Retreat Reflections: 2.

After we arrived back at church that Sunday, we had the Session 4 message during our regular church service with the rest of the church present. This message hit me even harder than the others:

1. What justification is and is not. He discussed "counterfeit idols" as described by Tullian Tchividjian. A good summary of those "counterfeit gospels" is here. Most idols lurk and pervade in church:

- Formalism: church activity / "always in church" / judgmental / imposing your standards on everyone: This is what I grew up in. I spent a lot of time around church, especially in the summer because my mom is her church's longtime Vacation Bible School director. But most of the time I would rather be somewhere else, or I would need a distraction such as basketball to avoid being bothersome. But hey, I was always in church whenever the doors were open, even if I never listened to anything the pastor said because I was drawing pictures all the way through the sermons, even in high school and college.

- Legalism: living by rules you create for yourself and others; there is no joy in your life because there is no grace to be celebrated. I grew up imposing my moral standards on everybody and defining myself by my morality. For me, that typically looked like imposing Biblical standards on everybody. The way I looked for a wife during that period was particularly telling. In college I was trying to date a girl who was not a Christian, but that didn't matter much to me because, like me, she was still a virgin and I found that more important than even faith in Christ. I became broken about my recreational dating practices in 2007 because one of the girls offended me so deeply by drinking alcohol on one of our dates - never minding that it isn't actually a sin to drink, only to get drunk, and the main reason why I don't drink at all is family history with alcoholism. Yes, as this sermon said, a Pharisee is the kind of boy you would want to bring home for dinner.

- Mysticism: "Retreat junkie" - incessant pursuit of emotional experience with God; changes churches often. The first half of that describes where I am right now to a T. After I started attending my current church and saw people with their hands raised during worship and I started doing it too, first I was doing it because I felt closer to God when I did and my Christianity up to that point had almost never been emotional, only rational. Sometimes I am only after that spiritual high and not after real closeness to God, real memorization of and obedience to Scripture, and real rejection of sin. And I was almost tempted to switch churches when most of the other hand-raisers left my church due to its shift in emphasis toward sound doctrine and started going to a Charismatic church. Praise God for books like Why We Love the Church, which tell me to be a plodding visionary in a church that faithfully serves Him and gets rid of the temptation to seek the constant emotional high and what I want over taking responsibility to serve.

- Activism: Stands for what is right but doesn't pursue God. This describes quite a lot of the people that I know, including the ones who make 3/4ths of their posts on Facebook about gay marriage. This is an area where, I admit, I'm quite skewed in the other direction. Growing up in a formalist/activist environment, when I got out of that I only wanted to pursue God. But even though His kingdom is not of this world, He does not call me to stick my head in the sand and keep it there regarding the problems in the world either.

- Biblicism: I didn't have time to write down what he said for this one. But an Awana Citation Award in the next room which I earned years before I started listening to sound preaching says that I have roots in this.

- Therapism: Makes Jesus more therapist than Savior and sees hurt as worse than sin ("moralistic therapeutic deism"). I've been around this and felt, honestly, pretty turned off by it, maybe because I am a legalist at heart. But killing sin is very hard to say the least, and we don't always realize what a war it is. Some of my best weekends spiritually, I have listened and rapped along to Tedashii's "Make War" over and over again. But most people don't really want to fight sin as sin, and some sin is rooted in events that happened to them through no fault of their own. I can definitely see why this would be a draw to people.

- Socialism: The body of Christ has replaced Christ Himself. This is the other half of where I am right now with regards to what God has taught me about learning to love the church. At camps I spend very little time with God on my own. At the two church camps I barely read any Scripture except for right before the sessions to prepare myself for worship. I was more content with getting to know other people - a very good thing, but not the best. Sometimes, I just need to hit the trail alone for an afternoon. And thank God for the chance to do that - "wanting nothing in life but to just be with Him, as if nothing in this world could ever compete with Him" (116 Clique).

2. Augustine said that the root of all sin is disorderly love. "No other gods before Me" includes even cute ones and noble ones. Family can be an idol of our heart. A lot of people seek the church as a place to get glory for themselves because there is less competition. For example, people who are not talented enough to join a rock band may be able to join a praise band. Your children were not born for justifying your existence through your vicariously living through them. The worst result of self-justification is that your rob God of His glory.

3. Being a Christian means that you are a failure, but an honorable failure; a sinner, but a righteous sinner. "I need Christ to pay for all of the ways that I tried to justify my life." "At least I'm not a porn star" is not God's standard. When you are justified, you do not hate others.

Here are some things I learned at the young adults camp outside the sermons:

1. Activity can be an enemy of spiritual discipline. Brother Paul Washer actually said this, but I realized this experientially here. After the sermons, I felt led to pray for the other people at the camp, that the points of the sermons would really be driven home to them. However, our schedule was very fast-paced, which meant I had to continue to the next activity. I am not using this as an indictment against those who scheduled this camp, but against myself for forgetting about the need to pray for these people when I got back from the camp and resumed work the next day.

2. True Christian fellowship can result in very deep and lasting bonds between Christians forming over a very short period of time. One brother from the Philippines spent his vacation from law school (March through June there) in the US attending several conferences and serving in several churches around the country, including ours. He is a friend of my pastor from his 5 years as a missionary in the Philippines. He and I only had a few hours to interact during his trip, but our friendship was fast and deep. We were quite open with each other and have stayed in touch now that he is back in the Philippines. Yet what kind of love would drive someone to decide to fly around the world to help with a two-night camp? Only God could do such a thing. And I do have the resources to fly to the Philippines without needing to raise support. I want to fly there and see him again on this side of glory, for my joy and his joy in the glory of God, so that we would not waste our lives but serve Him more effectively on this earth. If we can encourage each other on the internet, how much more side-by-side? I've seen it!

3. There is value in play, even among adults. You learn to respect someone faster if he is bigger than you and you play tug-of-war with a tire against him! American football has nothing on this game; this is anarchy! And I cringed when I saw the tire at the next camp. In a camp with 44 guests plus leaders, it is impossible to quickly form a deep friendship with everyone. But the playing field does allow some level of relationship to be built.

4. I need to expect to sacrifice some of my "sacred" schedule for a camp. This was predominantly a college camp. I graduated from college several years ago and now work in a job that requires a good night's sleep every night. At this camp, we played Capture the Flag in the dark at midnight. Then at 7am we had a morning workout. In between times, one of my roommates played his violin until about 2 in the morning. During the second night, people played hide and seek in the lodge in the middle of the night and were running up and down the halls. I learned at the next camp that earplugs are great. :-)

5. Getting home from a camp is pretty hard because at a camp, other people do most of my spiritual feeding for me. Outside the sessions, I did not have time to read my Bible. So after getting home, I had to adjust to my normal routine of reading, working, and praying again.