Humility

Spiritual Lust and Infatuation

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A couple weeks back, I posted that one of the Enemy’s tricks is to stoke the fires of wanting more (“Tangleknot on Leading the Opponent’s Subjects Astray“). In that desire for more, Christians may even make the mistake of overdesiring to grow deeper in the Faith.

“But, Dan,” you say, “how can that ever be a bad thing?”

Well, it’s a bad thing when it leads to spiritual lust.

Lust happens when all the boundaries that normally hold good gifts in check fall away, leaving a naked core of desire that knows no limitations. It’s playing the piano—by dropping bricks on the strings. Performing that way may make a sound, but it’s noise, not beautiful music. It’s a misguided approach. Should one want to play the piano correctly, one should play it as its design demands it be played. And as any skilled pianist can attest, one does not go from “Chopsticks” to Carnegie Hall overnight.

Spiritual lust occurs when Christians in their desire to know God violate the design He created by which we can know Him, grow in Him, and develop intimacy with Him. In the desire to know God, people inflamed by spiritual lust can instead find themselves drawn away from God because they violated His means of approaching Him. They become moths drawn to a flame, plunging down the pathway toward strange fire.

Spiritual lust is a kind of addictive behavior because it will drink whatever it can find to feed the thirst.  A little or a lot, it doesn’t matter. Nor does the quality of the spiritual experience or its rightness in the eyes of God. Spiritual lust makes demands that must be filled, no matter the expense.

Adoring fans...That addiction often leads Christians into pointless searches for truth in places where no truth (or precious little) can be found. A prospector looking for gold nuggets would not likely find them examining the contents of a septic tank. Yet this is what some Christians do when they go on quests to find the truth of God in other religions. Or it’s what too many charismatics do when they hop a jet bound for the far side of the world to bask in some new “revival” rather than finding God right where He has always been. Some Christians will tolerate all manner of skubalon in hopes of finding some tiny morsel to feed their spiritual rapaciousness.

The sad truth is no path to deeper intimacy with God exists than the old-fashioned ways found through the classic spiritual disciplines of the faith. We can’t help but grow in the Lord if we pray, study, meditate, fast, embrace solitude, practice submission, live simply, serve others, worship, confess our sins, seek guidance from the Lord, and celebrate.

Too many Christians want faster methods than those. Or they want whatever’s “new.” But both of those are simply spiritual lust. And God will never be honored through lust of any kind.

Spiritual infatuation tangentially connects with spiritual lust, but in a different way. It’s what happens to Christians who begin to veer into spiritual lust, but who sidetrack quickly because they find what they believe to be the perfect object of their theological affection.

Just as we old fogies get a whimsically nostalgic smile on our faces when we see a young teen utterly smitten with another, so it is that we recognize the signs when a young Christian has discovered a truth for the first time. How many times have we seen others find a tiny nugget of truth they then use as the sole basis for constructing elaborate theologies? How often do we run into other Christians, even older ones who should know better, who are infatuated with one truth to the point that all other godly truths become irrelevant?

I have many friends who are involved in the International House of Prayer (IHOP). IHOP has built much of its teaching foundation around Mike Bickle’s concept of Bridal Theology, connecting the Song of Solomon to Revelation’s depiction of the Bride of Christ.

Though I have grave concerns regarding Bickle and the Kansas City Prophets movement he came out of, I think that the Bible does show that God has a profound love for us akin to that of a groom for his bride. We Christians can be encouraged by this understanding.

But a problem swiftly rises: Building an entire theology off bridal imagery leaves out a big chunk of the rest of the Bible. Doing so avoids other perfectly legitimate explanations of the Gospel. It also forces proponents to keep expanding the morsel, blowing it out of proportion to its basic reality. Think how easily infatuated kids gush about their objects of affection, inevitably magnifying the character of that person to superhuman—and clearly mistaken—levels. After awhile, the voice of reason no longer penetrates the gauzy dreams erected by the infatuated. The infatuated filter their entire experience of reality through their infatuation. And we all know where that leads.

But before some of you high-five each other and yell, “Dude, Edelen totally dissed IHOP,” let me offer a different subject: atonement. A gnarly subject, yes?

Many reading this will defend a penal substitutionary view of atonement to the death. I, myself, believe in a penal substitutionary atonement. That said, I will also claim that some of the other views on the atonement (such as the ransom, governmental, Christus Victor, and satisfaction views ) all have some very good points going for them. In fact, it may even be possible—at least as I see it—that all those views work together in synergy much the same way that the four Gospels reinforce each other and give us a more complete understanding of Jesus.

Yeah, I know, heresy.

When you get to the heart of this problem, though, too often the pitchfork and torches crowd are the ones suffering from a spiritual infatuation. Remember, if Martin Luther hadn’t called the Roman Catholic Church on its spiritual infatuations….

Spiritual lust and spiritual infatuation lead to one unavoidable reality: a defective understanding of the revealed truths of God. And that defective understanding leads to all sorts of blindness and error when taken to extremes.

Trust me, too many of us take them to their extremes.

All of us suffer from some amount of spiritual lust and spiritual infatuation; it’s part of the human condition. That said, we don’t have to be complacent about this tendency. True growth in Christ comes when we seek Him rightly, discern truth from error, and allow Him to show us how our infatuations may be keeping us from knowing Him by His design and in His time.

 


A Clay-Footed People

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In my Dad’s childhood days in Price Hill, a tough neighborhood in Cincinnati, he lived next door to the Roses. Like the neighborhood, his neighbors were a gritty sort of people. In a wager over a pair of steel-toed boots, that neighbor boy shot my Dad in the foot with a .22 rifle. Fortunately for Dad, the steel in the toe of his boot caved but didn’t allow the bullet to pass through. They built things better back then, I think.

That boy went on to become quite a football player in his day, but that wasn’t the sport that earned him the moniker “Charlie Hustle.” Yeah, that Rose—Pete.

Despite the fact that he could have done my father a serious injury all those years ago, Pete Rose was my boyhood idol. I had posters of him all over my room. He epitomized a hero through his work ethic and lived up to his nickname. He was one of those granite-jawed, working-class, westside Cincinnatians, people who could wither you with a gaze, but who were the choice picks if you needed to storm the gates of Hell.

When Rose nearly killed Cleveland Indians catcher Ray Fosse in that infamous final play of the 1970 All-Star game (in Cincinnati, BTW), I was watching the game and just went wild. My hero scored the winning run. Didn’t matter that Fosse was never the same after that play. Rose did what Rose had to do. That was Rose. He played the game hard. That’s what made him the all-time hit leader, nearly saw him catch Joe Dimaggio’s consecutive hitting streak record, and gives him the near mythic quality he enjoys in Cincinnati.

Now if only there wasn’t that betting on baseball thing.

I say that because Rose’s betting on baseball pretty much ended whatever hero-worship he enjoyed from me. That was the first in a series of “welcome to reality, naif” disappointments with that saw the young adult me pretty much abandon the whole idea of finding heroes in celebrities of any kind.

A recently deceased Christian rock musician is garnering a bit more attention because of a scandal. It’s a bad scandal, though, in a way, it should surprise only those people with a whacked-out worldview. I suspect, though, that the people with that worldview would not be the ones you would first consider to be  out-of-step.

And that’s the point of this post. I write this because I see a fundamental flaw in reasoning among many American Christians today.

An old saying that makes some of us sigh goes like this: “Only Christians bury their wounded.” In too many cases, that’s true. Someone screws up and they’re as good as dead in the midst of too many church bodies, ESPECIALLY if the screwup is a pastor.

I have a theory about this. As much as most Christians adamantly say they believe that all people are sinners, they just as adamantly don’t practice that belief. Too many of us practice the faith as if everyone were born good, as if original sin never existed.

What else explains the utter shock, the profound horror, when Elder Joe Smith winds up in a sordid affair? Oh, how the tongues wag and the old ladies fan themselves hoping to stave off an attack of the vapors! Well, maybe 'feet IN clay' if not 'feet OF clay'Everyone just dies and goes into convulsions. Our church splits, people leave, and in many cases, Elder Joe Smith crawls off to die somewhere—or at least that’s what a good chunk of us wishes he would do.

And why do we believe that? Because no matter what creedal confession rolls off our lips, we simply don’t believe that people are sinners.

The odd thing about this is that worldly people aren’t shocked when sinners act like sinners. We Christians, though, stuck as we are on the foundational lie of the innate goodness of other Christian people, go belly up like a lake full of dynamited fish when yet another Christian stalwart proves spectacularly that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

One of the most well known pastors/authors out there today, a man respected throughout the Godblogosphere, revered almost—I know people who know him well. I’ve heard the stories. They’d cause a few of his fanclub to spontaneously combust, I suspect.  But you know what? His issues are no worse than yours or mine.

I’ve got to believe that nothing would profoundly change the focus, direction, praxis, and reflection of each Christian in this country than to stop asking the question, “How is it that good Christians can do bad things?” and start asking, “How is it that any of us can do even one good thing?” If that latter question ever caught on, we’d stop propping up Christian heroes who inevitably fail (and then suffer our public savaging) and start acting like humble servants who know our place. We would comprehend and embrace that each of us, should we stray from grace for even a moment, would be capable of the most vile evils. We’re lying to ourselves if we practice Christianity otherwise.

If 45 years of living has taught me anything, it’s that there’s not a person out there who doesn’t have feet of clay. I know I do. (Heck, I aspire to clay feet at this point in life!) Why should I expect otherwise in other people?

Isn’t it about time we Christians stopped spending all our free time attempting to hide our clay feet, started living under grace, and actually extended genuine forgiveness to others?

 

 

 

Wandering Away

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Our neighbors had a 17-year-old dog, Hickory. I say had because while they were on vacation and the dog was being cared for at home by others, Hickory wandered off and has not been seen since.

It’s common for sick and dying animals to wander away. They separate themselves from their normal world and find a quiet place elsewhere to lay down and die. We all suspect that’s just what Hickory did.

While it’s a sad thing to lose a beloved pet that way, it’s even more heartrending when a person wanders off to die. When people wander away, it’s not usually to due to a terminal illness or decrepitude. Instead, they wander off to die emotionally or spiritually.

I’m sure if God gave me eyes to see the numbers of people I’ve encountered in my life who have wandered away from Him, I’d be staggered. As it is, I already know too many.  I’m sure you do , too. (If not, consider reading this past post and follow the main link in it to see if your memory gets a refresher.)

Jesus had this to say:

What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it?
—Luke 15:4

I’ll go even farther than Jesus does with his illustration, which is about seeking the unsaved, and say that while a lost sinner who remains lost is a tragedy, nearly as bad is a believer who wanders away.

And what is our responsibility to those nameless people in our churches every Sunday who are there for a few months and then are gone, never to be seen again? What is their story? Do we even care to know it? Perhaps if we had, they would not have wandered away.

We live in a world that would prefer that the weak, the disabled, the stunned, and the emotionally shattered would just wander away and die like some animal on its last legs. Better that they do it out of sight than we have to bear with their prolonged downhill slide.

Yet it was those very people, the ones the Romans (who valued youth and virility) ignored and left to die, who were cared for by the early Church. Most historians agree that the exponential growth of the early Church in Rome came because it refused to let the marginalized and weak go ignored in their time of need.

Consider the Best Picture winner of 1978, The Deer Hunter (Spoiler Alert!):

Nick, Mike, and Steven are close friends from a steel town in Pennsylvania. All three ship off to fight in Vietnam, with all three captured and tortured by the Viet Cong. The method of psychological torture? All three are forced to play Russian roulette for their VC captors. When the trio create an opportunity to escape, only Nick is able to board the rescue ‘copter, with Mike and Steven left behind. In the attempt, Steven’s legs are badly damaged. The enemy on their tails, Mike manages to carry Steven to safety in friendly territory. Nick, meanwhile, vanishes.

At war’s end, Steven winds up in a home for disabled vets. Mike wanders the seedier side of Saigon and glimpses Nick in the gallery of a gambling hall where people play Russian roulette for money. The two don’t meet.

Eventually, Mike returns home. He reunites with Steven, only to hear that Nick has been sending Steven huge amounts of money. Mike knows how. Desperate to save his friend, he returns to the gambling hall where Nick is playing Russian roulette. To speak with Nick and convince him to come home, Mike must play Russian roulette too.

I’ll leave the ending for you to see.

Mike wouldn’t let Nick wander away. He risked his life just to speak with his friend, The Deer Hunterwho had, by then, been reduced to a shell by his handlers and the psychological torment he’d endured.

If anyone in this world is equipped to go into the hellholes of life and reach those who have wandered away, it’s the Christian.

Yet what is the answer most often given by Christians to the question Why do other people wander away? I know I have heard the most common answer more often than I can count: “Because their faith is weak.”

It’s a simple enough answer, isn’t it? The only problem is that it’s a simplistic answer, the kind that bears little of the humility of genuine Christian love and more of spiritual pride. It’s the answer of dispassionate church boards, elders who only love status, distracted church members, and tired pastors who long ago stopped caring.

In the Kingdom of God, what is true to the heart of the Lord runs counter to conventional wisdom and simplistic answers. When posed with the same question of why other people wander away, the true Christian responds not only in humility, but also with an answer that begs a deeper question: “Because my faith is weak.”

See, anyone can rationalize why other people fail, leaving them to wander away unmissed, but it takes someone who believes in a big God to put a figurative gun to the head to ensure one of God’s lost sheep doesn’t wander away to die.

Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
—John 15:13