to change to fit the world.
    • Science/Magic: We can change the world to fit our desires.
    • C.S. Lewis: Modernity was born in “dreams of power.”
    • The spirit of modernity gave us the responsibility to determine right and wrong.
      • It seems unfair then to think that it would be fair for God to punish us for things we think are ok.
      • We feel we have our own rights that we have determined for our selves to be inviolate.
    • Not everyone in the world believes this though
      • Why aren’t you offended by the idea of a forgiving God?
      • Other cultures actually dislike the idea of a forgiving God.
    • Imagine that if Christianity is not the product of any one culture but is actually the transcultural truth of God. If this is the case then it would contradict and offend every human culture at some point, because human cultures are ever-changing and imperfect. If Christianity were the truth it would have to be offending and correcting your thinking at some place. Maybe this is the place, the Christian doctrine of divine judgment.

Idea 2. The God of Judgment cant be a God of Love.

The big idea is : God shouldn’t be angry:

  • All loving persons are filled with wrath sometimes – because of their love.
  • God is angry and evil and injustice because it is destroying its peace and integrity
  • Volf:
    • If God did not make and end to violence then he would not be worthy of worship.
    • The concept of prohibiting violence in human is based on the concept that God will take vengance for us.
    • It takes a peaceful home in the suburbs to believe that human non violence is because of God’s non-violence. But this dies in the real world.
    • The lack of believe in a God of vengeance secretly nourishes violence.
    • Humans desire to make perpetrators of violence pay for their transgressions.
      • If we aren’t careful we will get sucked into a vortex of retaliation.
      • if you don’t believe that God will put things to right someday you will have to put them right yourself.
  • People think that a God of Judgment will lead to a more brutal society.
    • History shows that a lack of God’s judgment leads to brutality.  Nazi Germany and Communist Russia
    • Opium of the People: a belief in nothingness after death. Czeslaw Milosz
    • We think we will not have our evil judged.  All religions recognize our deeds are imperishable.
    • God’s final judgment is a necessary under-girding for the human practices of love and peacemaking.

Idea 3: A Loving God Would Not Allow Hell

Fighting and injustice are one thing but sending people to hell is another. How does eternal punishment fit in with the love of God. – it is an understandable recoiling

Modern People: Hell works like this – God gives us time, but if we haven’t made the right choices by the end of our lives he throws your soul into hell for eternity. As people fall into hell they say please don’t punish me!!!

  • This is a misunderstanding of the very nature of evil.
    • Sin separates us from God.
    • God is the source of our ultimate purpose.
    • Being separated from God totally is hell. No ability to give or receive love.
    • Image of Hell in the Bible- Fire.  Fire disintegrates.
    • Sin disintegrates us and consumes us. What if hell is an eternity of that? Self-absorbed self-centered life forever.
    • Hell is one’s freely chosen identity apart from God on a trajectory to infinity
      • The Rich man’s identity is intact. Doesn’t ask to be out of hell. Still is asking Lazarus to be his slave.
      • Hell Writ Small:
        • Disintegration
        • Isolation
    • Hell is the greatest monument to Human Freedom C.S. Lewis
      • God Gave them up to their desires. Romans 1:24
      • Two kinds of people.  Those who say, “God thy will be done” or those to whom God says “thy will be done.” All those who are in Hell choose it.

Idea 4: Hell and the Equality of People

Christians are not narrow minded because they believe in hell.  They are not any more narrow minded than someone who believes that there is no hell.

  • Both Christians and Liberal secular persons believe that there are terrible moral and spiritual errors.
  • Christians think the errors go with them forever, Liberal secular people think errors only last with a person while they are alive.

Christians are not discriminatory to people in this life, because they do not know who will be going to hell and who wont because people change in this life.

Idea 5: I believe in a God of Love

What makes you think God is love?

  • NO other religion outside the Bible teaches that God is love.
    • Buddhism is very selfless but does not believe in a personal god so there is no love because love is the action of a person.
    • Muslims think it is disrespectful to speak of anyone knowing God personally
    • Skeptics who cant believe in the God of the Bible because of his wrath must answer where do they get the concept that God is love?
      • Can you look at the world and infer that?  Wars and demise?
      • Religious texts?
      • The place we find that God is love is from the Bible, and it also tells us God is a God of Judgment who sets things right in the end.

The belief in a God of pure love who accepts everyone and judges no one – is a powerful act of faith.

  • There is no evidence for it in nature (it is cruel), nothing historical, not religious proof, outside of Christianity.

 

Prayer Time

 

Download Week 1:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1370227/Reason%20for%20God/Reason%20For%20God%20Chapter%201.doc

Download Week 2:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1370227/Reason%20for%20God/The%20Reason%20for%20God%20Chapter%202.doc

Download Week 3 here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1370227/Reason%20for%20God/Reason%20for%20God%20%E2%80%93%20Week%203.doc

Download Week 4:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1370227/Reason%20for%20God/Reason%20for%20God%20Week%204.doc

Download Week 5:  http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1370227/Reason%20for%20God/Chapter%205%20%20Reason%20for%20God.doc

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Missions Team to Colombia

June 24th, 2011 | Posted by mikeharder in Featured | Green Hills Church | Missions | Musings - (Comments Off)

Green Hills Church has sent a missions team to Bogota Colombia to help start a church in a town called Pacho. You can follow their journey here: http://liftmyeyesup.wordpress.com/ Please be praying for them!  Here is their 1st post.

The time is finally here! Tomorrow morning, the team flies out for Bogota, Colombia to spend 10 days getting to know the amazing people of this country and planting the seed for a future church in a small city 2 hours outside the capitol.
We will be spending part of the time in the actual city of Bogota, in a small community called Prada Veraniego where we will graciously be staying with Jorge and his wife, Ginny. Jorge is the lead paster of a church plant founded in the community about 4 years ago called Comunidad Viva. We will have the opportunity to worship here 2 Sundays in a row! Something about hearing the Word of God in a different language makes me realize just how awesome He really is and I’m so excited to get to worship the same God alongside the people of Prado Veraniego!
After spending some time in Bogota, our team will travel 2 hours outside the city to a town called Pacho. Once a vibrant area, thriving off the presence of drug money, Pacho is now a forgotten town. We will be meeting with a group of people from Bogota who have given up everything to plant a church in this area and minister the name of Jesus to the people of Pacho. Our time in Pacho will be spent putting on a Vacation Bible School (or SuperVacas) for the children in the morning followed by afternoon outreach programs for the women and children. Our hope is to plant the seed of Jesus’ name in Pacho so that all the people there can one day know his incredible love!
Prayers, Prayers, Prayers! Please pray for the health and safety of our team and for God’s will to be done. But most importantly, pray for the people of Prada Veraniego and Pacho. Pray for their ears to be opened and their hearts to be willing to hearing the Word of God!
More updates to come soon so keep checking back!

Reason for God Chapter 4

June 24th, 2011 | Posted by mikeharder in Community | Green Hills Church | Musings - (2 Comments)

I am posting a study guide for Tim Keller’s The Reason for God that I created to lead my small group through. I hope it is a blessing.

Reason for God Week 4

The Church is responsible for so much injustice.

 

ICE BREAKER:

  • When have you felt treated unjustly?

Interpretation Questions

  • What was your favorite part of this chapter?
  • What made you struggle in this chapter?
  • What did you learn about God in this chapter?
  • What did you learn about yourself in this chapter?

Study Questions

Truth:  Many people take an intellectual stand against Christianity do so against a background of personal disappointment with Christians and churches.

Behavior of Christians that have undermined the plausibility of the gospel.

  1. Christian’s character flaws
  2. War and violence
  3. Fanaticism

Character Flaws

  • Shouldn’t Christians be better than non-Christians?
  • Mistaken belief about Christianity.
    • Common Grace James 1:17.  All goodness is from God, an is given to all humanity.
    • Not Perfect but forgiven.  The Bible speaks that real Christians are flawed.
      • This means that the church will be filled with broken and immature people.
      • Hospital for sinners not a museum for saints.
    • Good character is primarily due to a good home and family. You are not responsible for that.
    • You can measure the power of the gospel from how much life change happens in their life.

Religion and Violence.

  • Christopher Hitchens- religion takes racial and cultural differences and aggravates them.
  • Religion transcendentalizes ordinary cultural differences making them seem like a cosmic battle of right and wrong.
  • The problem is that non religious regimes have done the same.  French Revolution
  • Alistair McGrath – when the idea of God is gone, a society will transcendentalize something else or concept.
  • Violence done in the name of Christianity is wrong.  It is not Christian
  • Violence is rooted in the human heart.

Fanaticism

  • Perhaps the biggest deterrent is fanaticism.
  • People try to understand Christianity on a scale of nominalism to fanaticism.
    • they think the best kind of Christian is in the middle.
    • The problem is that this view thinks that the Christian faith is some sort of moral improvement.
    • We should be fully fanatical but in a different way.  Fully committed to being loving and giving.
    • What seems over fanatical is actually a failure to be fully committed to Jesus.

The Biblical Critique of Religion

The way to run from oppression and injustice is not to tone down your beliefs but to pursue a fuller and truer faith in Jesus.

  • Jesus critiques the religious people in the sermon on the mount.
  • Jesus cannot be manipulated by our good works or moral performance.
  • True faith is marked by a profound concern for the poor and marginalized.
  • The way we treat them is how we treat God.

Where do we get the list of virtues that we criticize the church?  The BIBLE

  • Many cultures think it is ok to use power to get what you want. Including Islam and Evolution
  • Being others centered is a Christian Ethic.  Example of Anglo-Saxon’s self based shame culture.
  • The crusades are a result of Anglo Saxons not fully understanding the gospel.  Hadn’t penetrated their culture fully.  The Shame based culture of pride and respect was still intact among the leadership.
  • The right way to understand and criticize the Church is to not abandon the faith but move to a deeper and fuller understanding of the gospel.

Examples

Slavery

  1. Christians first understood that Slavery was wrong.
  2. they eradicated slavery in America and Britain.
  3. Even almost broke the British government. Racism

Martin Luther King Jr.

  1. Did not call churches to become more secular.  He called them to become more true to the gospel.
  2. Desmond Tutu
    1. Commission for Truth and Reconciliation.

Communism

  1. Catholic Church in Poland
  2. Forgiveness in Jesus’ name

Nazi Germany

  1. Deitrch Bonhoeffer – He went to Germany and made an illegal seminary
  2. It is not a religious act that makes the Christian but participation in the sufferings of God in the secular life.

Download Week 1:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1370227/Reason%20for%20God/Reason%20For%20God%20Chapter%201.doc

Download Week 2:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1370227/Reason%20for%20God/The%20Reason%20for%20God%20Chapter%202.doc

Download Week 3 here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1370227/Reason%20for%20God/Reason%20for%20God%20%E2%80%93%20Week%203.doc

Download Week 4:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1370227/Reason%20for%20God/Reason%20for%20God%20Week%204.doc

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Reason For God Study Guide Chapter 3

June 20th, 2011 | Posted by mikeharder in Community | Featured | Green Hills Church | Musings - (Comments Off)

I am posting a study guide for Tim Keller’s The Reason for God that I created to lead my small group through. I hope it is a blessing. This is one of my favorite chapters in the book.

IReason for God Chapter 3

Christianity is a Straightjacket

 

Ice Breaker:

How did you know you were in love with your spouse?

 

Interpretation Questions

What was your favorite part of this chapter?

What made you struggle in this chapter?

What did you learn about God in this chapter?

What did you learn about yourself in this chapter?

 

Study Questions:

Can someone share the objection to Christianity?  Christianity keeps us from being who we really are and can become. It limits us unnecessarily.

  • Is believing in absolute truth the enemy of freedom?
    • Christianity calls some things heresy and others immoral.
    • It keeps people outside of its community.
    • Governor of Alabama who said that his Christian family is his real family.

 

What is freedom?  Is freedom that there is no overarching purpose for which we were created?

  • True freedom is freedom to create your own meaning and purpose.
  • The idea of freedom from an evolutionary perspective is found in Stephen Jay Gould’s quote.
  • What did you think about that quote?

The world is making mistakes on the nature of truth, community Christianity and liberty itself.

Truth

Some say all truth claims are power-plays.

What does this mean?

  • That every truth claim has a desire to control others through it.
  • It is ultimately self defeating
  • “To see through all things is the same as to not see.”
  • Even believing this is a power-play
  • What this really is, is skepticism fully formed.  It leads you nowhere.

There must be absolute truth somewhere.  We have more to live in than just an empty existence.

 

Community

Community can’t be completely inclusive.

  • Do you agree with this statement?

Critics say that Christianity is not open to all.  All human communities should be completely inclusive open to all because we are human.  This is called Liberal Democracy. All that is important is to be respectful of the privacy and rights of others.

What is the matter with this view? Over simplification.  Liberal Democracy is based on an extensive list of assumptions.

  • Preference of individual to community rights
  • Division between private and public morality
  • The sanctity of personal choice.

The idea of a totally inclusive community is an illusion.

  1. All the ideas in Liberal Democracy foreign to many other cultures. Not all the shared commitments of are shared by Non Western Cultures.
  2. Every human community holds in common some beliefs that necessarily create boundaries, including some people and excluding other from its circle. (GLTB  board illustration.)
  3. Any community that did not hold its members accountable for specific beliefs and practices would have no corporate identity and would not really be a community at all.

What do you think about this idea?

Do you have any examples of this?

  • You cant be a fan of both Duke and UNC
  • You cant consider a group exclusive because it has standards for its members.

What do you think about Keller’s proposed new guidelines to determine if a group is open or closed?

  • Which community has beliefs that lead its members to treat persons in other communities with love and respect, to serve them and meet their needs
  • Which community’s beliefs lead it to demonize and attack others who violate their boundaries rather than treating them with kindness, humility and winsomeness?

Christianity isn’t Rigid

  1. What do you think about how Christianity has adapted itself to honor other cultures?
  2. Christianity changes the core and redeems the culture.

Freedom

Christianity supposedly limits our personal growth and potential because it constrains our freedom to choose our own beliefs and practices.

Kant:  an enlightened human being is someone who trusts in his or her own power of thinking rather than in authority or tradition.

  • You become god.
  • Freedom to determine our own moral standards is considered a necessity for being fully human.

Oversimplification.  Freedom cant be defined in only negative terms of absence of confinement and constraint.

Confinement and constraint make you free sometimes.

  • Practice and discipline can make you great at piano.
  • Discipline also can be negative if it is trying to make us into someone we are not.
  • Freedom is finding the right restrictions that can liberate us.

The belief that we each should determine our own morality is based on the belief that the spiritual realm is nothing at all like the rest of the world.

  • Do you believe that?
  • Great question:  Are there people in this world who are doing things that they think are ok but you think they should stop regardless of what they think because it is wrong?
  • Doesn’t that mean that you do believe that there is some kind of moral reality that is ‘there’ that is not defined by us, that must be abided by regardless of what a person feels or thinks?

Love, the ultimate freedom is more constraining than we think.

  1. Love is the most liberating freedom loss
  2. You have to lose independence to attain greater intimacy .
  3. What do you think about freedom and love in the context that Christianity is a love relationship with Jesus?
    • We have to limit ourselves to be in love with him.
    • We have to say no to other loves
    • He has limited himself by being in love with us.

Freedom is not the absence of limitations and constraints but it is the finding the right ones that fit our nature and liberate us.

 

Download Week 1 here:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1370227/Reason%20for%20God/Reason%20For%20God%20Chapter%201.doc

Download Week 2 here:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1370227/Reason%20for%20God/The%20Reason%20for%20God%20Chapter%202.doc

Download Week 3 here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1370227/Reason%20for%20God/Reason%20for%20God%20%E2%80%93%20Week%203.doc

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Reason for God Study Guide Chapter 2

June 18th, 2011 | Posted by mikeharder in Community | Green Hills Church | Musings - (Comments Off)

As I shared earlier, I am posting a study guide for Tim Keller’s The Reason for God that I created to lead my small group through. I hope it is a blessing.

The Reason for God Chapter 2

ICE BREAKER:  What is one characteristic or idiosyncrasy that you have developed recently from your parents.

 

Interpretation Questions:

  1. What was your favorite part of the chapter?
  2. What did you struggle with the most in the chapter?
  3. What did you learn about God?
  4. What did you learn about yourself?

Study Questions:

  • How could a good God allow suffering:  The problem of evil.
  • What is the problem of evil?  How does a good, all powerful god allow suffering?  He must not be good or not all powerful.
  • Why do we struggle with the problem of evil?
  • He says that this idea of a good God not existing because of evil is completely agreed upon by all sides as being bankrupt.  Why?
  • The hidden premise.  Since there is no good reason for me to see evil for me then there must not be a reason.
  • We have huge faith in our own abilities even though we seem hugely skeptical.
  • Do you have any times where you couldn’t see why God had allowed evil into your life but then used it for good?
  • God may have reasons to allow evil.Evil is a problem for believers but a worse problem for non believers.  Do you agree?
  • Where does the idea of what is just and not just come from if you are an atheist?
  • Are you sure that these things are just or unjust or just life?
  • Why is Natural Selection a flawed concept?   then it is ok to deny human rights to others.
  • What about suffering that has not silver lining?
  • Jesus himself entered into suffering that was pointless.  Didn’t exclude himself from suffering.
  • Christianity does not provide the reason for each experience of pain, but it provides deep resources for actually facing suffering with hope and courage rather than bitterness and despair.  page 22
  • Jesus was not like other martyrs.  He struggled. He was afraid.  He was giving up something he had never ever experienced.  His intimacy and relationship with God.  Can you imagine that he would give up for a season the greatest love and intimacy that exists in the universe.
  • What we know from the Cross.  That Jesus loves us.  Suffering doesn’t exist because God isn’t loving.  He took our misery so seriously that he entered into it.

Our perspective of suffering is limited by perspective of time and focus.

  • Someday all suffering is going to cease.  God allows suffering because he is at work to redeem people from the world of suffering.  If he destroyed it now then

The real problem is humanism.    That no one should ever suffer.  This is actually a very sinful idea.  That man’s highest value is that to keep other people from suffering. That humanity is god.

All suffering produces a product that is better.  If you don’t cause your children to struggle they will never learn to walk or to speak or to grow up.

Close in prayer.

Download Week 1 here:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1370227/Reason%20for%20God/Reason%20For%20God%20Chapter%201.doc

Download Week 2 here:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1370227/Reason%20for%20God/The%20Reason%20for%20God%20Chapter%202.doc

Reason For God Study Guide Chapter 1

June 16th, 2011 | Posted by mikeharder in Community | Featured | Green Hills Church | Musings - (Comments Off)

One of my favorite books is “The Reason for God” by Tim Keller. It is a great book that answers questions that many skeptics have concerning the gospel. I led my small group through this book  this spring and created a study guide/cliff notes for my group.  I will be sharing them with you in the coming weeks. I hope you enjoy them and use them for your own spiritual nourishment or in leading a group.  To download a copy of this in Microsoft word, click here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1370227/Reason%20for%20God/Reason%20For%20God%20Chapter%201.doc

Here is chapter 1…

Reason For God Chapter 1

Ice breaker:

Share with the group your name, favorite book, and what you are looking forward to learning in this study.

Introductory Questions:

  1. What did you like best about this chapter?
  2. What did you like least about the chapter?

 

Discussion Questions:

  1. What do you think about the claim that their cant be just 1 religion?
  2. Why do people want to make all religions equal and the same?
  • It denies the reason for the cross.
  1. What do you think about the results of people trying to minimize the divisiveness of religion:  Outlaw, Condemn, or Radically Privatize it?
    1. Outlaw
      1. i.     What do you think about the decision to outlaw religion?
      2. ii.     It hasn’t worked.  those who say religion is intolerant and violent have done the most violence and intolerance in the 20th century.  IE, communism in China and Russia
      3. Condemn
        1. i.     What is the failure with the idea that all religions are the same?
        2. ii.     Religions at their core have differing values.
        3. iii.     That is assuming you know the truth and that is an entirely different religion.
        4. iv.     What do you think about his comments on Moral relativism?  That Berger says that relativity, relativizes itself. If you hold to a socially relative view there can be no absolute truth.
        5. v. We all make truth claims and we have to do as best as we can to figure out which ones are true.
        6. vi. What do you think about the claim that it is arrogant to think that you are right and convert others?
        7. vii. This is contradictory – It’s an ethnocentric idea to claim that you are ethnocentric by converting others and to think you alone are right. Most religions think it is ok to be right.  Our idea of this comes from western thought of self-criticism and individualism.
        8. viii. Big Idea: Every worldview is a religious worldview.  Even Atheism or skepticism
      4. c. Radically Privatize
        1. i. Why do people say we should keep religion out of the secular world?
        2. ii. Why is this impossible to do?
        3. iii. This is the most important part of most people.
        4. iv. What is Religion?  It is a set of believes that explain what life is all about, who we are, and the most important things human being should spend their lives doing.
        5. v. Religion really means worldview.
        6. vi. Conclusion:  you cant keep the religious private.  Impossible

 

  1. What do you think about his claim that Christianity can save the world literally?
    1. Christians respect other faiths.
    2. Christians don’t expect to be perfect.  They are forgiven.
    3. Example of Christians in the Romo-Greco world.  Loved the poor, accepted everyone
    4. Christian fundamentals are what gives people hope for a loving world.

 

Close with Prayer

 

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Green Hills Church Sermon 6.12.11

June 15th, 2011 | Posted by mikeharder in Green Hills Church | Musings - (Comments Off)

Check out this week’s message. How to have a heart that responds to God’s goodness with Joy and Gratefulness. Video:http://greenhillschurch.org/media.php?pageID=34 Audio podcast:http://greenhillschurch.org/media.php?pageID=6

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The Offense of the Cross in Italy

April 21st, 2011 | Posted by mikeharder in Community | Featured | Musings - (Comments Off)
I got this article today from my father. As someone who loves Italy and the Gospel it was saddening. It was posted in Crosswalk.com but originally from Break Point Ministry. Please pray for Italy today. I was reading the book of Romans today and my heart is burdened for the church of Rome.
The Offense of the Cross in Italy
Chuck Colson
Last month, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Italian public schools have the right to display crucifixes.
The case has been widely viewed as a crucial one. As Roger Kiska of the Alliance Defense Fund put it, “A loss in this case would have meant, in essence, that it would be illegal under the European Convention on Human Rights to have religious symbols in any institution anywhere in Europe.”
Before you start celebrating, though, you ought to know that this may be a very mixed blessing. When you take a close look at the court’s reasoning, it becomes clear that there are some disturbing implications to this ruling.
In the New York Times, Professor Stanley Fish, a liberal relativist, writes that the court based its decision largely on the idea that “the crucifix is really not a religious symbol.” Fish justifiably asks, “Who knew?”
Who, indeed?
It seems the court decided that the crucifix is now an “identity-linked,” “historical and cultural” symbol — a symbol that stands for “the liberty and freedom of every person, the declaration of the right of man, and ultimately the modern secular state.”
In other words, it stands for pretty much anything but the death of Christ for the redemption of fallen mankind.
For the Christian, that poses a real dilema: If the crucifix is to be stripped of its meaning like this, is it worth displaying in schools, or anywhere at all?
If “the offense of the cross,” as Paul put it, is gone, what’s the point?
And that’s not all. The court went on to state, “In Christianity even the faith in an omniscient god is secondary in relation to charity,” which makes the cross an inclusive symbol.
Even Stanley Fish, who’s writing from a liberal, secular perspective, is driven to wonder about all this. “What we have here,” he says, “is a union of bad argument and bad theology. As a Christian virtue, charity presupposes the God it is said by the majority [of the court] to transcend…Generous though it may be in many respects, Christianity is hard-edged at its doctrinal center and that center is what the crucifix speaks.”
Fish may not be a Christian, but I think he’s pretty much nailed it. Ironically, I think he might just understand it better than many in Italy, where the practice of the Christian faith has been steadily eroding for many years.
Christians believe that everyone is welcome at the foot of the cross — but we also believe with German martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer that “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”
That’s why Stanley Fish is right in saying that a crucifix can never be what the court called “an essentially passive symbol.”
On that point, I wholeheartedly agree with him. Religious symbols matter because they convey meaning, and that’s why we Christians support the right to display them. Without that meaning, without Christ’s death and resurrection, the cross doesn’t matter — and neither does our faith.
This is the liberal cause: strip all sacred symbols and words of their meaning.
The real lesson here is that before we take up the fight for the cross, we had better be sure we understand what it is we’re fighting for.
This article published on April 20, 2011.

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What the Hell?

March 1st, 2011 | Posted by mikeharder in Community | Musings - (Comments Off)

As a pastor, I get lots of questions about hell.  Most of them go something like this.  Does it exist?  What is it like?  Surely a loving God wouldn’t send people there right?  I have found as I have studied what the Bible teaches about hell that most of us know very little about hell.  Furthermore, most people believe things about hell that are taught nowhere in the Bible. If we are honest, most of us have our concept of heaven, hell and the devil formed for us by what we watch on television in general and by cartoons in particular.  Most of us imagine something out of the far side comics or from Looney Toons to create our impression of what the afterlife looks like.  In those portrayals heaven is portrayed as a place where people play a harp among the clouds and hell is portrayed as a place where Satan rules on a throne and has a bunch of weird torture devices where he tortures humans for all eternity.

It is vital that we base what we know about heaven and hell and on what the Bible teaches instead of what pop culture and cartoons teach us.  As we study we find out that God teaches us something very different about what mankind’s destiny is after we die.

I was leading a Bible Study the other day and we were looking at the most famous Bible verse in the world.  John 3:16.  In it there is a phrase that many people just breeze right over.  - that none should perish but all have eternal life.  What do you think of when you hear that people can perish?  Do you believe it?  Do you reject it?  Honestly it is the reason why Jesus came to the earth.  The concept of Hell is vital to the message of the gospel.  If there is not hell there is no need for Jesus to come to earth to pay the price of sin for us.  If he died anyway, then he was a fool. Jesus was no fool.   He came and died for us because there was no other way to have peace with God.  Someone had to pay the price for sin so he took the pain of sin and death for us.

When we get started at looking at what the Bible teaches about Hell we need to go to the source.  Here are some  Biblical passages to look at: Matthew 8:11-12, Mark 9:42-48, Luke 16:19-31, Jude 1:3-13, Revelation 20:11-15, Revelation 19:20, 21:8.  These aren’t all of them but they are some of the main verses.  Go ahead and look them up if you want.

When looking at these verses something really stands out.  Jesus believed that hell was real.  In fact, he gives us more information about hell than anyone else.  R.C. Sproul says this:  It is so unpopular with us that few would give credence to it at all except that it comes to us from the teaching of Christ Himself.

So lets answer some Frequently Asked Questions:

1.  What is hell like?

Jesus says it is a place of torment.  He called it a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth.  It is fundamentally a place where you are separated from God’s favor.

It is a place where people get to experience the reality of choosing to live a life without God.

Many people think it is a symbol and only a image used to scare people I love what R.C. Sproul says.

I suspect they are symbols, but I find no relief in that. We must not think of them as being merely symbols. It is probable that the sinner in hell would prefer a literal lake of fire as his eternal abode to the reality of hell represented in the lake of fire image. If these images are indeed symbols, then we must conclude that the reality is worse than the symbol suggests. The function of symbols is to point beyond themselves to a higher or more intense state of actuality than the symbol itself can contain. That Jesus used the most awful symbols imaginable to describe hell is no comfort to those who see them simply as symbols.

2.  Does Satan live in Hell?

The answer is no.  Although the Bible teaches that someday Satan will be thrown into the lake of Fire, there is no evidence that Satan has ever been to hell.  In fact the Bible teaches that Satan is the prince, the ruler of this world.  Jesus references him as the ruler of this world in John 14:30.  You also find that Satan a lot about Satan in the book of Job.  Check out this passage from Job 1:6-7 6

6 Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and  Satan  also came among them. 7 TheLord said to Satan, “From where have you come?” Satan answered theLord and said, “From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.”

You find that he wanders the world looking for evil to do.  He also has access to go to heaven and present himself to God.  But you see that he also needs to ask for permission to take action against those who are followers of God.

I believe one of the reasons we like to think that Satan is in hell ruling the underworld is because it is much more frightening to live in the reality that he exists on this terrestrial ball with us.  If he is actively at work on this planet then we must be on guard that we will not fall under his influence.

3.  How could a loving God send sinners to hell?

He doesn’t.  They volunteer.  Those who go to hell choose to go there.

How do they choose?  People choose hell instead of God whenever they choose to deny him as their Lord and Savior. The most powerful sin in the universe is rejecting Jesus as God and God as the ultimate reality.   C.S. Lewis says it this way, ”I willingly believe that the damned are in one sense, successful rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside.”

The Bible teaches that if you spend your life telling God to be quiet and leave you alone, hell is that place where he honors your request.

I believe we must be careful that our hearts don’t get hardened toward God.  Matt 13:14-15 gives a sobering warning:

‘You will indeed hear but never understand,and you will indeed see but never perceive.15 For this people’s heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them.’

4.  Why does the topic of hell create such resistance?

The primary reason is because people resist the concept of punishment for sin.  People don’t want to think that God could possibly punish people for rejecting him.  In doing so they throw out huge portions of scripture in order to make the Bible conform to their image.

I think people really want to just let God off the hook.  They want him to be humane and humanitarian God.  That God be a being that only exists to ease human pain and not cause any of it.  They want him to be a God that looks the other way when people actively hate him by denying who he has revealed himself to be.

In conclusion:

Hell is an unpleasant reality of life.  Although we may not like the concept, Jesus taught very clearly that hell is a reality and it is the future of those who deny God’s offer of salvation in this life.  This is essential to the gospel.  Without the doctrine of hell there is no need for a savior.  If Hell is not real then Jesus came to this earth and gave himself up as a ransom for us in vain.  I hope that this post causes you to think, to explore and to discover what the Bible really says about what happens after death and to consider what the future holds for you.

Trusting Jesus is the most important decision you can ever make.  If you need help making it let me know in your comments or can email me at mike@mikeharderministries.com