Spiritual Warfare

Battling Beelzebul

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"Lucifer" by Franz von StuckFor we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
—Ephesians 6:12 ESV

Want a surefire indicator that the Holy Spirit is moving in a church?

1. The lowest floor of the church building floods during a rainstorm—and the church is near the top of a hill

2. Cars are vandalized in the church parking lot—and the church is located near the edge of a quiet rural area

3. Someone makes arson threats against the church—and the church is located near the edge of a quiet rural area

Our church meeting last Sunday was powerful. The Holy Spirit was moving in the midst of His people. He’s been moving this way for a while now. In the last few months, we’ve seen amazing healings (including a man with terminal heart disease whose body was so bloated with fluids he could barely move, but he was dancing in church just two days later, cured of his disease and fifty pounds lighter), people are being convicted of sin, the word of God is going out mightily, new people are coming in, we have baptisms about every other week, and on and on.

So, of course, the Enemy takes notice because the last thing he wants is for any of that kind of thing to occur. If you haven’t guessed already, the three assaults listed above happened at my church in the wake of the powerful move of the Lord last week.

Last year, I wrote a widely disseminated post called “The Chthonic Unmentionable” in which I wondered why Evangelicals cringed at the “Devil” part of of the triumvirate of “the world, the flesh, and the Devil.” I’ve been around long enough to know that most Evangelicals will mentally assent to the existence of Satan, but to ascribe to him much more than existence is too much to ask. Better to say nothing and maybe the demons will go away.

Despite Martin Luther’s inkwell and his penchant for aromatic responses when assaulted by Satan, I didn’t hear much more about the demonic growing up until I got involved in an Assemblies of God church. At that point, I wondered why no one had told me anything about this important fact of life. After a personal encounter with a demon-possessed person (mentioned in the link above), I suddenly realized that all those Gospel “stories” about Jesus casting out demons weren’t something that merely happened in Palestine circa 30 AD.

Like C.S. Lewis, I believe there are two mistaken notions about the demonic:

1. We focus on them.

2. We ignore them altogether.

To the first point, I once visited a church that considered Frank Peretti’s This Present Darkness akin to The Bible: The Sequel. I saw a guy casting a “demon” out of his chair before he sat down for the meeting. Must’ve had a bad run-in with tack at some earlier point in life and didn’t want to take any chances sitting on anything possibly more evil. What else could explain that kind of fruitcake behavior?

On the other hand, we’ve got folks in the American Church who would take a look at the three negative things that hit my church and its folks this week and sum it up with a shoulder shrug. “Just a string of bad luck,” they would say, or “Horrible coincidence.”

Let me simply say this: The Enemy HATES you. Lucifer and his legions would gleefully destroy your body, your home, your marriage, your children, your church…anything and everything is fair game to them, save for God’s grace on your life. Many Christians do suffer from those attacks; justification does not end our encounters with the demonic! When a marriage goes south in the Christian community, Satan orchestrated that destruction from the first “I do” to the last “This marriage is over! I’m out!”

We’re fools if we don’t take this war seriously—and it is a war. Jesus confessed this to Peter:

“Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.” Peter said to him, “Lord, I am ready to go with you both to prison and to death.” Jesus said, “I tell you, Peter, the rooster will not crow this day, until you deny three times that you know me.”
—Luke 22:31-34 ESV

Satan wants to sift us. Jesus countered that demand with prayer. All our resolve will not help us one lick unless we put on our blood-bought spiritual armor and walk as warriors against the infernal.

Ephesians 5:18 ends Paul’s admonition concerning defense against the demonic with this command:

…praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, and also for me….
—Ephesians 6:18-19a ESV, emphasis added

Are we praying in the Spirit that the Lord would destroy the works of the Enemy in our lives and in the lives of Christians around the world? Are we putting a priority on the kind of travailing prayer that Pauls speaks of? Because the chthonic is actively plotting ways to make each and every Christian rue the day he or she confessed Christ. Believe it. They don’t toss up their hands and go, “Oh well, onto the next one.” No, they never stop their assault.

We would do well to remember that the unsaved have no protection at all against the wiles of the Enemy. They are fair game 24/7/365. For this reason, we Christians should never deal smugly with the lost because not only are they under a powerful delusion inspired by Satan, but they live lives perpetually assaulted and have no clue that such a battle rages. I dare any Christian reading this to turn their noses up at the lost in light of this. It’s not just the afterlife that will be a living hell for the lost; it’s a living hell right now. Our response to their plight and to God’s plucking us out of a similar fate should be the same: humility.

We must never take the demonic lightly. Great times of encountering God in power are countered in every way possible by an Enemy who seeks to kill, maim, and destroy. Take that as a corollary.

{Image: Lucifer by Franz von Stuck, 1894}

Unshackling the American Church: The Tyranny of Modernism

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The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
—Excerpted from T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men”

They built seven houses on the former gas station lot. Yes, a violation of the physical laws of the universe, but I saw the houses with my own eyes.

Less than six months after my wife and I pledged our troth, I took a job with Apple Computer in the heart of Silicon Valley. Having lived my entire life in the Midwest, I expected some disorientation, but nothing prepared me for the future shock I experienced.

We settled in a two bedroom apartment in Sunnyvale—a name epitomizing idyll—nestled between AMD, Sun Microsystems, Yahoo!, and Lockheed Martin. As the local rubes, we wore our homespun naïveté on our sleeves, attempting to live as we had in the heart of the heartland. Our first agenda was to get to know our neighbors. Isn’t that how they do it back in Mayberry? Our complex was a chutney of Indian, Hong Kong, and German immigrants, all drawn to the computer capital of the world. We saw them through their windows, watched them walk into their apartments, but every knock on the door was met with a vast unanswered nothingness. We spent three-and-a-half years attempting to meet our neighbors. In the end, we met no one.

How to describe the eerie feeling when you knock on someone’s door, can hear people talking inside, but no one answers. Worse yet was to descend the staircase in the morning only to see the people below us attempting to leave, but instead scamper back inside like so many timid mice when the cat’s around.

Our Hong Kong ex-pat neighbors stayed invisible. The Indians would be out and about talking in English, only to change to Bengali when they noticed us coming. Conversations consisted of them looking confused when we said, “Hi, we’re the Edelens…,” before they distanced themselves from our outstretched hands. MannequinThe Germans, who inhabited the farthest buildings in our complex, would gather at the pool in their micro-bikinis and thongs and play a sort of game called “Let’s See How Long We Can Ignore the Two Americans Crashing Our Party Before They Go Back Where They Came From.” Never in my life had I introduced myself only to have someone laugh and turn back to his friends as if I were a kind of comedic, talking vapor.

Hundreds of people lived in that complex; surely someone would warm to us.

Only later did we learn from one of my immigrant co-workers that American television and movies piped into Hong Kong and India had effectively taught everyone in those countries that every last American carried a Smith & Wesson with a caliber big enough to down a 747. Open the door and you risked having Dirty Harry and his wife, Foxy Brown, put a slug in your head just for the fun of it.

We had a good church, but we noticed little spots of social leprosy there, too. When our official small group meeting was over, you would have thought someone had finished our prayer time by yelling, “Grenade!”—the room cleared that fast.

The excuse was always the same:

Me: “You’re going to work at 9:00 PM?”

Not Me: “Yeah, gotta fix some code for the video drivers.”

Me: “Wanna grab a coffee with us before you head in?”

Not Me: “Sounds great, but no time. Maybe next week.”

Next week rolls around. Lather, rinse, repeat. Evidently, not much got done; the video drivers, product manual, or marketing plan never received their promised healing. Nor did we ever share a coffee. Not once.

Our first church attempt had been far less successful. We were new to the area, but the church’s small groups were all closed. Weren’t accepting new people. One older couple did invite us over to their house, which oddly enough reminded me of something out of “Ozzie and Harriet,” and we enjoyed one of the three homecooked meals we had in our three-and-half years in the Valley. But the small groups were closed and most people rushed home after the Sunday service. Work? Seemed to always be the reason. No reason for the closed groups, though—at least that we could tell.

We had some friends who lived on the other side of San Jose whose new house had about ten feet of yard all the way around it. They wanted to paint the outside of their house a certain color, but the housing association that owned the land only approved five colors and their choice wasn’t one of the five. Nor did they have any say about their landscaping. Kiss the planned cherry tree goodbye! In fact, our friends didn’t technically own the outside of their home—just the inside. There wasn’t much to the outside anyway. You could pass the Grey Poupon through one kitchen window to the next. To step outside their patio door was to promptly step into their pool. The patio itself was more a concept than an actuality.

But the neighborhood was even more perplexing than the limitations, as houses that had been sold the week before never saw new occupants. In those mad, housing run-up days, the buyers flip-sold the house and pocketed upwards of $50,000 by doing so. The result was a neighborhood dotted with homes perpetually for sale, yet not even a year old—possibly forever empty.

All this time, the disquiet in my soul grew.

In the Valley, the measure of a man was his job, his affluence, his earning potential. I’d seen glimpses of this back in Ohio, but like a city-sized thumb it pressed down on you here with a new kind of ferocity. And affluence wasn’t just the measure of men. The teenager drove a Porsche Boxter. Private schools, each more tony than the next, sprouted in the hills, sponsored by aging rockers with kids (or grandkids), who had to ensure the little darlin’ got into Stanford with a full ride. This led to the quandary of choosing between battling school fundraisers, this one featuring Neil Young and that one headlining Joan Baez. (Tip: Go for Neil.) Because we all know that unless Junior gets into that accelerated pre-school, he’ll never take home the sheepskin from that Ivy of the West, dooming him to a future managing an ice cream shop with only twenty flavors.

Don’t ask any of those measured men to give, though. A study came out while we were there noting that residents of the Valley gave only 2% of their income to charity. A man would never consider dropping a measly 2% of his income into his 401k, but 2% was good enough for the least of these. Maybe the parents of those least people should have worked harder to finagle them into a name private school.

It was in our last weeks in California that they built the seven houses on the former gas station lot near the corner where we lived. Somehow they put a driveway down the middle of that, too. Einstein would have had all his wackiest theories proven by the way the architects had folded space to make room for seven houses. Seven houses that were nearly touching, but for all that closeness might just as well been on different planets. As we had learned, proximity did not mean neighborliness. A lot of other things were missing, too. The blur of life left everyone panting for something to make life worth living. But in the Valley, what was truly sacramental eluded many.

We slave away at jobs that have little meaning so we can buy things that provide no lasting meaning at all.

We willingly severed our connection to the soil from which God first fashioned our original ancestor because soil is dirty and doesn’t look good on our Steve Maddens.

We lost God in the blur of a million spurious activities that hold no eternal value.

We do not pray because our televisions and computers bury us under the problems of the entire world, so we don’t know where to begin. We don’t have the time anyway.

We love the material and tolerate people rather than the other way around.

Our savior died on a rough-hewn cross and rose again, yet many of us who claim His name find our iPods to be more real and the music gracing them more comforting.

We talk about community, but we cannot name our neighbors’ children, nor have they ever stepped foot in our home.

Time with the family is rated by quality, not quantity.

And the very things of God that He created for our benefit are forgotten amid the hustle—and cheapness—of modern life.

It’s disheartening. But it doesn’t have to be this way. We don’t have to lie down and accept this as the only way to live. Yet so many Christians, the ones who hold the breath of God in their spirits, are all too willing to join the world’s parade when confronted with the discordant times we live in. Need I remind us, the Church was not founded on “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em!”

What’s needed are people who understand that the simple ways we abandoned in our rush to modernity have meaning because God Himself gave them meaning. Lose them and we lose part of the eternity He placed in our hearts.

To cow to the times and say that nothing can be done because we live in a fallen world is to fundamentally deny that He that is in us is greater than he that is in the world. This is not blind utopianism, but a call to live lives wholly consecrated to manifesting God’s will for us in a world tainted by sin. It’s a call to rediscover what is pleasing to the Lord in each small moment of the day, whether we be baking bread or sharing our childhood stories with the next generation. It’s dedicating every thought, every action to the Lord in a way that finds His sanctification working out through us in the tiny slices of this present day. It is the heart of worship.

In the days ahead, I’ll be exploring how we Christians can challenge the assumptions of Modernism and find what is truly of God in a discordant age too preoccupied with the earthquake and storm to hear God in the whisper.

Thanks for reading.

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So much of what we do as a Church in this country is devoid of meaning. We’ve allowed the Enemy to strip out so many simple and sacred aspects of life that we didn’t notice they’d gone missing one by one until it was too late.

Other posts in the “Unshackling the American Church” series:

Who Watches the Watchers?

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Watching the Heretic HuntersCerulean Sanctum lost a few links from the sidebar Kingdom Links. Some blogs went comatose, their bloggers on extended sabbatical or having said “Adios!” to blogging altogether. WordPress will render “invisible” those links you wish to keep but not display. Rather than hit the delete key, I did a Claude Rains with Mysterium Tremendum, Shizuka Blog, John Wesley’s Journal, and The Gad(d)about with the expectation that they might some day return.

But a couple live blogs I deleted outright. The common factor in those links and blogs that I will no longer read is that they were mostly heretic-hunting blogs.

Old timers here know that I’ve discussed the Godblogosphere’s explosion of heretic hunters and taken a middle-of-the-road approach: We need to root out heresy, but we also need to do it soberly and with care.

But I’ve seen enough. The following are the reasons why I will no longer support those sites:

1. They’re not confronting soberly and with care.
2. They’re using dubious logic and questionable facts to assail their targets.
3. They disingenuously look the other way when their favorite sources violate their standards.
4. They often ignore the whole counsel of Scripture.
5. They operate in the same manner as the targets they criticize.
6. They overlook their own issues.
7. They utterly refuse correction when they’re clearly wrong.

I was originally going to name names, but that flies in the face of how I typically address issues at Cerulean Sanctum. I’m sure every Godblogger has been irresponsible in a couple of those above points before (including here), but not on the consistent level of the heretic hunters. Many of you will already know the sites I’m hinting at. If you’ve read them, you know those sites refuse correction anyway, so naming them will not make a difference in how they promulgate their particular brand of “righteous” ire.

I’m also stemming the criticism sure to come my way that by posting this, I’m just as guilty as the heretic hunters are. Honestly, that may be true. The difference, I hope, is that I’m willing to admit it upfront and to say that I may be wrong. I also hope this post is written without a trace of snarkiness or pleasure in the writing. It’s sad to me that this post even has to exist.

Nonetheless…

Here’s a breakdown of how these sites fail in the seven points listed above:
Not confronting soberly and with care —

Over time, the tone on some of these blogs and sites has turned particularly gleeful in routing perceived enemies. But just as God takes no delight in the downfall of the wicked, rather hoping that they would repent, no Christian blogger should do a “Ha! Ha!” a la The Simpsons‘ Nelson Muntz when they see a perceived enemy stumble. Nor should we joke about error or make fun of our enemies. And while it is fine for the Apostle Paul to “wish they’d go emasculate themselves,” none of us is Paul, or even a pale copy of him.

The other problem here is the absolute unwillingness to personally contact supposed heretics to doublecheck facts or to get a clearer understanding. The Lord doesn’t want His Church whispering in alleys about this fallen brother or that. The Church is not bettered by innuendo—and much of what passes for “truth” on some of these heretic hunting sites borders on innuendo. Or at least questionable facts. Just once I’d love to see something along the lines of “I spoke with Richard Foster about this perceived problem and we came to an understanding.” But sadly, holding my breath to see that sort of responsible confrontation will surely lead to little more than a change in my overall skin color and an eventual fall from my office chair.

I’ve attempted to confront some of the writers of the heretic hunting sites on numerous occasions, but they’re almost impossible to locate. No e-mail addresses, no comments allowed on their blogs or sites, no way of getting through to them (more about that further down.) In those cases where the bloggers are available, confrontation is stemmed by having comments deleted or being disallowed from a site. I firmly acknowledge a blogger’s right to manage his or her own site, but still. An unwillingness to connect directly speaks volumes about the folks behind the blogs—and none of it in keeping with true Christlikeness. None of us should be afraid to reason together with fellow believers.

Using dubious logic and questionable facts to assail their targets —

Rampant, rampant, rampant. As much as many of these sites claim to be intellectual or to uphold wisdom, their command of logic and reality is often lacking.

I’ve read some of the books the hunters claim are from the devil’s own hand and I swear I read a different book than they did. I’m well-acquainted with Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline and questioned some of the practices in the Meditation section long before the heretic hunters made Foster a whipping boy. But when an all-out assault on spiritual disciplines occurred earlier this year on some of the heretic-hunting sites, I had to question if the hunters had even bothered to read any of Foster beyond the few quotes they all seemed to be shunting around from one of their sites to another.

So out-of-context were some of those statements that it was clear that the hunter never bothered to read the entire book, or read it in such a way that the chip never left the shoulder and the “Ah hah! There’s more heresy!” was never far from the lips. But that kind of apporach does severe injustice to genuine Christian scholarship and knowledge. In truth, it’s little more than presupposition and eisegesis. Nor does it call for real discernment. Blanket condemnation based on presuppositions is not godly grappling with truths and lies.

One of the most egregious examples of the kind of nonsensical logic and reasoning employed by some of the hunters came when a Christian drumming conference that advertised “drumming in the Spirit” was equated with African shamanism for no other reason than that drums were used. The heretic hunter in this case used twisted logic to say that because A uses B for dark purposes, any use of B is therefore dark. Now, I’m not Joe Carter of The Evangelical Outpost , so I lack the facility with fallacies that Joe possesses, but I’m smart enough to know one when I see one. If the argument used by the heretic hunter is valid, then almost every practice that takes place in our Sunday services is out because some other non-Christian religion uses a similar practice. Goodbye to communion, prayer, the laying on of hands, worship, and nearly everything else.

That sort of guilt by association is the primary means by which many of these sites denigrate individuals, too. Christian A endorsed the book by Speaker B who on a single occasion spoke at a church lead by Pastor C who knew Worship Leader D who once led worship in the church of Reverend E who in passing said something nice about supposed Heretic F. Therefore, Christian A is a false prophet and teacher because the chain leads to Heretic F. And how do we know Heretic F is a heretic? Well, in the heretic hunter’s blog posts from last week, he/she used that same six degrees of separation method with a different set of conspirators to prove that case.

And on it goes, a sort of Last Man Standing game of theological musical chairs. Sadly, the favored sources for proving this person or that is heretical can have the same sort of tactic applied to them. Everyone is tied to the tainted. This is a no-win effort that only makes the entire Church look bad. Just as bad, it gets perilously close to fearmongering and conspiracy theories. From the content I’ve seen on some of these blogs, The Da Vinci Code hasn’t cornered the market on either of those two.

Disingenuously looking the other way when their favorite sources violate their standards —

Oh my, is this one huge. Even bigger than Joel Osteen’s church. I’m talkin’ ginormous huge.

I start with one of my favorite sources, A.W. Tozer. Tozer is the patron saint of many heretic-hunting sites. They quote him religiously and use his writings to slay every manner of dragon. Good for them! Tozer, who also happens to be the patron saint of Cerulean Sanctum, had a prophetic voice unlike any to come out of modern Evangelicalism in the last sixty years. The heretic-hunting sites call on Tozer’s keen understanding of the perilous decline of Evangelicalism to prove their points whenever a modern Evangelical heretic needs a solid keister kicking.

But let’s go back to look at some of the issues many of the heretic hunters are confronting: the surge in Christian mysticism, a reliance on feelings and ecstatic union with God in worship, getting back to what the desert fathers and monastics had to say about the Faith, recovering ancient church practices, and more. All barrels are blazing, firing volley after volley into the backsides of any Christian leader who happens to support those ideas and practices. And what is the weapon used to devastate these new apostates? The writings of Tozer.

The bitter truth here is that Tozer was an apologist for many of those supposed heresies, but the heretic hunters selectively quote his writings in such a way as to twist Tozer against the very things he stood for! In my opinion, that’s downright deceptive on the part of those sites that are doing this.

One of the books widely quoted is a series of sermons Tozer delivered that have been printed up as Whatever Happened to Worship? A Call to True Worship. As a huge fan of Tozer, it’s one of the few collections of his I had not read.

But after reading this book this last week, the one thing apparent to me is that the heretic sites are completely misrepresenting the book in an effort to have Tozer say many things in support of their position that he’s simply not saying. We should all have a problem with that kind of disingenuous use of the words of notable Christians.

Here are a few samples from Whatever Happened to Worship?:

Tozer on the Christian way to confront liberals and others who oppose orthodox Christianity—

We who are the fundamentalists and the “orthodox” Christians have gained the reputation of being “tigers”—great fighters for the truth. Our hands are heavy with callouses from the brass knuckles we have worn as we beat on the liberals. Because of the meaning of our Christian faith for a lost world, we are obligated to stand up for the truth and to contend for the faith when necessary.

But there is a better way, even in our dealing with those who are liberals in faith and theology. We can do a whole lot more for them by being Christlike than we can by figuratively beating them over the head with our knuckles

The liberals tell us they cannot believe the Bible. They tell us they cannot believe that Jesus Christ was the unique Son of God. At least most of them are honest about it. Moreover, I am certain we are not going to make them bow the knee by cursing them. If we are led by the Spirit of God and if we show forth the love of God this world needs, we become the “winsome saints.”

The strange and wonderful thing about it is that truly winsome and loving saints do not even know about their attractiveness. The great saints of past eras did not know they were great saints. If someone had told them, they would not have believed it, but those around them knew that Jesus was living His life in them.

The definition of winsome: “Charming, often in a childlike or naive way.”

All I ask is this: Are these heretic hunters winsome by any stretch of the word?

Tozer on feelings and mystery being a part of true worship of God—

We find much of spiritual astonishment and wonder in the book of Acts. You will always find these elements present when the Holy Spirit directs believing men and women.

On the other hand, you will not find astonished wonder among men and women when the Holy Spirit is not present. Engineers can do many great things in their fields, but no mere human force or direction can work the mysteries of God among men. If there is no wonder, no experience of mystery, our efforts to worship will be futile. There will be no worship without the Spirit.

If God can be understood and comprehended by any of our human means, then I cannot worship Him. One thing is sure. I will never bend my knees and say “Holy, holy, holy” to that which I have been able to decipher and figure out in my own mind! That which I can explain will never bring me to the place of awe. It can never fill me with astonishment or wonder or admiration.

The philosophers called the ancient mystery of the personhood of God the “mysterium conundrum.” We who are God’s children by faith call Him “our Father which art in heaven.” In sections of the church where there is life and blessing and wonder in worship, there is also the sense of divine mystery.

And…

I don’t know, my friend, how that makes you feel—but I feel that I must give God the full response of my heart. I am happy to be counted as a worshiper.

Well, that word “feel” has crept in here and I know that you may have an instant reaction against it. In fact, I have had people tell me very dogmatically that they will never allow “feeling” to have any part in their spiritual life and experience. I reply, “Too bad for you!” I say that because I have voiced a very real definition of what I believe true worship to be: worship is to feel in the heart!

In the Christian faith, we should be able to use the word “feel” boldly and without apology. What worse thing could be said of us as the Christian church if it could be said that we are a feelingless people?

And yet so many of the sites that quote Tozer liberally will deny that feelings and mystery play any part in the Faith.

Tozer on the value of Christian mystics—

I hope you have read some of the devotionals left us by that dear old English saint, Lady Julian, who lived more than 600 years ago. She wrote that one day she had been thinking about how high and lofty Jesus was, and yet how He Himself meets the humblest part of our human desire. She received such blessing within her being that she could not control herself. She let go with a shout and praised God out loud in Latin. Translated into English, it would have come out “Well, glory to God!”

Now, if that bothers you, friend, it may be because you do not know the kind of spiritual blessings and delight the Holy Spirit is waiting to provide among God’s worshiping saints.

Friends of Tozer repeatedly joked about his “girlfriend.” That would be the “Lady Julian” he mentions above—Julian of Norwich, a Catholic mystic.

And there’s more…

I mean no ill toward other Calvinists when I point out that all of the heretic hunters I’ve run across on the Web are strict disciples of John Calvin, some even going so far as to say that if you’re not a five-pointer, you’re not a Christian. It’s a shame there aren’t more good Arminian blogs and bloggers out there, but if they were to degenerate into that same rhetoric, perhaps it’s a good thing they stay off the Web.

Tozer again on the reality of what we Christians label ourselves—

We are told that when John Wesley was dying, he tried to sing, but his voice was nearly gone. He was almost ninety. He had traveled hundreds of thousands of miles on horseback, preaching three or four times daily in founding a great church. He was plainly Arminian in his theology, but as his Christian family and friends gathered around his bed, he was trying to sing the words of an old Calvinist hymn:

I will praise my Maker while I’ve breath, And when my soul is lost in death, Praise shall employ my nobler powers.

That is why I cannot get all heated up about contending for one theological side or another on that issue. If Isaac Watts, a Calvinist, could write such praise to God and John Wesley, an Arminian, could sing it with yearning and they both can meet and hug one another in glory, why should I allow anyone to force me to confess, “I don’t know which I am!” Why should anyone bother me with an issue like that?

I was created to worship and praise God. I was redeemed that I should worship Him and enjoy Him forever.

That is the primary issue, my brother or sister. That is why we earnestly invite men and women to become converted, taking Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord.

If the heretic hunters are quoting portions of Tozer that support their ideas, but rejecting just as many that dispute them vehemently (even on the very heretical topics they’re attempting to refute), how can anyone reading them trust them to accurately portray the ideas of any great Christian they quote?

Often ignoring the whole counsel of Scripture —

In the same way that selective quoting of great Christians occurs, so too is the Bible often reduced to the same well-worn passages, while others are ignored altogether if they don’t immediately prove the heretic hunter’s point or make it hard to explain. But as much as many of those sites say it’s wrong for a heretic to base an entire doctrine off a single Scripture (or two), the heretic hunters employ that same tactic. Again, the hunter becomes the hunted if consistency is applied.

Heretics that go back to experience, tradition, and history are soundly booed because they’re looking outside the Scriptures for answers. Yet heretic hunters who denigrate charismatics like to pick a single widely-disputed verse out 1 Corinthians 13 and then call on experience, tradition, and history to supposedly prove that all the charismata have ceased. I’m not trying to pick doctrinal fights here, only to point out their astonishing inconsistency in sticking to their own rules.

I just can’t take people seriously who say that it’s okay for them to play outside “The Rules,” but no one else can. And that leads into the next problem…

Operating in the same manner as the targets they criticize —

I think I’ve made that point clear in the commentary already.

Overlooking their own issues —

Yes, we know from the heretic hunters that Brian McLaren, Rick Warren, Richard Foster, Dallas Willard, Ravi Zacharias, and {fill in the blank with any popular Christian leader} are leading the Church astray. Okay, horse beaten. While I do not have the space to cover all the reasons for their beliefs in those regards, I can at least understand concerns. Every Christian leader needs some correction now and then. Consider the thumping Paul gave Peter for The Rock’s concessions to the Judaizers.

Cerulean Sanctum is a site that aims for Church purity as much as any other out there, so I’m not happy when any Christian, no matter how famous, gets something wrong.

But whatever happened to the idea that we’re sinners saved by grace and see through a glass darkly this side of Eternity?

And is doctrinal impurity in others any more harmful than being personally unloving, prideful, spiteful, and unwilling to be disciplined as needed? Yet so many of the heretic hunters, by the very words they write on their blogs and sites, show an abundance of those unwelcome traits.

Sometimes a speck has to be removed from an eye. But as the Lord commanded, we must remove our own log first.

That brings us to my last comment.

Utterly refusing correction when they’re clearly wrong —

There is no surer sign of spiritual pride than a refusal to be rebuked when rebuke is warranted.

I will say this to start: most of the supposed heretics and heretic hunters out there are better Christians than I am. My own spiritual sloth is ever before me. But one thing I do know, I’m willing to be corrected when I need it. I may argue with someone about that correction, but that point is still taken as it thaws on my leather-like hide and gradually sinks in. I’m certainly not the brute beast I was long ago.

But when I’ve confronted some of the heretic hunters on points of error, I’ve either had my faith questioned, my comments censored, or been given the complete brush-off. I will acknowledge that one site pulled a post after I noted the blogger’s horrendous slam on Third World Christians, but lately my other correcting comments have been deleted. The message sent to me and others like me is clear.

Those are reasons why I can no longer include links to well-known heretic hunting blogs in my sidebar links or read them myself. Yes, they can have good things to say, but there are other sources out there who more perfectly model the way we Christians should deal with the wayward. As Tozer said, we should always let our winsomeness speak for the Lord first .

There’s something to be said for the velvet-wrapped hammer.