Question:

“Would Mill Creek Community Church accept funds that were procured by gambling; say, for instance, if someone purchased a single lottery ticket and won a huge pot?”

Answer:

I thought about this when everything happened with the pharmacist who diluted chemotherapy prescriptions. He used money he gained that way to help his church in their building program! That church is now working to pay back the amount of money that came from that man…about one million dollars. Wow.

The lottery/gambling question is a little different, of course. I will only give a personal response as ultimately this kind of question would go before the Board of Elders…and perhaps before the entire church…for a decision.

In the case of the ill-gotten gains I mentioned earlier, the church has the opportunity to give the money back to those it came from (it will go to the victims of the crime). In the case of a lottery system, giving the money back is not an option. When someone receives funds in some inappropriate way we often discuss “righting the wrong” by giving the monies to a charity or some non-profit. In this case, the church is such a non-profit. I guess what I am saying is that I might feel odd rejecting the money as I would not know what else to recommend the person do with it!

Having said all of that, I do not encourage gambling. I have spoken before the State legislature opposing it, I have spoken to and known families destroyed by the industry. I feel that it draws out the worst in people. It appeals to unchristian motives not to “get rich quick” (Prov. 23:4; 28:22). In my mind it indignifies man by offering him an elusive and grotesquely desperate hope in something he that should not be a source of hope.

That gambling has become a part of American culture now raises these odd questions. I would also not suggest to school systems and other organizations that they refuse money received from the gambling industry. I realize that this situation may serve to perpetuate the gambling industry…and I do see that as a problem. Perhaps if any good can come out of this strange obsession, maybe we should seize it.

Again, those are my thoughts, not an official Mill Creek response.

Question:

Keeping the Law requires performance and compliance which can never be done. The Pharisees were experts at trying to do this. They were disciplined to a fault trying to look good but they were crooked as snakes. Yet, we as Christians still need to live disciplined lives. Paul tells Timothy to discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness. Spiritual disciplines are still valuable. On the surface keeping the Law and living a disciplined life look a lot alike…What do you think?

Answer:

Great question. Paul was clear that the absence of Law does not mean the absence of standards for those under grace. The difference is that under the Law standards had to be administered externally and forcefully. It was a system of obligation and not transformation. The believer under grace is empowered by the Spirit to change from within (the promise of the “spirit within” that Ezekiel foretold, 36:25-28). The spiritual disciplines we talk about appeal to something living and real inside…which is what the Law could never do. It could only whip from the outside. One who is “in the Spirit” (i.e., a believer) is “led” by the Spirit because he is a “son” (8:14). The language is rela*onal, not legal.

Sometimes believers in the rush of life forget that they are sons and not slaves. They act as though under law instead of crying “Abba! Father!” (8:15). Paul described a frustraion at his own failure as a believer (Rom. 7:14-21), but remember that for the unbeliever he describes hostility toward God and a totally inability to please him (Rom. 8:6-7).

Paul is teaching that the difference between living the Law and living a “disciplined life” (as a believer) lies in the administra*on of the standards (external versus internal) and in the experience with the standards (inability versus ability).

Question:

“I have a friend at school who said that the Christian belief that God ‘always was’ is no different than another belief that matter always was. So he said that evolution and creation are on the same footing. This doesn’t sound right–how do I respond to this?”

Answer:

First, I’m impressed that you are doing this in the first place. It’s gutsy!

This is an old problem. If you start with “something”–that something had to come from something, and that something had to come from something else, etc. This becomes an infinite chain that is unresolvable. This is referred to as the “problem of infinite regress.” But it is the problem for the materialist (or evolutionist), not the theist.

The Christian position is this:

1. Everything that has a beginning also has a cause. This is self evident (or obvious), but can easily be demonstrated. Any motion certainly has a cause. Wind has a cause. Electricity and phone books have causes. We can identify causes to these things as having been ordered by some set of conditions.

2. The Universe clearly had a beginning. One thing we know about the universe is that it is expanding. Red Shift and Doppler technologies have pretty well established this. If it is all expanding over time, and we can reverse the expansion, it is obvious that it all came from one point in time (scientists call this the “singularity”). This is what we popularly call the “Big Bang” and is the point of creation.

3. God is the point of origin for everything…the one reality without a beginning…the author of the Big Bang. We say he is the “uncaused cause.” He is the end of the infinite chain I mentioned–because He is infinite. This is consistent with the idea that everything with a beginning has a cause. At some point there has to be an uncause cause or nothing would ever be here.

So the Christian claim is NOT that everything must have a prior cause. This would be a claim for that infinite chain, which is an unworkable idea. Your friend’s claim seems to support the infinite chain. But an “infinite” is only theoretical, we NEVER see one in reality. If the universe is infinite and involves and infinite set of events prior to the current time, then the current time would never come–because this current time would break the set of infinite events leading up to this time. The universe is not infinite.

Theists (those who believe that God created) claim that natural mechanisms (like natural selection) cannot account for the complexity of living beings. There are three popular arguments for this:

1. Because of complexity in general. The 2nd law of thermodynamics says that order tends to disorder. Evolution is a direct contradiction of this universal law: claiming that simple organisms somehow organize, gather complex information, and complicate themselves. In organism, mutations tend to be destructive. How is it that evolution works in this kind of universe?

2. Because of “Specified complexity” – this phrase refers to the kind of complexity you see in language–which is also the kind of complexity in languages (human or computer). Natural causes never produce this kind of complexity. This is William Dembski’s phrase (he wrote a book called “Intelligent Design”).

3. Because of “Irreducible complexity” – this is Michael Behe’s phrase showing that even the simplest organisms could not be explained by evolution (he uses the hair of a bacterium as his illustration–his book is “Darwin’s Black Box”).

These are complicated issues and difficult to talk about. You may want to do a little reading before tackling the question…but don’t feel like you have to know everything about it to ask a few questions of your friend!

Question:

I’m new to Mill Creek and I don’t know much about our second campus at McCoy.  Where can I find more information about the McCoy campus?

Answer:

We’re so glad you’ve joined us at Mill Creek!  We prepared a list of 10 questions and answers about our new campus and its uses. View the McCoy F.A.Qs.