What makes a Christian weak or strong?

My friend Steve has posted something interesting about the Sabbath and how we observe it, and I had a chat with him the other week about it too. It has baffled me for a while as to why people seem to forget that commandment, but at the same time it's odd that whilst the Sabbath is the Saturday, we see it as Sunday - so can we see it as the same thing, or perhaps we should hold both of them?

This is an extended reply to his post, so have a look at his post first to see what he has written and the background to what was said at the Christian Union meeting to spark this.

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It's an interesting and important issue, but I think the main thing is that people give it due consideration, prayer and study of the Bible and choose something that is right in their conscience after this. I don't know what I feel entirely, given that I grew up with the same opinions, forced on me to some extent but also felt by me, and I still held these until probably 18 months ago and do to some degree now.

I think it is important to dedicate a day to God and to rest and to help others to rest too. I know it's not particularly British to help others and that we should all live as individuals and get on with our own lives, but I do feel a responsibility to help others lead a good life, and I believe others need rest too. Not many really want to work on a Sunday so is me going shopping really helping them if it increases demand and thus pressure from their employers to work? I had to work Sundays for a while when I really didn't want to, even though I got extra pay, but felt I had to in case I didn't look committed.

On the other hand I've had people come to Church who it would be great to have a chat with afterwards and make them feel welcome, and it may not be suitable or easy to invite them home, so as Wetherspoons is round the corner I can go there with them and buy them a drink or meal. This is vastly different to being so lazy and absent minded as to not buy food the previous day and prepare food then (although admitadely on said Sunday I was also in Sainsburys - my defence was the Summer Ball although it's not a great excuse!).

So I think the key things are these:

1) As it implies in Mark 2:23-27, I think you have to be pragmatic and do whatever you feels brings glory to God and is beneficial to those in need, without using it as an excuse.

2) Being weak and being strong is, I feel, about how you come to your decision rather than the decision itself.

I think legalism implies that you hold to your views because it's what your tradition is, perhaps passed down by your parents, or your Church, or assumed through a vary narrow and shallow reading of scripture. I think the contrasting view is not liberalism, but more to do with people who have studied scripture, gone deeper, and seen what is at the heart of the matter and made their decision based on this. Perhaps Paul has deemed that anyone who deeply studied the scriptures and who understood the gospel would come to the conclusion that it doesn't matter whether you eat meat, which I would say is accurate according to the Bible.

I think for John Risbridger to bring the Sunday thing in without a bit of explanation is a bit misleading, as it's by no means clear cut, in fact flicking through Romans, 14:5-6 seems to address this exact thing, and from my reading there isn't as clear a divide in Paul's mind with regards to this this issue as for vegetarianism. He seems to see the key part as each individual being "fully convinced in his own mind". It may even be that in different circumstances on different occasions that a different conclusion is reached on whether to buy, work, play, etc., as long as that decision is honourable and pleasing to God.

So I guess if you don't do things on Sundays because it's what you've been told to do I would see you as weak. However if you start buying things on Sunday (or more specifically if you refrain from having a separate day of rest for you and others) just because you find it easier not to, then you are just as weak, if not more so.

However, a 'strong' individual will study and pray and seek an answer which he can make with a clear conscience and about which he would be able to stand before God and not feel ashamed. Lets face it, there will probably be a lot of Sundays/Saturdays/Sabbaths before we die, God willing, so I think it is worth giving this a lot of thought and seeking God's will, and then putting that into action in how we live.

Why get baptised?

I'm getting baptised tomorrow and whilst it will be a great occasion, it's not something to be taken lightly. Through baptism I'm signalling that I have died to my old 'self' (a concept that was central to why I started this blog) and been reborn through the power of God to follow Christ and live my life as he would have me. I'll write in the next few days of my personal reasons for baptism, but this post, if a little long (it's worth it I promise...), should give some food for thought about the general role of baptism. I want it to be clear that I'm not doing this to be controversial in the Salvation Army (SA) (and indeed I believe a fair few people in the SA have been baptised), it is something I really feel I should do and want to do, but I do believe it raises important questions for the SA.

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The topic of baptism seems to raise so many dilemmas for different people and has caused a lot of division. In general, the Catholic and Anglican Churches seem to go for infant baptism (or Christening), whilst Baptists, Reformed and 'Free' Churches tend to go for adult ones. The logic for child baptism would seem to be that you wish to dedicate your child to God when they are young, and there could be arguably some backing for this in the Bible. Adult baptism seems more consistent and repeatedly implied throughout the New Testament (or more specifically those that are of an age to make their own conscious decision). The former also seem to go for drawing a cross on the forehead whilst the latter for full immersion (plunging the whole body into water).

The SA on the other hand don't do it at all (although are not, officially, against it). From what I have gleaned, the main reason for this seems to be that when the SA started (1865 in it's original form), it's membership drew from a variety of denominations, full of people who wanted to take the good news of Christ Jesus to those on the margins of society that had been forgotten by the wider Church. As there would have been disagreements amongst the members how baptism should be performed, this may have led to some friction, and so in 1883 William Booth wrote, suggesting: "is it not wise for us to postpone any settlement of the question, to leave it over to some future day, when we shall have more light, and see more clearly our way before us?" (see article mentioned in final paragraph). However, that day seems not to have arrived, or at least there seems to have been no point at which a serious, open discussion has occurred that has focused on Christ and put aside tradition and considered what is the best thing we can do as a movement, forgetting our pride and asking what is God's desire.

As you may well tell from how I write, and also given that I have made this decision, I feel baptism is right and is important. I feel glad to make this decision, and the fact I have come from this background has actually been extremely beneficial as I have been able to consider the special significance of baptism, rather than just seeing it as the natural 'next step'. I started seriously considering it maybe 18 months/2 years ago, challenged by how uni friends took it for granted and how I could really give no reason why I didn't, other than that it wasn't really the Salvation Army's thing. I couldn't really say the SA don't do symbolism, as they wear uniforms. Saying that we have 'Soldiership' which is equivalent almost seemed like I'd be saying "yeah I know Jesus made this suggestion but we've had a think and decided that William Booth's idea about the whole soldier thing just sounds a lot better". Again, it just seems like tradition getting in the way of the commands of God.

At the time of thinking this I was increasingly aware of the concept of Gnosticism which had invaded some parts of the early Church, where people thought the body was bad and the spirit good. This was rebuffed by early Christians who said that God made the whole human being good; spirit, soul AND body. I therefore figured that if God made us both spiritual and physical beings, then the things we relate with we look at in both a spiritual and physical context and meaning. Therefore it makes sense that we associate with some physical things in a spiritual way, sometimes in a bad way (idol worship, obsession around cars, money, etc.) but often in a good way (such as emotions experienced through photographs of people and places, or, for Christians, using the picture of the cross to help contemplate Christ). As God created us surely he knows we have these tendencies, and in fact wanted us to be like this, and so it seems logical that he would give us physical things to help us spiritually. He used the rainbow as a symbol of a promise, gave the Israelites the temple to symbolise the importance of God, and time and time again promise a sign to signify and confirm something spiritual. So it makes sense that when Christ wanted his followers to remember why he was to die he gave them the reminder of bread and wine, which was shown to be powerful in opening the followers eyes when they forgot that his death was planned. He also knew that people may judge Christians on their own works rather than what Christ has done, so by giving the sign of baptism they had something that was rooted in the death of Christ, rather than anything to do with human effort. Perhaps he knew that the SA would make uniforms for themselves and become soldiers, something that whilst obviously rooted in a decision to follow Christ, has so much more added to it and significance that is often more to do with the individual's actions than the work of God.

It was both a relief  (as it showed I wasn't crazy) but also a slight annoyance (that someone else had written something that I thought I was the first to think of) to read an article by Chick Yuill about this very topic and with similar explanation. A controversial figure in the SA, but someone who not only seems to have a solid grounding in the Bible but is also a very good speaker, Chick writes engagingly, and I encourage 'Salvationists' to read it through and seriously consider it (and have a look through the Rubicon website more generally), but others too should give it a read and maybe help them think afresh why it is that baptism is, and should be, held so dear.