The Deity of Christ

No doctrine is more important to the church than the doctrine of the nature of Christ. Christ is God. Christ is man. He is fully God and fully man. He has a human nature. He has a divine nature. Christ is fully God, but is the Son of God in relation to the Father.

The doctrine of Christ is certainly confusing, but it is no less important. Without acknowledging the deity of Christ, one cannot be a Christian. In fact, this is one of the distinctions between Jehovah's Witnesses and orthodox Christianity---the proposition that Christ is God.

That's why I was disturbed this Sunday to hear one of my young Sunday School students assert that Christ was "created" by the Father. He didn't state it as dogmatic fact, but rather he was attempting to answer a question I posed about John 1:1 - 3. I was asking the boys why John was telling us these things about Christ, and the student's answer was something to the effect of, "to let us know that after God created Jesus, Jesus created everything else." Obviously, I corrected him in love, knowing that he had no idea what he was talking about. However, I was also disheartened because he's been in church all of his life where people ostensibly are worshipping someone they claim to be, well, God. This subtle point seems to have escaped my young protege.

It has dawned on me that we have no idea what is in the heads of our children because we have no idea what's being put in their heads. As for me, I will be making a concerted effort with my co-teacher to properly teach our class the truths of Christ and the importance of same.

The Wall of Separation

Not enough Americans, Christian or otherwise, truly appreciate or understand the wall of separation which our forefathers erected between church and state. All to often, Christians hear that provocative phrase, and are jolted immediately into a diatribe about how that phrase is not in the Constitution, and how all the
Founders of our nation were Christian. Soon thereafter, they skip into a lecture about how we need prayer in school, etc.

May I be frank? I don't want a Mormon teaching my kid how to pray. Nor, I imagine, does a Mormon want me to teach his kid how to pray. People who so ardently advocate prayer in school need to take a less myopic view of their position.

For instance, let's say the teacher of the class purports to be a Christian, but fervently believes that all good people go to heaven. Now, no orthodox Christian holds such a view, which is a stranger to the Bible. But a lot of sincere people who profess Christ do hold to such a view. And I do not need a teacher with such an errant view of Christianity teaching, whether explicitly or tacitly, my child unbiblical notions about salvation or anything else.

Look, it's bad enough that once I have children the state is going to compel me, under threat of taking away my children or imprisonment, to send my child to a crappy school for eight hours a day. It's bad enough they tax my property value in order to fund that daily kidnapping. But do you have to compel my kid to go to a crappy school supplemented by errant prayers? What's more, do my fellow Christians need to be supporting this? I'm sorry, but somewhere along the way we forgot why the wall was erected: the state has no business telling my family what or how to believe on any topic of religious import.

Me and My Sweetie Pie