The Salty Peanut Gallery

There was a time when winning the Nobel Prize was considered one of the most celebrated achievements in the world. Unfortunately in recent years its regard has diminished greatly as it has become more and more a symbol of extreme humanism. Case in point: Al Gore winning the Nobel Peace Prize for his 2006 documentary “An Inconvenient Truth”. Would someone please tell me how an alarmist film on global warming filled with errors based upon faulty science has facilitated world “peace”? The Nobel committee applauded Gore for his efforts to “build up and disseminate greater knowledge about manmade climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.” Apparently Gore had convinced them that man is in control of his environment and therefore must act before he loses control.

That’s very interesting. This is just the kind of thinking one would expect from an organization that views the world from a Godless perspective. You see the Bible is very clear about our position in the universe. While it is true that man has been given the responsibility for stewardship over God’s creation, the reality is that God, not man, is in control. Unfortunately when a society rejects that inconvenient reality the end result is worship of the environment. This is exactly what Paul describes in Romans chapter one.

“Their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity…..they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and WORSHIPED AND SERVED CREATED THINGS rather than the Creator….” (Romans 1:21-25)

There’s an interesting new book that appeared on the New York Times Best Sellers list recently that I think illustrates this point further. It’s called “The World Without Us – What Earth would be like if humans disappeared” by Alan Weisman. Weisman’s website describes it as showing “how our planet would respond without the relentless pressure of the human presence….what the planet might be like today, if not for us.” The whole idea is to demonstrate “Earth’s tremendous capacity for self-healing”, seemingly as if to say that man is nothing more than a disease or an infection, a blight on the planet. Sounds a bit like a scene from “The Matrix”. It’s like we’re saying that man is somehow at odds with nature, that our very existence is somehow…unnatural. Man must, therefore, be some sort of freak of nature, an accident if you will, certainly not put here by design.

The other thing that I find astounding is the obvious absence of the sustaining hand of God. Apparently the book is meant as some sort of wakeup call to mankind about our wanton destruction of the planet, ignoring the plain truth that we didn’t create it, therefore, we don’t have it within us to destroy it. The Creator of the universe is fully capable of maintaining and caring for the earth until He himself sees fit to put an end to its existence. We live in a Godless society that worships the environment in exactly the way that scriptures said they would.

Rod Parsley, pastor of World Harvest Church in Columbus, Ohio, knocks one out of the park as he promotes his new book “Culturally Incorrect: How Clashing World views Affect Your Future”. His point is that far too many Christians have become so preoccupied with measuring success through numbers that we’ve lost sight of Christ’s true objective for the church.

“‘The problem is that we began to gauge success in the church world by how many people we had coming into a building on Sunday morning.’ And that, says Parsley, is often reflected in evangelistic focus. `We continually say, come — but Jesus never said, come. Jesus said, go.’Go into all the world.’ Be that salt, be that light.’”

You can read all about it here.

Goodbye Mr. Spalding! (That’s a little baseball lingo.) This is exactly what I’ve been saying for years. There’s nothing I hate more than for a believer (particularly a pastor) to ask me, “Did you
have a good Sunday?” Which is code for, “Did you have a lot of people there?” What difference does it make? I told one guy recently (a pastor), “Ya man, we had 25 people come forward and get saved today!”

“Really?”

“No, not really. I’m kidding.”

Here’s the deal. The Bible NEVER tells us to make our worship services appealing to the world so that the lost will come in and be saved. Jesus said, “Go.” Success is never measured by how many bodies we can pack into the pews. Success is measured by changed lives. And the last time I checked that’s still God’s job. We are merely the instruments that He chooses to use to accomplish His kingdom work.

According to the article Parsley says, “…it is a hallmark of the Christian faith to share Christ and to engage the culture.” Regarding his new book he says, “It flies in the face of much of the
post-modern … humanistic books that are being sold in Christian circles today. It’s not a self-help book; it’s a world-help book — how we can become the vessels of light that God intended us to be.”

Amen, brother! Preach it!

A few years ago a certain famous radio talk show personality began referring to big government as a “suckling pig,” stating that for many people it is the be all and end all for all of life’s problems “from the cradle to the grave.” Recently I’ve begun thinking that this is exactly the same mentality that permeates our churches today, this consumer mentality that causes the church to become nothing more than a service to be provided. The church logo could easily become the suckling pig.

And let’s face it. Churches today haven’t done themselves any favors in the way they have promoted themselves. Most church advertising is geared toward publicizing this great program or that wonderful benefit or this hip and trendy service. It isn’t any wonder that so many people in America today view the church as a product to be consumed.

A recent study from LifeWay Research seems to bear this out. They discovered that at least two-thirds of young adults who attend church while in high school will drop out of church for at least a year before the age of 22. According to Ed Stetzer, director of LifeWay Research, many young people today are simply reflecting a “church culture” that says “if you don’t meet my needs here, I’ll go somewhere else.”

“I think we have a very casual approach to that covenant community called church,” he says. “Ephesians 3:10 reminds us that God has chosen the church to make known His manifold wisdom in the world — and I think we have to help people connect better to the church. I think we need to begin to see that this covenant community called church is not an option in the Christian life. But to be fair, that’s what we’ve made it in North America today — and perhaps these young adults are reflecting to some degree the church culture in which they were grown and discipled.”

Paul writes in Ephesians 4:16 that because of Christ “the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.” The local church was never meant to be a product to be consumed or a service to be provided, but rather an interdependent community of Christ followers that meet regularly together to worship Him, to edify one another, and to be used of Him to impact their community. The church is not simply a place to be served, but rather a place to serve. May God help us to grow as disciples of Jesus Christ to that end.

Welcome to The Salty Peanut Gallery. This is my first post. Been thinking about starting my own blog for sometime now. My wife isn’t real crazy about it. She thinks I spend too much time on the computer as it is. She’s probably right. Let’s not tell her. It’ll be our little secret…

So why The Salty Peanut Gallery you might ask?

Number one, I happen to like salty peanuts. They’ve become one of my favorite snack foods. But obviously there’s a deeper thought in mind (if that’s possible coming from my mind).

Salt is a metaphor used by the Lord to describe believers in Christ. “You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men” – Matthew 5:13

The word salty is also used to describe remarks that are sharp, witty, and mentally stimulating. It is my hope that those who visit this blog would find it in some way thought provoking or at the very least entertaining.

Wikipedia defines a peanut gallery as “an audience which heckles the performer. The term originated in the days of vaudeville as a nickname for the cheapest (and therefore rowdiest) seats in the theater; the cheapest snack served at the theater would often be peanuts, which the patrons would sometimes throw at the performers on stage to signify their disapproval.” Today it is a term used figuratively to describe people whose criticisms are regarded as irrelevant or insignificant.

Everyone has an opinion and anyone is free to express there’s as long as it is moral and in good taste. Relevancy is optional.

So, what do you think?