Best of Cerulean Sanctum

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.

Need? What Need?

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August 3rd’s The Wall Street Journal ran a philanthropy story on Doris Buffet, the sister of billionaire Warren Buffet. She has a homey charity called the Sunshine Lady Foundation from which she intercepts letters of need addressed to her brother and meets those needs with small gifts of cash averaging $4,800.

Here’s a snippet from that WSJ article:

Marie Delahoussaye, a widow in Texas, asked for money to replace an obsolete hearing aid that “whistles.” In neat, black cursive script on green-lined memo paper she wrote, “Please consider helping me. I live very frugally. I don’t waste anything.”

Ms. Buffett paid for two hearing aids that cost about $1,800 total. Ms. Delahoussaye—who says she never expected to receive a response—says the devices have helped her reconnect with friends and her community. Before getting the hearing aids, “I couldn’t hear the phone ring,” she says. “I would go to church and couldn’t hear the sermon.” She says the experience has reaffirmed her faith in strangers. “This has made me realize there are still good people in the world,” she says.

A story that makes the heartstrings sing, right?

But did anyone here catch the deeper issue? This elderly widow couldn’t hear the sermons at her church. She writes to Warren Buffett. Doris Buffett comes to her assistance. And this hearing-impaired widow gets her new hearing aids. She says it reaffirms her faith in strangers.

But at whose expense does that reaffirmation come?

You see it? I hope I’m not the only one asking, “Where was her church?” I hate to think that she mentioned this to people at her church and no one did anything. It seems that way, though, doesn’t it?

We sometimes fall into this “God helps those who help themselves” mentality that flies in the face of the Gospel. I mean, if we won’t help an increasingly deaf widow, who will we help?

It pains me to think that we still live lives that rarely consider our neighbors. I’ve been accused by other Christians of preaching some kind of new utopia in which the Church meets everyone’s needs. That’s not true. I do, though, believe that many needs, particularly for community, are going unmet by our churches. We are His hands...Monetary needs, too. I don’t see how anyone in a church can buy a second car when some people in that same church can’t even afford to buy one. We’re buying all sorts of disposable junk for ourselves while others in our churches are barely getting by. There’s one word for that: evil.

Now it may be that the elderly widow quoted never made an attempt to contact anyone in her church about her problem. But even then, how is it that her first thought for help went outside the church rather than within it?

Do you see the PR problem there?

If folks in the pews realize that they might as well not even trouble anyone in their church for help because they know they probably won’t get it, what does that say to people outside the church? If we won’t take care of our own, how are we any better than some bridge club or secular fraternal organization? Actually, scratch that. The bridge club and secular fraternal organization would’ve done something to help.

Why do I harp on this topic so much? Because we’re just not getting it. A few churches understand, but not enough. Some are still stuck on believing that they can’t do anything to meet a need lest they somehow trample on God’s sovereign turf. Who knows? Maybe God’s trying to teach that person something; if we help that will only foul up God’s discipline. That’s baloney, though. The Bible is clear: See the need, meet the need. As I’ve been learning, we’re to always lead with love. God won’t punish us if we step in to help someone because we take seriously His command to be servants. On the flip side, we will be chastised if we don’t help. (Sheep and goats—Matthew 25:31-46—anyone?)

If we don’t understand who we are in Christ, then of course we’ll let the need go unmet. If we don’t understand that we have been given the storehouse of heaven because we’re heirs to the Kingdom, then of course we’ll be stingy. If we haven’t died at the cross, then of course we’ll be looking out for our own self-interests at the expense of others. Of course we won’t want to go without something we don’t need so that someone else can have their pressing need met. Why would we give up any of our wants so we can help someone else?

Yet Christ gave up His very life for us so that we can have the riches of heaven! What ingrates we can be. That some old lady can’t hear her pastor’s sermons, yet no one in her church will help. What kind of sermon is that guy preaching anyway, that his listeners can’t see how much Christ has lavished on them so they can lavish His bounty on others in need?

If I don’t instill in my son that we go without certain things we want so we can use the money to help others in need, then it doesn’t matter how many Bible verses he’s memorized, he’s been deprived of the heart of God. I fear that too many Christian parents brainwash themselves and their kids into a sense of entitlement that stomps on the Gospel. God help us should the next generation be even more stingy than we’ve become.

Are you angry now? Truly righteously angry? I am.

See also:

Sinners or Saints?

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Driving home this evening, I got to thinking about what I’ve written here the last few days. Much of it centers around how we Christians perceive ourselves and what Christ has done for us. Saints of the Most High God!It’s the question of whether we see ourselves as sinners or saints.

The more I read the Scriptures, the more I realize we’re misunderstanding the extent of Christ’s work on the cross. And in that misunderstanding, we fall back into a grossly mistaken position.

The New Testament draws clear lines of distinction between sinners and saints. We, however, like to blur those distinctions whenever we call our post-conversion selves “sinners.” But I don’t see Paul going back to that well all the time. When he writes a letter to a church, he doesn’t say, “To all the sinners in the church of….” No, he repeatedly uses the word saints.

In truth, you and I are saints who are being changed by God through the putting off of our old sin nature. Our identities got swapped out. God doesn’t look at us as sinners, but saints because of the salvation purchased for us by Christ.

So why is it that so many of us go back to that hangdog “sinner” appellation? Aren’t we giving up what Christ did for us at the cross? If we truly are new creations in Christ, if He’s paid the penalty on our behalf, and He’s secured for us access to the Father, why do we fall back into thinking of ourselves as sinners and not saints?

If anything, the epistles drive this home:

So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
—Romans 6:11

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
—Galatians 2:20

So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.
—Galatians 4:7

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God…
—Ephesians 2:19

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.
—1 John 3:1a

If we don’t have this mentality, then we’re missing out on what it means to be alive in Christ.

We then

  • set our expectations low and don’t believe God for the impossible because we still think we’re aliens and strangers,
  • fail to appropriate what Christ has purchased for us on the cross, because we mistakenly think the sinner in us is triumphant over the saint, and
  • muddle through and lament, rather than walk in our inheritance as children of God.

I’ve got to believe that our failure to move beyond identifying primarily as sinners is one reason why our churches lack power. It explains why so much of what we attempt for the Kingdom fails. It shows why so many of us limp through our days rather than rising on wings like eagles.

Church, it’s time to step out of the sinner ghetto and walk in the sainthood Christ so dearly paid for!