"Day 11 - Becoming Best Friend with God"

Today we're continuing our discussion of inaccurate translations of the Bible, and also the reckless way that Rick Warren uses it. Once again we have this feel-good Christianity that teaches that God is our friend. In the KJV of the Bible, Jesus and God only refers to people being his friends once, and that if of his disciples.

But purpose driven life quotes a slew of verses from a range of translations where the words friends and friendship with God are used, but none of these use the word friend in the original text.

Let's start in the old testament. Rick Warren quotes Exodus 34:14 from the New Living Translation (NLT): "You must worship no other gods, but only the LORD, for he is a God who is passionate about his relationship with you." The KJV says though, "For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God" Do you see the difference? I can see that the NLT talks about God's passion, instead of the fact that our God is a jealous God. And once again it seems to me that the meaning was changed so that it reflects what God does for us (passionate), instead of the requirement of what we have to do for God (worship jealous God).

On page 93 RW says: "Jesus is still the 'friend of sinners'", but if you read Matthew 11:19, it doesn't say Jesus is the friend of sinners, it says that they (they being the pharisees) say he is. "The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. But wisdom is justified of her children." Do you see that it isn't Jesus that says he is a friend of sinners? Should we now say Jesus was a glutton and winebibber?

Next he quotes from the message Job 42:7, and it says that God talks about his friend Job. But in the KJV it says "my servant Job". Now I'm thinking there's a huge difference between friend and servant. We need to gain perspective again of our place towards God ... we are here to serve Him, not to be His "friends". He is the almighty God who created heaven and earth, what are we to set ourselves up like we do? It seems as mankind we're more and more overstating our power and importance, and it's sad that even the Bible translations reflect that, instead of our true place in the presense of God.

Now I'm not saying we should go back to preaching fire and brimstone all the time. But we do need to realize where our place is. Jesus didn't come to be our friend, he came to save our sorry behinds from damnation, which is what we deserve. For that we should just fall on our knees and worship and thank Him, not make out like we're buddy-buddy with the one true living God.

Ok, I'm cutting this short now, after all it is my birthday today :)

Thank you Jesus for your incredible love for us, but Jesus please help us realize that just because you have such love for us and mercy on us, that that doesn't make us any more important. Amen

The Various Translations of the Bible

Chapter 3 deals with "Inaccurate vs Accurate Translations". I must admit that I was rather surprised to learn just how much different translations of the Bible differ. Of course I knew there were major differences, but for the first time I really compared scriptures, and the meaning is completely different from one translation to the other. This author advises to use the King James version as the true translation and to measure others to that.

And then there's The Message ... and I never knew that the message is not a translation of the scriptures, but rather an interpretation of scripture by the author. Now that casts a completely different light on it. It is disturbing then that the use of the message in churches are gaining so much popularity.

Rick Warren states that he doesn't believe in self-help, and quotes Matthew 16:25 from the message: "Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self". Seriously, does the real Bible talk about self-help, true self, false self at all? The way this verse has it, is that it is all about yourself, which is directly the opposite from what the Bible teaches.

Now lets see what the King James version says: "For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it." What do you think? Do these two quotes even remotely mean the same thing? The message quote is all about yourself, whereas the KJ quote is all about Jesus!! From the popular song ... "It's all about you, Jesus"

There are a ton of examples in the book ... I'll probably spend a couple of days on this topic. Let's look at a couple more tonight.

Rick Warren quotes Psalm 147:11 from the CEV (contemporary English version) "The Lord is pleased only with those who worship him and trust his love". KJV: "The Lord taketh pleasure in them that fear him, in those that hope in his mercy". Can you see that the meaning is different? Fear of the Lord is not the same as worshipping him, and God's love is not the same as God's mercy. God is full of love and mercy, but those are two different concepts.

Why is the church trying to remove the fear of the Lord as a component of Christianity? When was the last time you heard a sermon about fearing the Lord? When did Christianity change into a feel good movement, where there are no real requirements, where everything is just lovey-dovey? When did the focus change completely to God's love for us, and that God wants to be our "friend"? And we're forgetting about God's terrible justice! And the mercy of God that we need to badly? I also prefer concentrating on God's love for me, but when I think about the way I have lived and sometimes still behave, it scares the daylights out of me to think of God's justice. Thank you Lord Jesus for DYING on the cross for me, and for conquering death. Please be merciful to your weak servant.

Now here's one of Rick Warren's quotes that leave out a very very important part of the scripture, and in such changes the whole meaning of the quote. He quotes Psalm 14:2 from the Living Bible: "The Lord looks down from heaven on all mankind to see if there are any who are wise, who want to please God". Now here's the quote from KJV including the important verse 3 that Warren conveniently leaves out: "The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God. They are all gone aside, the are all together become filthy: the is none that doeth good, no, not one."

Well, that changes the picture a bit doesn't it? With Warren's half a quote, you might be led to think that yeah maybe there are a few good people, like when Abraham was pleading for Sodom and Ghamorra. But the full scripture clearly tell you that everybody has fallen, we are all guilty. And therefor once again, we have to live in fear of the Lord and beg his mercy.

Until next time ...

Membership covenant?

I'm ashamed I haven't updated this in three weeks! And in that time my other ventures haven't really been doing very well. Obviously I'm looking for a why, and God just keeps putting this in my head: "First seek the kingdom of God ... " So here I am - a new week, a new resolution to keep up with my Bible study ... If you will, pray for me please, and I'll pray for everybody who stumble upon this blog.

The next chapter in the book I'm following, "Who's Driving the Purpose Driven Church?", concentrates on the membership covenant that anybody that wants to join Rick Warren's Saddleback church is required to sign. It's a serious covenant stipulating that members will contribute financially, will do the SHAPE assessment, will serve in some capacity in the church, etc.

The problem with this covenant is that is goes directly against what Jesus said in Matthew 5:33-37, where He tells us not to make covenants and not to swear by anything, but to let our word be our bond. I'll quote from the King James Version: "Again, we have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths: But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is God's throne: Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King. Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst make one hair white or black. But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more then these cometh of evil."

So when you sign this covenant, the church has the right to throw you out, but there's nothing in there to keep Rick Warren and his church accountable for their part of the covenant. I think that is a real problem.

This is another example of where we let ourselves be led by our trusted church leaders, because we don't know any better, and just do what they say, which is really sad and unfortunate. I'm thinking of the membership agreement I signed when we started going to Northway. I didn't know any better, if I knew what Jesus said in Matthew 5, I would have have reservations about signing the membership covenant. I am struggling a bit with that, since I am breaking that covenant by going against Northway, but I also believe that that covenant can't be binding because it is against Jesus' direction.

In a previous post I mentioned that a group of people at Northway started pushing back against the plans they are making. We learned last week that that group of people were thrown out of the church. That's so sad to me. What's happening there? And it wasn't just any members, several of these people were very involved, one was the head usher for several years, others were involved in kids ministries. And they just get thrown out of church because they have an opposing viewpoint? That doesn't display Jesus' tolerance and love for members of the church. Very sad indeed.

I want to relate one more story. My wife and I started going to another church. We really enjoyed the first service we were at. They had just started a series on the 10 commandments. Unfortunately on the day the pastor talked about the third commandment, he said some things that caused us some discomfort. First he quoted Rick Warren, and then he talked about what Jesus said in Matthew 5 about not swearing by God's name (do not use my Name in vain). But then in just the next sentence he talks about the covenant members have to sign with this church!! Isn't that just so contradicting? And subsequently we found out that this church is also into the Purpose Driven Church thing ... they do the 101, 201, 301 classes with the SHAPE assessment. So onwards with the search for a church that hasn't been touched by this abomination.

Till next time ...

The 40 Days of Purpose Thing

Ok, Rick Warren asks us to set aside 40 days to discover our purpose, which in itself might not be a bad idea. But then he makes this incredible statement: "Whenever God wanted to prepare someone for his purposes, he took 40 days." How on earth can he justify that? There are so many great and faithful men and women in the Bible, can he really claim that God took 40 days with each of them? And the bigger problem is that even the examples he cites, are blatantly incorrect!

He actually has the gall to cite Jesus as an example of the 40 days theory!! I think you'll agree that Jesus was already very aware of his purpose long before he went into the dessert to be tempted by Satan. The exact quote is "Jesus was empowered by 40 days in the wilderness." P10. Jesus didn't need 40 days to be empowered! Jesus is GOD!! He is and was all powerful.

Jesus as man was actually weakened in the dessert. And he went into the dessert to be mercilessly tempted by Satan, He didn't go to be "empowered"!!

I want to talk about one more example that Warren cites, and that is Noah. Look at Genesis 6:9 "Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God." Noah walked with God a long time before the 40 days of rain came in Genesis 7. Noah lived his purpose for God when he built the ark, long before the 40 days of rain. Noah didn't find his purpose during the 40 days of rain, he had it a long time before that!

Moses knew his purpose before he went onto Mount Sinai for 40 days with God. David was living with and for God before Goliath's 40 days of taunting Israel. And so on ...

Rick Warren, what were you thinking? As far as I'm concerned, Rick Warren is discredited even before chapter 1 of the book starts. There is no doubt that a 40 day period plays a big role in the Bible, but not in the way that Rick Warren states.

Well, that's it for today.