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After I left the Assembly I found that I could no longer maintain my faith in Christianity. (By faith I mean in a standard conservative view of the Biblle) I am courious if anyone out there would like to share your current state of faith.

Dave,

Your question is phrased in the terms of an unbeliever. 

Christians believe in the person and lordship of Jesus Christ, not in "Christianity."  I don't point this out to nit-pick, but the distinction is worth noting.

Christianity truly defined is belief in Christ.  Belief in Christianity would be belief in a belief...

al

This is a good question Dave!

  Al:  I think that Dave defined his terms, when referring to "Christianity", by explaining that he now rejects "a standard conservative view of the Bible."  He rejects the view that the Bible contains the absolute revealed truth re. God.

  David M.: Before others start to answer your question maybe you could explain to us what led to your change of mind from the "conservative" belief you had and what you now believe---- or if you now have any belief in God at all, etc.?

   What I'm trying to get at is: are you an atheist, agnostic, or what (if any) are now your spiritual beliefs?  How did you originally "accept Christ," and can you isolate that experience from your involvement in the Assembly?

   I know of one former member who considered loyal Assembly involvement as the sum and subtance of his "life in Christ" and when he discovered that the Assembly was deeply flawed he could not separate his personal faith in God from his past bad experiences with the group.  His final decision was that there could be no God and he became an atheist.  I would submit that he never truly had a personal faith in God, but related only to God on the basis of religious affiliation.

    It has been my experience, in talking with many former members of cults/abusive churches, that those that came to their groups with a salvation experience, and some solid evangelical teaching, have fared much better in maintaing a strong faith in the Bible after leaving their respective groups, than those that have not.

                                    I believe that God still will bless,   Mark C. 

 

I consider myself a Christian, in the sense that I believe in Christ the Lord.  I do not, however, go to church or read the Bible regularly.  I believe that my relationship with the Lord is pretty tight.  I talk to him regularly.  I guess what I'm saying is that my concept of Christianity is sort of "out of the box". 

Hi Eulaha!

  Thanks so much for your honest response to David M.'s question.  I think I understand your present views of what it means to have a relationship with the Lord as you described it: "out of the box."

   When I was in the Assembly I certainly felt like I was in a box so when I left the group I refused to allow anyone to try and put up walls around me again! 

   People who have never been in a cult/abusive church often question those who stayed in these groups (some for many years) something like this: "you were not a physical prisoner of the group; why didn't you just leave as soon as you realized something was wrong?"

  The walls of that box are made up of:

1.) Guilt:
    A.) You are warned that fidelity to the group equals "being right with God."
          To leave the group is to leave God.
     B.) You are told that God accepts you based on your performance.  This includes meeting attendance, bible reading, prayer, witnessing, etc.

     2.) Feeling of belonging.
            This is the commitment to "friends" and our hunger to be accepted and wanted by others.  That in the Assembly these emotions were dysfunctional is clearly understood, but to those held by these walls they are nonetheless very real. 

   It is the "B" part of guilt that I struggle with still to this day.  I understand in my thinking that true relationship with God is "out of the box," in that it has everything to do with a gift based relationship with God vs. an earned one, but emotionally I still feel insecure without some of those walls around me to give me the assurance that I am okay with God! :'(

  When I avoid reading the bible and going to church it is because these in the past were the means of holding me in bondage for decades.  Yes, I know that this was never God's intention in the church or his word---- but how to overcome the overwhelming reluctance?

1.) It's okay to just decide to "live outside of the box", in the sense that God understands former Assembly members are a bit burned out on "climbing heavenly ladders!"  Consider it "time apart with the Lord" away from any of what might trigger memories from the past.  That may even mean not reading the BB for a period of time--- if that gets you too emotional.

2.) I think it's a good idea to have a friend that you can talk to who understands what you've been through, and is possibly struggling with similar things, to just sit down and talk.  This will go a long way to answering the "#2 point re. the emotional need for acceptance.
   ( When I was in the Assembly I knew some people for decades, but we were never able to have any kind of discussion that even approached a friendship.  Indeed, we were warned against this kind of stuff.)
 
   Now, some would insist that the two above points are not "spiritual," but humanistic/psychological answers that avoid the only true biblical solutions of church attendance and bible reading as the means to spiritual relationship with God.  I would contend that there can be no true profit from church and bible reading as long as I have not resolved the issue of learning to live my life on the basis of freedom in grace---i.e., "outside the box" of my former days in Phariseeism.

  I have discovered as I boldly resist living by guilt over my less than perfect performance, and instead opt to trust in the God who takes away my guilt and sin, that what insues is a marked change of heart in how I live my life.

  People notice a change in my behavior: from the depressed self preoccupied person I was, to a more content and happy individual who represents a Christian relationship that is much more attractive to others than the former dark cloud attitude I had.

  I also have a change of heart, in that I care more about people, not just defending/arguing my point of view---- I truly desire to "build up" others in their faith.

   I think by this "out of the box" way of thinking about our relationship with the Lord eventually we will come back to bible reading and church life, but we will look at both in a completely different way as a result of changing the context for how I relate to God.  Now the bible and church are not the walls of our imprisonment, but helpers in our joy and conduits for God's loving assurances! :)

  We will see things that remind us of the Assembly in evangelical churches; there will be those trying to use guilt to get us to "serve the Lord," etc., but from our new "out of the box" understanding these things will not have the power over us they once did and we will learn one of the most blessed phrases for a recovering Assemblyite to utter: "no thanks, but thanks for asking."

                                              Boy, God sure wants to bless us.  Mark C.

Recently, I listened to a series by Bart Ehrman from UNC Chapel Hill on the New Testament.  I wanted to understand better the securlar view of the Bible.  He went through what might be considered the non-conservative view of the Bible where it is popular to try and separate the Jesus of history from the Jesus of faith.  Most secular scholars tend to run the Bible through the standards of history concluding for various reasons what is and isn't true about Jesus, the authorship of Paul, etc.  Too much to go into here.

His arguments were comelling but as I dug deeper into this type of scholarship, it seemed even more speculative than assuming the Bible was historical.

Ann Rice, the best-selling novelist about vampires, recently returned to her Catholisim and wrote (so far in my opinion) a good novel called Christ the Lord.  In the afterward, she recounts her journey of going through various scholarship and being frustrated at the inane and conflicting conclusions they came up with.  She was greatly helped by N.T. Wright who is not exactly an evangelical (most do not like his New Perspectives on Paul) but writes compellingly of the centrality of the resurrection and the authorship of Paul.

So, I still lean towards "conservative camp" if one feels they have to apply such labels.  Do I have questions such as how literally the "lake of fire" should be taken in apocolyptic literature?  Of course.  I feel the Bible is God's word but there is much more I don't understand now than when I was in the Assembly.

Last Friday I was involved in a lively conversation about the doctrine of "bodily ressurection" (This was started by another teacher in our breakroom) After pointing out the similarities to  ancient Egyptian religion and the absurdity of "not donating organs/not having your body cremated" a Christian teacher piped in "I don't believe in any of that stuff," "I just believe in a relationship with God." Thus my problem When I posed the question, "...in Christianity"  Oh wait this may lead someone to think by Christianity I mean religion not relationship!  O.K. here it comes, "Dave" "What you experienced wasn't genuine Christianity"  "Let me tell you about true relationship with Christ!" Come on guys, just let people take this annonymous poll!  You don't have feel threatend or like you need to "fix" me.  :P :P :P :P :P :P :P

As a side note, our pastor was preaching on 1 Corinthians 15 yesterday.  He pointed out that the question "How are the dead raised" was a sarcastic one as if to say "oh yeah?  How is the Lord going to put a decaying body back together?"

The point of misunderstanding with the Corinithians is that they assumed resurrection meant supernaturally putting the old body back together which is the same misunderstanding that folks who don't believe in cremation or donating body organs have.  Rather the truth of the resurrection is that God gives us a new body.  Therefore, while we are not to abuse our bodies, there is nothing wrong for the Christian to be cremated or donate his/her organs.

IMO, I'd think twice about burning an old temple of God, even if it was decaying.

It's been documented that people who have had organ transplants will take on personalities of the previous owners of the body parts. It seems the more of the previous owner's body you have, the more likely this is to happen. What is going on here??? 

Until I heard these people speak, I thought transplants would be a fine thing to do. I have 2 cousins with kidney transplants.

There is also something that I find interesting. Your body will reject anyone else's body part as a foreign invader. This in itself says something.

A cousin I'm close to said that she is on 3 different anti-rejection medications. Her immune system doesn't exist. What a skewed picture.

A man was buried in a shallow grave, and his body decomposed into the surrounding soil.  Some flowers absorbed some of the atoms that once were part of the dead man’s brain.  A cow ate the flowers and produced milk which a toddler later drank.  The atoms that once formed part of the dead man’s brain became assimilated into the brain of the toddler.  In the resurrection, whose brain gets those atoms?  Is someone left with a deficient brain?

If the above is how we view the resurrection, then I believe the Lord Jesus would say to us, “You do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God” (Matthew 22:29).

I agree with Dave that believers receive a new body made of new atoms… believers receive new bodies that shall be as the glorified body of the Lord Jesus Christ (Phil. 3:21): bodies that shall never tire, become sick, or grow old.

It is true though that some of the atoms in our present bodies actually have been part of the bodies of past humans, plants, and animals. Oxygen molecules in the room you are in are moving over 1,000 mph; some of the ones you just exhaled are now down the street and in the lungs of someone else.

Regarding transplants, the Lord Jesus gave his blood a ransom for many; he tasted death for everyone.  If I die and my heart goes to a prostitute or my liver to an alcoholic, well, my Savior has already given far more for them to live.

I also have told my wife that if I die I want to be cremated because that is the least expensive form of legal “burial.”   I want the limited funds in my family to support the needs of the living.

Moon,

You said:

I suspect that you might want to do a little checking on the "documentation" of these claims before fully accepting them.  Did these folks cite peer-reviewed science or medical publications in evidence of their claims?  My guess would be no.  If I am wrong....enlighten me.

If this could be shown to be true, it would support Thomas Aquinas' teaching on inherent natures of entities.  Interesting.

Think about it though.  If a man receives a woman's heart, would he develop tendencies to crossdress?  Add a kidney and he turns into a homosexual?  Doesn't seem very likely to me.

Blessings,

Thomas Maddux

Rick, every room in my house is posted "SPEED LIMIT 500MPH."  We allow a margin of 50MPH under normal conditions, but molecules traveling in excess of 550MPH are pulled over and inhaled.  You just gotta draw the line somewhere...

al ;)

There is a documented case of a cat being skin-grafted with the flesh of a Pekingnese
and after coming home from the operation the cat attacked the Mailman and ate all of
the Chinese food off of the plates on the table. Now, if a skin transplant can result in
this behavior, imagine what other organ transplants might lead to.

Joe, I heard of a small pentecostal church that received a donor organ from a cathedral. 
The choir has been confused ever since... :D :o

That's right: His blood for life and His body in death. he did not give his body to be transplanted into anyone elses. Blood is different from body parts. Please.  ::)
and??
 

I heard them on a TV show. These people would even say things that they had never said before, some even had personality changes; they would do things that they had not done before. Check it out for yourself. I heard them myself on a weekly show(not Jerry Springer   ;) )I don't need the medical profession for verification of truths.  I'll go with my own organs and an immune system, thank you.

This is indeed a personal decision.  It took me a couple of cycles to get over the emotional barrier before I was willing to put "organ donor" on my driver's license. 

I was just surprised because this was the first time ever I had heard a real clear sermon that addressed cremation.  (http://www.abfboone.org/Resources/messages.htm to listen.  It is the message on 1/15/06.  By the way, the earlier messages 1 Corinthians 12-14 helped me concerning the Charismatic gifts as well.  Hint:  Pastor is not a Charasmatic in a classical sense nor a Cessationist.)

I am convinced that there is nothing unbiblical about creamation or organ donation.  Since my dad was cremated three years ago Loretta and I have thought about it and I think I have come to Rick's conclusion - it is probably the best way to have a memorial that is respectful but is not expensive nor uses up a plot of land that could be used for something else.  And in some cases taking an organ and its side effects might be an alternative to premature dieing.

Others may have other reasons for not being comfortable with it and that's fine.

Anyway, I didn't mean to divert this discussion.  Somehow this was related to a question about faith, but I don't remember how.

I think I found Faith again!  I believe that I will be in this Friday's Education Section of the Orange County Register!!!!!! I  believe, I believe!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :) :) :) :)

                                                                            PART I

Dave has told us that after he left the Assembly he could no longer maintain his faith in Christianity. (“the standard conservative view of the Bible”)  He then invited folks to “share their “current state of faith”.  So, that is what I will do.  I would describe the current state of my faith as healthy and growing.  In order to explain that, I will share with you my journey of faith.

I grew up in a nominal Christian home.  My folks believed in God, and we attended church regularly.  Our denomination was the Christian Church, a branch of the Campbellite movement closely related to the Church of Christ.  They taught me that Jesus had died for my sins.  They also gave an alter call at the close of every service.  I have probably sat through all the verses of “Softly and Tenderly” at least 500 times.  

They also observed the Lord’s Supper every week.  They referred to this as “taking Communion.”  When I was about 8 years old I asked my mother what it meant.  She told me that we did it to “have our sins forgiven.”  Theological sophistication was not part of my upbringing.

Neither was the discussion of Cosmology.  Nevertheless, I can remember my older brother telling me that “the universe goes on forever.”  This happened when I was about 8 years old.  I can remember lying in bed trying to picture an infinite universe.  I visualized passing through the blue sky going on and on.  But I kept seeing a brick wall!  Since it is now known that the universe is not infinite, it turns out I was right.  Why I came to that conclusion I have no idea.  What I do know is that I have, since childhood, tried to understand the world I live in.  I have always wanted to know why things are the way they are, and what is true.

I never doubted that I was a sinner.  Although my sins were unremarkable, they were real.  I committed most of the usual sins of childhood and adolescence.  Both my intellect and my conscience told me I was guilty of wrongdoing.

In 1959 at the age of 18 I left home and joined the Air Force.  During my first year I begin to try to find out who God was and how to know Him.  I began to read the New Testament.  Some of what I read was comforting.  Other parts were frightening.  I couldn’t make sense of it.

In April of 1961 I was transferred from my base in the UP of Michigan to Izmir, Turkey, (ancient Smyrna).  I flew down to Chicago and bought a ticket to Los Angeles on the Santa Fe. They let you take a leave before going overseas.  After buying my ticket, I had several hours before the train left.  I wandered into downtown Chicago, and spotted a sign that said “Victory Serviceman’s Center”.  Inside, a skilled Christian worker explained Ephesians 2:8-9 and Romans 10:9 to me.  Salvation, he said, is a gift, but it was to be found in Christ, who was my Lord.  The two came in a “package”.  I struggled with the idea of submitting to Christ for several minutes, but my heart was crying out, “DO IT!” so loud I prayed with him to receive Christ.  

I will never forget the wonderful peace and surety I felt that night as the train pulled out for LA.  I now know that I was having my first experience of peace with God and assurance of salvation.  The Holy Spirit was witnessing with my spirit that I was child of God.

About one month later I arrived in Izmir.  I quickly discovered that the word could be a perilous place for a new believer.  In Turkey the sins of the flesh are tolerated and indulged in quite openly.  The “old timers” invited the new guy, me, to go to town, hit the bars, and end up at the section of town cordoned off for the prostitutes.  I thought to myself, “I had better take a stand now or it’s over.”  So, by the grace of God, I did.  From then on, I was known as “Deacon”.

I soon discovered that many folks did not wish to believe in Christ. There were many, many hours of discussions about God and Christ in the barracks and at work.  I was presented with all the usual arguments, such as the psychological argument and the argument from evil.  I had a few resources to learn from, and learned how to reply to many of them.  A couple of examples follow:

1. You just believe in God because you fear death and have an infantile desire to avoid it.

This one has two big problems.  A. It is fallacious to argue that if someone wants something to be true, it therefore is not true.  When you take antibiotics you wish them to cure your illness.  Does that mean they cannot?  B. It is reversable.  “Your disbelief in God is grounded in your sense of sinfulness.  You therefore reject God out of an infantile desire not to be punished.”

2. A benevolent God would not allow evil to exist.

This is actually an argument in support of belief in God!  The skeptic acknowledges the reality of evil, and therefore of the existence of objective, universal morality.  Only a transcendent being is capable of making universal moral laws.  If there is no such being, morality is merely personal.  This “dumbs down” morality to being a matter of personal taste.  Adolph Hitler and Mother Theresa are moral equals.  

                                                                             PART II


During this period I developed an interest in history and archeology.  I was living 40 miles from Ephesus, which I visited several times.  On a hill overlooking Izmir there is a fortress begun on the orders of Alexander the Great, enlarged by the Romans, and completed by the Crusaders. I only had to walk a hundred yards from the gate of my base to walk out on a Roman aqueduct!  I visited Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, (which in those days included Jerusalem and Bethlehem), Greece, and several other European countries. 

The downtown headquarters had an excellent library, with many books on History, Philosophy, Religion, and Archeology.  I read constantly, and soon discovered something about Archaeology.  Archaeologists interpret their finds according to their theological bias.  (no surprise)  They tend to come in three flavors: 1. No archeological finds support the Bible. 2. Many archeological finds corroborate the Bible.  3. Archeology proves the Bible to be true.  Later, when I took Archeology in graduate school, I found that the majority are of the #2 variety, including my professor.

When I was rotated back to the states I decided to deal with the issue of my own questions about Christianity.  Sometimes I would ask myself if, as wonderful as it seemed to me, I had not just believed something that was just wishful thinking.  So, I decided to put it to the test.  I would face the “big guns” of atheism and skepticism.  Accordingly, I read books such as Bertrand Russell’s, “Why I Am Not a Christian” and Eric Hoffer’s, “
The True Believer”.  I was shocked to find out that although they stated their arguments eloquently, they said basically the same things I had heard in the barracks!  I was not, and still am not, impressed.  Incredibly, these brilliant men make egregious logical and factual errors in order to support their skepticism.  Could it be that sin darkens the understanding?

In August of 1963 I was discharged from the USAF.  They let me out a few weeks early so I could enter college in the Fall semester.  As soon as I hit the classroom, I knew I was in an environment that was not very friendly to Christianity.  American culture was just entering the era of the “Sexual Revolution” and the Great Satan of the times was “Puritanism.”  Since the Puritans were Christians, they took them as representatives of Christianity and constantly railed against them.  It didn’t matter what the subject was.  Psychology, Philosophy, Mathematics, English Literature, every professor seemed to be able to work in a few shots.

One of the objections to Christianity that I encountered in college was the “Dying and Rising Gods” theory.  This  objection is still encountered from time to time.  The idea, first proposed in Fraser’s “Golden Bough” and popularized by Joseph Campbell, is that religion has evolved from myths concocted by primitive cultures to explain natural phenomena.  One of the myths found in many near-eastern agricultural societies was that some god, Baal, Tammuz, Adonis, Osiris etc. descends into the underworld as winter begins, then returns in the spring.  This corresponds to the change of seasons, and is believed to be an explanation by a primitive society of the change of seasons.

One problem this objection is that it commits a categorical fallacy.  The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is nothing like these myths.  In the Osiris myth, for example, Osiris is a god.  He is tricked into climbing into a coffin by Set, his brother.  Set kills him by throwing him into the Nile.  Osiris’ wife, Isis, finds the body and brings it back.  So Set, gets it again and chops it up, then throws the pieces into the Nile.  Isis hunts down all the pieces and re-assembles them.  She then uses magic to restore Osiris to consciousness.  He is not really alive, though, and must dwell in the underworld as its king.  Not exactly the gospel of Matthew.

Another form of this objection is to claim that Greek mystery religions have many dying and rising savior gods who are then eaten in sacramental meals.  The problem with this one is that all the sources of information about these mystery cults come from around the third century AD.   It is therefore more likely that they were copying the very successful Christians rather than the other way around.

                                                                        PART III


During the middle 60’s I went through  a deeply painful and emotionally depressing period.  My entire family died, one by one.  I dealt with this unwisely...men must be strong and support the womenfolks.  No grieving, no tears, stiff upper lip.  The emotional cost was heavy, and many negative thoughts about God and Christianity ran through my mind.  There was no “wonderful peace and joy” to lean on, and no one I knew had any answers.

When I was in Turkey I had read, “The Screwtape Letters” by C.S. Lewis. I had been impressed by his insightful treatment of the common temptations and doubts of believers. When I discovered his “Mere Christianity”and other books I began finding answers to my doubts and questions.  Then, after I  transferred to Cal State Northridge in 1966 I discovered the works of Francis Schaeffer.  “Escape From Reason” and “The God Who Is There” were tremendously encouraging to me.  I discovered that Christianity presented a coherent worldview, supported by clear reasoning in the areas of Epistemology, Metaphysics and Logic. 

During this period I learned to put alternate worldviews to the test. A worldview is a person’s view of what reality consists of and how all the aspects “fit”. One of the tests is simply to ask whether or not those who ascribe to a worldview can and do actually live as if it were true.  There are others as well, but I will just say that I am convinced that Christian Theism is the only defensible worldview.

It has always intrigued me that atheists and agnostics do not seem to realize what good Christians they are.  I do not mean that they are born again Christians.  I mean that they are deeply Christianized in their worldview.  To describe them  I coined the term, “Preaching Athiests”.  They strongly assert the non-existence of God.  In the next breath they begin to criticize anyone who does on the basis of Christian values!  They deny the truth of Christianity, but must think as if it were true!

War is wrong they tell us.   All those people suffering and dying.  Then they go on to condemn anyone who favors using military force.  The problem with this is that they have to borrow their values from Christians in order to criticize anything!

We should, they assure us, be merciful, tolerant, and compassionate.  I guess they never heard of Charles Darwin.  According to him we are just animals who compete for available resources.  The more of “them” who die, the more resources that remain for the rest of us.  If human beings are just purposless conglomerations of molecules shaped by the “toss” of the evolutionary dice, why should anyone care what happens to them?

I have never met an Atheist who had any answer to this dilemma.  When questioned, the usual tactic is to attempt to change the subject by appealing to Christian morality in even stronger terms.  Pathetic.

Christianity does not answer all the questions that can be asked.  But it does provide us with a reasonable worldview that is internally consistent, consistent with what we know of the world both past and present, and has tremendous explanatory power.  Atheism has to subsist on borrowed Christian capital.

Blessings,

Thomas Maddux