The Greatest Commandment: God, Others, and Self

Sometimes I hear the greatest command summed up as “love God and love others”. That misses the only person in the whole world who isn’t included in those two categories, self. But Jesus did include loving yourself in the greatest commandment,

“³⁷ Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ ³⁸ This is the first and greatest commandment. ³⁹ And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself^.’” - Matthew 22:37-38

Paul echoes this in Ephesians 5:28-29, “²⁸ In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. ²⁹ After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church”

God doesn’t want us to get so caught up in loving ourselves that we get self-centered and fail at the first two greatest commandments in Jesus lists. I do wonder though, if we avoid talking about the love of self for fear people won’t handle it very well. What can happen is people end up feeling pretty beat up, guilty and lacking a biblical concept of God’s love for them and a healthy love for themselves. Maybe that is just so obvious that I am the only guy in the room that hasn’t picked up on that.

Review of Tim Keller’s New Book “Every Good Endeavor”

Tim Keller recently published his newest book “Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work.” If you know anything about Tim Keller’s work, you know he has a knack for dissecting culture and applying Christianity in ways that connect with people in contemporary culture. This book is no different. In Every Good Endeavor, Keller adeptly tackles something that affects nearly all of us, how faith and our work go together in a way that is in line with God’s plan for mankind.

Keller spends some time on the theology and psychology of work…man’s need for being productive as a part of God’s design for creation. There are some really great take home points from what scripture has to say about work. There is one main topic that I found most helpful in this book. That topic is work and the Christian worldview as opposed to alternate worldviews. Keller’s discussion of post-modernism and its effect on the psychology of work is worth the price of the book. He says that in the modern worldview people believed work, science and productivity could result in something meaningful. In other words, people worked with a positive goal in mind. That means your work is about more than your work and your paycheck. You are working toward something greater. Then along came Nietzsche, who deconstructed the idea that science and technology were actually moving people toward a more positive society. Postmodernism resulted. It is hard to have a positive concept of work when you remove the positive results from your labors by casting doubts that there is any good end that we are actually working toward. Once you remove the end goal, the means itself becomes the end. So people’s view of work changed from what they were able to do for others and society that would result in the greater good (a positive end) to working for pay, advancement, power and influence (means).

This is about worldview and he says worldview is more about which narrative we make our story. I like this approach. Often worldview discussions are a lot more cut and dry. They list five basic questions that they say worldview answers (questions like who are you, what is the problem in life, what is the solution, where are we headed, etc). Keller doesn’t mention the five questions, but his view stands as a broader picture of where worldview actually comes from…worldview doesn’t come from parents sitting down with their children and having them memorize the answer to 4-5 main questions of life. Worldview is developed through the stories we make our own. The Christian story is a story of redemption and restoration. It stands in contrast to the doubt of postmodernity by restoring our faith in God and what he tells us about this world we live in and where it is all headed. In other words, the Christian story informs us humans of what the ultimate goal in life is and that goal then influences the means we use to achieve it (work being one of those means).

Once you know the ultimate goal for your life (living to love God and neighbor, for examples) it changes your means/the reason why you work because you are now not working just to work or working as an end to itself. You are working toward a specific goal that is outside of and broader than yourself. The way scripture puts these pieces together is through narrative. Like any good story, scripture starts with things being good, tension is introduced (God’s good creation is marred by sin and our relationship with God, broken), that is resolved through Christ’s reconciling work on the cross that results in the glorious resurrection. Christianity is an amazing narrative that informs us of how we fit in this world and constructs our worldview through that story. That story, then, affects our motivation for work and the ways in which we work because we realize that everything we do is for the glory of God, therefore, do the best you can. If it is the means just for the sake of the means…why not be a slacker? If your view of work is full entrenched in postmodernism, the only person who is going to get hurt by doing a shoddy job is yourself (loss of pay, getting fired, etc) but if you are working as a part of God’s larger narrative, it changes the way we view work and the way we actually work.

I am thankful to Tim Keller, not only for writing this book, but also where this book sprung from. Based on things he said in the book, it sounds like Redeemer Presbyterian is in regular conversation about how faith affects work and really making concrete application in the lives of real people…some even leaving their job as they realize what they are doing is failing to honor and love God and neighbor. In other words, these are not good thoughts dreamed up in an ivory tower. This book is written in the trenches.

Last I want to say if you have been in “professional ministry” your whole working life, please read this book. We communicate on a weekly basis with those whose own work can be quite dissimilar from our own and who face challenges we don’t always face in ministry. If you preach, I would especially recommend that you read this book and that you even preach on this from time to time. Think about it, when you preach on how God views work…you are talking about something that can impact 40 hours of their week, every week. We don’t want to neglect this and we don’t want to spend time answering questions no one is asking. In other words, this is all profoundly practical and a worthwhile read.

Why Mormonism is Not Christianity – Ben Witherington

Have a read – Why Mormonism is Not Christianity

It is a really good read but if you don’t have the time the thumbnail sketch. It all boils down to trinity of “ologies”: theology, Christology, and soteriology. According to Dr. Witherington, the differences are significant enough to question whether we would consider them Christians as defined by the New Testament.

Unidimensional Prophets Need Not Apply – Don’t Criticize the Church Without Offering Solutions

In the Old Testament God would often raise up prophets in order to communicate God’s will to the people. Sometimes people think of prophets as people who tell the future. They did do that but more often than not prophets communicated two things: the people’s need to repent/change in various areas of their life and society & the positive alternative God had in mind for his people. Read Isaiah 1 for a good example of this (notice the turn in 1:16)

While I don’t think we have people today who are telling the future through direct means of inspiration like they had in the Old and New Testaments, I do believe we still have those prophetic voices among us. What troubles me though is it seems the prophetic voice that is present today is unidimensional. There are a ton of voices calling for change but are missing the rest of the message…communicating what the positive alternative God has for his people. In other words, we hear all kinds of sharp criticism of the church but few people are offering solutions.

Bottom line…if you are going to be a voice calling for change please come with some solutions in hand and don’t just shout angrily from the internet mountaintop at anyone who happens to be passing by. It just doesn’t fit very well with the M.O. of God’s prophets in scripture and can turn into something that is more unhealthy than the things they are railing against in the first place. There are too many guys who know how to poke holes and too few who know how to solve anything. Let’s have more of the second and fewer of the first.

Addendum:
From my comment to Christine below that lays out more of my train of thought on why complaining isn’t enough,

Here is my problem with it – we all know what the problems are. They have been discussed ad nauseum. It is no mystery. There have been hundreds of blog posts on it, books written laying out what the issues are. Fewer people have been pioneering on the front lines trying to turn the ship and then take part in the conversation of offering solutions. Too often even the solutions that are offered are by people who haven’t even tried them out in their own context. It is easier to snipe at problems from afar than it is to get in the trenches and bring about actual change. So I don’t really need more people pointing me toward the discussion that might or might not bring about solutions. If I hear criticism from someone I want that to be followed up with “and here is what we are doing about it.” If something is really that troublesome that someone would publicly write about it, isn’t it reasonable to think they would have been moved to action already?

Why Are Young People So Drawn to Calvinism?

Calvinism is all over the place. Many of the best known young preachers are Calvinists. Many of the most well read blogs are from a Calvinist perspective. All of a sudden there has been a huge influx of Calvinists. According to Lifeway “nearly 30% of SBC seminary graduates between 1998 and 2004, now serving as pastors, describe themselves as Calvinists” (p.74 of Young, Restless and Reformed). What is the story? I asked a young neo-Calvinist what book they would recommend to help me wrap my mind around what is going on. They said I should read Young, Restless, and Reformed by Collin Hansen. Collin is a journalist, Reformed and at one time the youngest editor at Christianity Today. He is currently the Editorial Director of the Gospel Coalition.

This book gives us two insights into why young adults are drawn to Calvinism. The first insight is Hansen’s own perspective. The second insight comes from all the interviews he did in order to write this book. This book is a record of Hansen’s travels to various well known Calvinist and Reformed congregations and conferences. He shares the stories of many young people who didn’t start out believing in TULIP but share their own process of accepting it as central to the Christian faith.

Two things need to be mentioned at the start. First, I am not a Calvinist…so this critique will reflect that in some places. Second,  there is a difference between Calvinism and the Reformed movement itself. The Reformed movement includes Calvinism but not all Calvinists are Reformed. Hansen says that the Reformed movement emphasizes TULIP along with “the five Reformation solas (by grace alone, by faith alone, by Christ alone, by Scripture alone, for God’s glory alone). (p.111)

For those of you who aren’t familiar with TULIP, it is the five points of Calvinism:
T – Total Depravity – by nature mankind is unrighteous, selfish, and unable to love and seek God on our own
U – Unconditional Election – Salvation comes by God’s choosing/election that he established in eternity past
L – Limited Atonement – Jesus died solely for the sins of God’s elect/chosen people.
I – Irresistible Grace – If God has elected you he will draw you to himself apart from anything to do with your own goodness (due to total depravity)
P –  Perseverance of the Saints – God is so sovereign that once you are elect you will be saved. Nothing can keep that from happening

There are several reasons Calvinism is increasing in popularity. It is not because it is hip or attractive from a worldly point of view:

1. Calvinism offers a God-centred approach to everything. It is not seeker sensitive. It is not pop-psychology. It is all about God, his power and authority.
2. Calvinism lowers the position of man – It seems like some Christians want to focus solely on our value and esteem. Calvinism is focusing on our own lowliness. They say we are nothing. We can’t even pick God or want to pick God unless God elects us by his own sovereign will. Much of the way we (Arminians) motivate people is through talking about what is in it for them. If you come to Sunday night church you can grow closer to God, be blessed, etc…not so much with Calvinism. It is all about God.
3. Calvinism offers certainty – Because God is so sovereign there is a solid foundation to live on. There is no wishy-washyness here. Hansen says, when John Piper speaks, he speaks with certainty (37)
4. Emphasis on scripture – these guys love scripture, love study, and aren’t afraid to dive in deep.
5. Passion – There is a sense of passion here because we often tend to get passionate about ourselves and that is all pretty shallow. When you passionate about the greatness of God and his overarching sovereignty…that is a passion that goes beneath the surface.
6. Calvinism recognizes the control is in God’s hands, not ours. That is a liberating thought.
7. It is a non-institutional institution. What I mean by that is they are less about church and more about God. That doesn’t mean church is emphasized less but in emphasizing our depravity and God’s election, grace and sovereignty they are putting God over church. They are moving outside the building
8. Worship that is more all about God and not about us – Emphasizing God’s sovereignty and our depravity comes out in their worship. It is God-centered.
9. This influence has made its way mainstream into a number of conferences and campus ministries that are affecting young adults all over the nation.

So what do we take away from this? There were a few things that I really appreciated about the Calvinist perspective. I really think they got emphasizing God and his glory right. I think too often we make self the driving force. We try to motivate people to attend or do things for what is in it for them rather than emphasize our participation in giving God the glory He deserves. That is solid. I appreciate their passion that comes directly out of a sole focus on God. We need more of that.

A couple of things were pretty unsettling to me about this book. I don’t know if this is about Hansen’s perspective or if this is common in Calvinism at large:

1. It seems they really venerate men like Edwards, Calvin, Piper and others. I bet their names appeared over 100 times in this book. Names like Jesus, Paul, Peter, etc paled in comparison.
2. Language of conversion – he talks about people converting to Calvinism. What does that mean? If they were elect to begin with how is there a conversion? A conversion of thoughts and views?
3. Sovereignty meets Mercy – Calvinists will go on and on about the mercy of God that they are the elect. They are elect only because God picked them against their own will and desires. The flip side is God rejected giving his mercy to others. They had the exact same sinful desires and depravity but God just chose not to be merciful to them. Can God still be full merciful if atonement is limited and his mercy is forced?
4. This book is a lot about personalities. He even says that if Piper weren’t so zealous in his presentation that young people wouldn’t listen to him (34).
5. It takes this book 90 pages before Hansen says all of this is really about the Gospel itself and not about Calvinism but you just don’t get that feeling reading this book. If Calvinism is accurate to God’s intention for creation then this is the Gospel we are talking about here. We go on and on about how people converted to Calvinism? Why not just call TULIP the Gospel?

What is your experience with Calvinism? For those of you who hold this view, is this critique fair?

For Everyone Series Goes OT

Just noticed on Amazon that the For Everyone Series made popular by N.T. Wright’s series on the New Testament is starting on the Old Testament. I have no idea how I missed this as it looks like Genesis came out in 2010. John Goldingay is authoring this series. Here is what they have out so far:

Genesis 1-16

Exodus & Leviticus

Joshua, Judges, Ruth

1 & 2 Samuel

1 & 2 Kings

1 & 2 Chronicles

If these are anything like their New Testament counterparts they will be inexpensive and very helpful. Has anyone read any of these?

Teaching Forgetable Bible Classes and Redefining Success

The world throws so much data at us that we now forget more than the average person consumed 10-20 years ago. This has a direct impact on our teaching. How many Bible classes do you specifically remember over the last 5-10 years? If your answer is, not very many, it shows us that the goal of Bible class cannot be purely the retaining of data. I don’t think the answer is ever going to be that 100% of what we teach is retained. That is just not possible. I do believe that it is easy to frame this issue in an unrealistic manner and then come to some invalid conclusions. It is impossible to remember everything you have been taught. I studied for hundreds and hundreds of tests in college that I memorized thousands of pages of information for. Ask me questions from my notes and I doubt my % of recall would be all that high. That is not all bad. That is to be expected. The question is, what did that information do to me? If it helped me grow, mature, handle tougher challenges, etc then it was useful.

If we are teaching information for the sake of those in class retaining all of it we will fail. But if we teach toward transformation and spiritual growth, even when the specific details of the information have faded, the effect is still there. So while you don’t remember all the classes you have been a part of in a given congregation there is no doubt that some of those classes have had a profound impact on the way you live, the way you see the world, the way you serve, the way you treat others, etc. It is imperative that the goal of our teaching is not information retention. That is a losing game. But if our goal is transforming the lives of those present one step at a time, success is just that much more attainable.

Toward the end of the Gospel of John, John tells us why he recorded all those events,

“³⁰ Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. ³¹ But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” – John 20:30-31

John says that he wants the reader to understand the information but that is not the end game. He wants that understanding to have a profound impact on the life of the reader by bringing them true life through Jesus Christ. That is transformation. So when you prepare a Bible class, sermon, or small group lesson ask yourself this, “When this lesson is over how will it lead toward one small or large piece of transformation in the lives of those present?” When we start thinking and creating things through that filter we will have more success.

More on information vs. transformation here – The Information to Transformation Shift

What The Incarnation of Christ Teaches Us and Does To Us

Preaching, teaching or writing on the incarnation of Christ usually focuses on the Gospels. There is another verse that I think has so much to teach us about the incarnation and it comes from the Apostle Paul in Colossians. Paul appears to be addressing some false teaching in Colossae about the nature of Christ to which he replies,

“For in Christ, all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form,” – Col 2:9

Jesus wasn’t part God, part man. Jesus was fully human and fully divine. That means Jesus had all the qualities of the immortal God wrapped into the body of mortal man. You can list all the attributes of God and assign them to the Jesus. I am sure that is not news to you at is point. Many people have made that point before. What is fascinating about all of this to me is the significance this brings to the actually incarnation/conception event in Mary’s womb in light of Jesus’ qualities as God. The incarnation takes all of the “fullness of God” and puts them into an embryo the size of a pin head in Mary’s womb. Not only do you end up with the smallest baby Jesus that you can imagine, you have 100% vulnerable divinity.

There is a tension that pulls between creator and created and between the all powerful God and the all vulnerable Jesus. Just a few verses before the scripture mentioned above, Paul wrote this about Jesus,

“¹⁵ He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. ¹⁶ For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. ¹⁷ He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” – Col 1:15-17

What does it say about a God who is willing to go from creator to created? What does it say about a God who is willing to step off the heavenly throne, put his immortality aside, take on flesh and be put in the womb of a woman he created?

As time passes and Jesus grows the vulnerability continues. He is ridiculed in his own hometown, misunderstood, mistreated, and homeless. After still a few more years and that same divine man is being nailed to a cross by men he created and loved. Finally, a body containing all the fullness of God dies and is raised back to life. Jesus, as God, endured all of that.

What does that mean for us? Paul tells us in the very next verse and at least for my tiny brain, the significance of all of this is mind blowing,

“and you have been given fullness in Christ.” – Col 2:10

In the incarnation Jesus empties himself so that we might become full. In the incarnation He steps down from heaven so that we might be raised up to be with him and he takes His place off the heavenly throne so that we too might be seated with him in heavenly realms (Eph 2:6). The incarnation of Jesus Christ is powerful, not just because it was his entrance into the world, but also because of the spiritual realities it opened the door to in the lives of those he came to save.

So here we are and we have been given fullness in Christ. God has placed us in a world that is lost and dead and aimless and empty. Will it be more alive when we depart than when we arrived? Will it be more filled with Christ’s presence due to our presence? Will we allow ourselves to be vulnerable and even suffer for the sake of Christ? Let us live out the incarnation of Christ through the fullness God has placed in each and every one of us so that the world will see God more clearly and that they too may receive fullness in Christ.

Paul’s Example on How to Deal with Silence in Scriptures

What would happen if you used the Command, Example and Necessary Inference hermeneutic to help us understand how to deal with scripture’s silence on a given issue? As hard of a time as people give necessary inference, coming to logical conclusions on issues through the study of scripture is something we all have to do. That is true on issues scripture is clear about and on issues scripture is silent about. Necessary inference is just that, necessary. The problem we run into is how much authority we place on the conclusions arrived at via necessary inference. I think Paul gives us a clue about how we present our conclusions on issues of silence in 1 Cor 7:10-12 that help us keep things in perspective and present them fairly,

“To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband. ¹¹ But if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. And a husband must not divorce his wife.  ¹² To the rest I say this (I, not the Lord): If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her”

Paul gives his take on the issue but says very clearly that he has no direction from the Lord. I am sure Paul prayed on this one, studied up, etc and this is the conclusion he reached. Yet he still says this is just Paul talking and not something that is directly from the Lord. Paul knows how to distinguish between the things that have been revealed to him by God and the things that have not. Obviously we don’t have the same inspiration Paul had but the principle is the same, we must be very careful when speaking on issues scripture is silent about and be up front about that when we present those issues that these are our opinions and why we have them/what scriptures we have based those conclusions on. I do believe God wants us to wrestle with issues scripture is silent on and I do believe the Bible is still our guide in those cases but we must have the humility and clarity of Paul to make the distinction of which things are clearly from God and which things are our own conclusions in these areas of silence. We get ourselves in trouble when we have an issue that scripture doesn’t directly address but we give our opinion as if it is scripture. We need to follow the example of Paul and be humble enough to say that what we are about to say is our own opinion on an issue but that scripture never addresses it.

Take home point – we need more people who are willing to say, “This conclusion is from me, not necessarily the Lord…” when we discussion issues of silence.

Thoughts?

Baptism – Immersion, Sprinkling, and Pouring

Word meanings can change over time. Today, baptism has become a general term within Christianity that encompasses sprinkling, pouring and immersing but only the latter is accurate to the Greek meaning of the word “baptism” in the New Testament and practice of the early church. If you doubt that please read the previous post, consult a good Greek New Testament lexicon, or have a look at Ferguson’s book, Baptism in the Early Church, 47-59  where he cites countless examples from extra-biblical literature where baptism is used to mean immersion. Here is his conclusion from, which was quoted in the previous post,

“Baptizo meant to dip, usually through submerging, but it also meant to overwhelm and so could be used whether the object was placed in an element (which was more common) or was overwhelmed by it (often in the metaphorical usages)…Pouring and sprinkling were distinct actions that were represented by different verbs and this usage too continued in Christian sources. When the latter speak of the pouring out of the Holy Spirit or the sprinkling of blood, they do not use baptize for these actions.” (Ferguson, 59)

The New Testament authors had other words at their disposal to talk about pouring and sprinkling and actually used them. They just never used them to describe immersion because pouring, sprinkling and immersion are three different things. There are more examples I could cite but I will just cite one each to make the point.

Pour – εκχεω (echeo)

• Acts 2:17-18 – “I will pour out my spirit on all people…I will pour out my spirit in those days.”

Sprinkle – ραντιζω (rantizo)

• Hebrews 9:21 – “In the same way, he sprinkled with the blood both the tabernacle and everything used in its ceremonies.”

Immerse – βαπτιζω (baptizo)

• Acts 2:41 – “Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.”
• Acts 8:36-39 – ” As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water. Why shouldn’t I be baptized?” ³⁸ And he gave orders to stop the chariot. Then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and Philip baptized him. ³⁹ When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord suddenly took Philip away, and the eunuch did not see him again, but went on his way rejoicing.

The question is how do those who practice pouring or sprinkling justify calling that baptism/immersion when that is neither the original meaning of the word or the practice of the early church.

Ferguson puts it like this,

“Submersion was undoubtedly the case for the fourth and fifth centuries in the Greek East and only slightly less certain for the Latin West. Was this a change from an earlier practice, a selection out of options previously available, or a continuation of the practice of the first three centuries? It is the contention of this study that the last interpretation best accords with the available facts. Unless one has preconceived ideas about how an immersion would be performed, the literary, art and archaeological evidence supports this conclusion. The express statements in the literary sources, supported by other hints, the depictions in art, and the very presence of specially built baptismal fonts, along with their size and shape, indicate that the normal procedure was for the administrator with his head on the baptizand’s head to bend the upper part of the body forward and dip the head under the water. Whether the person was standing, kneeling, or sitting may have varied in different circumstances, but in the art the one baptized is standing.” (p.857-858)

He continues on pouring and sprinkling,

“The only viable alternative interpretation of the evidence that would account for the fonts is a partial immersion in which the baptismal candidate stood in water and the administrator poured water over the upper part of the body, but this is largely conjectural. This interpretation is not really supported by paintings and sculpture…and with little (and that dubious) literary support. A pouring or sprinkling did occur in two special circumstances: a lack of water and (more often) sickbed or deathbed conversions. Both were treated as exceptional, second choice, and undesirable alternatives.” (p.858)

Ferguson is right, immersion was the common practice for several hundred years. He is also correct that pouring and sprinkling did begin at some point in the first few hundred years of the church’s existence. When? No one can say with 100% certainty but it appears to have had some separation from the first century church. You can see where pouring and sprinkling comes from. Some guy is about to die, he repents and a pool of water is too far away. What do you do in that moment? Let’s say you sprinkle the guy and he dies. Okay…so you did the best you could. Does that then justify making sprinkling or pouring the practice from that point on for the rest of the church and those who come to the Lord? Is that justifiable? A few more questions…I really am curious how people who practice sprinkling and pouring would answer these:

• Why do something other than the practice of the New Testament?
• Why do something other than the teaching of the New Testament?
• Why do something other than what Jesus went through himself?
• Why do something other than what Jesus commissioned us to do in Matthew 28:19, other than what Peter taught the crowd and did to the crowd in Acts 2:38-41, and other than what Paul went through himself in Acts 9:18?
• Why adopt an alternative practice that is devoid of the beautiful symbolism described by Paul in Romans 6?
• Why do something other than the teaching of  the New Testament when immersion is not done with great difficulty. It is not like we live in the desert and this is near impossible. It is not like it is going to take that much extra effort to go from from sprinkling to immersing. What’s the hold up? I would say it is being stuck in tradition. Is that justifiable?

Last, we all have to realize it is God who does the saving. In Churches of Christ we have sometimes sounded like the water does the saving. It is important reminder that God forgives sins, not water. And yet God has told us what to do in faith for our sins to be forgiven (Acts 2:38), how we are united with Christ’s death, burial and resurrection (Rom 6:1-7, Col 2:12), and which gives us a clean conscience toward God (1 Peter 3:21). That response is immersion.

I am not here to judge someone else’s servant. I am not here to point fingers. I am here to say let’s have a good look at what was taught and practiced in the New Testament and by faith (over tradition) practice and teach what we find there. I hope this has been helpful to you. If you have any comments, questions, or answers to my list of questions above please comment below. I look forward to the discussion.