Constantine I, also known as Constantine the Great, served as the Emperor of Rome from AD 306 to AD 337. In AD 313 Constantine proclaimed the Edict of Milan, which tolerated Christianity in the Roman Empire. As a result of this edict, Christians, who had been despised and persecuted by the Roman Empire, could no longer be persecuted and were now granted legal status. This opened the doorway for a partnership between Christianity and the Roman Empire that eventually led to the Edict of Thessalonica, issued in AD 380, which made Nicene Christianity (Christians who agreed with the Nicene Creed) the official religion of the Roman Empire. This led to 1,700 years of what I like to think of as a “dance” between Church and State that we today sometimes refer to as “Constantinianism”. Constantinianism did not end with the fall of the Roman Empire. It continued, in a different form, in the various state churches of Europe, in Catholic, Protestant, and Eastern Orthodox countries, both before and after the Protestant Reformation. Here are the rules of Constantinianism:
In other words, the Church and the State say to each other “We allow you to exist. We accept that your power is legitimate. We will not turn against you. We agree not criticize or challenge you. You agree not to criticize or challenge us. You help us to stay in power, and we will help you to stay in power”. It was a handshake between the Church and the State, for the mutual benefit of both. Constantinianism turned Christianity from a group of despised followers of Jesus into a respected world religion. In my opinion, this was not a good development for Christianity, for several reasons:
A form of Constantinianism came to the New World with the colonists. When the thirteen colonies were settled, the Puritans controlled Massachusetts Bay Colony and the Anglicans controlled Virginia. (The Baptists established Rhode Island and the Quakers established Pennsylvania, but those two groups were strongly in favor of the separation of church and state). When the thirteen colonies came together to form “a more perfect Union”, what would be the state religion? Would the new Union be controlled by the Puritans or the Anglicans? What about the smaller pockets of Dutch Reformed, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Mennonites, Moravians, Lutherans, Baptists and Quakers who populated the other colonies? The Founding Fathers wisely decided that there would be no state religion in the new Union. They attempted to form a Union that would be godly but Anti-constantinian. How would Jesus feel about Constantinianism? Is there a subtle form of Constantinianism at work in America today? If so, is that a good thing or a bad thing? I leave that for you to decide.
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“For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ”. (1 Corinthians 2:16)
Following Jesus is like enrolling ourselves as lifetime students into the “School of Jesus”. It means learning to live as Jesus lived. The original band of disciples we learn about in the Gospels were literally followers of Jesus. Their learning environment was not a classroom. Learning was done by what we might call “peripatetic apprenticeship”, which is how masters trained their disciples. Wherever Jesus went, his disciples went. Whatever Jesus did, his disciples did. They traveled where he traveled, rested where he rested, ate what he ate and drank what he drank. They spent years of their lives listening to Jesus, watching how he lived his life, and following his example. And in the process, hopefully they were becoming more and more like Jesus. They were learning to love what Jesus loved, and to hate what Jesus hated. They were learning what provoked the anger of Jesus, and what caused his heart to break. By observing his lifestyle, by conversing with him, and by sharing their lives together, in the intimate moments of vulnerability as well as in the intense rigors of practical ministry, they were absorbing his values, feeling his heartbeat, and discerning his heart. Hopefully, in the process, they were gradually becoming more and more like him in their attitude, behavior, values, thoughts, emotions, and lifestyle. They were learning to see things through the eyes of Jesus. They were evaluating life through the lens of Jesus, and they were learning to adjust their own lifestyles accordingly. This means coming to embrace what the Bible calls the “mind of Christ”. This is the challenge for Christians in North America today: After decades of proclaiming a Gospel that is strong on “how to gain eternal life” but weak on transformative discipleship, we need to refocus not only on how to be “saved” but on how to become more like Christ, so that we might obtain “the mind of Christ”. We know that this is not done through a process of self-transformation. The Holy Spirit gradually transforms us as we study the Word of God. The Word of God and the Spirit of God work together to bring transformation into our lives as we yield to the work of God in our lives. The result is not merely a free ticket to eternal life or a free pass from eternal condemnation, but a Christlike lifestyle that flows from Christlike character. If we are not becoming more like Christ, then our “Christianity” isn’t working in our lives in the way that it was designed to work. Our character and lifestyle are molded by the way in which we look at the world around us, and by the things that we tell ourselves about God, about ourselves, and about the world. We all look at the world through the lens of our own perspectives, much like looking at everything that is going on around us through a pair of colored lenses. It’s like wearing colored shades or sunglasses at the beach. Wearing a pair of colored shades may be more comfortable than having to deal with the overbearing strength of the sun in our eyes, but it also changes the way in which we view the sky and the water and the colors all around us. We see them differently because of the lenses through which we are looking. The colors that we see through our lenses don’t match up with the colors as they actually exist in the world. Now, if our Enemy (Christians know whom I am talking about) wanted to change our perspectives of reality in order to effectively keep us from consistently understanding and embracing the mind of Christ, one tactic would be to get us to put on a set of lenses or colored glasses, without realizing that we were doing so. Then we’d be walking through life seeing everything in the wrong colors, but not recognizing that something is amiss, because we wouldn’t realize that were wearing colored lenses. Think about the effect of this over a lifetime. We always thought we knew what green and red and blue really looked like, because they have looked this way for as long as we can remember. We don’t remember seeing the colors in any other way, and we don’t remember that we ever put on a pair of sunglasses. We assume that how we are seeing things is accurate, because it is all that we have ever known. Looking at life through an altered perspective and not realizing that our perspective is off is a very great deception. So how do we get “undeceived”? How do we take off our lenses? If you’re still tracking with me, may I offer some words of advice? If you’re not tracking with me, then you can stop reading here. My goal is to encourage, not to judge or offend, and certainly not to give unwanted advice. 1) We need to start by accepting the fact that we are wearing colored lenses. We all are. It’s not possible to go through life without wearing colored lenses. We learn to view life by the way our parents and teachers and friends and relatives and neighbors have taught us to view life. It’s like the air that we breathe. It’s all around us, it’s all that we have ever known, and we don’t think very much about it. None of us can claim that the way we view life is 100% consistent with the mind of Christ. The only person who has the mind of Christ, 100%, is Christ himself. We need to be willing to admit that we are wearing colored lenses before we can start taking the steps that are necessary to take them off. 2) We need to ask God to help us to take off our colored lenses and to help us to embrace the mind of Christ. This is where faith comes in. 3) We need to immerse ourselves in Scripture. This means reading Scripture in such a way that our own ideas and opinions are challenged. We need to ask God to challenge our views that may be erroneous, rather than hunting for Bible verses that seem to reinforce our cherished views. That may be painful, but we need to be willing to endure the pain. It’s not easy to look at the sun when we’ve been wearing colored shades all of our life. 4) We need to spend much time in prayer. God is always speaking, but we hear from Him most clearly when we are in constant conversation with Him. 5) We need to beware of any “isms” that we have embraced that may be contrary to the mind of Christ. Whether it’s liberalism or conservatism or nationalism or globalism or patriotism or anti-patriotism or socialism or capitalism, as soon as we see the “ism” at the end of a word, that should be a red flag. “Isms” are colored lenses. “Isms” are much more likely to compete with the mind of Christ than to lead us into the mind of Christ. If we really want to embrace the mind of Christ, then we need to get serious about purging the “isms” out of our life. We need to take off the colored lenses of our “isms” before we can put on the mind of Christ, or we will end up looking through several sets of lenses simultaneously, sometimes confusing them with each other, and the results will be muddled. (Beware: The formula of “Christ plus ________ism" (fill in the blank with whatever “ism” grabs our attention and captivates our heart) is more likely to draw us away from the mind of Christ than to draw us into the mind of Christ. If we are not extremely cautious, this will lead us into compromised allegiances and unwarranted alliances that will draw us away from the mind of Christ and that will cause us to misrepresent Christ before the watching world. It will make us into very poor ambassadors. It will happen in very small steps, and we will not recognize that it is happening until we end up in a place where we are very far removed from the mind of Christ, without ever realizing it). Does this mean that all of our personal convictions are wrong and that we need to completely shut out all outside influences in order to gain the mind of Christ? No, but we need to be vigilant. We need to be Bible-based and Spirit-led critical thinkers. We need to read and study and think and pray and discuss and evaluate and sift and weigh and discern, but in all of our sifting and weighing and discerning we need to be surrendering all that is not of God, and we need to be seeking the mind of Christ, through intensive and disciplined study of the Word of God, as enlightened by the Spirit of God, as a part of a company of solid God-fearing and Christ-seeking worshippers of God (the Church). Remember, Jesus promised us that the Holy Spirit would guide us into all truth (John 16:13). As we study the Word of God, the Holy Spirit will guide us into embracing the thoughts and values and convictions of Jesus, and will put the spotlight on and lead us to surrender anything that we may have picked up along the way from one of our “isms” that is contrary to the mind of Christ. Am I being judgmental? I certainly hope not, and I certainly don’t mean to be. I don’t claim to be better at this than anyone else. I’m wearing colored shades, just like everyone else, but I want to take remove mine, and I hope that you want to remove your colored shades as well. I want to see the sun as it really is. I want to see the Son as He really is, so that I might become more like Him. In a year that has been characterized by an unrelenting virus that has interrupted our lives in strange and sorrowful ways, by bitterly painful racial injustice that has torn open unhealed wounds, and by a nasty political polarization that is stirring up massive amounts of anger and resentment, let’s stop fighting against each other. Let’s be a little more gentle with ourselves and with each other. Let’s recognize the Enemy’s tactics. Let’s help each other to take off our colored lenses. Together we can learn what it means to be more authentic followers of Jesus—which is what the world needs to see if we are ever going to be able to gain a hearing for Jesus! Together we can learn what it means to more fully embrace the mind of Christ. We still have two months to turn 2020 into the year when we finally start to learn something about having 2020 vision. What the Enemy meant for evil, God can use for good. |
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