Posted on 08/08/2012 4:14:07 PM PDT by fishtank
Truthsearcher’s friend said:
“It made him so disgusted that he basically doesn’t believe in having a professional paid clergy any more. He thinks it should all be voluntary.”
Too bad he thinks that way. The Apostle Paul disagrees with him: 1 Timothy 5:17-18. So does Jesus: Matthew 10:10.
Also, what makes him think “volunteer” preachers/teachers would be any better? Read the book of Numbers. Moses encountered plenty of volunteers for the position.
This is long. It is an excerpt from CS Lewis “The Great Divorce”, where an apostate cleric ghost is confronted after death with the truth from a Spirit, and the cleric refuses to see it.
If you are unfamiliar with anything but Narnia, enjoy.
‘The Great Divorce’
by C. S. Lewis
An interview with an apostate cleric ...
... but flowed swiftly like a mountain stream: pale green where
trees overhung it but so clear that I could count the pebbles at the
bottom. Close beside me I saw another of the Bright People in
conversation with a ghost. It was that fat ghost with the cultured
voice who had addressed me in the bus, and it seemed to be wearing
gaiters.
“My dear boy, I’m delighted to see you,” it was saying to the
Spirit, who was naked and almost blindingly white. “I was talking to
your poor father the other day and wondering where you were.”
“You didn’t bring him?” said the other.
“Well, no. He lives a long way from the bus, and, to be quite
frank, he’s been getting a little eccentric lately. A little difficult.
Losing his grip. He never was prepared to make any great efforts, you
know. If you remember, he used to go to sleep when you and I got
talking seriously! Ah, Dick, I shall never forget some of our talks. I
expect you’ve changed your views a bit since then. You became rather
narrow-minded towards the end of your life: but no doubt you’ve
broadened out again.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, it’s obvious by now, isn’t it, that you weren’t quite right.
Why, my dear boy, you were coming to believe in a literal Heaven and
Hell!”
“But wasn’t I right?”
“Oh, in a spiritual sense, to be sure. I still believe in them in
that way. I am still, my dear boy, looking for the Kingdom. But nothing
superstitious or mythological....”
“Excuse me. Where do you imagine you’ve been?”
“Ah, I see. You mean that the grey town with its continual hope of
morning (we must all live by hope, must we not?), with its field for
indefinite progress, is, in a sense, Heaven, if only we have eyes to
see it? That is a beautiful idea.”
“I didn’t mean that at all. Is it possible you don’t know where
you’ve been?”
“Now that you mention it, I don’t think we ever do give it a name.
What do you call it?”
“We call it Hell.”
“There is no need to be profane, my dear boy. I may not be very
orthodox, in your sense of that word, but I do feel that these matters
ought to be discussed simply, and seriously, and reverently.”
“Discuss Hell reverently? I meant what I said. You have been in
Hell: though if you don’t go back you may call it Purgatory.”
“Go on, my dear boy, go on. That is so like you. No doubt you’ll
tell me why, on your view, I was sent there. I’m not angry.”
“But don’t you know? You went there because you are an apostate.”
“Are you serious, Dick?”
“Perfectly.”
“This is worse than I expected. Do you really think people are
penalised for their honest opinions? Even assuming, for the sake of
argument, that those opinions were mistaken.”
“Do you really think there are no sins of intellect?”
“There are indeed, Dick. There is hide-bound prejudice, and
intellectual dishonesty, and timidity, and stagnation. But honest
opinions fearlessly followed-they are not sins.”
“I know we used to talk that way. I did it too until the end of my
life when I became what you call narrow. It all turns on what are
honest opinions.”
“Mine certainly were. They were not only honest but heroic. I
asserted them fearlessly. When the doctrine of the Resurrection ceased
to commend itself to the critical faculties which God had given me, I
openly rejected it. I preached my famous sermon. I defied the whole
chapter. I took every risk.”
“What risk? What was at all likely to come of it except what
actually came-popularity, sales for your books, invitations, and
finally a bishopric?”
“Dick, this is unworthy of you. What are you suggesting?”
“Friend, I am not suggesting at all. You see, I know now. Let us be
frank. Our opinions were not honestly come by. We simply found
ourselves in contact with a certain current of ideas and plunged into
it because it seemed modern and successful. At College, you know, we
just started automatically writing the kind of essays that got good
marks and saying the kind of things that won applause. When, in our
whole lives, did we honestly face, in solitude, the one question on
which all turned: whether after all the Supernatural might not in fact
occur? When did we put up one moment’s real resistance to the loss of
our faith?”
“If this is meant to be a sketch of the genesis of liberal theology
in general, I reply that it is a mere libel. Do you suggest that men
like...”
The rest of the chapter is here:
http://listserv.virtueonline.org/pipermail/virtueonline_listserv.virtueonline.org/2003-October/006048.html
CharlesWayneCT wrote:
“Simple answer. Her church made her a pastor, and the bible clearly states that is wrong. So, why should she respect the bible, when her own church doesn’t follow it?”
Simple answer, yes, but really good and to the point. Although you probably didn’t need to say it four times ;-) ... on the other hand, maybe you did.
crusher said:
“The more “mainline” the Protestant denomination (United Methodist, United Presbyterian, ELCA Lutheran, Episcopal), the more likely the creature officiating the congregation is a fraud.”
Sadly, you are right. Even sadder is that there are plenty more frauds among the rest of the denominations. And there have been such for a very long time. “For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame - who set their mind on earthly things. For our citizenship is in heaven ...” (Philippians 3:18-20)
Also, don’t make the mistake of thinking that belly-serving preachers have to make a lot of money to be such. Some are quite willing to do so on the cheap. Sad.
Showing that Christian love by calling her a Lesbian and a whore and getting all giddy about her burning in hell.
Yeah, I’m sure that will surely draw her and others back in the fold. It sure makes me want to go out and join a church.
IMHO, there are far too many carnal judgments ongoing here, but missing the simpler more obvious problems.
1) The gift of pastor-teacher is a spiritual gift only shown in Scripture to be given to men and with very strong indications, if not “in-your-face” orders for women not to assume the role of Pastor.
2) Once again stress the “SPIRITUAL” nature of the gift. It is NOT a proclivity to academics, nor to command presence, nor to teaching, although for those so gifted spiritually, they may indeed also be well disciplined in their mental faculties to hone those skills. But those skills are not spiritual gifts.
3) She held a religious role as a leader in her religion, but missed the vary foundation of that thinking provided in Scripture, namely the Spirit filled life. Over time, attempting to repetitively counterfeit the spiritual life results in a scarred soul, misidentifying carnal worldly substitutes for the life of the new man.
4) We do not know if she has been saved or not. Believers who fall out of fellowship, then continue to rebel against God become some of the most wretched humans imaginable, becoming enemies of Christ, although still in His Royal family. If they continue to rebel through divine discipline, they may find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time, never able to do something other than that which is good for nothingness, ultimately placing themselves in a state of the sin unto death where God simply removes them from this life with the first death.
5) Note her rebellion has degenerated past a stage of rejecting God. That would merely lead to agnosticism, legalism, antinomianism, or general worldliness and carnality in arrogance.
Instead she has further degenerated into a second stage of spiritual degeneration, where the rebellious degenerate now attacks God. Rejecting God no longer satiates her lust for rebellion, she is now tempted to attack God and everything He provides.
She might become or condone lesbianism in an antinomian insatiable frantic search for happiness, ...or she might become extremely legalistic, condemning homosexuality and all lust in favor of an attempt to counterfeit righteousness without justice.
The lesson to be observed is that those who continue in sin, do not remain stable and secure, but will further degenerate towards not mere rebellion, but towards attacking God.
“Atheists don’t believe in God. But the Devil does’’.— Bishop Fulton J. Sheen.
Her problem is that she was going on head knowledge, rather than a dynamic interrelationship with the God of all of the universe. When you know Him, you cannot deny Him.
Isaiah 65:25 The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock: and dust [shall be] the serpent's meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the LORD.
To say you are an atheist is really to declare yourself a secular humanist. Man as God, as it were.
Being a religious leader, for some, is done out of a need for control and affirmation, and not out of service.
This isn’t as uncommon as you might think.
It does make me laugh a little, as I recollect something I heard someone say once about atheism:
“The difference between a Satanist and an Atheist is one knows who his boss is.”
While it is the duty of every Christian to be salt and light, to be gracious in speech and kind in deed, it is also the duty of every sinner to repent and follow Christ, even if everyone else on the planet turns out to be a scallywag. It seems foolish in the extreme to base my own faith in God on whether some professed believers were less than perfect. That is just the way we sinful humans are. Why would any sensible person risk their eternal soul over the bad behavior of other people? If the heart is in rebellion, it will latch on to any excuse to move ever further from God. If the heart is truly seeking God, it will not let the foolishness of others deflect it from the quest to know God.
“One of the first things my parents taught me as a very small child was, “God said it, I believe it and that settles it.””
I’ve heard that expression many times, but don’t agree with it. It should merely read, “God said it, that settles it.”
It’s settled whether or not you believe it simply because God said it. To make it subject to whether or not you believe it, makes truth subjective. That’s dangerous territory!
Teresa McBain ministered in the Methodist church for twenty years. She formerly pastored at Lake Jackson United Methodist Church in Tallahassee, Florida, but today she ministers as the public relations director of the American Atheists.1 She says that she used to believe in the God of the Bible, but she recently changed her mind: “I know it’s a lie. I know it’s false.”2 Why has she rejected God?
1 Timothy 2:12
“I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather she is to remain quiet.
For Adam was formed first then Eve and Adam was not deceived.
But, the woman who was deceived then became a transgressor.”
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