Comments on: Riffs: 05:12:07: John Dennis on the Life He Didn’t Live…Because He Lived the “Christian” Life

By: grimtraveller

grimtraveller — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 21:57:06 +0000

I’ve come to this 2 years late and I hope there are still people that will contribute to this post. I think John Dennis was being very piercing and insightful in what he wrote and as some pointed out, he was making a valid point about what christianity has become in the minds and practices of so many. I think that it is a sad fact that so many of us simply do not experience the freedom, joy and suffering that comes with truly knowing God. Instead, many of us seem to do what countless before us have done, which is to make up rules and regulations and sort of make them a litmus test of being a real believer. Sometimes it’s done with sincerity, if somewhat misguided, other times it’s done to cover up our innate controlling impulses. I live in England and believe me, it’s pretty much the same as the US of A and Canada.
If Saul of Tarsus was around, I’m sure some of us would get a Galatian style blast !!
Truth is, this life we are in is led by the Lord living in us. About 20 years ago, I feel he very pointedly let me know that my life was not my own, but his. It’s still a struggle sometimes though, against the dictats of man. But it gets less so, even if I’m seen as a rebel.

By: Melissa Husted

Melissa Husted — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 06:44:10 +0000

I found your site doing a search on prayer, but have jumped around from one interesting topic to another. You seem to have discovered all sorts of wonderful insights into the Christian life that God has recently been awakening my spirit to understand. I grew up back and forth from Southern to Fundamental Baptist, and still struggle with all the ensuing legalism. While I don’t still follow all the ‘rules’, I find myself making up my own rules for everything–how to keep house, what time to get up, which homeschool curriculum is the most godly, blah, blah, blah. God is really wrestling with me right now about being in relationship with Him. He created the world and would like us to receive his gifts with thankfulness. Thanks for your transparency–what an encouragement it is to see a sinner saved by grace enjoying his creator!

By: Jeremiah Lawson

Jeremiah Lawson — Sat, 26 May 2007 20:03:52 +0000

This reminds me of a testimonial/apologetic approach that says “This is how bad I would be if I weren’t a Christian”. It’s an approach I don’t buy anymore because Christians struggle with sin and any attempt to explain how bad we would be apart from Christ amplifies the sin that dwells in our hearts right now rather than attempting to imagine a life in which we never knew Christ, which is what this piece does. Here we get a sample of how we could be different if we didn’t use faith in Christ and Scripture as a rationalization for our own sin, which is REALLY how we would be different if we never knew the Lord. That’s just my take on this right now.

I think “if it weren’t for Christianity” is a really different ball of wax than “if I weren’t a Christian here are the things I wouldn’t excuse myself of in Jesus’ name.”

By: Sasquatch

Sasquatch — Tue, 22 May 2007 09:42:35 +0000

Hiya,
This post reminds me of Bible verses I read as a kid that made no sense.
When I grew up, and lived life, I looked back on them and suddenly my eyes were opened to what Solomon, Moses, David and the gang were talking about.
I was in their sandals and could nod my head and say, “I get it,” while feeling relief that God would transform my life like he did theirs.
I don’t think over-analyzing this dude’s blog and dividing it into subsections really does it justice.
I don’t think he’s saying what he’s saying.
The beer thing, the PTA meetings, he’s giving illustrations about his own feelings… it’s not meant to be a list of infallible statements.
I’m a first nations person and in my culture, I read it with my heart and not my head.
My heart connects with his sense of loss.
I’m still a deep believer in Christ.
But I literally almost lost my whole belief system because of the terrible things I experienced from Christians.
I was so happy to be a new believer, like a butterfly burst out of a cocoon, but Christian leaders gave me so many rocks to swallow that all I could do was drag my stomach weighed down by rhetoric across the ground.
My wings were still attached, but it seemed that I wasn’t actually supposed to use them.
I didn’t date the girls I liked, listen to the music that made me happy, or go to churches that gave me peace or made me feel relieved.
I was told to be cautious about all my decisions… because I was, after all, a sinner, and my instincts weren’t to be trusted.
I was told that we weren’t religious like mainline churches, and were freer and happier than anyone else in the world, but I sat in church with a broken heart enduring controlling sermons and cruel people whose meanness I never imagined in my previous life as an “unbeliever.”
I treated people like family who my “Spidey sense” warned me were not to be trusted.
Anything celebrity pastors and musicians said might as well have been written in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
HOWEVER, as I experienced these earthquakes, windstorms, and fires, I walked away from it all to follow the still small voice of God.
As Patrick Kyle wrote earlier, John Dennis isn’t writing about Christianity, but the cultural narrow-mindedness we are told IS Christianity.
I too look back with a lot of regret and emptiness, and I wish I’d listened to the Holy Spirit’s truth flowing and sparkling into my heart when I was a lot younger.
Following what I was led to believe was Christianity, as a preacher I knew used to say, “pierced my heart through with many sorrows.”
He used that expression to illustrate our sinful decisions… in my case, they were the sinful decisions of letting jerks tell me what to do, and not allowing God’s gifts of real life and freedom into my heart.
I feel so brainwashed that I consciously have to let God relieve me of all the distorted Bible teachings I was fed as a teenager.
When I actually hear the scriptural truth, as opposed to the rules John Dennis refers to, feeling validated by God is such a shaking experience that I have literally wept.
Thank God he can free us, but do we really have to be so dumb?
Thanks.

By: dan macdonald

dan macdonald — Wed, 16 May 2007 16:59:07 +0000

I am deeply grateful for the canned, hierarchical, overly aggressive para-church ministry that pushed its people to share the gospel with me whilst I was a skeptical but interested law student. I am thankful for the rigidly formal Baptist church that first took me in as a new Christian, fed me, taught me, and suggested a local church to attend when I graduated and started practicing law.

I am thankful to that local baptist church that loved me, taught me to tithe and serve and love young people, who I eventually became a youth pastor to. I am deeply appreciative that they supported me in prayer and finances whilst I joined a parachurch ministry, and loved me through many storms and valleys.

I am thankful to people like you, Michael, that thoughtfully probe the meaning of following Christ. I am a desperate sinner who deserves far worse than the present church I am privileged to serve.

By: jmanning

jmanning — Tue, 15 May 2007 02:39:27 +0000

I think some people aren’t getting this post….some of its still a stretch…but the more I hear people bash it the more I like it

By: Lynn

Lynn — Mon, 14 May 2007 23:09:43 +0000

Me again. “If it weren’t for Christianity” seems like a piece written by a disgruntled man. I guess for people who know their freedom in Christ, this piece doesn’t have much to say.

By: Michael Spencer

Michael Spencer — Mon, 14 May 2007 21:23:13 +0000

I think “If it weren’t for Christianity” is a different piece of writing. Just as valid.

By: Brad

Brad — Mon, 14 May 2007 21:19:40 +0000

If it wasn’t for Christianity, I’d value human life only as far as it serves my whims. Adolf Hitler would be a role model (actually he’d be but a common man in such a world). I’d see the post-modern thought that my salvation lies in an ever illusionary utopia, that is dependant on my finite mind and feeble limbs, as my only hope – a hope that would prove ever the more futile as the years pass.

Of course, if it wasn’t for Christianity, I simply would not exist.

Brad

By: dan macdonald

dan macdonald — Mon, 14 May 2007 19:03:27 +0000

If it wasn’t for Christianity…
I would never have heard about Christ.