The Fundamental Blog

The term, “fundamental,” seems to carry with it the connotation of a bigoted zeal which transcends reason, but is this a fair burden to lay at the feet of a single word? I think not. If you are at a dinner party and mention that you are a fundamental, born again, biblically assured Christian, you are sure to see the eyes roll as people flock away from you in droves, (but not if you were at my dinner party). Fundamentalism has gotten a bad rap because it seems to be used whenever we see the most extreme literal religionists being described. The real problem is not that they are fundamentalists, but rather that they are zealots for the wrong thing!

The way I use the term, “fundamental,” is merely at face value; that is, meaning the basics of an ideology, system, or theology. If you are going to venture into the world of the lexicologist, you would need to begin with the basics, learning to use the alphabet to be able to read and spell; this would then be considered the fundamental root of the lexicon. If you wanted to become a carpenter you would need to master the use of tools, the fundamentals of woodworking. If you wish to seriously consider theology, you need to grasp the basics of the Gospel as given in the Bible. The fundamental Christian doctrines would have to be understood before any deeper issues could be undertaken.

Fundamentalism is a problem when the thing one is being fundamental about is mistaken, wrong or evil at its core. If the source documents of a theology says that the follower should kill anyone who differs in opinion from the essential doctrines of the faith, then there is a problem; not because the view is fundamental, but because the object of that fundamentalism, the doctrine, is flawed. You can never hope to achieve success in quantum mathematics if you can not reconcile that 2+2=4. The foundation of any study must be the fundamental building blocks that support everything that is to follow.

When the world hears, “Fundamental Christian,” they generally think of someone who would stone the offender of the Sabbath, the adulterer or the one who curses their parent. The Fundamental Christian is thought to be, by many, the, “eye for an eye,” guy. And if that’s what Christianity taught, they would be right; but it isn’t what the Bible teaches. True, the Old Testament is filled with these types of commands but ever since God gave His final testimony in the person of Christ Jesus, the picture has been transformed into something else. The overall message of Christ concerns two primary ideas; honoring God the Father correctly, and loving one another.

In Mark 12:29-31 Jesus tells us, in response to the question of which commandment is the greatest, “The most important one… …is this: ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” The question then becomes, how do we do these things? Though these things are given as the proper way to order our lives, it bears noting at the outset that we are not talking about securing our salvation; that is elsewhere taught as being only by faith in Jesus. We honor and show our love for God by believing what He tells us, that Christ is one with the Father, that we can trust all Scripture, that Jesus is THE ONLY way to the Father, and that by faith in the Son.

Did God command animal sacrifices? Yes. Did God command the life of Isaac at the hands of his father? Yes. Did God order the genocide of entire nations? Yes. Does God want us to do these things today? Absolutely not! The Bible contains a lot of history and it also records a lot of things that God did not sanction for His people like polygamy and human sacrifice. Even so, we must recognize that not every word in the Bible is meant to be used literally today. With the coming of Christ, we enter into a new covenant, a better covenant, because as Paul tells us in Hebrews 8:6-7, there is a much better covenant now before us. Not a covenant of laws that are impossible to keep, but one of grace and forgiveness through the work of Jesus Christ on the cross. I do not believe that it is the desire of God that we should exchange blow for blow as He instructed in the Old Testament, but that we should accept the insult and turn the other cheek; but even this is not without the realization that we are not to act in milquetoast timidity.

If the Word of God is correctly understood there can be no fault in Christian fundamentalism. Fundamentalism is only bad when the underlying premise is bad. Fundamentalism can only be good when the underlying premise is good. There can be no standard of good and bad without the absolute morality of our Holy God which draws the distinction for us, for there is none good but God alone. Since God has supplied our premise, and since God can not lie, then it is His truth that we hold as the goodness of our faith and it is this goodness, the very goodness of God Himself, that I build my own fundamentalism upon. If the foundation of the faith is love in its most limitless and absolute origin, how can the fundamental insistence of its teachings be anything else?

Am I a Fundamental Christian? Absolutely! This is rapidly becoming a dangerous position to take and I ask that you pray for me, and everyone like me, who insists that the Word of God trumps any law of man or any notion of political correctness which may be legislated and thrust upon us by the world. The liberty we used to have of being able to speak freely is being eroded before our eyes, the threat of prosecution, (persecution?), for hate-speak, hangs over the heads of the Christian like the sword of Damocles dangling above the pulpit. Our government, the very government that was established under the precepts of a Judeo-Christian ethic, now tells us that we may not refer to the things the Bible calls detestable, detestable. If we assert that the Christian faith offers the only hope of salvation through faith in Christ, if we assert that some sexual practices are deviant or immoral, if we consider almost anything as absolute we are in danger of being arrested for hate crimes.

If this nation, if we as a people, would recognize that the ways of God are right and if we could leave off the calling of good, evil; and evil, good, then there might yet be a revival within this nation and millions might come to see that there is a way that leads to life and not death. When our Chief Executive parades the homosexual agenda around the south lawn of the White House as normal, when Oprah is allowed to dissuade millions of lemming-like TV zombies into the false hope that all religions lead to Heaven, when the highways are filled with advertisements for Adult Emporiums and slogans for beer that read, “Ice Cold Common Sense,” (a billboard seen in the Chicago area), how can we remain silent? Am I a Fundamental Christian? You bet your life I am!

If I am to be imprisoned, not for my opinions, but for merely stating the truth of God’s Word, then I guess I have found my retirement plan. I will not stand by quietly and have a mandatory tolerance for evil rammed down my throat without resisting to the best of my ability. If it turns out that these days are to be the, “Obama-nation which brings desolation,” then God help us all. Am I a Fundamental Christian? What other kind is there? If you call yourself Christian and you deny the fundamentals of the faith, then it won’t matter what you do, none of it will amount to a hill of beans and it will never prove to be …


All for the Glory of Christ

When we answer the call and step out in faith to accept Jesus, and the salvation which is ours only by His grace, we are crying out because we know that, left to ourselves, we are drowning in our lives of sin. We may have been treading the waters of death for several years or several decades but the point finally comes when we can no longer pretend that we can face death on our own. We have already come up for air twice and we’re getting ready to go down for the third time. The Psalmist writes, “In my anguish I cried to the Lord and He answered by setting me free.” (Psalm 118:5). Jesus, when talking to the Pharisees about their enslavement to sin, explains, “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” (John 8:36).

And that’s exactly what happens to us, we become free of the sin which tried to drag us down to the pit of death, so what do we do with that freedom? Too often we abuse it. We see professing Christians going into the bars because there is no command which expressly forbids it, there is even the suggestion that we should take a little wine from time to time. They aren’t alcoholics and it’s not drinking that’s a sin, its drunkenness. I have even heard people reason that its OK to smoke a little pot once in a while. God made everything, right? He said that it was good, right? Paul says that for the Christian everything’s permissible, right? Besides, if God didn’t want us to smoke it, He never would have given us marijuana in the first place, right?

This is what happens when the sinful nature wants to justify itself for remaining in its sin. Scripture is taken out of context, or used to the exclusion of the rest of God’s Word, to allow the most ridiculous actions to pass as within the purview of God’s will. Though it could be argued that there is no reason for pot to be illegal, (which I can not agree with), the fact remains; it is. If we consider all of God’s Word we have to recognize that we are to obey the laws that have been established by the authorities that God has allowed to govern, in as much as they do not directly violate God’s laws. But even alcohol, which is legal, must be closely guarded against.

Now I’m not trying to come off as someone who never takes a drink, I will occasionally bend an elbow, but not if there is a chance that someone else might take my actions to suggest that we should all get hammered whenever we want. As soon as any action becomes an affront to another, a line has been crossed that serves no purpose but to injure that person. A bottle of wine may compliment a meal nicely, but to drink to the point of drunkenness is clearly wrong. Paul says that even though something may be permissible, it remains to be seen whether or not it is also beneficial.

Just as a person’s right to flail their arms wildly about stops at the point where my nose starts, our freedom must never cause problems for others. If we exercise our freedom in love with regard to others, this should not troublesome, but we have abused our freedom if it causes another to fall. “Live as free men, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil.” (1 Peter 2:16). “You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love.” (Galatians 5:13). “It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything else that will cause your brother to fall.” (Romans 14:21). These are the chains that bind our freedom in Christ, and they should. We must not forget that the testimonies and practices we exhibit before the world can do as much to drive the worldling away as they do to invite him to follow.

For many, it may seem as though the secondary issues, the ones we tend to stretch in the exercise of our freedom, are those that determine salvation and this is when the confusion becomes dangerous. Those who are more mature in their faith may easily understand that we are dealing with non-essential issues but the new Christian may be just as easily confused, thinking that their very salvation hangs in the balance. Since it is very difficult to try to explain all the nuances of the denominational differences and the reasons that this may be allowed or that accepted; it is essential that we take our fellow Christians into account and chain our freedom so that they may be able to grow in the fundamentals of the faith.

I’m sure that we would all love to be able to stand at the day of judgment and be able to say, “Look at all these who I helped to lead to the cross.” But how many will be on the way to Hell because they misunderstood the things we did and turned from the faith as a result? It is not about being able to glorify ourselves in Heaven anyway. It only matters that we allow God to use us for His own glorification, that He use us as the example of His love and grace before a dark and troubled world. How can we stand before our holy God and learn that by the exercise of our freedom, we actually turned many away because all they saw was hypocrisy or legalism?

Freedom is never free. For every freedom we have ever received, whether in Christ or in our secular existence, there comes with that freedom a responsibility to limit ourselves, to stand as good stewards of that freedom. In Christ, the limits of our freedom is contained within the pages of scripture, this is why I am so adamant that we get into the Word of God and learn what it says for ourselves. We need discerning spirits but how can we develop them unless we know God’s truth. It is plain that we have been freed from the slavery to sin but it seems less plain that we have exchanged that slavery for one devoted to righteousness. We are now slaves to the Word, slaves to the cause of Christ and slaves to the servant-hood of God by the conviction of the Holy Spirit. This is our voluntary yoke. We are slaves, but we are free slaves, bound by the chains of restraint in the exercise of all that Christ Jesus has given us. We are free to be bound.

We have been set free to enjoy a life without the fear of death. We must not allow our freedom to ensnare others in hopelessness, the very same hopelessness we have been lifted from. We must read our Bibles, study God’s Word, speak our faith before the multitudes of the lost, and remember that we are obligated to make the transition from death to life as simple as possible. Whenever we are faced with a choice we need to ask, “Is my decision potentially a stumbling block for some one else?” And if is, then change the plan to avoid hurting anyone. We were all children when we came to faith, even if we were 80 years old; we came as little children. We can not allow ourselves to be the ones trying to discourage the children when Jesus says, “Hinder them not the little children but let them come unto me.” We must realize that each one who comes, is coming because his heart has received the grace which is given…


All for the Glory of Christ