What drives so many “Spirit-led” people is the need for certainty. They have often left the church with its institutional dysfunction and seek a “personal relationship” where Jesus reveals himself outside the confines of tradition. As I have perhaps overstated, these same folks bring their worldviews to their personal revelation, assimilate the two and then claim that “God told me such and such.” The need for certainty is a bane that they do not realize they have inherited from Descartes and Cartesian influence upon modernity. The have merged what is known as the perspicacity (or clarity) of Scripture (that is, that the Bible is clear and can be “read by any plough boy” [Tyndale]) with this unexamined philosophical premise and thus come away doing Bible study as though God was speaking directly to them and that what they think is what God thinks. Again, I am not saying that we do not need the Spirit of Jesus; we do, for it is the Spirit that opens the eyes and ears of our hearts and minds. We also need to learn HOW to think. For too long the church has taught us what to think but we have failed to learn the lesson of how to think. Those who think are often castigated as “worldly” or “in the flesh.” Here again, we must take note of the fact that Jesus is the Logos become flesh, it is flesh that is redeemed, not just spirit. Our thinking has been redeemed if we are willing to “repent” which simply means to “change our thinking.” It is not just the ‘what’ of our thinking that needs to change but the ‘how’ as well. Jesus cannot be grasped. He says to Mary in the garden after his resurrection that he is not to be grasped (John 20). Why is this? It is to remind us that ever and always Jesus is beyond our categories and changes us from outside in and inside out, that everything we think and how we think must be changed in the light of what he did in his life, cross and resurrection. Jesus leaves no stone unturned and it takes a lifetime to have stone after unexamined stone turned over and re-placed on Him who is the Rock, the solid foundation of our faith. It is not a once-for-all thing, but an ongoing process. Our comfort does not lie in the fact that we have pure doctrine or pure revelation. Our comfort does not lie in intellectual or spiritual certainty. These are illusions of the old way of thinking. Our comfort does not lie in the belief that we have grasped Jesus. Our comfort and only hope is that He has grasped us, called us, named us, and chosen us, all of us, and that He alone is our hope. We set our minds on “things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of the Abba” and, when we do, the things we think here below change over and over again. Our lot in life is not certainty but change. We are constantly “being transformed (II Cor. 3, Romans 12). Our lives consist of transformation not certitude. The sooner we accept this, the sooner we allow the Spirit real freedom to relieve us not only from the bondage of sin but also the bondage of the old age and the need for pure doctrine or intellectual certainty. Instead of spending our time defending “personal revelation” we shall find ourselves engaged as a community of faith, as those who recognize our need for one another when we interpret Scripture. We shall not be so hasty as throw out those who have come before us. We shall learn to let go of those doctrines they taught that no longer are viable and we shall also appreciate them for their insights in other areas. We are “the communion of saints” not isolated individuals. We are the Body of Christ, not just amputated fingers and toes alone with God in our own little worlds. It is those who recognize their need for others when they read Scripture that are truly open to the Spirit. They know the propensity for self-deception. They know the delusion that comes with thinking that they can just sit down with their Bibles and open them as if it was a divine Ouija board. Those who are open to the Spirit, who engage others and who have learned HOW to think are the blessed.
Posted on: Wed, 26 Jun 2013 01:45:01 +0000