Notice of Upcoming Hiatus

As I have mentioned before, my wife and I are preparing to have our first baby. As we became pregnant at least a year before we expected, this has involved a lot of reorientation for both of us, and we are spending a lot of time doing the kind of things we need to do as expectant parents: securing baby apparatus, planning our delivery, and any one of a thousand other responsibilities we are accepting as the caretakers of a new life. Every minute is precious to us, and we need to focus our attention on the baby and on my wife's prenatal care.

As a result, I will have to put this blog on hiatus for the next several months until we are back on a firmer schedule. I will post updates on our pregnancy and childbirth from time to time, and I hope that my readers will forgive what in the blogosphere generally amounts to an unconscionable time lapse (yes, I read blogs myself).

Until I am able to post on the Bible again, I want to leave you with a message that I have been attempting, sometimes successfully and other times unsuccessfully, to convey: The Christianity that is practiced in the majority of America's churches and households today is a dim shadow of the Christianity practiced by the apostles, by generations of martyrs, and by Jesus Himself. If you want the Christ of the Bible, you have to accept the Bible of the Christ--the Torah, the Nevim, and the Ketuvim, which comprise the Hebrew "Old Testament" Bible that Jesus and the apostles considered "the scriptures." It is not a matter of arrogant pietism--the Bible is abundantly clear that the Lord is concerned with far deeper issues than our appearance in front of others--but it is a matter of obedience, and respect.

To love the Lord is to obey His commandments. This is something Jesus Himself said, as recorded in John 14. If you love the Lord, if you really want to be a Christian, then you will have to jettison every bit of the materialistic selfishness that our society cherishes so deeply. To be Christlike is to be opposed, at the core of one's being, to the common pursuits and desires of this world, and anyone who is in Christ will face suffering and persecution as a result.

Those who have suffered and died for Christ knew that their blood and tears were shed in testimony of the Lord whose blood and tears bought their souls from damnation. They are not the "ideal" saints, the "perfect ones." They are, in the Lord's eyes, the norm for Christianity.

It is time for us to shake off the social acceptability of church attendance and choose, once and for all, where we stand in relationship to Christ.

It is time for us to declare, openly, where our hearts really lie.