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About Jesus Steve Sweetman My Journey Through The Ecclesiastical Maze Part 1
Preface
The following is an
accurate portrayal of my
life in relation to church. I
don’t doubt for a minute that our life’s experiences effect what we
believe and how we live. I’ve
seen this to be true concerning our experience with church. Yet for me
since 1970 I’ve attempted to allow Jesus and the Bible to mold my
thinking and influence my actions. In
this process comes the conflict between the traditions of men and the
truth of Scripture. So this
is my story - the search for truth in the midst of tradition. Coming
Into This World You may or may not recall
it, but next to Ronald Reagan’s “tear down this wall” statement
the words “I don’t recall” were some of his most famous words
spoken during the Iran-contra hearings.
So I borrow his words when I say that “I don’t recall it”,
but I’m told that I came into this world on December 4th
1951, in a small Canadian city. I can only imagine poking my head out of
the darkness into the light of day. Prior to this I would have only
heard strange noises from without echoing through an ocean that swirled
around my head. I wouldn’t
have had a clue what these sounds meant.
Some of my friends tell me that things haven’t changed much for
me since then. I’m still
as clueless as ever. Thanks
a lot Tim, Robert, Reg, Jim and Ken. Little did I or anyone
know at the time that within a couple of years of my birth two major
physical problems would be detected in me.
One of these deficiencies would bring both fear and joy to my
parents, along with the salvation of my father.
One problem was noticed
when I was about two years old, and believe it or not, I do recall the
incident. My mother dropped
a penny on the carpet of similar colour to the penny.
She asked me to pick it up and when I fumbled around she got a
little irritated with me. I
was unable to see the penny against the penny coloured carpet. My
mom’s friend suggested that I should see a doctor who consequently
diagnosed me as legally blind, meaning I’m not totally blind but
partially blind.
I grew up in a time where
our neighbour really did have a white picket fence, and women seldom
wore dresses above their knees, and next to never wore slacks. My mother
never wore “men’s clothes” as she put it until she had a bad
stroke at the age of 75. Women dressing like men was sinful according to
Deuteronomy 22:5, which was one of 613 rules found in the Law of Moses
that my mom was taught to obey. If
I had been smart at the age of two I could have asked the pastor why the
church didn’t promote all 613 rules.
How did it decide which ones to ignore?
As Christians we often fail to properly understand how to
interpret the Old Testament as New Testament Christians, but maybe that
was the light of truth my mom’s church had at the time.
I recall seeing toy tiger
tails flying out of car gas tank doors back then.
My dad got his tiger tail with the purchase of
“twenty five cents a gallon gas”. I
watched the Flintstone’s on a black and white TV, and listened to
hockey games on a little transistor radio. What I could have done with a
computer and internet back then. My
parents rented a two bedroom house for a grand sum of $45.00 a month in
the 1950’s. So when I say
it was a different world back then, it really was. My dad wasn’t a
Christian. His love was
trains and country music, which kind of go together, don’t you think?
Dad worked for the railroad and played steel guitar in a country
band. The band had its own radio show and played at dances, something my
mom detested since that was “worldly”. I
guess I got my guitar playing from my dad, although he had more raw
talent than me. I really
believe he could have made it to Nashville
if guitars weren’t so sinful back then.
I can’t quite figure out why the church thought guitars were
bad when David said that we should praise God with stringed instruments
in Psalms 150:4. Why could
David play a stringed instrument and my dad couldn’t?
Just to let you know, it took a few years but the church came
around and let my dad play the guitar.
Proper exegesis of Scripture should always be a priority for us,
but it’s often not.
My mother was a Christian
in the tradition of what was called “the Holiness Movement”.
This tradition equates being
holy with following certain rules. And by the way, the word holy in
relation to God means to be set apart just for Him.
Some rules could be found in the Bible while others were made up
by the church. If you
weren’t knowledgeable you’d have thought that all these rules came
directly from God because that’s the way they were taught to people
like my mom. So my mom
couldn’t wear slacks, and my dad couldn’t play secular music.
This was the life I was born into. The Holiness Movement was my
introduction into what I now call “the Ecclesiastical Maze”, and a
maze it is. A couple summers back a
little boy actually got lost in a large corn-field maze in our area. It
took two days to find the little guy.
His parents were terrified. My
heart goes out to people like this little boy who get lost in our
“ecclesiastical maze”, and many do get lost.
When I was young there
were lots of things I wasn’t allowed to do because they were sinful.
Other things I had to do in order to keep my salvation, like
attend church meetings twice on Sundays, and do quiet and restful things
Sunday afternoons since Sunday was the Sabbath.
My mom and dad usually slept.
That was a pretty quiet thing to do.
I never found out until later that Sunday really wasn’t the
Sabbath and that Christians weren’t obligated to obey Sabbath rules
found in the Law of Moses anyway since “Christ is the end of the Law.
(Romans 10:4) I’m not sure
why my Sunday School teacher never told us that the Sunday Sabbath rule
was just a church tradition. Maybe
she didn’t know that herself. I
wasted a lot of good Sunday afternoons figuring out how to do quiet
things. What
Does Ecclesiastical Mean? The word
“ecclesiastical” comes directly from the Greek
word “ecclesia” which means “a called out and separated group of
people”. It’s used in a
variety of ways in the Greek New Testament.
One example is when it’s used in reference to an unruly mob in
Acts 21:35. Jesus Himself used this
word in Matt. 16:18 when He said “
I will build my ecclesia”, which we’ve
translated as, “I will build my church”. For a number of
reasons I’ve explained elsewhere, I view our English translation of
“ecclesia” into church as a tragic mistake.
I don’t believe our word church properly represents Jesus’
understanding of “ecclesia”. Jesus
was simply saying that He’d put together His own group of special
people. I don’t think He
was thinking of building the ecclesiastical maze as we know it today.
You might just want to ponder for yourself just what you
think Jesus meant when He said, “I will build my ecclesia”.
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