Guidance

Guidance the Monty Hall Way

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We talk much about guidance and mistakes in the Christian walk. If one sure mistake exists, it’s to eat half a bag of dark chocolate peanut M&Ms after 10:30 PM. Even now, my pancreas begs for mercy.

But I get like that when I’m pondering tough questions. One’s mind drifts in the ether, trying to solve all of life’s questions, and the hand reaches into that bag again and again. Soon, half the bag’s gone, replaced with ruing buying the dumb, corn-syruped thing in the first place.

(Drop me a line at 4:00 AM and see if I’m still wired.)

The topic that started the binge concerns open and closed doors. Evangelicalism obsesses over the idea that God opens and closes doors as part of the way He guides us. If I’d invested a dollar for every time in the last thirty years I’ve heard a Christian pray that God would open a door, my manservant, Bill Gates, would be serving me Château d’Yquem nightly in my palatial Seychelles island estate.

I’m fascinated by the open/closed door metaphor that we Christians so easily conjure for guidance. When I ponder its origins, a couple verses come to mind:

“To the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: “This is the message from the one who is holy and true. He has the key that belonged to David, and when he opens a door, no one can close it, and when he closes it, no one can open it.
—Revelation 3:7

[Paul and Timothy] traveled through the region of Phrygia and Galatia because the Holy Spirit did not let them preach the message in the province of Asia. When they reached the border of Mysia, they tried to go into the province of Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them.
—Acts 16:6-7

I believe those two verses form the backbone of the open/closed door theology many Christians use today to justify guidance and the decisions they make.

What does the open/closed door theory of guidance look like? Well, a person has a decision to make, sets before the Lord the options, then pursues the option that “opens” or abandons the one that”closes,” perceiving the opening or closing of a “door” as the sanction or denial of a particular option.

Truthfully, I’ve struggled immensely attempting to understand that view of guidance. Yet so many Christians I know live and die by the open/closed door method of discerning God’s will.

Problems abound:

  • Is an “open” door truly God’s will? I could decide to park my car on a bridge, climb on top of the railing, then hurl myself off simply because that opportunity might be open. However, there’s no guarantee that God’s going to save me from my stupidity. Nor is hurling myself off a bridge God’s will. The Bible clearly does not support self-destruction, so it can never be God’s will to attempt to destroy one’s person. Satan tried that same temptation with the Lord, if we remember!
  • Is a “closed” door truly closed? The door was obviously closed to the woman who pleaded with the judge to vindicate her against her enemy. She got nowhere with the judge. One day, though, under her persistent badgering, he relented, and she received what she desired. Should we use that verse to justify banging on closed doors?
  • Is a “closed” door the result of God willfully closing it or from the interference of evil spiritual forces. (Likewise, could evil open a door?) Woo! Don’t ask too many of your Christian friends to deal with that one! Would a little extra prayer open the closed door? Remember, as Jesus noted, some closed doors that involve the demonic can only be resolved with prayer and fasting. They may eventually open.

It gets more complex than this, too.

Let’s look at two options:

  • Door A offers a possibility that flies in the face of conventional Christian thinking. Many Christians would reject it, though they may do so based more on enculturation than explicit Scriptural admonition. For the person faced with this door, its opening would provide an immediate solution that, while not popular with some, would offer more immediate benefits.
  • Door B offers a more traditional solution, but with more uncertainty and fewer immediate benefits, with the distinct possibility of fewer long-term benefits (or outright hardship). This door has the blessing of more Christians.

What, then, would one do if God “opens” Door A and not Door B? Walking through Door A might garner serious brickbats from fellow Christians. But didn’t God “open the door?”

On the other hand, if Door A is rejected in hopes that Door B opens, what happens if Door B stays “closed?” Are Church people willing to come to the aid of the person who rejects A on principle only to have B fail to open? Which door? The lady or the tiger?My own experience in this scenario doesn’t give me much comfort that the Church will pick up the slack should someone take the tough stand and resist open Door A, only to later find Door B wedged shut. It also raises the troubling question that God doesn’t seem to know what He’s doing because He didn’t open the more popular “Christian” option.

I’ve had more than a few people tell me I’m one of the smartest people they’ve ever met. But being (supposedly) smart doesn’t resolve this open/closed door dilemma, at least for me. I know that when I face open/closed doors, particularly when the situation is pressing, I can rarely figure out what to do. As I get older, I find that indecisiveness growing rather than lessening. So much for the wisdom of the aged!

The problem of the open/closed door doesn’t always resolve through reading Scripture either. Some situations become one of “damned if you do, and damned if you don’t” and one can pile up Scriptures on either side to the point of utter confusion.

Some claim they make decisions by sensing more peace in one option than the other, yet I’ve seen the “peaceful” door turn out to have tigers lurking behind it. So I’m not sure the peace angle works.

I tend toward the countercultural angle, as I find that the wisdom of the culture reflects as no wisdom at all. Certainly not God’s wisdom. That means I often choose the door that runs counter to prevailing wisdom. I’m finding that, more often than not, my feet wind up on the narrow road, unpopular though it may be, even with other Church people.

Some may say that whatever path one winds up on reflects God’s will, but that doesn’t sit well with me, especially when following that supposedly God-directed path generates catcalls from other Christians, often the very ones who most support God’s sovereignty in all things. What, they’re suddenly not happy with God’s leading because it looks unconventional?

So I don’t know about the open/closed door means of discernment. It poses too many traps, too many Gideon-like fleeces, little of it reflecting true faithfulness. While God may very well lead that way, it may be the exception rather than the rule.

A Lesson on the Spirit from the Three Little Pigs

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My son and I were discussing the moral ramifications of “The Three Little Pigs,” when a thought struck me. A peculiarly theological thought.

Young pigs strike out from home to seek their fortunes in the world. Each encounters a man carrying a building material. Each builds a home from that building material. Depending on which version of the story you read, the first two pigs either wind up as so much meat sticking to the Big Bad Wolf’s ribs or they escape to the third pig’s impregnable fortress of brick wherein they turn the tables on the wolf and make soup out of HIM.

Being the curmudgeonly type, I prefer the more dire outcome for the two foolish pigs. I mean, the wolf was just being true to type. Why should HE suffer?

Anyway…

You can’t read that story and miss the appellation slathered on the first two pigs: foolish.

But do we ever think why?

In the story I read with my son, the pigs went their separate ways. The first one encounters a man selling straw. In some parts of the world straw makes for a perfectly legitimate building material. How smart of the pig to transact some business and build a house. A house is better than no house, right? I would think so. It rains on the just and the unjust—and on pigs, too. A roof overhead when it’s raining feels pretty darn good.

The second pig, having not heard of the misfortune that eventually caught up with his sibling, contracted with another man to buy wood for his house. Seeing as most of us live in houses made of wood, The one who endured to the end...we’re that second pig. Wood makes a fine house save for encounters with F5 tornadoes and wolves of unusual lung capacity. But that pig was still foolish.

The third pig bode his time and just so happened to come across a man selling bricks. The rest is fairy tale history.

“So, Dan,” you’re saying, “I’ve got 1,732 other blogs to read today. Get to the point.”

Some circles of Christianity, at least in my opinion, have a low view of the Holy Spirit. He seals us for salvation and helps us understand Scripture, but He’s sort of shy and quiet otherwise, kind of the introvert of the Trinity. At least as some would paint Him. He certainly doesn’t go around guiding people. We have all the guidance we need from the Scriptures and there’s no possible reason why we’d need the Holy Spirit to tell us anything apart from what any of us would find in the Book.

Tell that to Pig 1 and Pig 2.

So a man comes up to you with some straw. The pragmatist in your swinish self informs you that straw would make a decent house. The opportunity is right before you. You never know when that straw’s going to show up again. Being quite the religious pig, you consider that God makes straw, right? It’s good stuff. God said so. Plus, you hate being rained on.

Straw it is.

Or a man comes up to you with wood. Strong stuff that wood! Would make a fine house. God makes trees. Plenty of God’s little creatures live in trees. They do okay by God’s trees. And then there’s that Noah guy. Gotta love that wooden boat and all the protection it gave. You’ve been to Sunday School, so…

Wood it is.

Next thing you know, you and your brother’s little digested corpses are so much steaming wolf scat on the side of the road.

What went wrong?

I see this happen in the lives of a lot of Christians. Because they’ve chopped out the Spirit’s ability to speak to them, they make pragmatic choices rather than godly ones. Straw and wood may be perfectly good building material in all but the most bizarre cases. But what does the Spirit say? Would He tell us to hold out for something that might be coming down the road that we can’t see, but He can? Would He ask us to endure the rainstorm for a few more days until the man with bricks enters the scene and saves the day?

For all we know, straw and wood may be our only choices. The pragmatist says to strike while the iron’s hot, to make the most of the opportunities God affords us. But what does the Spirit say?

The storyteller deems the third pig wise. In the eyes of the first two, he’s a fool because he had the opportunity to buy decent building material, but he didn’t. Those first two pigs didn’t have the God’s-eye view, though.

For the truly Spirit-led Christian, of which there seems to be few in this age of pragmatic churchmen, heeding the Spirit occurs throughout the day. The kind of guidance received can’t always be traced back to the Book. Consider this disciple:

Now there was a disciple at Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision, “Ananias.” And he said, “Here I am, Lord.” And the Lord said to him, “Rise and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul, for behold, he is praying, and he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight.”
—Acts 9:10-12

That’s some mighty fine guidance that disciple received, but he didn’t get it by reading the Book, did he? He took that guidance rather conventionally, too, since the next verse finds him arguing about it with the Lord. Perhaps he was used to the Lord speaking to him. I can’t see any of us in the same situation, the audible voice of God telling us to drive to Death Valley to change the tire of some couple who would be open to hearing the Gospel right there amid the rattlesnakes, and us saying, “But, Lord….” I suspect that the vast majority of us would keel over from fright, our hair bleached white, because it’s far too out-of-the-ordinary that the Holy Spirit should actually guide us like the Book says He will.

Straw was good. Wood was better. Brick was best. How often do we settle for straw because we weren’t listening to the Spirit’s call to hold out for something better? Because we’re so deaf to the sound of the Savior’s voice, we may never know the difference between the pragmatic solution and the one that’s spiritually discerned. But difference there is and the only way to know it is to have the Lord shout it right in our deaf ears until we hear it as a whisper.

Then we’re getting somewhere.