Here is the third, and final post of this series. Here is the quote and problems I originally posted about."As long as I am doing what is right, nobody has the right to judge me. What is accountable to some Christians is of no consequence to others. I have had Christians lambast me for not attending church each and every week. Scripture "tells" them that I should be doing so. God tells me another. You have to listen to God as he speaks to you. One should never assume to discern how God speaks to each of us. This indeed, if we are being faithful and doing well in Gods eyes. In as much, judging others for how God spoke to them is blasphemy. Indeed, a human is but a human."
And here, again are the problems:
1) "Nobody has a right to judge me."
2) "Scripture "tells" them that I should be doing so. God tells me another. You have to listen to God as He speaks to you."
3) "Judging others for how God spoke to them is blasphemy."
I will be addressing problem #3 today.
"Well, this statement about blasphemy seems utterly questionable at best.", a friend of mine said. Now I tend to agree that this use of kind of a "how dare you question what God told me" is a problem. For two reasons.
A) Someone cannot question the person making the claim-they make themselves "untouchable", (It does not matter how faithful you seem, or how well you think you are doing before God, you cannot subvert the Word of God. Refer to the last post where I discuss the importance of not contradicting God)
B) You are claiming to speak for God (Prophet?)
First, if someone makes that claim, you have seemingly shut down all communication. It's like the Ultimate "because I said so" moment. Also, questioning what someone says is not usually the negative type of judgement (like this), it is an assessment of what the person is saying and whether or not what they are saying is true or truly from God.
Now, if y'all want to go around saying God told me this and that...that is one thing (I have a problem with Christians doing this because I think they use it too flipently-For more listen to Decision Making series from www.str.org), but if you are a Christian making these claims, you can be checked out. Paul told the Bereans, basically, "good job" for checking in the Scriptures to determine if what Paul was preaching was from God.
We are also to test the spirits to see if they are from God because there are many false prophets in the world (1 John 4:1). Again, if you are a non-Christian and want to make claims that God spoke to you about thus and such, that is a little different. But if you are a believer in Jesus of Nazareth, your claims will be judged by other believers.
Folks, Biblical doctrine is important. If doctrine were not important, we would not need to be making these distinctions. White Horse Inn had a broadcast a few weeks ago where the question was asked, "Which is more important: Biblical doctrine or following Jesus?" Most pastors at an evangelical pastor's conference said that following Jesus was more important, and a few even said that doctrine was not important at all. Here's the thing: If you have no concept or use of doctrine, which Jesus, which God are you following?
Is it the Jesus of Mormons, who is a spirit brother of Lucifer? Is it Jesus of the Jehovah's Witness's, who is Michael the Archangel? The God of Islam? The impersonal God of Buddhism, or one of a multitude of gods in Hinduism. Without doctrine, you can have a mish-mash. Since Christianity is something in particular, making sure we are getting closer to what God wants us to be needs to be one of our goals. One of the ways to do that is to be refined by reading the Word, and learning from Christian thinkers and pastors who challenge us toward godliness.
Secondly, if you are saying, "God told me...", you better be darn sure you are completely correct. Folks in the Old testament who made these claims were called Prophets. And prophets had a error margin of ZERO. The test for whether they were from God was; True or False. And you had no second chance because it cost you your life. That is how serious it was to claim to speak as God's mouthpiece.
Today is a little different. I think many Christians use the Lord's name flippantly or even in vain when they say something like "I was reading and God told me..." Now I understand that the writer above may have had another thing in mind, but I want to stress the importance (or gravity) of making these types of statements. We need to be a little more careful.
Now I hope this series does not come across as if I have all the answers, but I am convinced, by the studying I have done about Christianity and this topic in particular, that this kind of thinking is not conducive to the Christian worldview. Ideas have consequences and I hope I have adequately shown some of the possible consequences of holding on to these ideas. Hold fast to what is good. Get rid of what is not.
Derrick
16 comments:
I have experienced the wonder and blessing of having experienced a vision. In as much, it was how God spoke to me. I know that I know that I know. I was not claiming to speak for God, but how God spoke to me. When we pray, are we not speaking directly to God? Do we not pray because we are thanking, asking, or otherwise communicating with God? We do so because we believe in His promise. Answers come in many ways. Sometimes answers comes many years after a prayer. Sometimes answers come in ways that we do not even realize. I have experienced a vision, now I dream dreams.
Acts 2:17 And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and daughters shall prophecy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.
Derrick said:
<< A) Someone cannot question the person making the claim-they make themselves "untouchable", >>
Tangentally, it is interesting that many Christians in general will do the same thing, if one were to press them on the question of how they know that the sum of the fundamental truths of Christianity is true. Let’s face it: the average Christian in America and elsewhere has not exactly sat down one day and decided to draw up a list of reasons by which he knows that Christianity is true. Again, he has not, for example, consulted any apologetical works of people’s patron apologists like St. Ravi, St. Josh or St. Greg, and he could not think of any better reasons to offer other than:
a) “I just know that Christianity is true”; or
b) “It changed my life.”
(And of course, any Mormon or Muslim might claim the same thing, as some skeptics would astutely point out.)
Now, I will grant that these people geniunely know that Christianity is true, and it therefore pretty much follows either that the fundamental propositions of Christianity somehow have some special qualities which themselves serve as means of knowledge or that instead perhaps God clandestinely and subjectively informs his elect that these propositions are true. Nevertheless, it hardly seems true that all people (including, for example, reprobate folks) know or have been told from on high that the sum of the fundamental truths of Christianity are true. Therefore, if one were to press most Christians on the question of how they know what they know, they would make themselves untouchable.
(They would either do this or else do something dumb like claim that unregenerate man’s knowledge that God and morality exist entails every last tenet of the gospel of Christ.)
And let no one here reading this feel smug and think that he is above doing such things in that he has studied basic Christian apologetics and he knows about predictive prophecy has read a couple of books from Josh McDowell and Lee Strobel. You have heard Koukl say that every point of view has its problems; this is a true statement on his part, but in light of the many and serious problems that can be raised and have been raised against various tenets of Christian orthodoxy I doubt that most learned Christians are honest and/or wise enough to recognize both: a) that a viewpoint with holes logically poked through it can stand only if the probabilistic weight of evidence leans in favor of it; and b) it is not clear (at least not to this fallible observer) that the weight of objective evidence always leans in favor of Christian orthodoxy after the most astute and learned of atheist, Open Theist, and other objectors have raised various and sundry counterarguments against Christian orthodoxy!
(I have no qualms in making this latter claim either. When I was still running with the all-things-Afrikan crowd I did not through peer pressure, or through socio-psychological pressure to fit in with the rest of the group, or through errant reasoning buy into everything that they were saying at the time.
And years later when I first took up the “defense” of the Christian doctrines that I was expected by others and by self to believe, I parroted the lines of reasoning offered by the Christian intelligentsia and by the Christian laypeople around me. But it was later and thankfully given to me to reflect on all the lame assumptions and lines of reasoning that I had and that other believers have made. I also listen to the general words and counter-orthodoxy objections raised by atheists, heterodox folks and troublemakers and know that these people are not stupid and witless.
So the bottom line is that there is a sense in which truths and supposed truths of Christianity are never safe. The truths of Christianity are just those--truths--but challenges to one’s faith in the same not only are providentially here to stay for the foreseeable future, but some of them are actually are significant, worthy of attention, and challenging.)
That is something to think about if you believe that a good share of the church’s current problems would be solved by a shifting away from postmodernity and more back toward modernity. (Then again, I know that I packed so many things into a relatively few small set of words, I will not be understood! :D) Everybody wants to be untouchable.
Derrick said:
<< If you have no concept or use of doctrine, which Jesus, which God are you following? Is it the Jesus of Mormons, who is a spirit brother of Lucifer? Is it Jesus of the Jehovah's Witness's, who is Michael the Archangel? The God of Islam? The impersonal God of Buddhism, or one of a multitude of gods in Hinduism. >>
Now getting back on topic.... If a Christian has no concept or use of doctrine, then this series of questions has no use other than to make what is not a logical appeal but rather a socio-psychological appeal that he believe what you want him to believe, I would think. After all, teachings do not matter to the person, so the things which are taught about do not matter, and so the teaching (for example) that Jesus is not an angel does not matter!
I say this because it is possible to demonstrate that under some conditions one can believe that a certain object exists while this person also harbors false beliefs about this object. To say that someone mistakenly worships “the Jesus of horrible religions A through Z” is not necessarily to say that that person is worshipping something other than Christ.
Well, one needs to be careful nowadays in attaching significance to things seen and heard within the theater of one’s mind.
I had friend who dreamed about snow one night; when she woke up it was snowing, and she declared that this was something really weird. But once one sits down to calculate the odds of a least one resident of New York dreaming about snow on a cold night while it is snowing, he will begin to realize that this was pretty much statistically bound to happen to someone and probably was not a message from God; in fact, the girl was not even a believer.
Meanwhile, all of us have had times when we have dreamed of real people. That is to say, we have all had dreams in which we have had thoughts which corresponded with real people, Bozo the Clown not actually being inside my head if I have a nightmare about scary clowns. We’ve all also had times when we dreamed of someone’s speaking to us. That is to say, we had thoughts which were similar or analogous to real-life speech; if I dream that a divine unicorn talked to me, it does not suddenly become true that a divine unicorn exists and talked to me last night.
Some of us have also dreamed that God said something to someone (so to speak), whether to them or to others. Yet this would not necessarily mean that God literally spoke to whoever had this dream. I dreamed that a divine unicorn spoke to me, but this does not necessarily mean that a divine unicorn literally spoke to me; after all, there are no divine unicorns. By analogy, if one dreams that God speaks to him, it is not necessarily true that God literally spoke to this person.
We can take these examples, add to them modern examples of people’s wrongly interpreting “strange” events as being signs that God is telling them something, and then say that if God spoke to you, then cool; he spoke to you. However, given the context of Acts 2:17 the occurrence of visions from on high apparently are no more likely to occur than are dreams from on high and the prophesying of one’s and daughters. But how many prophets REALLY are out there today?
Personally, I do not rule out the idea that God would literally speak to anyone through a vision or dream. At the same time, the idea that this is done often seems worthy of doubt, if only doubt. In any case, one again has to be careful about these things; it would be a bad thing to attribute words or messages to God that God never in fact communicated to anyone.
I am at peace. God once spoke to me through a vision. I have no need to qualify it to anyone. In as much, I do not care who tells me that God did not speak to me through a vision. I did indeed share my vision to my American Indian friends who had a special meeting with many guests for me. We shared many thoughts. I see it as a shame that others value the vision of an elder as questionable. I have no shame with my vision. I have no question with my vision. I am at peace. I should only pray that those who question my vison find the peace of God that I have. After all, has anyone asked or discussed what the vision was? The Great Spirit knows.
Qualification: Before it is misinterpreted," I should only pray that those who question my vision find the peace of God that I have" MEANS that I would wish that everybody feels the closeness of God that I feel. It was not meant to detract or diminish anybody else in their relationship with God. I do find it interesting that so much has been done to validate if God indeed did bless me with a vison, or if was just in "The Theatre Of My Mind". I suppose that unless one experiences a vision themself, it is easier to make marginal statements that someone else probably did not.
Previous statement was Russ. I don't know why my name did not appear...
Russ, this is a response to your first comment on this topic.
First, what is in question is not whether or not you had a vision or a dream. You had something. You call it a vision. Fair enough for the sake of discussion.
What is at issue is 1)whether or not it was from God...
2)whether your interpretation is the correct interpretation...Another way to put that is "is the interpretation from God?"
and 3)we must also go back to whether or not it is blasphemy to even question whether your vision or interpretation is from God.
#1 & 2:These are important issues. One way to test whether or not something is from God is to see whether or not it lines up with Scripture. God will NEVER contradict Himself.
Interpretation is just as important. Many times, when God spoke to folks (Think of Joseph and his dream interpretation to Pharaoh and the two men in prison)in the Bible in dreams, He would give them the interpretation as well-this is a similar reason for interpretation of tongues, as well, it would seem.
This goes with: God will NEVER contradict His written Word.
As Greg Koukl, at str.org, in his talk on http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5203hearing the voice of God, this "hearing" happened rarely, it was crystal clear (no chance for misunderstanding or misinterpretation), and should not be expected to happen regularly, particularly as a common occurance in the Christian life, then or now.
#3 With regard to your claim that others are committing blasphemy if they question what you heard from God; I'm sorry, but that seems mistaken. Blasphemy is a bold claim. And I am convinced you will find no Biblical support or reasons why we should take that view as the correct one. You may be right, but I don't think you have given enough support for the view.
In conclusion, Did God speak to you through a vision: It is possible, with the qualification that it must be tested in light of His revealed Word.
I do think that God can be mysterious, but being a Christian is not a mystical endevour. We don't need to try and read the signs around us. We don't need private messages from God to be productive followers of God. (Note: the private messages thing is different than prayer. You can read about this at STR.org under the column Misc-Down near the bottom of the page)
Derrick
Derrick, have you thought about changing the font size of the header at the top of your blog? At 800x600 monitor resolution it looks like it’s at 8pt or 9pt and I’m straining my eyes to read it.
ouch.
What do you mean by ouch? Nobody is saying that you absolutely did not have a vision from God. Are we all questioning it? Yes. However, questioning claims and testing them according to the bible is what we should be doing. I don't believe that anyone is intending to attack you personally. Rather, informing you to look carefully at how your vision or dreams line up with God's word before making a claim that it is from God. I think that Derrick wrote very clearly and to the point without attacking you as a person. He may be attacking some of your ideas, but that is part of a debate as well as a possible consequence of sharing one's ideas.
" OUCH" related to the previous message from Kwame about straining his eyes, for crying out loud. One word even, and I am taken out of context without even being asked about it.
I believe I did ask you about it. The first part of my comment said, "What do you mean by ouch?" I was sincerely asking. Second, I do not think that it is a fair claim to say that I (or anyone, for that matter) took you out of context in this situation because there was no context. You could have been responding to Derrick, Kwame, or something completely different. Because there was no explanation, I assumed that your comment was in regard to Derrick's prior comment. Ok, my bad. However, if I had just assumed that your comment was in regard to Kwame's and it really wasn't, then that would have been a problem as well.
Who is "we all"? " Are we all questioning it? Yes" ( relating to my vision ) relates to whom? Not everybody does question it. There were but three people in this blog on this topic who responded, so I suppose clarification is and should be more thorough. This vision is nothing new. This is something that happened many years ago. There is no question that is was a vision other than a dream. It was discussed and scripturally reviewed by persons educated on the matter. In part if the vision was indeed proven to be quite accurate and forfilled, what say thee then? Was it a dream come true, or a vision? Fortunately, those who were a part of this process of discussion about it at the time know. Now, time has passed and it is but a memory of faith acted upon. Still a portion exists, one which must stay with me alone.
Yeah, I’d say it was pretty obvious that the “ouch” response had to do with my poor eyes and the small font. Then again, the fact that Tracy was not sure about this shows that obviousness may be relative. Even the smartest and most careful people in the world have their cognitive “blind spots.”
Wow, was it really that obvious? Well, I can admit that I jumped the gun a little and assumed too much. I suppose that obviousness and perception are both relative.
Alright, here are some final thoughts on the topic of the judging others, hearing from God, and blasphemy series.
Hopefully, it was clear that we are to judge other believers for what they say and do. Not an unrighteous, appearance-focused manner, but in a manner that is sometimes a challenging rebuke, sometimes gentle persuasion, but always striving for the Truth of Scripture.
Also, God will never contradict Himself from within or without His revealed Word. Paul says in Galatians, "But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned!" (See:Galatian 1:6-10) Whatever method we think God uses to communicate to us needs to line up with what God has already said. Also, if you have some reference to Scripture, please try to include it in there somewhere (there is no need for the whole passage, but a quick reference would be fine, so the audience can test it for themselves-as I hope y'all do when I post Scripture).
Regardless of whether blasphemy is defined as "speaking carelessly, falsly, or insultingly about God or holy things" or an "irreverence toward something considered sacred or inviolatable", it is not blasphemy to question others' visions, dreams, I-heard-from-God and whether they line up with Scripture. It is not blasphemy to judge others for how God spoke to them. It may be something else, but it is not blasphemy.
Finally, to be a good ambassador of Jesus Christ, we must, among other things, share the reasons we believe what we believe, but also with gentleness and respect.
As always, I must admit, I do not have the answers for everything as it relates to life as a Christian. That is what others are for. Whether they are pastors, teachers, people at church, or people on this blog, and even some folks that don't believe exactly what I believe that will help me refine my own worldview, force me to give reasons for my view and sometimes get rid of things that do not ring true.
Derrick
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