Tip Your Sacred Cows

First off, take about eight minutes to watch this beautifully shot, and compelling odd, film, Venom and Fire.




Like i said, odd huh? But i'm not trying to make fun of these people or the things they believe. When we finally know as we are known, there are probably things i do, and believe, that will make running around the auditorium with a molotov cocktail seem pretty mundane. And there's no doubt that these people sincerely believe what they're doing is within the boundaries of Biblical Christianity. That makes them sincerely wrong of course, but in many ways it makes them preferable to whatever the latest megachurch craze is by the time you're reading this!

There are sacred cows in every church, every movement, every denomination. And we need to find them, and tip them over.

We find them, first of all, by looking to the Bible. Protestants are people of the book. We're Protestants basically because we believe that the Word forms the Church, not the other way around. It's not just as simple as that, but i think that's a decent summary. We're not saved by handling snakes, or wearing a tie, or reading the King James, but by trusting Christ for salvation, as it tells us in the Bible. Would that guy go to Hell if he stopped handling snakes? No! Will your church be Ichabod if you try something new this weekend? No! But we all have this golden calfs that we can't see beyond. The subjects of this film's are fairly obvious, but only because they're not the same as ours.

We're all like Solomon, we don't know how to come in or how to go out. We all need the wisdom that's from above. And we need protecting from extra Biblical practices, because what we practice is what we believe. We need to know the Bible well enough so that we don't think that just because Paul handled a snake in Malta, we all do. It's the same thing that leads to advocates of homosexuality pulling random verses out of Leviticus to argue with. They could save time by simply tweeting, 'i don't understand how the Bible works.' But we, people of the book, should. Practice like this should drive us back to our Bibles, humble and childlike, making sure we are the people of the book we say we are.

'People say, if I come to your church you'll throw a snake on me.' Well that would put me off! But what extra Biblical expectations put people off coming to your church or to mine? What they have to wear? What they have to do? We may not handle snakes, but if there's something outside the Gospel that puts visitors off, what can we do about it? What sacred cows must we tip? Where are our snake boxes and flaming bottles?