altar calls, so-called ..

altar calls
been through many thousands of them
got to the place some years ago where they became .. irksome almost

well, that's heresy right there, I suppose
(although what I've seen pass for 'christian' in my lifetime often has more qualifications along those lines) ..
it's just that the set-up for it leaves me wondering if much of it isn't an emotional response, kinda like watching a tear-jerker, and emotional responses don't seem to me to resolve much over the long term .. I know that as a matter of personal fact, both in my own life and in many many others ..

I am an emotional person for sure; every human should be ..
one of the great errors of certain strains of evengelicalism, and too, Protestantism at large, is the hard-driving teachings against emotions - trusting them, putting too much weight behind them, etc., to the point where we almost thought them to be sinful ..
in my think on it, emotions are a valid part of the human experience, but we must be people of balance ..

commitment can involve emotions for sure, but it calls for consideration too ..
perhaps those altar calls simply call for a bit more consideration on both the part of the preacher and the preachee ..

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Jesus asked a couple of questions one time, in the context of being his disciples ..
(and make no bones about it, that's precisely what we're talking about when we consider becoming a Christian, as he himself said " go into the world at large and make disciples of all people groups .. ", or similar .. and disciple is far far more than a response to an 'altar call') ..

at Luke 14:25 ff, Jesus throws up all kinds of red flags to the large crowd following him, like they were playing they wanted to 'follow' him .. like hating your family and your own life ..

and then he went parabolic, told the story of the person building without counting the cost before hand, and the king going into battle without first considering whether he could win with the army he had, or should negotiate terms of peace .. both are foolish moves ..
ipso facto, when you think about following Jesus, think a little deeper than the Romans Road, altar calls to the sound of whiny background music, gold crosses, and fish tattoos .. which accounts for the tragic shortage of disciples in a nation so readily confused with 'christian' on the world stage .. sorry .. it's true ..

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one other comment about altar calls .. there is no such thing as an 'altar' in a christian church .. sorry .. that's true too ..


when Paul says to offer up our bodies to God as a living sacrifice, he wasn't thinking about an altar at the front of a church; he was thinking purely personal ..

altars had their rightful place in the kingdom of Israel - they were the place where the blood of sacrificed animals was offered symbolically for sin ..
but this is a new kingdom in which new wineskins are called for - the kingdom of God, which Jesus preached everywhere, all the time, to everyone ..

for this age there is but one altar, one sacrifice, one high priest - Jesus was both of the latter, and the cross his place of sacrifice ..
and that was a one-off thing, never ever to be repeated

christianity has become the place of a different kind of priest, lording-it over people - that was never Jesus' intention when he built his church .. so we have elevated persons, standing before pulpits, staging their religion for the masses ..

it bodes us well, methinks, to bear in mind the Hebrews call: " we have an altar from which those who serve in the Tabernacle have no right to eat " .. not inside the Jewish tabernacle or temple, but outside the camp, where the sacrificed animals were burned ..
let us go to him there, bearing his reproach with him (Hebrews 13:10-14)

that's a whole different kind of 'altar' right there .. it's an altar of self-sacrifice and soul-bloodletting, running thick in the dirt

so when we pander to these newfangled ideas and inventions of men, derived for the purpose of 'drawing' people, to slay people, to count people for their baptisms and memberships and 'tithes'-so-called, we play to a tune foreign to the ears of Jesus the Christ, whose only music was the pleas of the hurting, the sick, the dead, and, finally, the death-calls from the religious and the hammerstrikes from the imperialisits, and one or two tearfilled groans from the women that followed him, and his best friend ..

altars are dead, for the dead

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it's also worth considering that the place of Communion or Lord's Supper is not kneeling at some altar, but sitting at a table with equals, siblings of Jesus, sharing as one, remembering his death ..

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these thoughts were prompted by an article i read today in which the author kinda reminisces about the old tent meeting revivals and kinda misses altar calls ..
just so you know ..

peace to you