The picture of the diving board on the cover was taken by one of my sons where we vacation. My sons have taken the plunge from this board many times. Me, not so much. I can understand reticence. However, despite my caution, there are good reasons to dive in from this board. The water is deep. There are no sharks. Jumping in can be great fun. Or so I am told. I tend to be a skeptical person.
There are many reasons people share for being skeptical of the claims of Christianity. In this short book I would like to introduce you to some reasons that we can lay aside our doubts and fears and take the plunge into a life of faith. It is beautiful. It is believable. And it can be great fun.
This book is presented in two parts. The first part gives reasons to believe in God and trust in Jesus based on the beauty of Christianity. The water is refreshing on a hot summer day. Jumping in is a beautiful experience. Christianity, when expressed well, leads to greater beauty in one’s life, and indeed the world.
The second part gives reasons to believe in God and trust in Jesus despite the warnings of the people who say it is foolish to do so. According to the evidence, the water is deep, there are no sharks. Faith is not a blind leap, but a reasonable step.
If you are skeptical, I understand. However, I invite you to discover how Christianity is both beautiful and believable. I invite you to join me on the diving board, maybe we might even take a step . . .
This book available here. An ebook version is also available for Kindle, Apple Books (free), and Kobo (free).
In 1990 I sat in a recruiting centre of the Canadian Armed Forces and asked how I might become a chaplain. The response was that I needed two degrees and a few years of experience as a pastor. Thirty-three years later I am finally enrolled into the Canadian Armed Forces. Twenty-six years of experience as a pastor should be enough?
Will my work as a military chaplain be different from my work as a pastor? I believe so, in fact I consider this to a career change. In a month’s time I will not be thinking of myself as a Baptist Pastor who happens to serve in the military. I will be thinking of myself as a military chaplain who happened to be a Baptist pastor. Though both roles use many of the same skills, they are different.
Some Baptists serving in the military may look to me as a Baptist pastor, and may even look to me for Baptist rites, like believer’s baptism or baby dedications. But for the most part military members will be looking to me as their padre, neither knowing, nor caring, that I have been a Baptist pastor.
Why is a military chaplain different from a Baptist pastor?
We should consider where my salary will come from. As a pastor it comes from Christian people who are willing to pay me to accomplish Christian goals. A military chaplain is paid by the public through taxes. The average Canadian is generally not interested in the promotion of Christianity, and certainly does not want to have to pay for it!
You might object and ask if I shouldn’t be obeying God rather than people. If a pastor feels truly called to get paid for advancing Christianity, then yes, perhaps they should obey God in that. However, Canadian taxpayers should not be expected to foot the bill. Those who feel they have such a calling should not become chaplains. Some of us feel our calling is much broader than the promotion of Christianity.
How is military chaplaincy different?
As a Baptist pastor I have had as my guiding principle, “helping people walk with Jesus in faith, hope, and love.” Obviously I need a different guiding principle because that is not going to fly with the people paying my paycheque. If I’m not helping people walk with Jesus in faith, hope, and love, what will I be doing?
There is a wonderful word in the Bible, shalom, which often gets translated as “peace.” It can be found, for example, in Jeremiah 29 where the people are encouraged to “pray for the peace of Jerusalem” (verse 7).
“Peace” does not fully capture the idea behind shalom. When we think of peace, we often think of the absence of war or conflict. Shalom goes further than that to signify the presence of harmony, of things being well, of everything working together, of completeness. My motorcycle is at peace when it is in the garage doing nothing. It is at shalom when it is on the road and all the parts are working together as its creators intended. Since I have joined the navy, let me switch to a sailing ship analogy. Imagine a tall ship, one with many sails. A ship may experience peace at the dock, but it experiences shalom when it is sailing the sea and all the sails are working together. If the sails represent members of the military, and the ship represents the unit they are assigned to, the chaplain helps ensure the sails are trimmed and watches for them getting bent out of shape or torn up.
This means helping people deal with whatever might be getting them bent out of shape. It might be in the area of mental health, like dealing with anxiety, loneliness, or depression. It might be relational health, dealing with things like grief, conflict, or betrayal. It might be financial health. It might be spiritual health, although spirituality touches, and is touched by, everything else. It might be a discussion on how certain religious beliefs help or hinder one’s well being.
In helping a service member move toward health and well-being, a chat might be enough (with the service member doing most of the chatting and the chaplain doing most of the listening). Counselling may be helpful, or a referral to more qualified professionals, or to services that are available.
The chaplain may also be the one who communicates up the chain of command that a sail may need to be sent back for repairs. A sail may be so torn and ripped that it is in the best interest of the sail and the ship alike that this particular sail not be hoisted today. The shalom, not just of the individual, but of the entire unit is to be considered.
The key word in all this is “help.” Where I have considered my calling to be summed up with “helping people walk with Jesus in faith, hope, and love,” now it changes to “helping people walk in shalom.” In helping people, there may be opportunities to help people walk with Jesus. There may even be opportunities of introducing people to Jesus. However, these opportunities need to come from the service member’s curiosity, and not my need to make Jesus known.
Ironically, while it may seem that opportunities for evangelism are stifled in chaplaincy, if more Christians had the idea of helping people experience shalom in their lives, we might see greater curiosity in Jesus. There has been apathy toward Christianity for some time now. In our day this has increasingly been replaced by disgust. Why? When I was young we were taught that we Christians should live in such a way that people will ask, “what do you have that I don’t?”. For many today, the answer to that question is not “Christians have peace and joy,” but rather, “Christians have an agenda.”
A different approach might lead to a different response. If we Christians are a people who help people, rather than a people who try to control people, denigrate people, oppose people, or who have power over people, there might be a different response than apathy or disgust. There might be curiosity. A change in posture might be good for the Christian Church in general.
My greatest fear as I join the military is not how many push-ups I can do or how far I can run, but that I might feel useless. When a ship is sailing fine, and the sails seem to be in good shape, no one is knocking on the chaplain’s door. Chaplains, like pastors, spend considerable time building relationships, because you don’t know you need a chaplain until you do.
A big change for me will be that I won’t be preaching very much. Since this blog has been mostly my sermons, this also means I won’t be blogging very much. I would like to thank all those who have read my posts, whether occasionally or regularly. Thank you!
Women have been a big part of the story, from Eve on. Women have not always been the focus of sermons, and I confess, that includes sermons by me. The majority of sermons in our Baptist circles are preached by men and when we do preach on women it is often either a sermon about a heroine of the faith, which all women should be like, or what the Bible says about the place of women in families and churches, which all women should pay attention to. So usually a sermon about women, to women is focused on how they should be better. Shall we follow the usual path as we focus in on the Book of Ruth?
Interestingly, the Book of Ruth is placed right after the Book of Judges which itself ends with women being a big part of the story. True, it is mostly about men being at war, but women become the focus when the tribes of Israel recognise that since the tribe of Benjamin was down to 600 men following a war against them, they would need wives so that the tribe would not be completely wiped out. Let’s pause and consider what happened to all the women of Benjamin.
You know how if you don’t show up to a meeting, the people at the meeting nominate you for a job you don’t want? The men of Jabesh-Gilead did not send soldiers to the battle so the other tribes destroyed that town, women and children included, all except for 400 marriage worthy women who were taken and given to the men of Benjamin. That leaves 200 men without wives. They were each told to abduct a wife from a festival at Shiloh. Problem solved. For the men.
If you think the Bible always teaches you how to live, you will run into trouble here. The Bible often records how horrible things were (and are), and how not to live, how not to do things. It also records here what attitudes toward women men are not to have. In the Book Judges men treated women like property. Men often treated each other badly, but generally it was safer to be a man than a woman. It still is.
The Book of Ruth offers a great contrast to the Book of Judges. In the Book of Ruth, Naomi and Ruth matter. Women matter.
While the book is about Ruth and Naomi, it is also about Boaz. Boaz is an example of a better attitude toward women than what we find in the Book of Judges. Fir example,
Boaz went over and said to Ruth, “Listen, my daughter. Stay right here with us when you gather grain; don’t go to any other fields. Stay right behind the young women working in my field. See which part of the field they are harvesting, and then follow them. I have warned the young men not to treat you roughly. And when you are thirsty, help yourself to the water they have drawn from the well.”….When Ruth went back to work again, Boaz ordered his young men, “Let her gather grain right among the sheaves without stopping her. And pull out some heads of barley from the bundles and drop them on purpose for her. Let her pick them up, and don’t give her a hard time!”
Ruth 2:8,9,15,16 (NLT)
While Boaz recognised the kindness of Ruth toward Naomi, he responded with kindness of his own. Some may want to turn the story of Ruth and Boaz into a romance novel, but it really is more about how in marrying Ruth, Boaz ensured that Ruth and Naomi were provided for, fulfilling his responsibility as a kinsman-redeemer. Boaz did what he was supposed to do, but in doing that he stood in contrast to many men we find in the Bible who did not. May we who are men be more like Boaz, and less like the men we find in Judges.
The Book of Ruth also contrasts with another book of the Bible; Ezra:
Then Ezra the priest stood and said to them: “You have committed a terrible sin. By marrying pagan women, you have increased Israel’s guilt. So now confess your sin to the LORD, the God of your ancestors, and do what he demands. Separate yourselves from the people of the land and from these pagan women.” Then the whole assembly raised their voices and answered, “Yes, you are right; we must do as you say!” Then they added, “This isn’t something that can be done in a day or two, for many of us are involved in this extremely sinful affair. And this is the rainy season, so we cannot stay out here much longer. Let our leaders act on behalf of us all. Let everyone who has a pagan wife come at a scheduled time, accompanied by the leaders and judges of his city, so that the fierce anger of our God concerning this affair may be turned away from us.” Only Jonathan son of Asahel and Jahzeiah son of Tikvah opposed this course of action, and they were supported by Meshullam and Shabbethai the Levite.
Ezra 10:10-15 (NLT)
In the Book of Ezra the people recommitted their lives to God. That might be the gist of a sermon I would preach on this passage of Scripture. Look at how great these men were and the strength of their commitment to God! In the Book of Ezra the men recommitted their lives to God by sending away their foreign wives, plus children. Where did these women and children go? What happened to them?
Many Bible scholars think that the Book of Ruth, while set in the days of Judges, was recorded at the time of Ezra. We could sum up the moral of the story as; “Before we send our foreign wives away, let us remember Ruth, a foreign woman, a good woman, and the great-grandmother of king David. Foreign women matter.” Yes, commitment to God is commendable, but the path taken to show that in Ezra may not have been wise. Perhaps we sometimes make unwise decisions even in our attempts to be committed to God. The Bible doesn’t always tell us how to live, but records for us different voices as people wrestled with how to live well. May we who are men be more like Boaz, and less like the men we find in Judges, and Ezra.
Perhaps this is typical. I set out to write sermon about women, for women, and it ends up being about men, for men; Men, we need to be better.
If there is a message to women here, it could be; if the men in your life are like the men of Judges, who were not known for their commitment to God, or like the men of Ezra, who were…you deserve better.
Thinking Through Scripture 