Faith

Fear, Fights, Flameouts, and a Few Weeks Without a Post

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Regular readers will know that I haven’t posted in a few weeks.

The simplest explanation comes down to my increasing bewilderment at the state of the American Church. I’ve been gobsmacked (or should it be Godsmacked ?) by the increasing  insanity within our ranks. It truly feels like people are losing their grip on reality.

I’ve watched a few fights among believers online over piddling differences. I’m sick to death of the all-important need by some to be correct, even at the expense of love, fellowship, and unity. I’ve watched one battle in which neither side can come up with a solid biblical platform to justify their position,  and neither side will acknowledge that perhaps their side could learn something from the other. No, the need to be right trumps everything else, and the conversation descends into so much name-calling and noise. Sickening.

I’ve watched frightened believers, who resemble Chicken Littles, call for filling the bunker and fleeing to gold reserves (despite what Larry Norman sang about gold and bread). It’s the end of the world as we know it, and these self-appointed stokers of fear are on the front lines sounding the trumpet. “The _______________ {Insert bogeyman group or individual of the week} is going to wreck everything we’ve built for ourselves” is their clarion call. Faith that God is still in charge and that whether we live or die we are still the Lord’s don’t seem to enter into the equation. As I see it, When the Lord comes again, will He find faith on earth? indeed seems to be the question of the hour. A positive answer appears doubtful given how riddled with fear American Christians are. A big difference exists between being sober and being fearful;  it’s past time for us to know the difference.

I’ve watched a few more ministry flameouts, big ones. That’s all I’ll say. You probably know who.  No need to bury more of our wounded, though some seem eager and ready for the task.

All in all, it makes you wonder if the people behind all this mania realize how damaging they have become to the cause of Christ. The fighters, the fearmongers, the detractors of the flameouts—which of them is bettering the case for the Gospel?

People of God, don’t get involved in this garbage. Go about your commission. Don’t veer off the path. Don’t listen to the siren calls. A lot of people out there are using the guise of Christianity to sow discord, anxiety, and rebellion. Ignore them and go about your godly business.

Lost people look to the Church for answers. It’s time for us to grow up and start offering them.

Rethinking Evangelicalism’s Tropes #3: Faith

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Juan de Valdés Leal - 'The Sacrifice of Isaac'

Juan de Valdés Leal - 'The Sacrifice of Isaac'

Evangelicals love the Reformation. While most Evangelicals are not Lutherans, you’ll get a lot of head nods if the importance of Martin Luther’s actions comes up in casual conversation. And it’s next to impossible to talk about Luther without talking sola fide.

But as much as Evangelicals want to talk about faith, I’ve found that the more educated an Evangelical is and the higher up on the socio-economic ladder, the more the issue of faith becomes one of talk and conjecture rather than actual practice.

In fact, when some hoped-for and prayed-over outcome fails to come to pass, anymore it seems that the most intelligent and wealthier Evangelicals are most likely to come up with a tortuous explanation for the failure based on issues of God’s sovereignty or His will. What they don’t ever want to say to one who failed to receive is “The failure was due to your lack of faith.”

In Evangelical circles, at least in the educated and wealthier ones, claiming that one failed to have enough faith is tantamount to shouting a racial slur or vulgarity in someone’s face. We just don’t do that. We’re too afraid of hurting someone’s feelings.

Problem is, I’ve read the New Testament and the writers are constantly telling us that God honors faith and that doubters shouldn’t expect to receive anything from Him. In short, we didn’t get what we asked for because we lacked faith. It’s our fault, not God’s, no matter how hurt our feelings may be to hear that.

I looked up the phrase your faith in the ESV version of the Bible, and Jesus uses that term nine times in a positive sense, typically along the lines of “your faith has made you well.” Those faith possessors got what they wanted because they didn’t doubt but instead trusted Jesus wholeheartedly.

Lack of faith is almost never (and I’ll show you the one semi-exception that I know) rewarded. Instead we get passages like this:

[Jesus] went away from there and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. And on the Sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astonished, saying, “Where did this man get these things? What is the wisdom given to him? How are such mighty works done by his hands? Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him. And Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown and among his relatives and in his own household.” And he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them. And he marveled because of their unbelief.
—Mark 6:1-6a

Jesus could not do many miracles in His hometown because his old neighbors rationalized away whatever faith they may have had in Him. They came up with naturalistic, “educated” explanations of why they could expect so little from Jesus. And they received the results of their unbelief.

Then there is this:

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.
—James 1:5-8

How often do we ever apply that passage to our own lack of faith? Instead, we treat those words as if they apply to some nebulous, theoretical other.

In the truly “impossible” situations, Jesus deals with the unbelieving by choosing who stays and who goes. Witness His actions here:

While [Jesus] was still speaking, there came from the ruler’s house some who said, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the Teacher any further?” But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue, “Do not fear, only believe.” And he allowed no one to follow him except Peter and James and John the brother of James. They came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and Jesus saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. And when he had entered, he said to them, “Why are you making a commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. But he put them all outside and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him and went in where the child was. Taking her by the hand he said to her, “Talitha cumi,” which means, “Little girl, I say to you, arise.” And immediately the girl got up and began walking (for she was twelve years of age), and they were immediately overcome with amazement. And he strictly charged them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.
—Mark 5:35-43

Jesus took only the three disciples most likely to trust Him, and He had all the scoffers removed from the house. Why? Because He has no room for those who lack faith.

On the positive side, there’s this:

As they passed by in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered away to its roots. And Peter remembered and said to him, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree that you cursed has withered.” And Jesus answered them, “Have faith in God. Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”
—Mark 11:20-24

I once wrote a post about that Mark passage, claiming it was the least-believed passage in the Bible. I stand by that statement. That so many of us Evangelicals will try to explain away the very upfront nature of Jesus’ statement here, making excuses for ourselves and for others, is a sign that maybe we’re just as lousy at the faith thing as Jesus’ doubting neighbors.

As for Jesus even remotely rewarding doubt, the only passage that comes to mind is this one, and I believe the Lord puts this in the Scriptures as a cautionary tale (and with a big qualifier):

And they brought the boy to [Jesus]. And when the spirit saw him, immediately it convulsed the boy, and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth. And Jesus asked his father, “How long has this been happening to him?” And he said, “From childhood. And it has often cast him into fire and into water, to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” And Jesus said to him, “‘If you can’! All things are possible for one who believes.” Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, “I believe; help my unbelief!” And when Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, “You mute and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.” And after crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out, and the boy was like a corpse, so that most of them said, “He is dead.” But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose.
—Mark 9:20-27

Jesus here is somewhat shocked that the father of the boy questions His ability to work through faith. Despite this, He restores the boy to wholeness, though one could argue that He does so only after the father confesses the error of his unbelief.

Yet don’t we routinely add “if you can” to our prayers to the Lord? Aren’t we constantly hedging our bets when it comes to asking for big things in prayer?

And who are we that we should be let off lightly? Maybe someone needs to simply say to us, “You didn’t get what you wanted because you didn’t have enough faith.”

My mother died from brain cancer. She died just months after our first child was born, right when we needed her most to help us. That my father had died just months before her only compounded how much we needed her help, if for no other reason than the major relief of having an on-call babysitter now and then.

During my mother’s illness, I had to come to grips with the fact that I didn’t have much faith to believe that she would be healed. Her kind of cancer was almost always 100 percent fatal within a couple years of diagnosis.

Now my perspective on supernatural healing and the ability of the Lord to work miracles was no different then than it is now. But the fact remained that a part of me doubted that God would indeed raise up my mother to wholeness. I remember the months of her slow decline and my lying in bed at night realizing that I just didn’t have enough faith to believe she would be restored. And she died.

Now it may be a horrifying thing to some of you to hear me say this, but honestly, I need to own up to my lack of faith for her healing. Her death may in fact be partly due to the lack of faith in me and those around her. It may not, but I can’t excuse myself. The whole incident made me realize that I needed to grow up.

I think it’s time we stop being babies about faith. Maybe we need to man up and accept that perhaps the bad outcome was because we simply did not take God at His word and failed to have faith. That may be galling to people. It may be hurtful to those who have suffered loss. But I can’t find any excuses in the New Testament for doubt. They just aren’t there. If we say we believe the Bible is the inerrant word of God, then we have to come to grips with this reality right from the myriad examples in Scripture: People who have faith get what they ask for and people who don’t have faith don’t.

One last thing: Paul’s thorn.

So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
—2 Corinthians 12:7-10

That passage is the one most people will cite when it comes to unanswered prayers said in faith. I will fully concede that God did not give Paul what he prayed for.

But I will add what few people ever do: God audibly spoke to Paul to specifically explain why the apostle would not receive what he prayed for in faith.

When God audibly speaks to you and me to give us a reason why we should stop praying for something in faith, then we’ve got a great reason to stop praying and start accepting the hard answer. Otherwise, this is how we are to pray—always:

And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’ For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.'” And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge says. And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
—Luke 18:1-8

That final question of Jesus should haunt us. That we try instead to make excuses for our own lack of faith should haunt us even more.

Making Sense of Confusing Christian Voices

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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.