Religion vs. Relationship

I have seen this meme going around Facebook. Some of the sources credit it to David E. Taylor: “Religion is a guy in church thinking about fishing. Relationship is a guy out fishing thinking about God.”

I think this has a genuine point it is trying to make. What I assume is intended is to highlight the posture of the heart. Yes, you can be bodily in a church service, while the heart is not there. And when you have a relationship with God, it goes with you everywhere you go, at all times, even fishing. Truth.

I probably could just stop there, but on the other hand I see possible deficiencies leading to misunderstanding.

The first two are somewhat minor. The meme stereotypes the word “religion” as negative, while in fact it can be meant either positive, neutral, or negative. And the meme can leave the impression that church is just a building where we go. The church is the people, the congregation. I don’t stop here, because I think the way some people will take this meme is to try to justify going fishing in place of going to church. I have heard many justify it in almost this way!

What one is thinking at these two different times (church vs. fishing) reveals something of the heart. However, the meme contains a logical fallacy (false dilemma) that limits the choices to two. It misses other options (one can fishing and not be thinking about God). It especially misses this much better option – to be at present when the time comes to assemble with our fellow believers AND to be thinking about God! What a blessing!

We don’t want to just go through the motions. We want to truly connect with God. We can do that while gathered at church. We should do that while gathered at church. While first and foremost is our relationship with God, we also have an obligation to our relationship with believers, and to obey the command of God to assemble.

Where the heart is is important (cf. Matthew 6:21). Our connection to and relationship with God certainly is not confined to one location. It is a lifetime of moments, thoughts, and places. Nevertheless, if we do not feel close to God when we gather in church, the solution is not to go fishing, but to examine our hearts. And if we do not feel close to God when we are fishing – or at work or at home – that is cause to examine our hearts as well.

Deuteronomy 6:5 and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.

1 John 3:14 We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death.

Hebrews 10:25 not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.

Christ Our Hope

I am not a Southern Baptist, but I found the record of this sermon preached at the Southern Baptist Convention to be interesting.

W. Douglas Hudgins, pastor of First Baptist Church, Jackson, Mississippi preached the annual sermon on June 4, 1968 at the Southern Baptist Convention.

Hudgins’s sermon “Christ, Our Hope” was based on the text from 1 Timothy 1:1, “Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the commandment of God our Saviour, and Lord Jesus Christ, which is our hope.” His points were that our world is a hopeless world of bewildering technology, convulsive sociology, paganized ideology, confused theology, and changing ecclesiology. After highlighting the hopelessness, he turned to the hope. He said that Jesus Christ is our only hope. He is our hope because of who he is, because of what he taught, because of what he did, and because of what he promises.

The Baptist Record, June 6, 1968, pp. 1-2.

Charity in the King James Bible

The word “charity” is used 28 times in 24 verses in the King James Bible. It is only used in the New Testament, and does not appear in the Old Testament (or the Apocrypha). In every case the translators reserve it in context of the love Christians have or ought to have, using the English word “love” more broadly.

I recently read where someone suggested that the use of “charity” by the King James translators was driven by Rule # 3, that “The Old Ecclesiastical Words to be kept.” This is incorrect. “Charity” was not the “old ecclesiastical word” of the 1540 Great Bible, the 1560 Geneva Bible, the 1568 Bishop’s Bible, or the 1559 Book of Common Prayer. These Bibles commonly use “love” where “charity” is found in the King James translation. The Book of Common Prayer prints 1 Corinthians 13 with love rather than charity. “Charity” was a change apparently first made in the 1572 Bishop’s Bible.

Rather then, this choice seems correlated with Rule # 1, to generally follow the Bishop’s Bible and that it be “as little altered as the Truth of the originals will permit.” The 1568 Bishop’s Bible almost always had the word “love,” but by 1572 had been changed. All 28 uses in the King James Bible correspond exactly to the use in the 1602 Bishop’s Bible, which is the Bible the translators had before them when they were working on the translation.

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Note: I found that there are people online who claim the change from “love” to “charity” in the Bishop’s Bible is a nod to “ecclesiastical language” – not the ecclesiastical language of the Church of England, but rather the “ecclesiastical language” of Jerome of Stridon’s Latin translation of the Bible, specifically his use of “carita/s” in the Vulgate. I do not find this convincing. Jerome used carita/s over a hundred times in his translation, even some places in the Old Testament and the Apocrypha. (The Douay-Rheims has nearly 100 instances of the English word “charity.”) Rather, I believe that the particular context is the reason for using “charity” in these 28 places; that is, in these cases the translators (Bishops & KJV) reserve it in context of the love Christians have or ought to have, as opposed to love in a more general or generic sense.

Left thy first love

Revelation 2:4 Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love.

Preaching on the church of Ephesus in Revelation 2, Brother Ben Horn of Middle Cross Baptist Church pointed out out that the word “left” indicates that the church at Ephesus did not just depart from her first love carelessly, but departed willfully.

Sometimes we misplace things and cannot find them. That is lost, carelessly. Sometimes we place things somewhere, know where they are, and do not want to take them up again. That is left, willfully.

Calvary

Death and Eternity, by Isaac Watts

1. My thoughts, that often mount the skies,
Go search the world beneath,
Where nature all in ruin lies,
And owns her Sovereign, Death.[i]

2. The tyrant, how he triumphs here,
His trophies spread around!
And heaps of dust and bones appear
Through all the hollow ground.

3. These skulls, what ghastly figures now!
How loathsome to the eyes!
Those are the heads we lately knew
So beauteous and so wise.

4. But where the souls, those deathless things,
That left this dying clay?
My thoughts, now stretch out all your wings,
And trace Eternity!

5. O that unfathomable deep!
Those deeps without a shore!
Where living waters gently creep,
Or fiery billows roar.

6. Thus must we leave the banks of life,
And try this doubtful sea:
Vain are our groans and dying strife
To gain a moment’s stay.

7. There we shall swim in heav’nly bliss,
Or sink in flaming waves,
While the pale carcass thoughtless lies
Amongst the silent graves.

8. Some hearty friend shall drop his tear
On our dry bones, and say,
“These once were strong, as mine appear;
“And mine must be as they.”

9. Thus shall our mould’ring members teach
What now our senses learn:
For dust and ashes loudest preach
The infinite concern.

The above hymn, in 9 stanzas of common meter, was published in Horæ Lyricæ by Isaac Watts. It was not in the 1706 Edition, but was added in 1709. See Horæ Lyricæ, pages 28-30, Book 1. For a little more on Isaac Watts, see HERE. (Fuller biographies of Watts are easily found online.)

In The Sacred Harp (page 300), the fist stanza of Watts’s above text appears with the tune Calvary by Daniel Read.

Daniel Read was born November 16, 1757 in Rehoboth, Massachusetts, the son of Daniel Read and Mary White. He grew up on a farm there, but moved to and settled New Haven, New Haven County, Connecticut in 1782. Here he married Jerusha Sherman (in 1785), ran a general store, made combs, composed music, and taught singing schools. He is considered a key figure in early American music, being part of the “First New England School” of musicians –also known as the “Yankee Tunesmiths.” Various sources assert that Read was the third American composer to publish a collection of his own music, in 1785, known as The American Singing Book. Read later also published The Columbian Harmonist and The New Haven Collection of Sacred Music. He wrote in 1790 An Introduction to Psalmody to instruct and encourage hopeful new composers.

Eleven tunes by Read appear in the 1991 Denson Edition of The Sacred Harp, and five in the 2012 Cooper Edition of The Sacred Harp. Some of his best-known compositions include Windham, Stafford, and Sherburne.

Daniel Read died at age 79 on December 4, 1836. He and his wife are buried at the Grove Street Cemetery in New Haven, Connecticut.

See “Daniel Read complains, gets even” for an excerpt from a letter from Daniel Read to Jacob French in which he complains about Isaiah robbing and republishing his works in the Worcester Collection of Sacred Harmony (1786). The book Music in the USA concludes: “Ironically the ‘pirating,’ or unauthorized borrowing by other tune-book publishers, made it possible for Read’s music to survive.” For example, “‘Greenwich’ was published 82 times in Read’s own era.” (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2008, p. 73)

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[i] In the first stanza “owns” (3rd person singular present tense of “own”) seems to be used primarily in the sense of “acknowledging” or “admitting” rather than “possessing.” The searched and examined state of nature recognizes or testifies that “death” is her sovereign.

Why Not Grandchildren, and other links

The posting of links does not constitute an endorsement of the sites linked, and not necessarily even agreement with the specific posts linked.

• Why Not Grandchildren? An Argument Against Reformed Paedobaptism -- “The right of the remotest generation was as much derived from Abraham and the covenant made with him, as was that of his immediate seed...”
• Uneasy Riders -- “ The team had just seen TV news footage of an EF5 tornado crossing I-35, right smack dab in the middle of our route...”
• Tragedy on the Prairie -- “Just outside the small town of Groesbeck, east of Waco, tucked between cow pastures and the Navasota River, stands an old wooden fort...”
• The ‘Whitewash’ Conspiracy – re: The King James Only Controversy by James White -- “In other words, White is ‘inconsistent’ and has a ‘double standard.’”
• Stop Misusing Tyndale -- “Translating into English does not by default mean translating for the most ignorant English reader in the country.”
• South Poles -- “Texas is a patchwork of cultures, accents and traditions. Thanks to the Polish Heritage Center, one of our more overlooked threads is finally getting the spotlight it deserves.”
• Poor and Misleading Translation in the New International Version -- “…the NIV’s changes … obfuscate the original text and make it unfairly difficult for readers to consider other interpretations, (2) other translations generally avoid making such changes, and (3) they usually appear to be theologically motivated.”
• Phillippi Primitive Baptist Church, Schley County, Organized in 1835 -- “...the little sanctuary still stands, a reminder of another era that feels both distant and near.”
• Ologies, Isms, & Ations -- “A list to give brief descriptions of different beliefs and doctrines regarding the Bible and other non-Biblical religions and belief systems.”
• Methods in Sermonizing -- “An old book we used many years ago.”
• John Wycliffe’s Bible: Correcting a False Narrative -- “It’s often claimed that translations of the Bible into the vernacular languages of medieval Europe weren’t really opposed within the church because there are a few examples of such translations prior to the Reformation.”
• Galvanized by the Gospel -- “By the 1820s, Baptists had become bitterly divided over the issue of missions.”
• First London Confession (Read by Audiobook Narrator David K. Martin) -- “This narration was done for those interested in learning more about the 1646 edition of the First London Baptist Confession of Faith.”
• Fast and Curious -- “Nineteen hummingbird species have been recorded across Texas. In summer breeding months, the two most common species are black-chinned hummers in West Texas and ruby-throated hummingbirds in East Texas.”
• Canaanite Child Sacrifice, Abortion, and the Bible -- “May we repent and turn from any semblance of cooperation with the modern day cult of Molech, and hear and apply the command of the Spirit of Christ through Paul: Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness...”

Nice

complacency, noun. A feeling of quiet pleasure or security, often while unaware of some potential danger, defect, or the like; self-satisfaction or smug satisfaction with an existing situation, condition, etc.; inclination to please; complaisance.

There is a large problem of complacency – in Sacred Harp, in the churches, and in our country. One part of this is that we have created a societal value of “nice” (which intersects with outsized tolerance) and we have placed it above love and truth. We ought to be nice (amiably pleasant; kind), but somehow “nice” has become the highest goal for many. A way to illustrate and emphasize this is to think of two people asleep in their home and the home catches on fire. Our societal version of “nice” is like saying, “Oh, but I don’t want to bother them, they are asleep.” So, instead, we just let them burn to death! That’s actually not nice.

• Ephesians 4:15 …speaking the truth in love…
• 1 John 3:18 …let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth.

Be not many masters

James 3:1 My brethren, be not many masters, knowing that we shall receive the greater condemnation.

James warns aspiring teachers to not undertake that calling lightly. The teacher is a sinner like his students (v. 2) and will incur a stricter judgment (v. 1).

The Pulpit & Pen Christian Discernment Archives on Facebook often posts clips from vile and heretical “sermons,” in order illustrate the dung and mire into which so-called preaching in the United States has sunk. For example, on Monday August 24 they posted a link to an article about a United Methodist impastor in Alabama, detailing how the Bible is full or errors, historical inaccuracies, and contradictions. “Pastor” Gilbert said, “…The Bible is full of contradictions, and that’s to be expected…” going on to compare the Bible to Aesop’s Fables. This reveals the debased level of garbage that enters the American ear from American pulpits.

This is a disgusting display of multiplying words without knowledge, a famine of hearing the words of the Lord. However, Bible-believing preachers ought not be lifted up with pride, but rather mourn. We ought to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God, and also consider our own selves, lest we be deceived. While believing the word itself, we may be preaching self-indulgence, self-satisfaction, and just plain self. Bible-believing preachers often appropriate the culture, accentuate the comedy, and appeal to the crowd rather than following the simple biblical directive, “Preach the word.”

2 Timothy 4:2 preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.

• Preach the word with confidence – because it is inspired (2 Timothy 3:16-17).
• Preach the word with diligence – because with must answer to God (2 Timothy 4:1, 5).
• Preach the word with influence – because unsettled times come (2 Timothy 3:11; 4:3-4).
• Preach the word with incentive – because a crown awaits (2 Timothy 4:6-8).