Discernment

Rethinking Evangelicalism’s Tropes #1: “Rescue Those Who Are Being Taken Away to Death”

Standard

In the late 1980s, I was an active footsoldier in Operation Rescue, the anti-abortion organization. Not a leader. Not an organizer. But one of the grunts who did the protests and paid for doing so. I have the battle scars. You may disagree with me if you will, but you can’t challenge my experiences.

I met some of the most concerned and dedicated people in Operation Rescue. Better people than I am. I was committed to the cause. For those others, though, the cause was their life.

I think there’s a powerful spiritual delusion that accompanies the pro-“choice” side. Planned Parenthood used to hide behind the mask of “helping women,” but their rabid opposition to General Electric’s 4D sonogram technology tore away that mask several years ago. Though the 4D technology would help women immensely, especially healthwise, it has the side effect (a negative one from Planned Parenthood’s perspective) of showing the developing fetus in crystal clarity. Makes it much harder to abort one’s child when that child flashes you a winning smile from the womb.

In short, Planned Parenthood doesn’t give a damn about women’s health. They love the money that comes from killing babies.

As for Operation Rescue, while it had a large Roman Catholic contingent, the most conservative of conservative Evangelicals made up the rest. A Rescue meeting had a lot of Bible in it, at least the ones I attended. Rescue’s name and rallying cry come from this passage in the Bible:

Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter. If you say, “Behold, we did not know this,” does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it, and will he not repay man according to his work?
—Proverbs 24:11-12

The first sentence was the major theme, but what followed was often used for garnering new recruits for Rescue.

Today, I’m not active in Operation Rescue or the prolife movement. I haven’t been in 20 years. That said, I didn’t leave because of grudges or snits. I left because I felt there had to be a better way.

It’s not that babies weren’t saved. They were. But it seemed a lot of effort went into Rescue that could have been more effective if channeled into the mission Jesus gave us:

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
—Matthew 28:19-20

Jesus adds this insight:

For the one who is not against us is for us.
—Mark 9:40

We tend to interpret the Bible willy-nilly. Whatever suits our position winds up quoted.

But how can we as the Church interpret anything from the Bible without a reference back to the mission Jesus gave us? I would contend that everything we do as Christians must be viewed through the lens of Matthew 28:19-20 or else we are off our mission, the mission the Lord gave us straight from his lips.

In light of this, how then should we interpret Proverbs 24:11-12?

Are we to rescue babies alone? No, we are to rescue anyone being led away to death. And since anyone whose name is not written in the Lamb’s book of life will taste the eternal agony of the second death, working to rescue those stumbling toward it becomes our primary job. The only way to interpret Proverbs 24:11-12 is that we are tasked to ensure that no one, no matter how deserving, ends up being led off to that hellish slaughter.

Physical death is horrible. In the case of the death of the unborn, babies being ripped apart in the womb should shock and horrify anyone whose soul hasn’t been seared. But the second death is an order of magnitude more horrifying than any of that. We just choose not to think it is.

Leonard Ravenhill, a favorite of this blogger, wrote this:

Charlie Peace was a criminal. Laws of God or man curbed him not. Finally the law caught up with him, and he was condemned to death. On the fatal morning in Armley Jail, Leeds, England, he was taken on the death-walk. Before him went the prison chaplain, routinely and sleepily reading some Bible verses. The criminal touched the preacher and asked what he was reading. “The Consolations of Religion,” was the reply. Charlie Peace was shocked at the way he professionally read about hell. Could a man be so unmoved under the very shadow of the scaffold as to lead a fellow-human there and yet, dry-eyed, read of a pit that has no bottom into which this fellow must fall? Could this preacher believe the words that there is an eternal fire that never consumes its victims, and yet slide over the phrase without a tremor? Is a man human at all who can say with no tears, “You will be eternally dying and yet never know the relief that death brings”? All this was too much for Charlie Peace. So he preached. Listen to his on-the-eve-of-hell sermon:

“Sir,” addressing the preacher, “if I believed what you and the church of God say that you believe, even if England were covered with broken glass from coast to coast, I would walk over it, if need be, on hands and knees and think it worthwhile living, just to save one soul from an eternal hell like that!

For all the time and energy the prolife movement has invested in fighting for the unborn, I keep wondering how many more gains we could have made if we focused on ensuring not one soul ended up in hell forever. Converts to our faith don’t tend to abort their unborn children. And in making those converts a priority, aren’t we in fact rescuing two people?

Sometimes, the good is the enemy of the best.

Making Sense of Confusing Christian Voices

Standard

A reader wrote to ask a question I thought was important, so I want to post a response here.

The gist of that multipart question:

How do I make sense of the mishmash of voices/teachings/ideas/admonitions I hear in the Christian Church today? How can it all be reconciled? A respected Christian pastor on the radio says one thing, while a famous Christian author writes something different. Denominations don’t agree. How do I know who is right and who isn’t?

That’s a difficult question. What I share below is what I believe. It’s how I handle that same question, because each of us needs to find a way to deal with the flood of information that bombards us daily. Even Christian information. We live in strange times awash in more information and data in one day than most people used to encounter in a lifetime. Making sense of it all is a monumental task.

1. Recognize that each of us is on a journey of faith—and we have not yet arrived at journey’s end.

One thing that bothers me most about Western Christianity is our mania concerning incompleteness. If we were to read a novel that had many interesting ideas woven through the narrative but which lacked a final chapter, many of us would tear out our hair in frustration. The fact that many wonderful events occurred in the book or that we learned intriguing things along the way pales against the angst of not knowing if the hero vanquished his foe or if the heroine overcame her circumstances.

Your story and mine are not yet complete. The final chapter hasn’t been written, nor all the events played out. We’re still journeying through the narrative of our lives.

And that journey is being orchestrated by God Himself.

Since God is writing our story, since He is planning our journey, we can be at peace with incompleteness if we allow God to do His work in our lives.

One of the Scriptures that brings me great comfort when I want to rush toward what I think is the right destination in my journey is this:

He [God] has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.
—Ecclesiastes 3:11

My timing is not His timing. Only His timing is perfect. What God has done is too wondrous for me to grasp, so full and rich as to be beyond me.

And I can be at peace with that, if I choose to be.

Paul puts it this way in the New Testament:

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
—1 Corinthians 13:12

What’s around the bend in the river? That conjecture drives some people to distraction and worry. In some cases, it even causes people to abandon the journey.

But the real answer to what’s around that bend? God. Which is why worrying is fruitless. God is there in the parts of the path we can’t see, so we are sheltered no matter where we are in the journey.

2. Recognize that each person is on a different part of the journey of faith.

Something in our cultural makeup assumes that everyone must be on our same faith journey and be just as far along as we are.Horizon meets road

Honestly, that’s just pride. And that pride manifests as judging people who don’t measure up.

Here’s a reality check: Every famous Christian you and I admire, every pastor, every teacher, every author, all of them are flawed. None are or were fully complete this side of heaven. Each was someplace along that pathway that defines the journey of faith, and the likelihood is that their stations along the way will not always align with ours.

Our problem is that we expect those waystations to align despite the fact that each of us is a unique individual with unique sins, a unique past, unique gifts, and a unique perspective on the journey. Our destination may be the same, but how we get there is unique to what God wants do through us for His glory.

When I encounter another Christian, the worst thing I can assume about him is that his journey has been identical to mine, that he’s gone just as far as I have, and that he’s standing alongside me on the path. When I do that, I completely mangle his story to fit mine. Or else I throw up my hands at his travel log of experiences and claim he’s on the wrong journey.

Again, that’s pride. It makes me the arbiter of all reality, places me at the center of the universe, and leaves God out of the business of managing other people’s journeys.

If you grew up in a loving home with a devoted father who loved you immensely, how weird would it be for some fellow believer to insist that you must have a problem with the fatherhood of God because everyone has a problem with their earthly fathers, and those problems taint our perspective of our heavenly one? How likely would it be that this insistent person had a problem with his own earthly father?

Yet this sort of thing is repeated daily a million times over on a million different scales within the Christian Church today. That insistent person made an assumption about your journey.

Now it may be that instead of a great earthly father, yours was a nightmare. If that’s the case, then this insistent person will seem like a breath of fresh air. Great! Thank God for that. But if not, then just realize that people are in different places on their journey. That seems so obvious, yet the confusion out there says we fail to understand that truth.

The greatest Christians we can cite were at one point lost. At one point they struggled with the lordship of Jesus in all aspects of life. At one point they got some doctrine wrong. People like Martin Luther, Charles Spurgeon, Amy Carmichael, Gladys Alward, Watchman Nee, A.W. Tozer, Corrie Ten Boom, C.S. Lewis, Jack Hayford, Chuck Swindoll, and Francis Chan were at some point wrong more often than right. But each learned and grew in God’s grace.

Can you imagine encountering Martin Luther as a young man today? He’d probably seem like a basketcase. But look how his journey unfolded!

How arrogant we can be when we judge by our standards rather than nurture by God’s!

3. Make peace with paradox, mystery, and the dim mirror, but never give up wanting to understand more.

One aspect of Western Christian I am increasingly willing to move off center stage is scientific rationalism. We in the West approach every part of life with the scrutiny and logic of Mr. Spock. Problem is, as any fan of Star Trek will tell you, Mr. Spock often missed the point, and instead those wacky, paradoxical humans saved the day.

We want to shoehorn our faith into systematic theologies and logic. We want God to conform to manmade standards. We hate thinking that Paul is right about the dim mirror. We want our faith to make sense at all times and in all places before all people.

But consider this: Jesus Christ is both fully man and fully God.

Or another: The infinite God of the universe dwells in finite believers.

Or another: You will live forever.

Mind blown? Well, it should be.

Our problem in North America 2011 is that we’ve stymied our willingness to wonder. And when you kill wonder and mystery, all that’s left is bitter argument.

It’s okay not to know it all. God is not going to slay us if we can’t resolve some of the paradoxical or mysterious aspects of the Christian faith. He’s not going to keep us out of heaven if we don’t understand the nuances of infralapsarianism. You and I can rest assured that even if we don’t fully get it, God does, and that’s just fine.

That said, God doesn’t want us to be mired 24/7/365  whimsically pondering how the stars speak forth praise. Sometimes, Mr. Spock’s logic saved the Enterprise from certain doom. Growing some head knowledge about our faith is just as needed as heart knowledge and a place for mystery, wonder, and awe.

So it’s okay if not everything you and I hear aligns. Again, our journeys are different and so are those of the people who speak to us. And sometimes, while two voices seem to be at irreconcilable odds, they may not be, especially as we gain a bit more wisdom down the path of our journey. It’s amazing what a little experience can do when it comes to making the seemingly impossible possible.

4. Get discernment by learning how to properly apply revelation from God.

This is the more nuts and bolts part of the post.

God speaks to us in the following ways:

Through the general revelation of His created world.

Through the special revelation of the Scriptures.

Through the personal and intimate revelation of His Holy Spirit indwelling us.

Where Christians go astray is when they downplay one of those three or punt one entirely. Yet all three are critical for proper discernment of truth. One will never contradict the other, and all three work together to reveal truth.

In Romans 1 we read that men are without excuse before God because of the revelation inherent in the created order. When we look at the world around us, it speaks of God.

That should blow our minds. That it doesn’t blow the minds of some Christians is one reason why people lose their ability to wonder. And wonder is an essential part of faith that keeps us from falling into easy arguments.

The Scriptures have been given to us to show the part of God’s story that can’t be fully explained by the created world. They are not only a far richer source of truth than the created world—and more obvious in their implications, too—but the Scriptures form the backbone of our practice of the Faith itself. They reveal who Jesus is and show us how we can know Him. The Bible is our essential equipping  tool:

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.
—2 Timothy 3:16-17

But while it is one thing to equip a person for ministry, it is quite another to direct him. This is why we have the Holy Spirit in us. The Holy Spirit is not only our seal of salvation, but He is the one who makes sense of what we know from the Bible in such a way as to apply it correctly. The Holy  Spirit’s revelation takes the general purpose instructions of the Bible and shows us how to apply them in specific circumstances not specifically addressed in the Scriptures. The Holy Spirit makes sense of the spiritual world for us and leads us in everything.

So, to be discerning, we must do the following:

Be observant of the natural world.

Study and know the Scriptures.

Learn to listen to and obey the voice of the Holy Spirit.

Most churches and denominations do one of those three well, are passable in a second, and tend to forget the third. We’re not allowed the “luxury” of not handling all three fully and properly, though.

Oddly enough, our failures to heed all three contribute to the host of conflicting voices in the Christian Church. When one teacher is talking about the Bible being the only genuine source of revelation and another teacher stresses we have to learn to listen to the Holy Spirit, it sounds like a clash. It’s not, though. It’s just men failing to live up to the entire calling of the Lord.

This lack tends to force us into piecemeal study of forms of revelation and how we should use them. That’s not optimal, but finding a church in North America that handles all revelation well is not easy, sad to say. It should be easy, but we Westerners tend to latch onto what appeals to us most and forget everything else. That failing explains in part the thousands of different Christian denominations out there. If we understand this, we can make peace with it, even if it’s not ideal.

5. Know that God loves you and will keep you.

I think the greatest fear in those who ask the questions that start this post is that God is somehow not good enough to protect them and keep them unto salvation and knowledge of Him.

But God does love you and me. This is what the Paul writes:

And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.
—Philippians 1:6

And this is what the Lord Jesus says to you from His own lips:

“And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
—Matthew 28:20b

He will never leave us or forsake us. He is faithful when we aren’t. He loves us even when we see through a dim mirror and miss our turn on the path. He will see us through to the end.

Do we believe that? If we do, then we will not fear, even when the voices around us grow confusing.

I hope this helps.

Lastly, humility must permeate it all. If we recognize that we are dust (and others are too), it helps us put all of learning into perspective. Our teachers will often fail, but that’s okay because the riches of God are so vast that no one teacher will ever enlighten us. That’s God’s work, because He is not limited. Draw close to Him, and learn from His Son by the Holy Spirit, and your path will be made straight.

Angry Prophets, Reader Rebuke, and Simple Faith

Standard

You may have noticed it’s been quiet here at Cerulean Sanctum of late, with fewer posts spread farther and farther apart.

Fact is, I’m exhausted.

Anyone who has ever been a caregiver will understand. I’ve been in that role for a couple years now. It’s not one that comes naturally to me; nor is it a role I requested. I’m sure it will not last forever, but right now it is hard. I’ve had to pull back from nearly everything I’ve been involved in.

A select few readers know the situation, but it’s not one for public forums.

To add to this, I’ve been receiving a greater than average number of private emails calling into question what shows up on the pages of Cerulean Sanctum. Increasingly, the tone is angry.

I’ve mulled over those emails. I take every email I receive seriously, whether it be positive or negative. I’ve enclosed one such negative email below:

Subject: Are You the Next Phil Johnson?

You are rapidly approaching that stage of self-exaltation where you’re so convinced of your own righteousness that you can’t hear anything from anybody. If you want an example of that kind of vanity and arrogance, how about the original Pyro-narcissist, Phil Johnson? Have you written your own bio for Wikipedia yet, Dan? How about printing up tee-shirts or coffee mugs? Wouldn’t it be so great if everyone could have a cup of Cerulean Sanctum while they’re online?

And with your Feedburner badge proudly proclaiming how many readers subscribe, have you considered the effect you might be having on all the younger brethren in that total? You’re slowly poisoning their faith, day after day, week after week, turning them into chronic complainers like yourself, and making them confirmed cynics and pessimists.

Have you considered how you might embolden some of these weaker brothers and sisters to do things their uneasy consciences might otherwise keep them from doing? “Be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak … When you sin against your brothers in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ.” (1 Cor. 8:9-13)

Have you thought about the possibility that you could even be the blogosphere’s next Michael Spencer? (i.e., check out early) “Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.” (James 3:1) You’re definitely opinionated, just as Michael was, but no more qualified to speak on many of the subjects you comment on. And your vanity can be downright embarrassing.

While you’ve been building this Tower of Babel (or babble) known as CS, have you considered that the Lord may “come down” (Gen. 11:5-9) to dismantle what you’ve built and scatter your followers? (i.e., to more qualified teachers more in line with His purposes)

One thing is as sure as the law of gravity. “For whoever exalts himself will be humbled.” (Matt. 23:12) I don ‘t think you even know what spirit controls you, and it’s going to take a hard fall to jar you back to reality (if it’s not too late for that to happen). And if you think the only alternative to your approach is some kind of Boy Scout righteousness, that just confirms how little depth you really have.

You need to take my advice. You need to seek counseling (cf. my previous comment on CS) and think about getting down from your soapbox for awhile, for everyone’s sake, including your own.

Paul Overall (you’re a smart guy, but in case you didn’t get it … a pall over all you write about)

I posted that because I think it’s a fair example of what has happened to rebuke among Christian brothers and sisters.

The anonymity of the Internet and the general breakdown of our culture that has accompanied it has turned us all into angry people. Worse, too many of us consider ourselves crusaders against this or that.

At the risk of further creating cynical, pessimistic young believers, I want to say that we American Christians can’t let our discourse keep plummeting into angry prophet mode, especially when it carries no winsomeness at all. We seem to have become a people known only for what we oppose and those whom we rebuke. We are not so much about being light but being antidarkness.

This blog exists because I routinely encountered fellow believers who had been in the Church for years and wondered if what they were experiencing was the fullness of what it means to be in the Body of Christ. What I kept hearing them say was “something is not right.” Many couldn’t put their finger on the lack because so much of what they had become was not about being the light, but being antidarkness. And sometimes, one can’t reason to the light simply from the position of antidarkness. Yet in far too many cases, that is all that we have given Christians in America.

The question Can we do better? fuels this blog. It’s the entire reason Cerulean Sanctum exists. I believe with all my heart that the Church in North America CAN do better. We CAN be more than we have been. We CAN be a more fulfilling community, one that models light more than it does antidarkness.

The only way to get to that light is to show what the light looks like. That’s not an easy task for those accustomed mostly to being antidarkness. It’s The Matrix all over again, being trapped in a pseudoreality and looking beyond it to what is geniune and real.

When I attended Wheaton College, I was in a New Testament overview class taught by a brilliant professor. I wanted to mine his wisdom, so I asked questions in class. I posed some tough issues and he gave mindblowing responses that I found life altering. After a while, it dawned on me that I was always the only person asking questions; most of the class just sat there.

One day, I was approached by a big guy from the class who threatened to punch me out if I asked anymore questions. True story.

That metaphor strikes me when it comes to where we are in American Christianity as we near 2011. I fear that too many of us not only hate the questions, but we can’t stand the answers, either. We have become a status quo people who do not want to be broken out of whatever reverie we’ve created for ourselves.

In short, too many of us don’t care about improving anything, much less the way the Church functions. As long as we have a paycheck and can buy stuff, put our kids through some elite school, and retire in peace, stop bothering us with questions. And answers bug us too.

I keep wondering what it is going to take to shake us. But then, it’s not as if any of this is new. I was reading through a portion of Jeremiah a couple weeks ago and the folks of that day complained just as mightily about having their reverie questioned.

I make no pretenses to being a prophet. I’m just a bystander in this life, watching the world go by, and wondering why some things are the way they are. Given what I have seen, too many of us never get past being a bystander. We’re cool with that role. Leave the wondering to troublemakers. And get the troublemakers out of our churches too.

Cerulean Sanctum is NOT going away, but I am going to take a break for the month of December.

What I feel God is saying to me personally is to get away from all the complexity of what we Americans have made of the Faith and get back to the simple core. What’s scary is a lot of us American Christians don’t want the simple core, either. The greatest two commandments, to love God and love our fellow man, are answers we don’t want to hear, because in hearing them, everything in our lives must change, everything down to our very own core. And the status quo is SO much easier, even if there is no genuine life in it.

See you in January.