Behind The Scenes No. 2

Welcome to another edition of Behind The Scenes. I suspect the next comment is from someone who visits this page regularly. So here's his comment, and here's my reply:

Of course they "can't help" but talk about god when the idea is unceasingly shoved down their subjective little throats. You people are useless. Spend time at a food shelter or something, stop sitting around pretending the voices in your head are divine. Grow up and be a man and forgo this imaginary friend that who's sadistic desires would see you burn in hell for eternity. I wish people like you would maybe read history books or study something productive so we can maybe cure cancer or not lose ground to China and India. No, lets all get into a hyped up hysteria induced coma and and smile as the drug slowly runs through our veins. You lie and pretend to know anything about something allegedly outside of what it is possible to know. You lie to children and yourselves about what is happening in your life. It's sickening. You pretend like no other cultures existed with any sense of right or wrong before Jesus. You pretend like your "perfect bible" makes any sense when your just as quick to pick and choose which passages best suit your needs for the time against any atheist you'd levy such a charge against. You deny thousands of years of scientific understanding, of pure human struggle for understanding, and shit on it when you worship your own mental impediments. It is because of people like you that I have lost any real hope in our species to last indefinitely. You will forever be responsible for perpetuating ideals and lies that clog men's minds and retard progress. I don't care how good believe this crap makes you feel. I don't care how much you believe its real. You are in denial, you need help and its not going to be from an invisible sky daddy.

Anonymous,

Why do you think that personal attacks are going to have any effect on me?

Where else but in the realm of persecuting Christianity can one claim that “I don’t see this, therefore it’s false”? Your opinion about anything I write here has no bearing on whether it’s true or not. Do you understand what I’m saying? Stop spewing out these half-baked remarks, and putting words in my mouth, and actually listen to what Christians truly believe. I’m afraid the only exposure you’ve had are the pinatas that the media pundits put up for ridicule. Allow me to set the record straight.

You pretend like no other cultures existed with any sense of right or wrong before Jesus.

This is news to me. I’m fully aware of Hammurabi’s Code that would show that people had a sense of right and wrong way before Jesus showed up in the New Testament.

Where do you think the ideas of right and wrong even came from? Do any other holy books explain the origin of these concepts?

You lie and pretend to know anything about something allegedly outside of what it is possible to know.

How could you possibly know if I’m lying if what I say is truly unknowable?

You pretend like your "perfect bible" makes any sense when your just as quick to pick and choose which passages best suit your needs for the time against any atheist you'd levy such a charge against.

You sound just like the complainers talked about in Luke 7:33-34. You’re not happy with someone just giving you a Bible, and you decry anybody who dares target your accusations with specific scripture. I’m sorry, but you can’t have it both ways.

To sum things up:

Basically you’re calling me blind to some kind of “truth” when I claim to see something you can’t see. You claim I’m lying about something that YOU can’t see, therefore I must be the one that’s wrong. Give me a break.

You won’t actually deal with what I’m saying, instead accusing me of being some short-sighted bigot, and then you fill up my blog with nothing but opinion about what you see in your limited view of Christianity.

I’m sorry you think that we’re slowing people down, but last I checked, I just can’t find any examples of atheists who have moved things along.

The problem here is that you cannot understand spiritual things because you are spiritually dead. The Bible describes this condition. And again, I can’t say this enough--your opinion does not matter when it comes to the truth.

God has made Himself very available. You might say He doesn’t exist, but can you know that for sure, or is that more opinion? Have you even tried looking, or is this just wishful thinking? I just can’t get over how foolish that argument sounds about claiming something isn’t there because you can’t see it, but never checking to see if your eyes are even working properly.

You don’t like the idea of there being a God that will hold you accountable for your life. Every day you live without Jesus is one more day that God’s wrath piles up a little more. I don’t know how you expect to stand up against the Creator of the universe when He hauls out this laundry list of offences that you don’t care about right now. He’s not some angry little kid throwing a temper tantrum. He is the most high Judge you’ll ever face, with a standard of holiness NONE of us can measure up to. There are no other gods to run to, and there is nowhere to hide. He’s the only game in town. He’s God. He is infinitely holy. He doesn’t answer to you. He made you for His glory, not yours. Claiming ignorance will not help since you already know the difference between right and wrong.

So what are you going to do? Are you actually going to do something about how much trouble you’re in, or are you going to risk everything on the dumbest gamble of your entire life?

The Camps, and a Prayer Request

Long time no see. Down to business.

CAMP NUMBER ONE!

Two weeks ago, there was a Grace Camp Meeting at Rockport Baptist Church which featured a number of great speakers. I really hope these guys preach this hard all the time, because I know that if I were preaching at a church, I'd be taking the street-sweeper approach, being as true to the Bible as I could be, but not worrying about opinions :) Just like Jesus said in Matthew 10:34, the message brought by God, (and ideally, by the people preaching it) shouldn't bring peace, but a sword.

There were a number of people who had to take a startling look at their own lives and realize they aren't as safe as they thought they were. Can I make this clear? We should not assume we are as safe as we are if our faith is based on an assumption other than what Christ did for us. This message brought a sword to what they were basing their faith on instead of bringing them peace about some "decision" they made.

And there was such a variety of sermons, all different topics, the whole thing was just like a taste of Heaven. So awesome. The fellowship was intense, we sat around discussing what we heard, and everything just seemed to be so God-focused. I'm just sorry I can't remember more because the details are fuzzy.

All the sermons (along with others that we post from a church normally) can be found at SermonAudio I've had an account with them for forever, and I don't know if hoops are to be jumped through. If you can't easily get an account and download stuff, let me know and I'd be happy to post them up on here.

CAMP NUMBER TWO!

The other camp, which is not so fuzzy because we just got back from it two days ago, was a youth camp out at Bates Creek. This was the second time I've ever been to Bates Creek, and it's with a bunch of people who grew up there for the most part.

I'm used to the kind of camps that focus more on activities than study and worship. The worship was like an afterthought put there by people who suddenly realized, "Oh. That's right, this is a church camp. We should talk about God or something."

And I feel bad for saying that, because in all probability, if they had a sample of what it was like at THIS camp, they probably would have structured it differently. But many churches seem to flock together on how they organize stuff, and this was at a time when packages and programs were what was being used. I remember at K-thru-six camp, they always had some kind of theme that the skits and activities centered around. I mean seriously, it came in a kit. A box, ok? And you could find it at a Christian bookstore. The kit was the size of a suitcase and in it, you found all the ideas you wish you had about how to keep kids distracted during a church camp. Youth camp wasn't much different. It just had loud concerts and the sermons were about topics geared toward that age bracket instead of the overall goal of learning more about God.

You want to know what kind of program we had for this camp? We had preachers preach. People brought their skillsets and used them for the glory of God and for service. One guy works at Starbucks and he brought out all his coffee paraphernalia and brewed coffee for people. We had people who were called "Ninjas" whose sole purpose was to serve and not draw focus to themselves. The sound guy brought his skills, and I'm glad, because I didn't know a thing about wiring up the sound in the tabernacle. There were fierce 3 on 3 basketball games and muddy volleyball to be had. The cooks made good food.

The main difference here was that, with kids at the first camp, their goal was to go to camp, get away from the folks for awhile, and have some fun. They got it. Those same kind of kids came to our camp, and instead of the focus being the fun, they found God waiting. And then they had better fun.

The last session, Aaron got up and asked if anyone had anything to say before we left. I came down front and spoke, and one thing I noticed was that I saw a lot of smiling faces. I mean tons. These are the kids in the age group whose cliche thing is not showing much emotion, just kind of mumble-grumbling along, not really caring. Apathy. But I saw smiles. And they weren't smiling because we'd gotten them high emotionally--some hard stuff was preached and it really turned heads the first night--this was solid smiling. I told them, "You all have learned some heavy stuff, and you'll be going back to school and home and to friends and talking about what you learned." For the hecklers on this blog, I want to point out that it's not because we made this into some kind of "Jesus Camp", but because what they learned, they can't HELP but to talk about.

The first night there, Scott preached a sermon. My wife was a "mole" in the audience (read: group leader) and she told me later on that a lot of kids around here were being really disrespectful until about a fourth of the way into the lesson. Then they totally got caught by what he was saying.

Afterwards, a young guy from Grubville was coming up and just started talking to me (his group was in the same cabin as ours) and was just BEAMING with CONFUSION or SOMETHING. And I said to him, I said, "Do you need to have a sit-down or something?" and he's like, "I don't know!" What he'd heard was so unexpected and true that he didn't know how to process it. But he knew he'd heard good stuff.

Before we had the first session we had a small group time with the kids in the cabins. Basically just asking a few questions about what they thought they'd expect, what their backgrounds were, their hobbies, etc. Also we asked a few questions about the whole subject of the weekend, which was "Don't Waste Your Life" (a book by John Piper). Not many deep answers were given. After the first session, something happened and people were just bursting with answers and questions they never knew they had. Charlotte's cabin had used almost ALL of the 2-hour break between a session and lunch just to discuss what they'd heard.

The whole weekend was cold and wet, and the tabernacle we were in doesn't have any walls--just a roof. So wind was whistling through constantly. Most of the camp was muddy and wet. We almost lost a van in the swamp. Kids looked like giant mudballs. the preaching was hard material. And after all that, at the front of the group, they were smiling.

That's what I'm talking about. Praise the Lord.

PRAYER REQUEST...

I don't get on here enough and flesh out ideas that I get. I really do have a passion for blogging, and you have no idea how many things pop in my head and I think, "I should put that on the blog..." and then never do. I almost forgot my username and password to even get on here today. Please pray that I can make time to blog in the future.

Take care,

Divide and Conquer

"You're Baptist and happen to be a Christian. I'm a Christian and happen to go to a Baptist church."

I heard this from my father-in-law yesterday regarding a thought he had about churches in this region.

Too often, we tend to want to label ourselves in favor of packaging our beliefs in a quick way so we, in a sense, give a mini-biography about our faith. In just the realm of Baptists, there are Southern, Reformed, Freewill, tons of others. Living on the fringe of the Bible Belt here, you can't throw a rock without hitting a church of some kind.

I'm starting to find it a bit distasteful that people, including myself, will tend to congregate with people of like beliefs. The funny thing is, I know that in my church of about 200 people, there is not a pair of people with the same exact theology as another person.

So why do we do it? My theory is that it's just sin at work dividing people into ever smaller groups.

The problem with this is that people will not get out of their little boxes and challenge themselves with "new" ideas about the Bible because they are surrounded with a group of people who believe a certain way by default--or they just won't be introduced to anything new. I really think that this is the reason we don't see as many revivals or reformations amongst us. The last time I heard of a huge change in ideology was started by a guy who's dead now.

We divide ourselves too much. The result of being divided into smaller and smaller groups is that Satan will pick them off with false truths and bend their learning slightly, and over time they will be so far off the mark that it's ridiculous.

I mean, how many times have we read that living the Christian life is like a war? It's not smart to take a tiny group of people away from a whole platoon of soldiers to do their own thing because they think they have it right is it? They'll most likely get blown into chunky bits because a small group is easier to take out than a bigger one.

So why treat church any differently? We shouldn't. Here's a list of things people have divided over that I can think of off the top of my head:

Music--hymns vs. contemporary; drums or no drums; too noisy, not loud enough
Hand raising--OMG YOU CHARISMATIC!!!11 vs. It doesn't bother me
Shouting during worship--Everybody's going to start doing it vs. Who Cares

This stuff isn't really worth dividing over, because that's the only thing it can do IS divide. What does Paul say about this kind of stuff? Basically that if something you're doing is offending a brother, cease doing it. It's implied that you shouldn't be grumbling about ceasing. But what's the ultimate goal here? It's unity, right? So wouldn't the ultimate goal be to just not get upset at all about this kind of stuff, to realize that these are really fringe issues (if they're even issues at all) and that it's MUCH more important to just maintain unity?

I don't know. I really hope that this rambling of mine is making some sense because I have what feels like an idea what looks like a plate of spaghetti that can't be untangled. I'm trying to just get across the idea of NOT dividing over minor issues.

Castrating the Gospel

Last Saturday at the Men's Prayer Breakfast, one of us got up and talked about how important it is to not water down the Gospel in favor of making it easier to swallow.

There are a lot of teachers and preachers today that will avoid touchy subjects such as grace, salvation, sin, Hell, and a whole host of others. It's a huge problem because it means that there are thousands of people who aren't willing to tell people about the grievous disease of sin that they have that WILL kill them, and it's in favor of making sure people aren't offended or scared off.

And I'm really getting tired of seeing so many preachers absolutely refuse to engage on this topic. This is THE topic--the most important one. It's got peoples' souls at stake here, and preachers are dancing around it like something unclean.

As Christians, we are not called to treat the Gospel like a thing which can be talked about at a bare minimum, and receive a merit badge for it. No. No, we're called to be true to it, not to add or take away. The Gospel by itself is offensive to people who hate the idea that they need a Savior to get to Heaven, that they can't get there by themselves.

We so badly need a revival in this country. I almost weep when I hear teachers like Paul Washer come out and I'm just thinking, "Why can't everybody be like that?" This man has been banned from quite a number of places simply because he preached as if this was his only opportunity (and apparently it was). Why are we castrating the Gospel in favor of not offending people?

Please pray that more Christians have the fortitude to take this burden on in the future, especially our younger generations.

AWOL

I am so sorry I haven't posted in quite awhile, but a lot of things have been going on.

First and foremost, as of October 6 2007, I got married to a wonderful, Godly woman named Charlotte.

That, in addition to an added workload at my jobs and teaching Sunday School, there's not been a lot of time to update.

So, the next entry will be what's on my mind.

Take care,

Michael Fritzius

Behind the Scenes No. 1

Hey folks.

I want to try something new. For the first time since the start of this blog, I've received a couple of anonymous comments that challenge what I'm saying.

I'm fine with it. I'd be foolish if I didn't expect a public blog be challenged by people who have differing points of view. I'm not going to be some kind of nazi and police comments based on their content--but I'm also not going to let them just sit there in some dusty corner for someone else to find and wonder why I didn't address them.

With that in mind, the first (and I'm thinking, less serious comment) of the two is found in the entry Breaking Boards For The Glory Of God. Here the comment is in regards to masturbation:

Anonymous said...

masturbating relieves stress, helps prevent prostate cancer, and provides for better fertillity in the future. you should tell him to beat it all the more if he wants to feel better


Ok. Well the downside is that it misdirects the focus of sexual pleasure from your current (or future) spouse to yourself. Worse yet, he'd end up probably equating sex with what he gets out of it, rather than treating it as a giving of himself.

The first two reasons for continuing have holes in the logic. First of all, you do not need to masturbate to relieve stress. The stress relief comes from a release of endorphins upon orgasm, so it's more likely that the "stress" is caused by a light withdrawal from the endorphin rush that's caused by an orgasm. The problem with this argument is that whatever is causing the stress is still going to be there after you're done, but your body isn't going to be responding to it since it's had its fix.

If it's actual stress, then a better way to relieve it is to just fix whatever is stressing you out instead of wasting time beating off.

The second--preventing prostate cancer... Whoever wrote this probably isn't in danger of prostate cancer at his age, so if he's using this as an excuse then it's a total cop-out. But if you're that worried, then a foolproof way to catch this is to have regular check-ups. Prostate cancer is not dangerous if it's caught in time. It's the slowest growing cancer that a man can get and doesn't get really dangerous until late in the game. Personally, I'd rather know about it and have something done about it, rather than taking my chances by "reducing my chances".

The final reason, while not wrong, is still redundant. Yes, it may make you have more virile sperm, but you already have means of weeding out ineffective ones anyway. Your body absorbs sperm that aren't used so that "fresh" ones are always available.

You will not die of cancer, or go crazy because of stress, and your balls will not explode from not masturbating. So it's not something that needs to be done, and with that in mind, if all the positives are cancelled out, leaving only the negatives... then don't do it.

The second comment was left in an entry titled Finally:

Anonymous said...
I have actually gone to school as a bible critic and have studied extensivelly what parts made it in and what was left on the cutting room floor. I believe what that "quasi athiest" as you put it was getting at is there are hundreds if not thousands of little mishaps that have occured in the bible ending up in the different translations we have today. If even one word is changed in a passage it completely, and has completely, changed the meaning of what is being said. I don't think that you should renounced what "good" things you've learned from the book, but I would advise that you do some unbiased research of your own about the origins and contents of the "trusted" word.


Anonymous, I can tell you're a relativist. I see that you assume that my research is biased, with (I'm guessing) the reason being that you don't like the conclusions I've made.

Let me ask you this simple question: What makes you think you're right?

I've heard so many attacks against the Bible that aren't even backed up by examples. I would think that if the Bible is full of so many flaws and contradictions that, first off, Christianity would dwindle to extinction because of people becoming more intellectual, and second, people would at least present something instead of straw men and blanket generalizations.

I have actually gone to school as a bible critic and have studied extensivelly what parts made it in and what was left on the cutting room floor.

So you went to school and other people told you that the Bible was hacked, edited, and compressed for time and content to fit your tv, and you believed it. I can guarantee you that nobody who makes these claims was present at the time even one of the books of the Bible were written. How did they get their information then? Who told them? Who told the people who told them?

I believe what that "quasi athiest" as you put it was getting at is there are hundreds if not thousands of little mishaps that have occured in the bible ending up in the different translations we have today.

What I said to the person mentioned here was that there is no way to make a simple change to such a complex book as the Bible, and have it still be logically sound. There are still no contradictions in there. It's a conditional statement, and it implies that if a change would cause a contradiction... and there are no contradictions... then there have been no changes.

I'm not saying there aren't variants that DO have changes that DO change the meaning--those ARE the ones I'm decrying. But just because some of those exist doesn't mean that all Bibles, everywhere, printed at anytime, are flawed because of "guiltiness by association".

If even one word is changed in a passage it completely, and has completely, changed the meaning of what is being said.

That's true, but again, just having the possibility of that doesn't mean that every Bible is broken. And there are examples of a one-word change that totally uproots the true meaning of something. The Jehovah's Witnesses have re-worded the passage in John 1:1 from:

1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

to:

1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a God.

See? They've added a simple word--just a letter, really--and changed the whole idea of God's triune nature and made it seem like a polytheistic religion.

So yes, adding to or taking away from the Bible is alive and well. But ask yourself this: What are they changing it from? Doesn't having a ton of variants imply that there is an original, un-fooled-around-with version?

I don't think that you should renounced what "good" things you've learned from the book, but I would advise that you do some unbiased research of your own about the origins and contents of the "trusted" word.

Again, what makes you think I'm the one that's biased? Do you feel that you should be free to do whatever you want, whenever you want, as much as you want, regardless of responsibility for those actions? If you're human, then you do--all of us have that nature deep down. So if the Bible says that you're not made to give glory to yourself, but to God... and you really want to just give glory to yourself, all the time... then it's reasonable to say that the biased one here isn't me.

Anonymous, you need to understand that there's not a single person that knows everything, and that has everything right. No one. People, instead of taking the approach of saying, "Hey, I might be wrong about this," changed it to, "Hey, YOU are wrong about this." If I'm wrong, if the Bible is wrong, that implies that there's something it can be compared to that IS right, and you haven't presented anything to compare it against.

Can you see where I'm coming from? If it's possible to say that something is wrong, and it IS wrong, then there must be some kind of standard or model to compare it against. But you haven't got anything to compare it against, just your claim that it's wrong. So... I don't know what you expect me to do about this.

Breaking Boards For The Glory Of God

Fighting sin is a lot like a karate chop.

I know a guy who decided to quit looking at porn and quit masturbating. He came to me and expressed some concern about the concept of never looking, ever again, and never touching himself, ever again. It's understandably hard to think about it, much the same way it would be for a drug addict to imagine never using their drug of choice, ever.

I told him, "Your focus is wrong. The sin is still the focus of your attention, even if you are saying 'I'm focusing on not sinning', because NOT sinning still puts the focus on the sin."

When we focus on not sinning, we still put the focus on sin--it's just what we do with it is different. The focus should instead be, How could I glorify God now that I'm not sinning like this?

This is why I'm saying that fighting sin is a lot like a karate chop. I've heard (and am not sure if it's true but will use the analogy anyway because that's how I roll) that when you go to break a board with a firm chop or punch, the focus should NOT be the wood. You want your hand, or fist, to get to a point two feet or so past the board. Just take your hand, and move it very quickly from where it's at, to the point behind the board. Guess what: The ultimate goal of breaking the board has been achieved but the focus was different.

The reason why they say to aim past the board is because when your focus is on the board itself, whether you realize it or not, your fist actually slows down enough that you will probably fail. Much the same way, you will probably fail if you focus simply on not sinning. You will sin though, and it's going to sting. It'll sting when you break the board as well, but not as bad as when your fist is stopped cold.