7 Myths Debunked in The Total Money Makeover

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"Myth: You can get a good deal on a new car at 0% interest."

"Truth: A new car loses 60% of its value in the first 4 years; that isn’t 0%."

"A good used car that is less than three years old is as reliable or more reliable than a new car. A new $28,000 car will lose about $17,000 of value in the first four years you own it. That is almost $100 per week in lost value. To understand what I’m talking about, open your window on your way to work once a week and throw out a $100 bill."

"USA Today notes that the average car payment is $464 over sixty-four months. Most people get a car payment and keep it throughout their lives. As soon as a car is paid off, they get another payment because they “need” a new car. If you keep a $464 car payment throughout your life, which is “normal,” you miss the opportunity to save that money. If you invested $464 per month from age 25 to age 65, a normal working lifetime, in the average mutual fund averaging 12 percent (the seventy-year stock market average), you would have $5,458,854.45 at age sixty-five. Hope you like the car!"

If We Are Doing Anything Different Than What Is In the New Testament, Please Tell Us. Okay...

 THE REASON I POST ARTICLES

The primary reason I post articles is to increase awareness through questioning our assumptions. Our assumptions determine what our conclusions/beliefs are, so if we never challenge our assumptions with new information, then we will always draw the same conclusions. 

Unless we already know everything, then not allowing new information and never wrestling with our assumptions is not wise behavior. We will only become more isolated and delusional about what is true, especially in the Information Age where everyone has access to reliable information. Never has there been an age when we can appear more foolish.

Another reason I post articles is because, generally speaking, we do not know our own history. God commands Christians to "mature" and "grow" (Eph. 4:11-15; 2 Pet. 3:18) just as much as He commands baptism (Acts 2:38), so not realizing and not acknowledging that we interpret the Bible and that we have inherited the power structures and systems already in existence when we were born into this world will also contribute to unnecessary and peculiar behaviors that are obvious to others, but not to ourselves.

These peculiarities are not favorable as we would like to think they are, but actually make us odd because they lack integrity. If they were peculiarities that showed that we go out of our way to apply to ourselves what we expect of others in matters commonly called "doctrine," then that would truly make us different from the world in a respectable and honorable way. This is not how we are "peculiar."

Why Do People Eat The Lord's Supper in Church Buildings Instead of Homes?

"Many institutions and elements of institutions which have sometimes been thought to belong to primitive Christianity belong, in fact, to the Middle Ages.--Edwin Hatch

"Experience supplies painful proof that traditions once called into being are first called useful, then they become necessary. At last they are too often made idols, and all must bow down to them or be punished."--J. C. Ryle

"Protestants (as well as Catholics) do not practice the Supper the way it was observed in the first century. For the early Christians, the Lord's Supper was a festive communal meal. The mood was one of celebration and joy. When believers first gathered for the meal, they broke the bread and passed it around. Then they ate their meal, which then concluded after the cup was passed around. The Lord's Supper was essentially a Christian banquet."--Frank Viola

"When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table. And he said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God.” After taking the cup, he gave thanks and said, “Take this and divide it among you.For I tell you I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you" (Luke 22:14-20).

"While they were eating, Jesus took bread...When they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives" (Matt. 26:26-30).

"The word deipnon (1 Cor. 11:20), meaning "dinner," tells us that it was not a token meal (as it has become since) or part of a meal (as it is sometimes envisaged), but an entire, ordinary meal. The term indicates that this is the main (normally evening) meal, the one to which guests were invited. The breaking and distribution of the bread was the normal way of commencing such a meal, just as the taking of a cup was the usual way to bring it to a conclusion, prayers of blessing accompanied both."--Robert Banks

"It is not in doubt that the Lord's Supper began as a family meal or a meal of friends in a private house. The Lord's Supper moved from being a real meal into being a symbolic meal."--William Barclay

Why Do People Dress Up For Church?

 

Man made doctrines like "give your best to God" are often cloaks for clerical control that compartmentalize rich and poor and sustain ethnic and class divisions, but what else should we expect from a dualistic Christianity?

With dualism, we expect to look and act differently when "religious" than while we are "in the world."

 

When a foundational part of western Christianity's hermeneutic is to be "called out" of the world (which is NOT what ekklesia means--it was a political assembly called together), and when we view worship as "separate from the rest of life," then there are bound to be manifestations like dressing up for church to show that you are giving your best to God. Often it comes across as simply a means for the self righteous to shame all who disagree with them.

Here is yet another inherited "doctrine" that in many places in the institutional churches is a cause of division (Rom. 16:17), perhaps because people fear an established hierarchy, and/or they have been taught that this human tradition is another factor of "faithfulness." If not in word, then certainly by example.

When and where did our modern practice originate? As we will see from James 2:1-13, it was not first century Christianity.