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Blogging, Life, Christology…..

November 25, 2009 By Randy Olds Leave a Comment

This has been a very interesting month for me. By the end of October my life appeared to be running along fairly smoothly, although there were a few bumps in the road of life that I was rolling over. I had no idea of the significance of these bumps at the time or that they were an indication that my life was getting ready to go caroming all over the road. The rapidly intensifying dramas that have developed around me and my family over the last month have somewhat distracted me from the blog outline that I had come up with at the end of October.

Although I still eventually intend to get back to that outline, I’ll be for the time being focusing more on just what is going on with my relationship with Christ as I attempt to traverse the still bumpy road ahead. Hopefully things will smooth out over the next month or so, and then I can get back to some of the ideas that I wanted to explore more fully. If not, so be it.

During this same period of time I’ve also somehow or another gotten involved reading a sequence of books that have challenged some of my previously held Christological views. The first was ‘Surprised By Hope’ by N.T. Wright and the second was ‘Miracles’ by C.S. Lewis, which I just finished tonight. Although ‘Miracles’ was primarily a book on apologetics, his views on Christology in this book closely mirror the views held by Wright.

I have sitting on my coffee table the very lengthy ‘Jesus and the Victory of God’ also by N.T. Wright which I plan on starting next week. At 741 pages of small heavily endnoted text, it promises to be a long read, more than likely lasting me past Christmas. I plan on taking my time with this book, although I really can’t say that I’ve fully digested ‘Surprised by Hope’ yet, as I was somewhat distracted by what was going on in my personal life while I was reading it. I’ll probably blog a little next week on the some of the common Christological ideas presented by both of the books that I just read that I had never really thought about with any amount of real depth.

I guess that perhaps it is somewhat appropriate that I’ll be reading this in-depth book about Jesus as I’m going through the Advent and Christmas season. Maybe God is trying to steer me in a different direction than where I was originally headed.

I don’t know if I’ll have time to blog any more prior to next week as I’m going to have a house full of family for the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. My mom is flying in this morning from South Louisiana and my little brother and his wife are driving up from Austin. With a full house, I doubt that I’ll have much of a chance to even do any reading, much less writing. Probably just as well, my brain hurts right now, and I could use a small break with family to just enjoy each others company and give thanks to God for all of the joy that He’s brought into my life.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

‘Only Luke is with me…’

November 24, 2009 By Randy Olds Leave a Comment
Occasionally, during times of trials or tribulation, it helps to look around at the suffering that so many others may be going through to be able to put one’s own troubles into perspective. No matter how bad things may seem at the time, they are in reality only “temporary light afflictions“( 2 Corinthians 4:17) and things could always be worse. My family and I have of late been experiencing a great deal of trials coming at us seemingly from all directions, but I realize that things could be much, much worse. Compared to many people across the globe, I am blessed beyond measure. And, of course, I know that God is in charge and has a view of the ‘big picture’ and knows exactly what He is doing.

A really good example of ‘courage under fire’ can be found in the second epistle of Paul to Timothy. At this time Paul was ‘in chains’ in the Mamertine Prison in Rome, Italy and was awaiting execution. Nearly all of his friends had deserted him (2 Timothy 4:16) and he was alone in the cold, dark cell. Paul tells Timothy in 2 Timothy 1:7 that “God has not given us a spirit of fearfulness, but one of power, love, and sound judgement.’ It almost sounds like Paul is trying to convince himself, like a child whistling whilst walking past a graveyard, but we know that is not the case. Paul knows that his salvation is secure and that he has ‘fought the good fight’ and that all of the suffering was worth the cost.

He gives Timothy additional instructions for his ministry, but also warns him that ‘all those who live a godly life in Christ will be persecuted’ (2 Timothy 3:12) and tells him about some of those who had turned away from him or did him harm in other parts of the epistle (2 Timothy 1:15, 4:10, 4:14-15). In fact, only Luke had not left him as he dictated this letter in his cold, gloomy prison cell in Rome (2 Timothy.4:11).

History records that the stairs going down into the cell that we see today weren’t there in ancient times and that a ladder was lowered through a hole in the ceiling when a prisoner arrived or departed. Food was unceremoniously dropped down through the hole to the prisoner below. I can imagine Luke or perhaps Onesiphorus (who Paul mentions in 2 Timothy 1:16-18) peering down at Paul laying in the cell below as they shouted encouragement’s back and forth. For most of the time, however, all that Paul had was his thoughts and his Lord Jesus Christ to keep him company or perhaps a fellow prisoner or two as he lay in the ‘death cell’ that his fellow Apostle Peter had occupied a year or so earlier. (Actually there are differing accounts on who was martyred first, Peter or Paul, but the consensus favors Peter as being martyred in 64 and Paul in 67)

As he writes what was probably his very last epistle, he encourages Timothy to ‘share in the suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. To please the recruiter, no one serving as a soldier gets entangled in the concerns of everyday life’ (2 Timothy 2:3-4). As I continue to go through my current turbulent times, I work to apply these words to my own life. At the end of the day, spiritually speaking, the only thing that really matters is doing the work of Christ’s Kingdom. All of the sometimes unpleasant concerns of everyday life matter not nearly as much as staying focused on Christ and the portion of His work that has yet to be accomplished.

My current troubles will eventually cease, but there will be others that will crop up as I continue in my walk of faith, and some of what I am going through now may indeed pale in comparison to what I may have to suffer in the future. What is important is to always keep Christ in mind and know that I am never alone, He is always with me. As with Paul, no matter how bad it could ever get, Christ will always be with me as well as at least a portion of the Christian brothers and sisters that I have come to know or will come to know during my life.

Image of the lower cell in the Mamertine Prison where Peter and Paul were held prior to their martyrdoms according to most sources. The cross on the alter is a Petrine Cross according to the tradition that Peter requested to be crucified upside down because he “was not worthy to be crucified in the same manner as his Savior.”

Filed Under: The Bible, Trials and Tribulations

Victims of Spiritual Abuse

November 22, 2009 By Randy Olds Leave a Comment

I wrote yesterday about how many people who are hurt and scarred from their past experiences are often misjudged by their words and actions. In actuality they are simply acting out of fear and pain and are often misjudged as being bitter or judgemental. I was speaking primarily of people who have suffered abuse or neglect in their interpersonal relationships. The same concept holds true, however, for people who have experienced abuse or neglect in their relationships with various forms of abusive religions or cults and are deeply spiritually scarred and appear to be angry at God and Christianity as the result.

I have written on occasion about the abuses that I experienced growing up in the cult known as the Worldwide Church of God. As a child growing up in this “church” I suffered from ostracization from those that were “outside” of my church, condemnation from those “inside” of the church after I chose to leave, as well as a lifetime of trying to dispel all of the false teachings that I was subjected to as a child and teenager. It took a long, long time before I was able to convince myself that I wasn’t going to end up being one of the “two witnesses” or end up burning in the “lake of fire” described in Revelation. It also took many, many years to find a Christian church where I was able to feel “at home” with as well as to be able to develop a relationship with Jesus Christ that actually was able to make a difference in my life.

After reading many, many writings of others who grew up in this abusive cult as well as those writings of others who grew up in other abusive religious environments, I understand why so many have chosen to become agnostic or even militantly atheist. The pain of coming out of such an abusive religious environment and the fear of ending up in another one is simply not worth it for many people. They decide that it’s not worth the risk to even take a chance on God or any Christian church again. Likewise, with such a perverted twisted perception of Jesus Christ and Christianity indelibly marked upon their brains, it is very difficult to perceive God as being all-loving and all-compassionate. Additionally, many of the right-wing fundamentalist nutjobs that so frequently show up in the media give many the impression that there is no safe place to go and find a loving caring God or a loving, caring congregation of Christians.

I think that much of the militant fist-shaking at God and Christianity that I see across the Internet is not so much a hate of God and Christianity but rather a deep seated fear. A fear of being rejected by the members of some church or another that simply won’t understand how one’s early life and teachings that were so screwy have left them confused about the very nature of God. A fear of being taught yet again even more falsehoods about Christ and Christianity. A fear of not being able to accept or understand the reality of who God really is and what Jesus really came here two thousand years ago to accomplish. Even a fear that God Himself may not really love you and bring you into His care under the umbrella of a real Christian church.

Some of these fears are actually somewhat justified, others aren’t. For example, the idea of being able to integrate into real Christianity has been very difficult for me. I essentially had to unlearn every single thing that I thought I knew about the Christian faith in order to be able to start over. In my Saturday Morning Men’s group that I attend, many of the men simply shake their heads in disbelief when I describe some of the teachings and religious abuse that I grew up with. It is not that they don’t care about me or appreciate me as a member of the group, it’s more that they simply can’t imagine growing up the way that I did and how radically different some of Armstrong’s teachings were from most of Christianity. I sometimes feel somewhat reticent to even mention some of the things that I grew up believing for fear that folks may consider me a wackjob, although I know that they don’t.

So far as the fear of being taught new falsehoods about Christ and the Christian faith, I don’t worry about that nearly as much as I used to. I won’t say that I trust implicitly everything that the Methodist church or my pastor teaches, but I feel that if there are any doctrinal errors present, they are not errors such that will cause harm to me, my family or to my relationship with Jesus Christ. Additionally, having been taught such flagrant untruths as I was growing up in the WCG and then being exposed to other not quite so flagrant untruths in various forms of fundamentalism, I have become an excellent Bible student. I study every topic that I come across much more in depth than anybody that I know with the exception of course of some of the pastors and seminarians that I know. I try a keep an open mind and let God through the Holy Spirit guide me as I look at many theological topics from every point of view.

I have finally come into a deeply personal meaningful and productive relationship with Jesus Christ some twenty-three or so years after leaving the abuses of the Worldwide Church of God. It was a long complicated journey that was further complicated by substance abuse issues as well as family problems. With regards to those substance abuse and family issues, I have sensed by much of what I have read by many other “adult children” of the WCG (or other cults or forms of extremism) that these are a common issues. Many of the adults who drug their children into this cult (or some other form of abusive religion) were already plagued with “other issues” that made them easy fodder for the cult. Most normal, adjusted people don’t just go off and join some cult. They do so because of an unmet emotional need that they believe that the cult will fill. Therefore, many of the children of these adults who join these cults or other abusive religions are already predisposed to addiction or family problems. Once fully grown, these problems just add fuel to the fire of their fear of religion.

I am sometimes amazed that I made it to where I am now. Many others aren’t nearly so fortunate. My older brother committed suicide four years ago after years of struggling with addictions and struggles to find a religious environment where he could fit in, and I’ve read that the addiction and suicide rates of adult children of cults is significantly higher than that of the general population.

As I read the blogs and the comments on the message boards of “survivors” of the Worldwide Church of God as well as those escaping other cults or extreme fundamentalism, I am both thankful and saddened. I am thankful that (for the most part) I have finally erased the last vestiges of the damage done to me as I child growing up in an abusive home and an abusive cult and have finally found a meaningful and genuine relationship with Jesus Christ. I am deeply saddened however by the many, many people out there who are still searching for Christ (and a Christian church that they feel they can belong to) and who are still obviously in a lot of emotional and spiritual pain because they have yet to overcome the damage done to them by whatever religious abuses that they have suffered. Many appear angry and hateful, but I realize that it is just a cover for the pain and the fear. Others aren’t quite so angry, but they are still lost and are looking for a home with Christ. I hope and pray that they find it. It’s a wonderful place to finally be.

Filed Under: Armstrongism, Christian Living, Spiritual Abuse

Being a Conduit of Christ’s Healing Love

November 21, 2009 By Randy Olds Leave a Comment

It is oftentimes very easy to misjudge people by their actions. Even if we know a person intimately, what we perceive as bitterness could be pain, what we perceive as callousness could be fear of rejection, and what we perceive as pride could be a lack of self-confidence. Without the ability to be able to look deeply into the heart of a person as only God Himself is able to do, we cannot with any certainty judge a person’s true intent simply by observing their actions or listening to their words.

Take for example a stray dog that you may find on the side of the road. You have no way of knowing how its former owner may have mistreated it. You don’t know what kind of nurturing love it may or may not have received as pup. You may approach this dog with the kindest of intentions and be dismayed when it begins to growl and snap at you. A great many people would then leave this dog on the side of the road, believing it to be a “bad dog”; not realizing that the dog was simply afraid that you were going to strike it as it had been struck so many times before. To the dog, his suspicions have been once again confirmed that people are not to be trusted because yet another person has left him cold and shivering on the side of the road.

People are of course not dogs. People are indeed much, much more complex, but sometimes people’s actions are much like those of the abused dog. Once some people have been hurt over and again by many different people, they will begin to snarl and snap at even the most benign of actions, fearing that they will once again be hurt. Of course, the average person will react to this person’s defense mechanism and judge this person to be mean or temperamental. And once again the wounded person’s suspicions will be confirmed that people are just not to be trusted. The cycle is strengthened and confirmed to both the person judging as well as the person who is being judged.

As I reflect on my own life and all of the people that have passed in and out of it over the years it seems to me that the vast majority of those people that I have encountered have suffered from one degree or another of dysfunction in their lives. Broken homes, bad marriages, abusive religions, addictions, as well as a myriad of other symptoms of this fallen world have shaped the character of many of the people that I have come to know throughout my life, my own self included. People react differently to all of these external influences, but most will develop some sort of coping mechanism to try and avoid further pain as they attempt to get through this life. Quite often these coping mechanisms will be wrongly interpreted by those outside looking in as some sort of defect of character.

I find that the closer I am emotionally to someone, the harder it is to discern whether they are acting out of fear and pain or out of anger or bitterness. It is often quite easy to realize that the angry person that you encounter shaking their fist at the world while standing homeless on the street corner must have had a troubled life and that they are simply reacting to years of strife and troubles. It is quite another thing to understand that the harsh words coming from a loved one are not necessarily coming from anger or spite but instead from fear or pain. I think that it is naturally much easier to internalize those angry words and actions of someone close to you and therefore judge their words or actions wrongly instead of looking instead at the underlying pain or fear that may be the cause of them.

Christ came not only as a sacrifice for sin but also to bring healing into the world. We are told that when He returns he will bring to an end once and for all the pain and that this world is suffering from. However, until the Day that He returns much of the emotional healing that will occur will be through those that are called to be in the body of Christ, which is what we commonly call the Christian Church. That healing must come in the form of loving words, acts and deeds performed by those people who are true Christians. We as followers of Christ are actually meant to be the tools that He uses to bring about the healing that so many people are in such a desperate need of.

When we as Christians judge one another we prevent ourselves from being this conduit of His healing power and love. Jesus looks deep into the heart and that is where we must strive to look also. I don’t think that it is possible to be able to perceive the heart of a person without the assistance of the Holy Spirit to give us discernment. Without the help of the Holy Spirit it is all too easy to judge a person by their words or actions and completely miss that they are acting only out of fear or pain. When we judge in this manner we are missing out on an opportunity to be an instrument by which Christ is able to give His healing love through us.

I know that I have missed many opportunities to be an instrument of Christ’s love because I wrongly judged a person’s acts or words. As I continue to try and be a disciple of Christ I intend to try and look beyond the apparent outward appearances of a person and see what fear or pain may be inside that is in need of the healing love of Christ. I pray that I am able to be a person that Christ can use for healing the fear or pain instead of further confirming that people are simply not to be trusted. I seek first of all to be able to provide that healing love of Christ to those who I am closest to, but also to be able to give that love to all those who Christ will put into my path as I seek to follow in his footsteps. This is much easier said than done, as I was once a very selfish self-centered person and still have that tendency at times, but I am quite sure that this is a key part of what being a disciple of Jesus Christ is all about.

Filed Under: Christian Living, Prevenient Grace, Salvation

Getting the Questions Right

November 19, 2009 By Randy Olds Leave a Comment


Those who wish to succeed must ask the right preliminary questions. Aristotle, Metaphysics, II, (III), I.

The last six days have been the most stressful and traumatic days that I have experienced since I gave my life to Jesus Christ. I don’t have the time, space nor energy to go into detail about the events of the last week, but suffice it to say that my entire family has been affected and if it wasn’t for my faith in Christ to see me and my family through the uncharted waters that we have entered I’d probably be locked in a rubber room right now.

For those who have been reading this blog, you probably have come to understand that I had a very traumatic childhood, and that further events in my life since becoming an adult coupled with poor choices that I made because of a belief system that was all out of whack complicated my life and made finding a relationship with Christ very difficult. It has only been in the last year or so that I have moved into the light and have been able to allow God to start unraveling the mess that was my life.

I recently wrote an outline of theological topics that I feel the need to explore as I attempt to better understand God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. I still intend to tackle that outline in the upcoming months, but there are more pressing things to tend to right now.

While I have been dealing with the crises that have erupted in my life during the last week, I have spent much time in prayer. I have prayed alone for hours. I have prayed in tandem with my wife for hours. I have prayed with my pastor. I have also counseled with two of my pastors as I have tried to make sense of the trials and troubles that are besetting my family and me. I know that the love of God and my faith in Him is the only thing that will see me through the times ahead.

Some time back I asked God to rebuild me into as close of a likeness of His only begotten Son that I could be able to attain with His help in this lifetime. I realized that might be a dangerous prayer, but I meant it then and I mean it now. Following as closely in His footsteps as I possibly can is the most important thing in the world to me. The problem, of course, is finding where those footsteps lead and summoning (with the help of the Holy Spirit) the courage and strength to continue daily picking up my cross and following behind Him.

Some of the trials that I am going through are as the result of the many mistakes that I made earlier in my life. Others I perceive are deliberate attacks of the Devil as he attempts to derail my family and me as we try and follow Christ. Still others though I believe should not so much be perceived as trials, but rather the process that God is using to remove from me all of the things that will prevent Him from recreating me in His image. Although painful at times, I try and give thanks to God for everything, trusting that He is in charge and knows what the final portrait is supposed to look like.

I don’t know much about God. The one thing that I do know is that He loves me and sent His Son for me. I also know that He wants me to “Love Him with all of my heart, all of my mind, all of my soul and to love my neighbor as myself.” I’m not completely sure what that looks like nor how exactly I am to carry it out, but I am putting my trust in Him to show me.

Over the course of the last year I have come to realize that much of what I had perceived to be true for all of my life simply was not so. Even during the periods of my life where I was reasoning in a fairly lucid manner, I was reaching the wrong conclusions because I had been misinformed about facts. Once I realized that most of the things that I had assumed were true about myself as well as God and my relationship to Him were erroneous, it began to dawn on me that I didn’t even know where to begin.

The quote from Aristotle at the top of this post comes from the first page of C.S. Lewis’ book “Miracles” that I just started reading this evening and it seemed to be appropriate to where I find myself at this time in life. As I move forward through the weeks and months ahead and search for the right course to plot in my walk with God, I need to be asking the right preliminary questions. In times past I was unable to ask the correct questions because I was operating on false assumptions. Now that I have just the faintest glimpse of the reality of Christ and His love for me I am striving to ask the right questions as I move forward.

Some of the questions that I am currently asking are “How do I continue to have faith through the dark times?” “How do I exhibit God’s love back to Him, my family and everyone else that He puts into my life?” ” What does He expect from me?” “What part of the process is my responsibility and what part is God’s?” Just to name a few.

If this post seems a little disjointed, it is only because I am somewhat disjointed myself. It has been a very long emotionally exhausting week. I’m sure that more clarity will emerge in the coming days and weeks as I seek Christ’s love and guidance to attempt to walk just as He would walk.

Filed Under: Learning About God, Trials and Tribulations

Surprised By Hope – in progress

November 11, 2009 By Randy Olds Leave a Comment

I am currently about halfway through N.T. Wrights surprisingly excellent book “Surprised By Hope.” In it he gives some really interesting perspectives on Heaven, Hell and the Resurrection. I think that in the latter chapters he also discusses how our views on these subjects affects our worldview as well as our opinion of the mission of the church.

Wright has so far confirmed many of my beliefs, but he has also given me some significant food for thought in several other areas. Although I’ve read several of N.T. Wrights lengthy essays on various subjects, this is the first of his books that I have undertaken. I’ll try and give my parting thoughts of this book after I have finished it in a day or two, and then pick back up where I was at in my blog.

Filed Under: blogging
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