Matthew 3 Testimony
This is a copy of my testimony from last Sunday that was given before the message.
Today’s sermon really touched me. I felt like it spoke to recent events in my life. Repent for the Kingdom of heaven is near. Repentance is more than ethical improvement. It is the spiritual transformation. Last night friend of mine shared with me an article by a catholic priest called “Why having a heart of Gold is not what Christianity is all about.” The author talked about how Immanuel Kant started a trend that the claims of revealed religions are absurd and unverifiable, and that what is really important is ethics and being moral.
When I listened to Grace’s testimony about her struggle with her teacher and friends I realize clearly that for many people they view Christianity as just a system of morals. The position is that the bible is first and foremost about ethics, and there is an idea that Jesus should be transcended in favor of the ethics he gives. At least that is their position. This is why you hear all this rubbish about Jesus being a good moral teacher. This idea was present with my friend Ali I had dinner with last week. He struggles with atheism and feels like the world is meaningless. He wants to kill himself at times and experiments with drugs to try to find anything to help him find meaning. He used to be Muslim but after a year of evangelizing him he gave up Islam. But to my sadness instead of becoming Christian he became atheist. The other night we met for dinner and after an hour of conversation he admitted that it is easier to live with yourself as a Christian, but it is harder to be a Christian. Nevertheless he would not believe. His point was ultimately the same as Kant, religion is about ethics, and while he said he had no ethics, he then said he had ethics. So there was no problem for him. In the past when I read the bible I always thought of morality and ethics when I read “Repent.” I had been taught that it means turning away from a sin. But it means something more than that. Kant was wrong. Jesus says in Mark’s gospel “Repent and believe the good news.” The word ‘repent’ is the same as John the Baptist used. The word literally means “to go beyond the mind that you have”. As you recall from his sermon, the word used is metanoia. When I break a rule or violate my conscience I am called to go beyond the mind I have. But more than that, Jesus urges us to change our way of thinking and see the world that is coming. The priest said that morality is not the central theme of the New Testament. The theme is a coming of a new way of things. A paradigm shift to viewing things unseen that ends in Revelations 21 with the New Jerusalem. That is why St. Paul tells the Corinthians that the time is short. That is why the scriptures say that what matters is a new creation. Why all of Paul’s achievements are nothing, why he tells the Roman’s their deeds are nothing, why circumcision means nothing. The predominate message of the early church was nothing besides the resurrection of Christ. The transformation of this world into some more, something greater. The curse that Adam brought, death is in retreat. That is the message of repentance. To go beyond death, by dying so that Jesus might live inside you.
At the heart of it all is a choice. Repentance requires a decision. We need Christ’s help to make this decision.To repent, to go beyond one’s mind is a choice. It is faith to step out into the unknown and depend on God. The forerunners to my culture believed that a man is his own master. The American dream is at its core the idea that I control my destiny. But as Kierkegaard states, when man is dependent on God, he is independent. When I make a choice I exclude all other choices. And the choice to repent excludes non repentance, and while this seems easy to understand, I constantly feel like I want it both ways. I want to repent but not really change anything. And while John says “The kingdom of heaven is near.” Jesus says “you are not far from the Kingdom”. Jesus helps me, and when I am unwilling he helps me become willing. I think of all that he has done for me and all that I have done by his power and grace and I am confident in his might. I can do all things though Christ who strengthens me. Let me go beyond this mind I have and take up my place with children of God. There is room for another at the foot of the cross.
I think this is a good point:
“In the past when I read the bible I always thought of morality and ethics when I read “Repent.” I had been taught that it means turning away from a sin. But it means something more than that.”
This sounds similar to Spurgeon. I like what Spurgeon say about the word “repent”.
For example:
“I will begin with this remark—that trembling beneath the sound of the gospel is not “repentance.”
“It is possible that you may confess your sins, and yet may not repent.”
“There is another mistake many poor people make when they are thinking about salvation, and that is—that they cannot repent enough; they imagine that were they to repent up to a certain degree, they would be saved. “Oh, sir!” some of you will say, “I have not penitence enough.” Beloved, let me tell you that there is not any eminent degree of “repentance” which is necessary to salvation. You know there are degrees of faith, and yet the least faith saves; so there are degrees of repentance, and the least repentance will save the soul if it is sincere. The Bible says, “He that believeth shall be saved,” and when it says that, it includes the very smallest degree of faith. So when it says, “Repent and be saved,” it includes the man who has the lowest degree of real repentance.
Spurgeon’s sermon No. 44 http://spurgeon.org/sermons/0044.htm
Repentance is a tricky topic. Two of the current top 10 songs in the US are “Ghost” and “Take me to church”, both have heavy religious overtones
“I keep going to the river to pray, I need something that can wipe away the pain” “I’ll tell you my sins and you can sharpen your knife Offer me that deathless death Good God, let me give you my life”
But in these instances they seem to get the message twisted a bit. Both of them feel that a significant other is the solution to the issue.
“And at most I’m sleeping all these demons away But your ghost, the ghost of you It keeps me awake”
“My lover’s the sunlight To keep the Goddess on my side She demands a sacrifice”
Furthermore, it seems like the message is some pain is the solution to the issue, which is true. The idea that “there is not forgiveness of sins without the shedding of blood” does not disappear because you are not Christian. But I feel as though many people apply repentance as the “shedding of blood” in their lives where it was already been shed on the cross. We should keep looking to the cross and striving to be like him, so that he can change us from within.
“I feel as though many people apply repentance as the “shedding of blood” in their lives where it was already been shed on the cross. We should keep looking to the cross and striving to be like him, so that he can change us from within. – See more at: http://www.ubfriends.org/2015/02/13/matthew-3-testimony/#comment-16500
Precisely! That may be the best summary of the spiritual abuse and undue religious influence we find at ubf. Most ubf people need to heed Jesus’ strong imperative: “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’”
Today I listened to a podcast about Søren Kierkegaard on my way to work and vaguely remembered your testimony.
You wrote “at the heart of it all is a choice.” In fact Kierkegaard tought that we need to live a life of conscious decisions. In UBF, they instead made all the decisions for us. There was only one decision – to obey not matter what. They sold it to us as “making a decision” and “becoming mature” – but it was in reality the opposite of that. Kierkegaard also wrote that we need to become what we truly are – in UBF they instead tried to make us something that we never have been, but a cookie cutter shepherd personality that they wanted us to be.
In Kierkegaard’s famous writing “Either/Or” he juxtaposed two ways of living: “an essentially hedonistic, aesthetic mode and one characterized by ethical imperatives arising from the maturing of human conscience” (Wikipedia). Superficially it sounds like we heard that in UBF, too, but UBF’s alternative to the hedonistic way is a perversion of the way Kierkegaard describes, they did not show us how to grow in ethical and mature behavior, but how to become careless, dependent and immature and numb, living our life based on nothing but slavish obedience. “In simple terms, one can choose either to remain oblivious to all that goes on in the world, or to become involved. More specifically, the ethic realm starts with a conscious effort to choose one’s life, with a choice to choose” (Wikipedia). In UBF, you are really not involved. You let others make the decisions. You don’t care when people in your own group are abused or hurt. Also, in UBF you don’t “make a conscious effort to choose your life,” but you are subtly manipulated to stop making decisions, to even stop thinking, and let others determine your life.
Some Kierkegaard quotes which sound truly relevant for any UBFer:
“Be that self which one truly is.”
“The most common form of despair is not being who you are.”
“Once you label me you negate me.”
“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”
“The proud person always wants to do the right thing, the great thing. But because he wants to do it in his own strength, he is fighting not with man, but with God.”
“Do you not know that there comes a midnight hour when every one has to throw off his mask? Do you believe that life will always let itself be mocked? Do you think you can slip away a little before midnight in order to avoid this? Or are you not terrified by it? I have seen men in real life who so long deceived others that at last their true nature could not reveal itself;… In every man there is something which to a certain degree prevents him from becoming perfectly transparent to himself; and this may be the case in so high a degree, he may be so inexplicably woven into relationships of life which extend far beyond himself that he almost cannot reveal himself. But he who cannot reveal himself cannot love, and he who cannot love is the most unhappy man of all.”
+1
+1 Love the quotes! “Do you not know that there comes a midnight hour when every one has to throw off his mask? … But he who cannot reveal himself cannot love, and he who cannot love is the most unhappy man of all.”