Observations on Biblical Orthodoxy and Prophetic Inspiration Or Rethinking everything I know about God It was many years ago now that I got a call from a pastor in North Eastern Nevada. He was in a battle with a Christian Woman’s group that had, as he described it, gone astray from Biblical truth. They were doing things in their services that had no Biblical precedent and leading people astray. I talked to him for some time, and recognized that the same group existed in our community and they were doing some of the same things and, well, I was on their board of oversight. So, I listened intently to this pastors complaints, realizing that I did not have the same reaction and in reality had not been concerned with the group or their services. Maybe I had missed something. The issue was that they were praying for people in their meetings and often the people being prayed for were falling down, as they described it, “under the power.” The pastor could find no Biblical precedent for this phenomenon, and had informed the leaders of the group that they were out of order and were introducing things into their Christian faith that were extra-biblical. My reaction was that they were digging women out of addictions, dead end lives and broken relationships and gathered them to worship God. This did not seem like a bad thing to me and I was unconcerned about their style of presentation or worship. I also sensed a power struggle between this pastor and the ladies who headed up the ladies group. Why he needed to control their functions was beyond me. Another incident had happened a few years before that allowed me to come to grips with some of the demand for Biblical orthodoxy. A good friend from Southern California was attending a church that was exploding in size and influence across the land. The pastor was under fire by many in the evangelical world for his permitting extra-biblical expressions in his church. He was also a professor at a large and influential Christian college and seminary in Southern CA. After some time of conflict with the power structure of the college, he resigned under the threat of being dismissed for his view of the Bible and the style of worship and practice in his church. More recently, I got involved in a rising tide of criticism from a growing segment of the church world, including some friends, who have decided that there are a number of large churches who are teaching extra-biblical doctrine and are not faithful to sound doctrine and sound orthodoxy. They have named names, issued written denunciations, and compiled a list of churches and groups who are practicing a style of Christianity that is labeled as error, if not entirely a cult. The problem for me is, I did not see the churches or their leaders as a threat to Christianity or the truth. I have dismissed the whole issue as a difference between personalities, emphasis and style. I simply do not care about the styles of church practice. The substance of the gospel, it seems to me, can encompass a large variety of styles, personalities and cultures. Synthesis of detail is not necessary to bring purity to the church of the living God. I have always thought that God is far larger than we conceive Him as being and far more capable of managing His own church than I am. I do not need to control these things. Style and substance are two different things. But there is a far more important issue underlying these issues of Christian identity and of our adherence to orthodox doctrines and practices. It is the issue of our perspective of God and of His word. One observation that seems inescapable in this conflict is that the condemned pastors, churches and ministries are all large, growing and seemingly successful. One of the key charges is that they are large and growing because they compromise the gospel to gain numbers and that they are astray from the objectives of and practices of ‘real’ Christianity. So, by now you are asking, what does a woman’s group in rural Nevada, a pastor in Southern CA and a current controversy have in common? What they represent is a diverse view of God and the Bible. They are closely aligned together, but are worlds apart. In the contrasts that they create, they do not and cannot understand one another for, they have totally different world views. One is prescriptive and the other is descriptive. Let me explain… Those who know me best know that I see the two trees in the Garden of Evan as pivotal to all life and theology. In the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is the seed of the law, and the prescriptions of what is good and what is bad. It is definitive, contrasting, paradoxical and filled with dichotomies. It is not just the tree of evil, but of contrasting good. It is both. It is the seed plot of all religion, and I use that term to denote systems of belief by which man presumes to understand God, encode Him, creates practices to please Him and finds systems of thought and practice that they feel please God. In that sense, religion is a universal package that includes any and all faiths from Christian to Islam, Judaism to Buddhism. Religion originates within man and is the human prescription of what is right, good and proper. It is the encoding of systems of thought, practice and principle into confines of orthodoxy and heterodoxy. It seeks to be faithful to the confines of those prescriptive elements that create safety, but also bondage, security but also a loss of freedom. It is the age old difference between law and grace. Religion, from that human centered perspective, is from the same tree as the evil it fights. It is the contrasting opposite that is inextricably tied to the evil it fights. Good and evil are in the same fruit and from the same tree. The opposite is the Tree of Life. In that tree there is innocence, fellowship with God and an awe as to the creative wonder of God. Adam and Eve did not have church doctrine and polity – they had God. Hold on, stay with me here. I am not going to do away with the Bible, sound doctrine or the proprieties of sanity. I am, however going to stretch you, the reader, and expose you to a different view of spirituality and of God Himself. The Trip I left Reno to go to a pastor’s conference in San Diego, CA. I had attended many of them, and enjoyed the fellowship with old friends and peers. As I drove along, I was listening to a cassette tape series by the pastor I referenced before, who was under fire from the college where he taught. OK, let me stop here to tell the younger set that a cassette tape is a devise that recorded sounds before the age of MP3, DVD, thumb drives and Wi-Fi. You can find them in the Smithsonian Institute Museum. As I drove along, I listened but my mind wandered to experiences I had that were spiritual in nature, but were, well, not covered by church structures and practice. You know, they were the things you don’t talk about because you don’t want to be considered weird. As I passed by a freeway rest stop I remembered an incident many years before when I was traveling for General Motors, and covered most of Southern California. I had been traveling south on the same freeway from Orange County and discovered a man standing beside the freeway with a gas can in his hand. He had obviously run out of gas and was in trouble, for no one was going to stop on a busy Southern CA freeway to offer help. But as I checked my rearview mirror, there was no one behind me for half a mile or so. This was odd for a six lane freeway in Southern California. So, I pulled over and offered him a ride. I politely decided to engage him in conversation, well at least I tried. It seems that he was the master of conversation, rather than me. I asked him where his car was and if he had walked far. Although I saw him and the gas can, I did not see a car beside the freeway. He seemed to ignore the question and in turn asked me about myself. I explained that I was visiting auto dealers in the San Diego area. He asked me why? I told him that I was representing General Motors and my role was to help them solve problems. He asked me how I did that. Well, I did not know how I did that, I explained, but my training was to move their focus from the frustration of problems to a plan of action. People. I explained, tend to get sidetracked by problems and move away from their purpose, goal and focus. My goal was to refocus them back on what they are supposed to be doing. The presumption was that the problem had a solution but the focus was confused and needed a new perspective. I was there to help them see things differently and to regain their strength of purpose in moving through or past the problem. I explained that it was a good job and I enjoyed it. About then, he looked at me and said, “But you have your own problems that you cannot see through.” I was silent. I had just been hit beside my head with an accurate observation by a stranger. He continued, “You are up against an impossible situation and there is no solution.” He was right on and I had no idea how he knew. All I knew was that by then, tears were rolling down my face and I was listening intently. “Do not despair, God is working on it, and you know, He never fails,” he said. “You are not just representing General Motors to auto dealers, you are a minister of the Most High God and He will not leave you hanging.” Silence attended our journey for many minutes as I tried to digest what had just happened. Finally he smiled and apologized for asking but said he needed to use the restroom at the next rest stop and asked if I would mind stopping. Of course I needed a break also, so I we pulled in and he disappeared into the men’s room. I waited for several minutes, but he did not come back to the car. So I took the gas can and went into the restroom, but there was no one there. I walked to the edge of the rest area that was adjacent to the beach. There was no one on the beach of on the trails to the beach. So I went back to the rest stop and walked the length of it, and did not find him. Finally I left the gas can in front of the restroom where he could find it and drove away. My conclusion was that I had just had a divine appointment with an angel, a prophet or an elusive weird dude, and I did not know which. So fast forward again, I am driving to San Diego for a pastor’s conference years later and listening to tapes as I passed the rest stop. My memory flashed back to the former incident with the mysterious stranger. I smiled, knowing that he was exactly right in reading my situation and also in the fact that God was working behind the scenes in my behalf. All had come together and all was well. But the memory quickened something in my mind and I began to think more deeply about what the speaker on the tape series was saying. When I arrived at the conference, I got a bite to eat, changed into my church clothes and wandered on down to the auditorium in which the meeting was about to start. I was delighted to find old friends, to great them and feel the warmth of a lifetime of relationship with most of them. Soon, the meeting began and I found myself not quite connecting with the setting. Familiar songs rang out and the worship was of a style that I had grown up in, but I was not engaged. I kept going over the tape series in my mind, and soon it was obvious that I was “out-of-it.” I looked over the program to see the list of speakers and subjects for the conference, and thought how similar this was to every other conference I had been to. There were the same speakers, speaking on the same subjects, and presuming to teach how to do church better, when I knew that most of them had been doing the same thing year after year with the same results. We had been pastoring in Reno just a few years and our church was already larger than most of those pastored by the speakers. I took little comfort or pride in what was happening in the Reno church, for I did not like size comparisons, or competitive church games, for none of us are ultimately in control of the results we see, or don’t see. But there was always a hierarchical structure at the conferences and there was always the posturing that happens when human beings get together. Finally, realizing that I was not going to enjoy the meeting, so I left and went to my room. I set down and turned on the TV, but could not focus on it either. So I just sat in a chair and thought. Finally I picked up my day planner, thumbed through to find the phone number of my friend who was attending the church pastored by the man on the tape series I had been listening to, and dialed the number. It rang once and then his familiar voice come on the phone. I explained that I was rethinking some things and wanted his input. He is a psychologist, so he presumed that I need counseling, but I explained that I was listening to his pastor on the trip down and had some questions to ask him. He agreed to do his best to answer. I asked about the problems his pastor was having with the college and the rumors of other churches taking a stand against him. I asked about the explosion of the church numerically and of the phenomenon going on in church practice. People were claiming miracles were happening and healings and visions, and a lot of things that was not happening in most churches. I asked about the charges of extra-biblical practices and of unorthodox teaching. He laughed and started talking. He explained much about the history of the church he attended and of the controversies that were rocking the church world in the area. As he talked, a little diagram formed in my mind. I asked him if he understood the problem of his pastor allowing extra-biblical practices in the church, and again, he laughed. “Depends on what you see in the Bible and how you think about the Bible,” he said. “If you read the Bible as a closed book, then yes, we are not orthodox. But if you look at it as an opened book, then we are simply living in the reality of a God who is present not just historic,” he added. I asked him about the charge that his pastor was preaching that the Bible was not inspired. Again, he laughed. He simply said nothing could be further from the truth. He was not saying that the Bible was an opened book, in term of it being incomplete and that we could add to it, or write new books to be included into it. Not at all, he assured me. What he was saying was that much of Christianity sees the Bible through the matrix of the Tree of Good and Evil. They use it to define what is right and wrong rather than to see in it the revelation of a God who is not just a historic figure, determining what is permissible and what is condemned, but who is a present reality inviting all of us to allow the power of His presence to demonstrate His creative nature in our world, in our communities and in our lives, now! The Bible was not seen by his church, as a dictionary of doctrines and limitation of how God worked, but as a living encouragement to do the stuff that other did in the past, without limitation. I listened for a few more minutes, but my mind was now racing beyond the phone conversation, so I thanked him and hung up. One of the great truths about God is that He is unfathomable, beyond comprehension and greater than our concepts and descriptions. One of the great books of all time is a little book entitled, ‘Your God is Too Small.‘ It reiterates the age old perspective that God is far greater than we can comprehend, far larger than we can imagine and far more complex than our minds can contain. He is, to a great degree, unknowable by the mind of finite humans. Another truth that became fresh was something I had already known and something that we all know to some degree. What we get out of the Bible is often limited by and defined by the world view we bring to our reading of it. There are filters, most often unknown, that we all carry over our eyes that shade our perception of truth. It allows us to gloss over many things that are obvious to others and predisposes us to justify what we already know and the perception of truth that we already have. The plethora of doctrines, denominations, beliefs and perceptions within Christianity is so vast and different as to boggle the mind. And, we all come from those different perspectives by studying the same book, the Bible. The difference is not in the Bible, but in the filters through which we view it. Yet we spend most of our time, in the religious pursuit of self-justification, proving that we are right and others are wrong. We measure doctrines and practices through our imperfect knowledge and define who is right and who is wrong. We set up objectives for the church in terms of bringing conformity of thought, practice and polity in an effort to be true to the prescriptions of God who will, of course, not be pleased if we think wrong and have wrong doctrines. Yesterday a couple of young men came to our house, wearing slacks, dress shirt and tie and carrying a brief case. Yes, they were Jehovah’s Witnesses. I always enjoy those times of interchange. I’m not sure why! Anyway, they proceeded to tell me why they were right and everyone else was wrong, as though by hearing this I would fall down and worship their doctrinal stance. But as they talked, they mentioned something about revelation, so I asked about it. They explained that their church gathers for instruction and revelation of the truth. I asked if they learned anything in those services. They were quite amazed that I would ask such a dumb question, but affirmed that, yes they did learn. So I asked that in learning and finding revelation, they had to leave some old concepts behind in order to gain the new understanding. They affirmed that of course they did. So I asked if that is the case, if they were not acknowledging that the ideas which they abandoned to gain greater new understanding and truth was error. At this they bristled, but seeing that they were trapped, they reluctantly agreed. I assured them that I was not charging them with ignorance but was simply pointing out that a belief in revelation requires an acknowledgment that we do not know everything yet and that some of what we believe may be suspect. They paused, then turned to the Bible in hand to show me again, why what they believed was truth and why other churches were wrong, then excused themselves and left. I found it sad that they were able to accommodate dichotomies in thinking without acknowledging them or without challenging them. Their God was prescriptive and their Bible was definitive. Their objective was to create an organized outline about God and a prescriptive relationship of the Bible to humans. The Bible for them, was closed, dead, and useful only to define right from wrong, good from evil and to reaffirm their rightness in contrast to everyone else. God is not a doctrine, He is! He is the “I AM,” the eternal Creator, the Alpha and Omega. Information about God, as complete as we can make it, is the categorical understanding of incomplete and imperfect human minds. It may be true as far as it goes, but it can also become a barrier to our understanding and experience of relating to the wondrous knowing of God Himself. It is possible, even in some cases probable to substitute knowledge about God for an ongoing relationship with Him. You see, there is a vast difference between a God and the Bible when it is simply the law, the prescription of what is right and what is wrong, who is right and who is wrong, as opposed to walking innocently with Him in the expectation that He and His Word, are descriptive of how others in history experienced God and walked with Him and the encouragement that we, in the here and now, do the same. One perspective limits us to seeing religion with its prescriptions, rules, laws, practices and the approval we gain from others in our group by conforming to them. The other opens us to a descriptive wonder of the God of creation and of His ongoing creative work in us. One is of the law and reduces God and the Bible to nothing more than props in our need to be right. The other describes the wonder of God’s inter-relationship with humanity and releases us to believe for that same presence, power and wonder here and now. Does that mean that right doctrine is unimportant? Not at all, but it does mean that right doctrine used as a self-affirmation of correctness and orthodoxy may be from the wrong tree. Right thinking about God is that which releases us to walk in fellowship with Him now. Right doctrine is that which is not used to contrast but to encourage a present power of life in us. God is interested in the revelation of Himself to His people, in solving our personal problems, in solving the dilemmas of communities, nations and the world for which Christ died. Religion diminishes God and the Bible to arguments about trivia and the determination of whose side God is on. Relationship is the invitation to decide who is on God’s side and who will open to partner with the ongoing power of His grace – here and now! Prescriptive or Descriptive – One is of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the other of the Tree of Life. The dead, closed prescriptions of the Bible creates death, while a greater view opens it to the description of what God can do is we are willing to see Him as the ultimate unlimited force of the universe and the creator, not just then, but now! If we can take off our Good and Evil glasses and view the Bible as open to our present life, then it is quite possible that we will not need to be critical of other churches, ministries and groups, who think differently about things, but who may well be doing the things that the Bible talks about others doing long ago! God is now! Rehearsing the stuff that others did in the past is different than doing the stuff they did and more, here and now! The inspiration of scripture is not in its synthesis of correct thought, but in its revelation of a present God. It was not intended to control the right in opposition to the wrong. It was given as a revelation of how imperfect humans struggled with life and found God real. It was not intended to affirm law, but to reveal grace. It is not a tool for us to do battle with others, but the power of God revealed in triumphing in life. Anything less does damage to us and to the cause of Christ. Observations on Biblical Orthodoxy and Prophetic Inspiration Or Rethinking everything I know about God It was many years ago now that I got a call from a pastor in North Eastern Nevada. He was in a battle with a Christian Woman’s group that had, as he described it, gone astray from Biblical truth. They were doing things in their services that had no Biblical precedent and leading people astray. I talked to him for some time, and recognized that the same group existed in our community and they were doing some of the same things and, well, I was on their board of oversight. So, I listened intently to this pastors complaints, realizing that I did not have the same reaction and in reality had not been concerned with the group or their services. Maybe I had missed something. The issue was that they were praying for people in their meetings and often the people being prayed for were falling down, as they described it, “under the power.” The pastor could find no Biblical precedent for this phenomenon, and had informed the leaders of the group that they were out of order and were introducing things into their Christian faith that were extra-biblical. My reaction was that they were digging women out of addictions, dead end lives and broken relationships and gathered them to worship God. This did not seem like a bad thing to me and I was unconcerned about their style of presentation or worship. I also sensed a power struggle between this pastor and the ladies who headed up the ladies group. Why he needed to control their functions was beyond me. Another incident had happened a few years before that allowed me to come to grips with some of the demand for Biblical orthodoxy. A good friend from Southern California was attending a church that was exploding in size and influence across the land. The pastor was under fire by many in the evangelical world for his permitting extra-biblical expressions in his church. He was also a professor at a large and influential Christian college and seminary in Southern CA. After some time of conflict with the power structure of the college, he resigned under the threat of being dismissed for his view of the Bible and the style of worship and practice in his church. More recently, I got involved in a rising tide of criticism from a growing segment of the church world, including some friends, who have decided that there are a number of large churches who are teaching extra-biblical doctrine and are not faithful to sound doctrine and sound orthodoxy. They have named names, issued written denunciations, and compiled a list of churches and groups who are practicing a style of Christianity that is labeled as error, if not entirely a cult. The problem for me is, I did not see the churches or their leaders as a threat to Christianity or the truth. I have dismissed the whole issue as a difference between personalities, emphasis and style. I simply do not care about the styles of church practice. The substance of the gospel, it seems to me, can encompass a large variety of styles, personalities and cultures. Synthesis of detail is not necessary to bring purity to the church of the living God. I have always thought that God is far larger than we conceive Him as being and far more capable of managing His own church than I am. I do not need to control these things. Style and substance are two different things. But there is a far more important issue underlying these issues of Christian identity and of our adherence to orthodox doctrines and practices. It is the issue of our perspective of God and of His word. One observation that seems inescapable in this conflict is that the condemned pastors, churches and ministries are all large, growing and seemingly successful. One of the key charges is that they are large and growing because they compromise the gospel to gain numbers and that they are astray from the objectives of and practices of ‘real’ Christianity. So, by now you are asking, what does a woman’s group in rural Nevada, a pastor in Southern CA and a current controversy have in common? What they represent is a diverse view of God and the Bible. They are closely aligned together, but are worlds apart. In the contrasts that they create, they do not and cannot understand one another for, they have totally different world views. One is prescriptive and the other is descriptive. Let me explain… Those who know me best know that I see the two trees in the Garden of Evan as pivotal to all life and theology. In the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is the seed of the law, and the prescriptions of what is good and what is bad. It is definitive, contrasting, paradoxical and filled with dichotomies. It is not just the tree of evil, but of contrasting good. It is both. It is the seed plot of all religion, and I use that term to denote systems of belief by which man presumes to understand God, encode Him, creates practices to please Him and finds systems of thought and practice that they feel please God. In that sense, religion is a universal package that includes any and all faiths from Christian to Islam, Judaism to Buddhism. Religion originates within man and is the human prescription of what is right, good and proper. It is the encoding of systems of thought, practice and principle into confines of orthodoxy and heterodoxy. It seeks to be faithful to the confines of those prescriptive elements that create safety, but also bondage, security but also a loss of freedom. It is the age old difference between law and grace. Religion, from that human centered perspective, is from the same tree as the evil it fights. It is the contrasting opposite that is inextricably tied to the evil it fights. Good and evil are in the same fruit and from the same tree. The opposite is the Tree of Life. In that tree there is innocence, fellowship with God and an awe as to the creative wonder of God. Adam and Eve did not have church doctrine and polity – they had God. Hold on, stay with me here. I am not going to do away with the Bible, sound doctrine or the proprieties of sanity. I am, however going to stretch you, the reader, and expose you to a different view of spirituality and of God Himself. The Trip I left Reno to go to a pastor’s conference in San Diego, CA. I had attended many of them, and enjoyed the fellowship with old friends and peers. As I drove along, I was listening to a cassette tape series by the pastor I referenced before, who was under fire from the college where he taught. OK, let me stop here to tell the younger set that a cassette tape is a devise that recorded sounds before the age of MP3, DVD, thumb drives and Wi-Fi. You can find them in the Smithsonian Institute Museum. As I drove along, I listened but my mind wandered to experiences I had that were spiritual in nature, but were, well, not covered by church structures and practice. You know, they were the things you don’t talk about because you don’t want to be considered weird. As I passed by a freeway rest stop I remembered an incident many years before when I was traveling for General Motors, and covered most of Southern California. I had been traveling south on the same freeway from Orange County and discovered a man standing beside the freeway with a gas can in his hand. He had obviously run out of gas and was in trouble, for no one was going to stop on a busy Southern CA freeway to offer help. But as I checked my rearview mirror, there was no one behind me for half a mile or so. This was odd for a six lane freeway in Southern California. So, I pulled over and offered him a ride. I politely decided to engage him in conversation, well at least I tried. It seems that he was the master of conversation, rather than me. I asked him where his car was and if he had walked far. Although I saw him and the gas can, I did not see a car beside the freeway. He seemed to ignore the question and in turn asked me about myself. I explained that I was visiting auto dealers in the San Diego area. He asked me why? I told him that I was representing General Motors and my role was to help them solve problems. He asked me how I did that. Well, I did not know how I did that, I explained, but my training was to move their focus from the frustration of problems to a plan of action. People. I explained, tend to get sidetracked by problems and move away from their purpose, goal and focus. My goal was to refocus them back on what they are supposed to be doing. The presumption was that the problem had a solution but the focus was confused and needed a new perspective. I was there to help them see things differently and to regain their strength of purpose in moving through or past the problem. I explained that it was a good job and I enjoyed it. About then, he looked at me and said, “But you have your own problems that you cannot see through.” I was silent. I had just been hit beside my head with an accurate observation by a stranger. He continued, “You are up against an impossible situation and there is no solution.” He was right on and I had no idea how he knew. All I knew was that by then, tears were rolling down my face and I was listening intently. “Do not despair, God is working on it, and you know, He never fails,” he said. “You are not just representing General Motors to auto dealers, you are a minister of the Most High God and He will not leave you hanging.” Silence attended our journey for many minutes as I tried to digest what had just happened. Finally he smiled and apologized for asking but said he needed to use the restroom at the next rest stop and asked if I would mind stopping. Of course I needed a break also, so I we pulled in and he disappeared into the men’s room. I waited for several minutes, but he did not come back to the car. So I took the gas can and went into the restroom, but there was no one there. I walked to the edge of the rest area that was adjacent to the beach. There was no one on the beach of on the trails to the beach. So I went back to the rest stop and walked the length of it, and did not find him. Finally I left the gas can in front of the restroom where he could find it and drove away. My conclusion was that I had just had a divine appointment with an angel, a prophet or an elusive weird dude, and I did not know which. So fast forward again, I am driving to San Diego for a pastor’s conference years later and listening to tapes as I passed the rest stop. My memory flashed back to the former incident with the mysterious stranger. I smiled, knowing that he was exactly right in reading my situation and also in the fact that God was working behind the scenes in my behalf. All had come together and all was well. But the memory quickened something in my mind and I began to think more deeply about what the speaker on the tape series was saying. When I arrived at the conference, I got a bite to eat, changed into my church clothes and wandered on down to the auditorium in which the meeting was about to start. I was delighted to find old friends, to great them and feel the warmth of a lifetime of relationship with most of them. Soon, the meeting began and I found myself not quite connecting with the setting. Familiar songs rang out and the worship was of a style that I had grown up in, but I was not engaged. I kept going over the tape series in my mind, and soon it was obvious that I was “out-of-it.” I looked over the program to see the list of speakers and subjects for the conference, and thought how similar this was to every other conference I had been to. There were the same speakers, speaking on the same subjects, and presuming to teach how to do church better, when I knew that most of them had been doing the same thing year after year with the same results. We had been pastoring in Reno just a few years and our church was already larger than most of those pastored by the speakers. I took little comfort or pride in what was happening in the Reno church, for I did not like size comparisons, or competitive church games, for none of us are ultimately in control of the results we see, or don’t see. But there was always a hierarchical structure at the conferences and there was always the posturing that happens when human beings get together. Finally, realizing that I was not going to enjoy the meeting, so I left and went to my room. I set down and turned on the TV, but could not focus on it either. So I just sat in a chair and thought. Finally I picked up my day planner, thumbed through to find the phone number of my friend who was attending the church pastored by the man on the tape series I had been listening to, and dialed the number. It rang once and then his familiar voice come on the phone. I explained that I was rethinking some things and wanted his input. He is a psychologist, so he presumed that I need counseling, but I explained that I was listening to his pastor on the trip down and had some questions to ask him. He agreed to do his best to answer. I asked about the problems his pastor was having with the college and the rumors of other churches taking a stand against him. I asked about the explosion of the church numerically and of the phenomenon going on in church practice. People were claiming miracles were happening and healings and visions, and a lot of things that was not happening in most churches. I asked about the charges of extra-biblical practices and of unorthodox teaching. He laughed and started talking. He explained much about the history of the church he attended and of the controversies that were rocking the church world in the area. As he talked, a little diagram formed in my mind. I asked him if he understood the problem of his pastor allowing extra-biblical practices in the church, and again, he laughed. “Depends on what you see in the Bible and how you think about the Bible,” he said. “If you read the Bible as a closed book, then yes, we are not orthodox. But if you look at it as an opened book, then we are simply living in the reality of a God who is present not just historic,” he added. I asked him about the charge that his pastor was preaching that the Bible was not inspired. Again, he laughed. He simply said nothing could be further from the truth. He was not saying that the Bible was an opened book, in term of it being incomplete and that we could add to it, or write new books to be included into it. Not at all, he assured me. What he was saying was that much of Christianity sees the Bible through the matrix of the Tree of Good and Evil. They use it to define what is right and wrong rather than to see in it the revelation of a God who is not just a historic figure, determining what is permissible and what is condemned, but who is a present reality inviting all of us to allow the power of His presence to demonstrate His creative nature in our world, in our communities and in our lives, now! The Bible was not seen by his church, as a dictionary of doctrines and limitation of how God worked, but as a living encouragement to do the stuff that other did in the past, without limitation. I listened for a few more minutes, but my mind was now racing beyond the phone conversation, so I thanked him and hung up. One of the great truths about God is that He is unfathomable, beyond comprehension and greater than our concepts and descriptions. One of the great books of all time is a little book entitled, ‘Your God is Too Small.‘ It reiterates the age old perspective that God is far greater than we can comprehend, far larger than we can imagine and far more complex than our minds can contain. He is, to a great degree, unknowable by the mind of finite humans. Another truth that became fresh was something I had already known and something that we all know to some degree. What we get out of the Bible is often limited by and defined by the world view we bring to our reading of it. There are filters, most often unknown, that we all carry over our eyes that shade our perception of truth. It allows us to gloss over many things that are obvious to others and predisposes us to justify what we already know and the perception of truth that we already have. The plethora of doctrines, denominations, beliefs and perceptions within Christianity is so vast and different as to boggle the mind. And, we all come from those different perspectives by studying the same book, the Bible. The difference is not in the Bible, but in the filters through which we view it. Yet we spend most of our time, in the religious pursuit of self-justification, proving that we are right and others are wrong. We measure doctrines and practices through our imperfect knowledge and define who is right and who is wrong. We set up objectives for the church in terms of bringing conformity of thought, practice and polity in an effort to be true to the prescriptions of God who will, of course, not be pleased if we think wrong and have wrong doctrines. Yesterday a couple of young men came to our house, wearing slacks, dress shirt and tie and carrying a brief case. Yes, they were Jehovah’s Witnesses. I always enjoy those times of interchange. I’m not sure why! Anyway, they proceeded to tell me why they were right and everyone else was wrong, as though by hearing this I would fall down and worship their doctrinal stance. But as they talked, they mentioned something about revelation, so I asked about it. They explained that their church gathers for instruction and revelation of the truth. I asked if they learned anything in those services. They were quite amazed that I would ask such a dumb question, but affirmed that, yes they did learn. So I asked that in learning and finding revelation, they had to leave some old concepts behind in order to gain the new understanding. They affirmed that of course they did. So I asked if that is the case, if they were not acknowledging that the ideas which they abandoned to gain greater new understanding and truth was error. At this they bristled, but seeing that they were trapped, they reluctantly agreed. I assured them that I was not charging them with ignorance but was simply pointing out that a belief in revelation requires an acknowledgment that we do not know everything yet and that some of what we believe may be suspect. They paused, then turned to the Bible in hand to show me again, why what they believed was truth and why other churches were wrong, then excused themselves and left. I found it sad that they were able to accommodate dichotomies in thinking without acknowledging them or without challenging them. Their God was prescriptive and their Bible was definitive. Their objective was to create an organized outline about God and a prescriptive relationship of the Bible to humans. The Bible for them, was closed, dead, and useful only to define right from wrong, good from evil and to reaffirm their rightness in contrast to everyone else. God is not a doctrine, He is! He is the “I AM,” the eternal Creator, the Alpha and Omega. Information about God, as complete as we can make it, is the categorical understanding of incomplete and imperfect human minds. It may be true as far as it goes, but it can also become a barrier to our understanding and experience of relating to the wondrous knowing of God Himself. It is possible, even in some cases probable to substitute knowledge about God for an ongoing relationship with Him. You see, there is a vast difference between a God and the Bible when it is simply the law, the prescription of what is right and what is wrong, who is right and who is wrong, as opposed to walking innocently with Him in the expectation that He and His Word, are descriptive of how others in history experienced God and walked with Him and the encouragement that we, in the here and now, do the same. One perspective limits us to seeing religion with its prescriptions, rules, laws, practices and the approval we gain from others in our group by conforming to them. The other opens us to a descriptive wonder of the God of creation and of His ongoing creative work in us. One is of the law and reduces God and the Bible to nothing more than props in our need to be right. The other describes the wonder of God’s inter-relationship with humanity and releases us to believe for that same presence, power and wonder here and now. Does that mean that right doctrine is unimportant? Not at all, but it does mean that right doctrine used as a self-affirmation of correctness and orthodoxy may be from the wrong tree. Right thinking about God is that which releases us to walk in fellowship with Him now. Right doctrine is that which is not used to contrast but to encourage a present power of life in us. God is interested in the revelation of Himself to His people, in solving our personal problems, in solving the dilemmas of communities, nations and the world for which Christ died. Religion diminishes God and the Bible to arguments about trivia and the determination of whose side God is on. Relationship is the invitation to decide who is on God’s side and who will open to partner with the ongoing power of His grace – here and now! Prescriptive or Descriptive – One is of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the other of the Tree of Life. The dead, closed prescriptions of the Bible creates death, while a greater view opens it to the description of what God can do is we are willing to see Him as the ultimate unlimited force of the universe and the creator, not just then, but now! If we can take off our Good and Evil glasses and view the Bible as open to our present life, then it is quite possible that we will not need to be critical of other churches, ministries and groups, who think differently about things, but who may well be doing the things that the Bible talks about others doing long ago! God is now! Rehearsing the stuff that others did in the past is different than doing the stuff they did and more, here and now! The inspiration of scripture is not in its synthesis of correct thought, but in its revelation of a present God. It was not intended to control the right in opposition to the wrong. It was given as a revelation of how imperfect humans struggled with life and found God real. It was not intended to affirm law, but to reveal grace. It is not a tool for us to do battle with others, but the power of God revealed in triumphing in life. Anything less does damage to us and to the cause of Christ. dimensionsofgrace.org/
Posted on: Sat, 20 Sep 2014 11:03:44 +0000
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