Posted by Mike O on: 02.08.2007 /
There’s this old dude on youtube who has had a “meteoric” rise to stardom. Perhaps you’ve heard of him … geriatric1927. It’s not too bad when you make it into wikipedia in under six months!
Anyway, this guy fascinates me. If you go to youtube and do a search on geriatric1927 you’ll find a ton of stuff he’s done, including a series of memoirs called “telling it all,” which is basically nothing more than him telling stories from his own life. I think he’s got 42 of them out there now.
Well, he gave me an idea. What if I were to just talk about the things that are going on in my life? What if a Christian were to expose to non-Christians the thoughts he has when reads scripture? What if non-Christians could see into the mind of a Christian who is serious about his faith, and was willing to be transparent about it?
I’m going to call this series “Ravings of a madman” as a tongue in cheek way of saying that I know you don’t buy it. I know you think it’s ridiculous. But perhaps it will be interesting to see how an actual Christian processes the things he reads in scripture.
To that end, as a sort of experiment, I’d like to just pass my thoughts along to you. You can take ‘em or leave ‘em. It matters not to me. Perhaps you’ll find it interesting. Perhaps not. But whatever happens, I hope it sparks interesting conversation and gives you just a little insight into the workings of one Christian’s twisted mind.
And now …. The Ravings of a Madman!
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Last Sunday, my pastor taught out of Revelation 3:14-22. This is where it says that God will “spit you out of my mouth.” Here’s a link to the audio if you’re interested. It’s the sermon from Feb 4.
To the angel of the church in Laodicea write:
These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation. I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see. Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest, and repent. Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me. To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”
Many of us have heard this before, and the part where it says, “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other!” Most people, Christians anyway, take this to mean something to the effect “I wish you either loved me or hated me, but since you are somewhere in the middle I will spit you out of my mouth.” But a little history on the city of Laodicea reveals a different, more personal rip that the angel was making on them.
Laodicea was a great center of banking and finance. It was one of the wealthiest cities of the ancient world! When Laodicea was destroyed by an earthquake in 60 A.D., they refused aid from the Roman empire and rebuilt the city from their own wealth. Regarding that city, it was written, “One of the most famous cities of Asia, Laodicea, was in the same year overthrown by an earthquake and without any relief from us recovered itself by its own resources”
This correlates directly to the phrase from the verses I quoted, “You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’”
Also, a few miles to the north was a city named Hierapolis. Hierapolis was known for it’s healing natural hot springs. And a few miles to the south was a city named Colossae (Paul’s letter to the Colossians was written to Colossae). Colossae was known for it’s refreshing natural cold springs.
What the Laodocians did was build aquaducts from Hierapolis and Colossae to bring the water from the hot- and cold springs into their city. The problem was, of course, that by the time it got there, it was neither hot nor cold. It was lukewarm - good for neither healing nor refreshing. Good for nothing.
When you think of the church in America, do you think of a healing place (HOT)?
When you think of the church in America, do you think of a refreshing place (COLD)?
Or do you see an institution that is neither not nor cold … good for nothing?
When people look at ME, do they see someone who is hot or cold? Or lukewarm??
To the … [lukewarm] church … write … you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.
To the … [lukewarm] church … write … you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see.
But also,
To the … church … write … Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline.
To the … church … write … Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.
To the … church … write … To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne.
And to the … church … write … He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.
My prayer for the church (and more importantly, myself since I’m the only one I am responsible for) is that we would be what we were meant to be. A place of healing (HOT) and a place of refreshing (COLD), and not a place of mere ritual (LUKEWARM).
Ritual, I think, is the aquaduct that people like myself build in an effort to provide what only God can provide … (healing and refreshing). And the result is something that is neither.
My prayer for the church, an institution that I love dearly, and more importantly for myself, is that we would no longer be lukewarm, but either hot or cold.
Comment by: MTran
1Mike O.,
Your madness is quite inspiring!
Your description of the hot and warm springs of Laodicea is exactly the type of information I find to be fascinating & useful in understanding scripture or any other ancient text.
If you’ve got more teachings like this, I, for one, would love to read more.
Good work!
Comment by: benjamin ady
2Mike,
I got really excited cause I thought you said you were going to expose your “non-christian” thoughts in response to Scripture reading with us. Then I read the whole post, and thought ‘huh?’. then I went back and reread your intro, and I realized you said you were going to expose your thoughts to non christians. So I was kind of bummed out. Oh well.
I don’t understand why people preach sermons from revelation. Or more specifically, why they preach the sermons they do from revelation. If I were going to preach from revelation, I would preach really subversive sermons–the sorts of sermons which I would hope would inspire people to go out and do the kinds of crazy things which could get them exiled to a deserted island by the feds, where they could then, hopefully, have totally excellent visions, and write them down. But that’s just me.
Comment by: Mike O
3I never realized that the whole “Behold, I stand at the door and knock” part was written to the church. That’s interesting to me. I mean, I still think we apply it correctly when we say to about-to-become Christians that Christ is knocking on their hearts door, won’t you let him in. But we Christians would do well to realize that, hey, he’s knocking on my heart, too. Will I let him in?? That’s a wierd thought to me because I’m already a believer.
I liked this because I could apply it to me. I can look at myself and say, “Hot or cold, dude. Be hot or cold!”
Comment by: NCxian
4Benjamin: I got really excited because I thought you said you were going to preach sermons from Revelation that would inspire people to go out and do crazy things that would give them totally excellent visions and consequently would cause them to be exiled by the feds. Oh, well . . . (I think they preach those sermons in Jamaica).
Actually, there are some really subversive sermons to be had in Revelation. And it sounds like Mike O heard one that would be pretty subversive in your average suburban church in the middle of a building campaign.
Comment by: Ir (Helen)
5Mike, I like the general principle of ‘Be hot or cold, not lukewarm!”
At the same time it makes me shudder because in the hands of some Christians I think it gets interpreted as “Go and be really pushy and obnoxious to those in your family, community and workplace who strangely have failed to embrace your beliefs and moral values so far”
And also, this strikes me as kind of nasty: “So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.”
I don’t really picture Jesus talking like this even though I think these are Jesus’ words.
And then I start getting angry at the thought that many Christians’ invalidating answer to that is “It doesn’t matter what YOUR picture is. You need to accept what the Bible says.”
Ok, so…I like the message, I shudder, I get angry…
This is one reason why I generally don’t read the Bible anymore. It’s too emotionally intense.
But that’s my issue, not yours, Mike - so, thanks for sharing your thoughts here.
Comment by: NCxian
6About the neither hot/cold passage, Helen said:
Yes, I think this is exactly how I’ve seen some folks interpret this passage.
Actually, I think I can imagine Jesus saying these kinds of things to smug, wealthy, self-centered, Jews/Christians. I would expect such disgust would be consistent with his understanding (as a Jew) of the message of the Prophets.
Helen, what did you mean when you said you think these are Jesus’ words?
Comment by: Mike O
7I actually though about that … that this is a bit subversive to the Christian community. Not to mention the fact that we’re hopefully starting a building campaign in the fall.
To Helen’s comment, do people misuse the Bible? Of course. So do I (never on purpose, though). But people misuse lots of things. A scalpel can be used to heal or kill. The fact that it can be misued does not invalidate it’s original intent. When Jesus said it, what was his intent? To bash people or to correct them?
Comment by: Mike O
8That’s a commonly held belief. I don’t know the specifics of which portions of Revelation are the words of Jesus and which aren’t, but it’s commonly held that Jesus is speaking in Revelation.
Comment by: NCxian
9Do you mean, Jesus is usually identified with a character who speaks in John’s revelation? Or that Jesus actually spoke the words while he was alive and John remembered or heard tell of them and incorporated them in his revelation?
I’ve steered clear of Revelation most of my life, but it has gotten more interesting to me lately. You just have to ignore the Left Behind crap, and it becomes a pretty interesting piece of spiritual literature.
Comment by: Ir (Helen)
10NCxian wrote:
I meant, that I think the author intended them to be understood as spoken by Jesus, because I think when the author wrote “These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation.” he meant that to be understood as a reference to Jesus.
I should have said that’s what I meant - sorry for not being clear.
NCxian - there are some interesting things in Revelation but overall it’s hard for me to get away from my sense that it (the book of Revelation, not Mike’s post :-)) is somewhat the ravings of a madman. The relish (so it seems to me) with which the extreme violence and suffering in it are described puts me off it big-time.
NCxian I hear what you’re saying about the comment which I find nasty. I understand getting angry at complacency when there is so much to be done in this world.
I think the comment bothered me because it reminded me of the rest of the book in which suffering and pain are gloried in - as long as they are happening to ‘them’ not ‘us’. That reminds me too much of a video clip I watched yesterday…
Comment by: NCxian
11I think what got me thinking differently about Revelation was a book called In God’s Time, by Craig Hill (although, I guess I was beginning to be curious about it since I picked up the book). Anyway, Hill starts with several (long and scholarly and a little boring) chapters on apocalyptic literature. It had never occurred to me that Revelation was just one of many works of a particular genre that I just wasn’t familiar with. Hill compares our reading Revelation (or Daniel) today, to somebody from biblical times trying to understand MTV. We don’t understand the style, with it’s peculiar imagery and vocabulary, so it is a very alien thing to us. Not to mention that it was written 2000 years ago.
I am not one who thinks that the Bible is designed to speak to us today if we know nothing of the context in which it was written. And the context of Revelation, which includes the history and popularity of its style, is just not very accessible to us today. I’m not sure I understand it better now, but I am intrigued to see it in that light.
Comment by: Mike O
12I don’t know what the end looks like, but assuming there is one, it will be interesting to see how it actually works. Kind of like going back after a project is completed and comparing the finished product to the documentation.
Comment by: Ir (Helen)
13Mike O wrote:
But (with all due respect) how do you know that you’re right about Jesus’ original intent and they are wrong?
Comment by: Mike O
14I don’t. But I suspect. If you look at the nature of the message of the Gospel, there is an undercurrent of love that runs through everything. The purpose is to draw people to Christ. If I apply scripture to myself and it makes me a nicer, more merciful and graceful person (more Christlike??), if it encourages an undercurrent of love in my life, then I think I’ve got it right. It can be harsh and loving at the same time.
Look at how you treat your children when they’re bad. When you apply parenting skills to your own life, it works. But if I were to come and mandate that you parent your children a certain way … even if you would have done it that way anyway … that would be terribly offensive. Even if I was right in what I said.
Same thing here … for scripture to be effective, it can only be used to modify ones own self. If I try to use scripture to make you change, I’ll just piss you off, and how is that Christlike? Rather, I will apply scripture to my own life and let people see it. And if/when others decide to apply it to themselves, that’s when we can talk about what I think the Bible says for someone else. But if someone doesn’t want to hear it, I need to keep my big mouth shut. What good is it to jam it down your throat?
Comment by: Karen
15Rant warning:
This is one of those sets of verses constantly quoted totally out of context in the churches I attended. That has really negative correlations for me, because I never felt like I got any good scholarly teaching about what Revelation was, who it was actually written to, what its historical context was, who wrote it, and how it came to be included in the bible. It was treated like this word-for-word, literal blueprint for events that would happen in our lifetimes, indeed in the near future. Presented that way, it was quite frightening.
The hot/cold dichotomy was used to bash believers over the head about whether they were “on fire for the lord” - or if they’d “gone cold” and “lost their first love.” As Helen mentions, this interpretation made some people (myself included) worried that were we not evangelising enough, not feeling enough happy-happy-joy-joy feelings about Jesus, not pushing our values hard enough, not on some emotional high all the time. No matter how much you were already doing, you could still feel guilty about not doing more.
The other negative correlation I have is that “mainstream” churches (as opposed to conservative or fundamentalist churches) were always pointed to as the “lukewarm” Christians - who someday Jesus would gag at and do a spit-take over at the gates of heaven. That always felt very superior and mean-spirited, to me.
I went to a lecture by author and journalist Jonathan Kirsch last year. He wrote a book giving all that historical context that I missed on Revelation. It’s called “A History of The End of the World, How the Most Controversial Book in the Bible Changed the Course of Western Civilization.” Really, really interesting.
Comment by: Karen
16Actually, this is exactly what author Jonathan Kirsch (obviously not a conservative Christian) concludes. As he puts it, the author of Revelation was a cranky madman on a purity quest to reform nascent Christianity - and quite possibly on some kind of a drug trip when he saw the apocalyptic visions he records. The application of Revelation to End Times theology came much later in church history, and its ideas have been co-opted by various apocalyptic movements ever since.
Comment by: Mike O
17Yup. That’s exactly what I’m saying about people pointing to other people and saying “YOU’RE lukewarm! YOU’RE not evangelizing enough! YOU’RE not passionate enough! yada yada yada.”
I just remembered a line from a play I was in where someone said “God will spit you out of his mouth,” and the next line was, “That’s ridiculous! God doesn’t spit!” I thought it was a funny line.
Comment by: MTran
18Mike O.,
A somewhat off-topic analogy hit me after reading your hot-cold post.
When it comes to media coverage of celebrities, the paparazzi and tabloids go after those who are “totally hot” or “completely cool”. If you’re in the middle, they have no interest in you.
Karen,
Thanks for the book references. I’ll keep my eyes open for The History of the End.
Comment by: Ir (Helen)
19Mike O wrote:
We definitely agree on this! :)
Comment by: MTran
20I agree with both Mike O. and Ir on this one. I never felt any particular anger or resentment toward believers of any religion until the last few years (post 9-11) when I witnessed increasingly hate filled, villification of any non-believer or “wrong” believer by the nutso Christianists who seem to be intent on turning the US into not just a theocracy but a theorcacy of the most punitive, blindered type.
It seemed to me that a new maliciousness was being infused with religion in a very dangerous way. My experiences with main-line denominations have been different. But it worries me greatly when the crazy end of the spectrum gets a stranglehold on public policy.
Comment by: Mike O
21It’s interesting the different connotations that come up with the idea of hot and cold. It never even occured to me that they would be correlated at some level to abrasiveness or negativity. But I can certainly see now how they can be.
At some level we all correlate it to passion. But how that passion plays itself out is completely different. To me, it’s an internal passion to “get it right” with God. It’s a passion towards God, and the effect of that should result in a spiritual attractiveness to people. It’s a passion to “be” something.
But what maybe happens is that it manifests itself as a passion to “do” something, and that’s where it gets screwed up, and people get hurt.
I heard it taught this way … the Bible doesn’t tell people to “go out witnessing,” (DO something), it tells Christians to “be witnesses (BE something). When I apply hot/cold to myself, it should change who I am as a person, not what I do.
Sure, it should manifest itself in what I do, but only indirectly as who I am gets more and more “right with God.”
Comment by: Laura M.
22Mike O,
Wow! I have to say when I read your idea for this ‘experiment’ I wasn’t thrilled about the concept. It would be fair to say I was a sceptic.
When you began with the book of Revelations, well >8-(
I agree with what Helen said about how Christians often use this passage, and I totally relate to how Karen described Revelations being taught in her church. (Except that in my childhood it was my aunt, uncles and grandparents who were the pastors- and the message was shouted at the top of their lungs, loud enough to shake the pews). The message was that God wanted sinners to be beat over the head with the bible, if that’s what it took to make the message sink into their thick skulls (Anyone see the movie Saved ?).
I’d never thought of a positive context, like the one you mention here, for the hot/cold (soothing/refreshing)analogy. I love how you express the idea of trying to change yourself, to strive to be a better YOU rather than forcing change on others.
It’s a ‘revelation’to me that there could be such practical lessons in the book of Revelations!
It just goes to show, once again, how important it is to put yourself out there- right out of your personal safety/comfort zone and take a risk. For me, in this example, like so many others here at this site, by listening to the lessons others have learned even when you think you’ve already heard it all before. How else would we learn things we never knew we never knew?
I hope you’ll continue with this personal experiment. You’ve already sold me on the idea.
Comment by: Laura M.
23benjamin ady,
You make laughhhhh !
I especially like the honesty about misreading Mike’s intentions and then being bummed out about it .
I had tears in my eyes (:8- 0}
Comment by: Laura M.
24benjamin,
Maybe you can talk Mike into sharing some of his NON-Christian thoughts with us…lol…lol
Comment by: Mike O
25Hey, thanks for that, Laura. I just went back and reread my original post, and reading it after having read the feedback I got, I can definitely see the negative connotations it can inspire.
The feedback has been eye-opening.
I’m starting to think I was raised in an unusually good, Christian environment. I never had anyone pounding on me. I never experienced the legalistic, fundamentalist harshness so many have seen. And that is a testament to my parents. I can honestly say that my Christian experience has been almost entirely positive. Sure, I have questions now and again, and there are things about it I would do different if I was God. But overall, my parents showed me a Christianity that wasn’t like what many of you have experienced.
Comment by: Mike O
26Me???? NON-Christian thoughts? Well, I never!!
Comment by: Mike O
27Actually, there are parts I don’t understand. Like when some people hurt other people, why do they continue to prosper? Does that count as a non-Christian thought?
Comment by: Laura M.
28Yeah, good question…why do they continue to prosper?
Talk about a bummer.