Book Review: Jesus Calling

Michael Horton of the White Horse Inn does a good job of looking at some of the problems with the book, Jesus Calling by Sarah Young. He not only deal with some of the message, but the method that Young used to 'hear from God'.

As far back as you can recall, you’ve started or ended the day with a time of personal meditation on God’s Word and prayer. Only this time, you try something different. You want to hear Jesus speak to you personally. So you take out pen and paper and record the results. As she tells us in her introduction, this is what happened when Sarah Young sought a deeper sense of the presence of Jesus. The result is the daily devotional,Jesus Calling: Enjoying Peace in His Presence (Thomas Nelson, 2004). The book has taken off since it was first published. It now includes a variety of supplements and has even been turned into a NKJV study Bible.

The author states up front that, unlike Scripture, the words she reports from Jesus are not inerrant. Nevertheless, she presents them as first-person speech from Jesus himself. “I knew that God communicated with me through the Bible,” she says, “but I yearned for more.” “Increasingly, I wanted to hear what God had to say to me personally on a given day.” That “more” was “the Presence of Jesus,” something beyond the ordinary means of grace. “So I was ready to begin a new spiritual quest,” beginning with Andrew Murray’s The Secret of the Abiding Presence. After reading God Calling, she relates, “I began to wonder if I, too, could receive messages during my times of communing with God.”

Preparing for an interview today on the topic, I read through Jesus Calling. A few reflections: first touching on the method and then on the message.

The Method

In Romans 10, Paul ties the method of salvation to the message: Just as God has saved us in Christ, apart from our works, he has chosen a method of delivering this gift that puts us on the receiving end. We don’t have to ascend into heaven or descend to the depths to find Christ, according to Scripture. “But what does it say? ‘The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,’ that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming” (v 8). “So faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ” (v 17).

Jesus Christ, who rose from the dead, is the Word Incarnate; his speech is the very word of God. Proving his claims by his resurrection from the dead, he also commissioned his apostles as his ambassadors. Their speech in his name is his speech. Furthermore, when that word is proclaimed and read today, it is the very Word of God. Preaching involves teaching and exhortation, but it is more than that; it is Christ himself commanding, absolving, justifying, renewing, sanctifying, and assuring us. Christ could not be closer to you than he is by his Word and Spirit.

Neither Christ nor the Spirit speaks today apart from his Word. It is through the public ministry of preaching and the sacraments that the Holy Spirit unites us to Christ with all of his benefits. When we meditate on Scripture privately or in our family devotions, it is an extension of that public ministry. The preached Word calls us “out of ourselves,” as the Westminster Shorter Catechism puts it, binding us to Christ and therefore to his body. It is not simply a private affair in the garden, alone, whose joy “none other has ever known,” as the Keswick-inspired hymn has it (“In the Garden”). It was this point that separated the churches of the Reformation not only from Rome but from the Anabaptists.

Yet evangelicalism is a river into which various streams converge. The Reformers discovered in Scripture an inseparable connection between the public and the private, the external and the internal, the formal and the informal. However, radical Protestantism has frequently set the latter over the former. Sure, the external Word matters, but it’s the word that Jesus or the Spirit speaks directly to each of us every day that matters more. “Something more” is the essence of what the Reformers called “enthusiasm.”

In terms of method, then, Jesus Calling is a “something more” book. At the very least, I believe that it encourages believers to see God’s Word as hum-drum and to ascend into the heavens or descend to the depths to discover a word that will make Jesus more present in our daily lives. According to the Reformation stream of evangelicalism, God speaks to us in his Word (the arrow pointing down from God to us) and we speak to him in prayer (the arrow directed up to God). However, Jesus Calling confuses the direction of these arrows, blurring the distinction between God’s speech and our response.

The Message

In terms of content, the message is reducible to one point: Trust me more in daily dependence and you’ll enjoy my presence.

There are some good points. Jesus, according to the author, doesn’t promise a problem-free life; trials are opportunities for growth spurts. He’s in charge and works everything together for our good. Don’t seek Jesus merely to confirm your own plans for the day, but be transformed by his purposes. And above all, fix your eyes on Jesus.

Yet I kept asking, “What purposes”? “Who is Jesus and why should I fix my eyes on him?” In short, the gospel is taken for granted. When exhortations to trust are separated from a clear proclamation of who Christ is, what he has done, and why he is therefore trustworthy, trust simply becomes a work—something that I need to gin up within myself.

The substance of the book is drawn from the wells of the Keswick or “higher life/victorious life” movement that B. B. Warfield critiqued so thoroughly at the turn of the twentieth century in his massive study, Perfectionism. Based on the Wesleyan notion of two acts of faith—one for justification and another for sanctification, the Keswick teaching calls believers to enter into the “higher life.” While they are saved, many believers fail to experience the presence of Jesus in their daily lives. By “surrendering all,” letting go of their attachment to the things of this world, and striving to enter into this realm of ultimate peace, believers can attain a perpetual state of victory. As Warfield pointed out, the movement exhibited a deep inner contradiction in its message. On the one hand, you aren’t supposed to do anything, but simply rest in Jesus. Leave off striving! On the other hand, there are many things that you have to strive to do in order to enter into the higher life. Warfield traced the lineage back to Germany mysticism.

Andrew Murray (1828-1917) was a classic spiritual writer in this stream and his book, The Secret of the Abiding Presence, has been a staple of Keswick piety. Murray’s emphases are replete throughout Jesus Calling. The only difference is that they are placed on the lips of Jesus himself.

Compared with the Psalms, for example, Jesus Calling is remarkably shallow. I do not say that with a snarky tone, but with all seriousness. The Psalms first place before us the mighty acts of God and then call us to respond in confession, trust, and thankfulness. But in Jesus Calling I’m repeatedly exhorted to look to Christ, rest in Christ, trust in Christ, to be thankful and long for a deeper sense of his presence, with little that might provoke any of this. Which means that I’m directed not actually to Christ but to my own inner struggle to be more trustful, restful, and thankful.

Consequently, trust becomes a work. Nothing depends on us, but everything depends on us. Strive to stop striving. Then, “Save your best striving for seeking my face” (71). “Thankfulness opens the door to My Presence…I have empowered you to open or close that door” (215). You can achieve the victorious life through living in deep dependence on Me” (6). “Every time you affirm your trust in me, you put a coin into my treasury. Thus you build up equity in preparation for days of trouble. I keep safely in My heart all trust invested in Me, with interest compounded continuously. The more you trust Me, the more I empower you to do so…Store up for yourself treasure in heaven, through placing your trust in Me. This practice will keep you in My Peace.”

The first mention of Christ even dying for our sins appears on February 28 (page 61). The next reference (to wearing Christ’s robe) is August 9 (p. 232). Even the December readings focus on a general presence of Jesus in our hearts and daily lives, without anchoring it in Jesus’s person and work in history.

As in Keswick spirituality more generally, trust becomes an inner virtue that grows by its exercise. “The more you choose to trust Me, the easier it becomes,” Jesus allegedly says. “Thought patterns of trust become etched into your brain.” This has more in common with Aristotle than with the Apostles. The latter taught that faith comes—and is strengthened—by hearing God’s Word proclaimed.

Reading Jesus Calling, I was reminded of the confusing message of my Christian youth. Longing for “something more,” I pored over my mother’s bookshelf: Thomas a Kempis’ Imitation of Christ, D. L. Moody, Bill Bright, and Andrew Murray. Only with the discovery of the Reformers and various Puritan writers was I offered a liberating alternative that drew me out of myself to cling to Christ. While looking to this Reformation stream for a cluster of doctrines, many in the history of pietism have looked for “something more” elsewhere. Luther and Calvin may be great guides on understanding salvation, but we find our spirituality in medieval and modern alternatives. Yet Reformation piety directs us to the Word, always to the Word, where Christ speaks to us every time it is preached and his sacraments are administered in his name. When we come to this Word, in public and in private, we never need something more.

Here's a great post from Cripplegate: "So did Jesus address homosexuality? Yes, He did. He did so by sending His Spirit to superintend the writing of Paul such that what Paul wrote was precisely what Jesus intended, so much so that it could be said to be “God-breathed.” Jesus condemned homosexuality by means of Paul’s condemnation of homosexuality. And therefore, to deny that homosexuality is sinful is to deny Jesus Himself, and is irreconcilable with true, biblical Christianity." Mike Riccardi

Is it True that Jesus Never Addressed Homosexuality?

by Mike Riccardi

A couple of months ago, I began responding to a couple of popular arguments for why some believe that homosexuality is reconcilable with Christianity. My hope was (and still is) that I might be able to serve those who are mistaken in this regard by helping them to see that faith in Jesus and His Word cannot be reconciled with attempts to legitimize homosexuality. I had addressed the semi-sarcastic objection that we as Christians are inconsistent in condemning homosexuality on the basis of the Levitical law, since we don’t also condemn eating shellfish and mixing fabrics. I also addressed the objection that in condemning homosexuality Christians are being unloving—getting caught up in the details while forgetting that our cardinal Christian virtue is love. If you haven’t read those, I hope you will.

But today I want to address another popular argument for reconciling homosexuality with true Christianity. And that is the objection that Jesus Himself never said a word about homosexuality. Those who make this argument grant that Paul condemned it as sinful (Rom 1:26–27; 1 Cor 6:9–10; 1 Tim 1:9–10). But the sentiment behind this objection is that Paul had corrupted the way of life and the ideology that Jesus came to propagate, and that Jesus would have been “loving” and “accepting” of homosexuals, just as they are.

But is it true that Jesus never said anything about homosexuality?

Actually, just like the other objections, there are several reasons for which this objection simply does not hold up to biblical and logical scrutiny. Today I’d like to address five of them.

Argument from Silence

First, it must be noted that this is an argument from silence, and thus rests on a shaky rational foundation. Jesus also didn’t say a word about pedophilia, bestiality, or rape. But it would be absurd to seek to garner support for any of those abominable acts on the basis of such silence.

Special Pleading

Secondly, this objection rests upon a premise that the objectors reject—namely, that the Bible is God’s infallible Word. What I mean is: the only source of knowledge for the claim that Jesus never said something about a particular topic is the Bible itself. The argument is: “Jesus never said anything [implied: as we see recorded in the Bible] about homosexuality.” Yet it is the authority of this very Bible that these folks deny when they refuse to accept Paul’s teaching on homosexuality. So the argument itself is a case of special pleading. Those who employ it appeal to an authority that they elsewhere explicitly reject—namely, the Bible as God’s Word.

No Reason to Say What Everyone Agreed Upon

Third, a great portion of Jesus’ ministry related to Israel and those familiar with the Law of Moses. They were living in an age under the Mosaic Covenant, which explicitly condemned homosexuality (Lev 18:22; 20:13). Unless there was some precipitating issue that would force Jesus to comment on homosexuality, the only reasonable conclusion—especially in light of the fact that Jesus viewed the Old Testament as the very Word of God (e.g., Matt 22:43) which was infallible (John 10:35)—is that His view of homosexuality was the Old Testament’s view (i.e., God’s view) of homosexuality.

What Jesus Did Say about Marriage

Fourth, when Jesus did speak about marriage, He affirmed it as an institution between a male and a female. In Matthew 19, the Pharisees asked Him what He thought about divorce, hoping to trap Him into disagreeing with Moses and therefore finding reason for condemning Him. Now, in Jesus’ response about why divorce is a bad thing and a result of the hardness of human hearts, Jesus says, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.”

Now, if Jesus wanted to simply and efficiently answer the Pharisees’ question about divorce, He could have done so by skipping immediately to verse 5: “Have you not read that the two become one flesh?” That’s really the answer to the question about divorce. God joins spouses together as one flesh, and man shouldn’t separate what God has joined together.

So why does He start, in verse 4, by reminding the Pharisees that God made human beings male and female? For two reasons, at least. One, He goes out of His way to make this point in order to underscore that marriage, by its very nature, is a divinely-ordained institution—that the originator of marriage is the Creator Himself. Number two, He makes this point, which would otherwise seem superfluous, in order to make it clear that that divinely-ordained institution exists only between one man and one woman. God created man as male and female, and then brought them together in one flesh as the husband-wife relationship illustrates the complementarity and unity-in-diversity that characterizes God’s own nature as one Being who eternally exists in three Persons.

All of Scripture is the Word of Jesus

But all of those responses are really supplementary to this final one. It concerns the inspiration of the New Testament. While it’s true that we have no record of Jesus speaking about homosexuality during His earthly sojourn, the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus sent to speak His words (John 16:12–14), superintended what Paul wrote so that he wrote exactly what God desired to be written (2 Tim 3:16–17; 2 Pet 1:20–21).

See, strictly speaking, Jesus did not stop speaking when Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John finished their Gospel accounts. While Jesus was still on earth, He told the disciples that He had much to say to them, things which they could not bear at that time (John 16:12). But He promised that the Holy Spirit would come to the disciples and would guide them into all truth. This is a promise from Jesus Himself that the word that the Holy Spirit would speak through the disciples would be Christ’s own words (John 16:13). In this way, the Spirit would glorify Jesus (John 16:14).

And the Holy Spirit did just that. As the Church was being built, the Spirit spoke Jesus’ words to the writers of the New Testament. All Scripture (which, according to 2 Peter 3:16, included Paul’s writings) is God-breathed (2 Tim 3:16)—that is, it is the very Word of God, His own breath. “But,” you ask, “didn’t men write Scripture?” Yes they did. But the Holy Spirit so superintended the minds and wills of the writers of Scripture such that the words they wrote under their own recognizance were precisely what God wanted to say to His people (2 Pet 1:20–21).

So the Book of Acts, the epistles of Paul, Peter, John, James, and Jude, the letter to the Hebrews, and the Revelation given to the Apostle John are all the word of God Himself. And, since God exists eternally as Father, Son, and Spirit, and since Jesus is Himself God the Son,all of the New Testament is the Word of Christ. Even the words not appearing in red type are nevertheless the Lord of the Church speaking to His Church by means of the Holy Spirit through the agency of human writers.

So did Jesus address homosexuality? Yes, He did. He did so by sending His Spirit to superintend the writing of Paul such that what Paul wrote was precisely what Jesus intended, so much so that it could be said to be “God-breathed.” Jesus condemned homosexuality by means of Paul’s condemnation of homosexuality. And therefore, to deny that homosexuality is sinful is to deny Jesus Himself, and is irreconcilable with true, biblical Christianity.

Do we "Only Need Jesus"? Is This Christian?

FactChecker: Is the 'I Only Need Jesus!' Declaration Christian?

Note: FactChecker is a monthly series in which Glenn T. Stanton examines claims, myths, and misunderstandings frequently heard in evangelical circles.

We hear this often in good Christian circles. The credo is adopted by many Christians in an effort to declare and live by a more stripped-down faith. They want their Christianity unleaded, organic, unplugged, non-fat, free-range, locally sourced and sustainable. The real-deal without the fluff.

Except it's not.

Believing that all we need is Jesus is simply an incomplete theology and fails to understand Christianity and what it is that God teaches us about our life in him.

Let's examine this in four key parts.

1)    Jesus never taught this.

John the Baptist pointed us to Christ and Christ points us to His Father.

Jesus, in John 14, explains something very important about himself to his disciples. He proclaims to them,

I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will knowmy Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.

And we can know the Father because the Son points us to him. Now, how would the "just give me Jesus" folks answer Jesus?

Jesus says he is the Way, the way to somewhere or someone. Jesus told us he is going to prepare a home for us in God's home, a place where we can dwell with the Father, through redemption from the Son, by the Holy Spirit's drawing and keeping. Jesus tells us that he is obedient to all the Father has commanded him "so that the world may know that I love the Father." (John 14:31)

What are the first words of Jesus' recorded in Scripture? They tell of the center of Christ's life, when he tells his parents,

"Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?" (Luke 2, ESV)

The New King James puts it this way,

And He said to them, "Why did you seek Me? Did you not know that I must be about My Father's business?"

Jesus announced to his parents, as if it is obvious, that he must be about his Father's business, in his Father's house. The meaning here is literally, "I must about the things of my Father!"

Jesus our Savior makes a way for us to know and dwell with the Father. It is Christ's delight and unwavering heart to do this, which leads us to our next point.

2)    The God of Christianity is not Jesus alone.

Jesus' fundamental essence, personality, and being is as the Second Person of the divine and eternal Holy Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Most of the early creeds of the Church were carefully written and proclaimed to make this central tenant of our faith clearly understood for all. We declare and confess one God in Three Divine Persons. We cannot take one member of the Godhead over the others, for to do so is to deny each of them.

This makes the "Just give me Jesus" claim problematic even while it might be very well-intentioned. Consider the ancient Trinity Shield, created to easily communicate to the illiterate the mystery of the Three-in-One. Each of the three are fully, completely, God---one no more than the other---but each of the three are distinct from one another in their divine personhood, character, and nature.

We cannot take Christ without taking his Father and the Holy Spirit. To do so is to not take Christ in actuality. And because of this dramatic and profound truth, addressing the "All I need is Jesus" topic is not mere theological quibbling.

Now, it would be wrong to say that those who take this "All I need is Jesus" attitude are denying the Trinity. It's just that they don't seem to have really considered the fuller implications of their position. While Christianity is not complex, it is neither this simple.

Some who proclaim this singular need will certainly say, "Well, of course. When we say all we need is Jesus, we mean we need God the Father and God the Holy Spirit." To this, the question "Then why don't you say that?" is not unreasonable. The word "all" is by definition an exclusive term.

This leads up to our third point, because to say all you need is the Trinity is not biblical either.

3)    Good Ecclesiology Refutes It.

We cannot simultaneously hold the "All I need is Jesus" position and understand how and what Christ established the Church for. There are no lone-ranger Christians.  Doesn't Paul tell us that "we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body . . ."? The body of Christ is made up of each of us who are baptized in the name of the Trinity. I Corinthians 12:21 tells us "the eye cannot say to the hand, 'I have no need of you!' And the head cannot say to the feet, 'I don't need you?'" We are told here that "God has arranged the parts of the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be"?

And Hebrews 10 commands us in our relationships with the others that we make up the mystical body of Christ with,

And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

By our very nature as Christians we are bound to others. We need them and they need us. That is how God fashioned his Church to work as Christ's beloved Bride. As such, we cannot forsake the assembling of ourselves together.

4)    Creation contradicts it.

In the very second chapter of the first book of scripture, God says something deeply profound that curiously contradicts this seemingly noble idea. Here we have the second telling of humanity's creation. God has created man first. It's a remarkable situation for Adam. Man is there in God's wonderful, untainted creation with every tree (save one) for his delight, pleasant to the eye and delicious to the tongue. And best of all, the man had perfect, unhindered communion with God. They walked and talked together. If anything was ever idyllic, this was.

But in this very setting, God said something quite profound about the man. Perhaps the most profound statement uttered about humanity in all of human telling, second only to explaining that male and female are uniquely created in the image of God.

What was this statement?

"Then the Lord God said, 'It is not good that the man should be alone . . .'"

(Genesis 2:18)

Before the Fall had touched and defaced humanity and creation, God said there was something that was not good. It was not good for man to be alone.

But what might we have said to God in response to His statement? I know what I would say:

"But God, I'm not alone. I have You, what else could I possibly want or need?"

God did not forget or overlook the fact of his own sufficiency. He wants to show us something very important about us, what God made us to be. Man was made for another, like him, but different as well. And it was not good without . . . her.

God made us in such a way that even in our sole relationship with him, we are not as we were created to be. Yes, that is very curious, even startling, but it's what God said.

Just as God is a community of Divine Persons, man as God's unique image-bearer in creation must live in a community of human persons. And the first community of human persons that God established is the communion of husband and wife called to enter a union of intense physical, emotional and spiritual intimacy of love which is life-giving, just as the Trinity is life-giving. This human pro-creative union will bring forth the third member of this human trinity after their own kind. A baby. A new generation God-imagers.

This is what God gave us to satisfy and solve the original problem of man's solitude.

Jesus is Lord of all creation. We must hold him above all and before all. But we don't hold him alone. We honor the Lord of all creation by enjoying, glorying, observing, and participating in the wonder, beauty, majesty, and fullness of His creation.

Christians are not  gnostics nor solipsists. We live in our Father's world. And we do so with others.

No Good in Theological Debates?

I was listening to a sermon recently and the pastor made a comment that caused a bit of concern (though I’m not sure this is the best word). I have heard similar comments made before, and often, from different churches and leaders. The pastor said something to the effect of, ‘I have seen no good come from a theological debate. We should instead just love Jesus and study the Word.’ He also mentioned that theological debate is divisive and can lead to self righteousness.

I am trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, so I am going to assume he doesn’t fully mean there is no value to debate since he also mentioned that it is important to offer arguments to others. Maybe he meant quarrelsome debate. However, I wanted to offer a few thoughts on his comments, since it is one I have dealt with in the past. The challenge in this, ironically, is to do it such a way as to avoid the label divisive or self righteous. I’ll do my best.

1) Just because you can see no value in something does not mean there is no value or that someone else does not see the value.

                I like math and I think it is useful beyond simply answering the question in front of you. It helps with critical thinking skills and more. Many folks do not see the value, though it is there. For years, I did not like history; it took a long time to see or appreciate the value in it.  While we may not always see the value in something, it does not mean the value is not there.

2) Just because someone does something poorly does not mean we ought not to engage in it.

                Marriage, driving, parenting, communication, relationships, loving God, loving others, preaching, apologetics, debate, etc…Many folks completely mess up these things, myself included, on a daily basis. This does not mean we ought to abandon them. Instead, we must work on doing them well. Many folks come from a family of dysfunctional relationships (who doesn’t? J)- I still wanted to get married and have children. But I knew it was going to take work to do it well. I knew there were certain things I did not want for my relationship. So, I learned from folks that did it well and tried not to make the same mistakes.

3) Unity does not mean we always agree. Debating theology does not always mean being divisive just to be divisive- put another way- Dividing truth from error is not always bad.

                Like it or not good theology does divide. But sometimes our error will have worse results than division. If I say I love Jesus, I need to be sure of a few things about Him (ie…theology). If I am wrong about some of the details of who He is, this could have eternal implications. Even if I just want to ‘love Jesus and study the Word’. Mormons, some New Age folks, and others could say the same thing and still not be a believer.

                Just as we must be careful not to treat ‘nonessentials’ as the most important thing, we must also be careful not to think that if an issue is not explicitly the Gospel that it is not important. Many issues have implications beyond the immediate, but have some level of importance. (ex…baptism, church governance, methods of evangelism, worship music, the sovereignty of God vs. man, Biblical interpretation, etc)

                On the formal side of debate folks like Ravi Zacharius, Greg Koukl, William Lane Craig, James White and many other godly men have participated in public debates that have been very helpful, even if not for those directly involved. Koukl calls the value in this- ricochet evangelism. What he means is that sometimes we may never persuade the person we are talking to; sometimes those who may be “listening in” may learn something valuable, even if it only to learn how to deal with those we may disagree with. (I have found this can be the case with many online interactions as well)

 Debate, discussion (even heated), or thinking deeply about controversial theological matters can be done well or poorly.

                As I said above, I want to give the pastor the benefit of the doubt. It may have just been a throw away comment that was not clearly qualified, which is understandable. However, the American Church has long neglected the intellectual life. And many Christians feel like they can never bring up a contrary view for fear they could be, or have been, unfairly labeled divisive. And just for questioning, discussing or debating important issues about the God of the Bible.

                God is bigger than our doubts; He is bigger than our questions; He is bigger than when we mess up. Thank the Lord. Even when we mess up our marriages, theological discussions, and any other human interactions. Thank the Lord. He still saves people in spite of us. Thank the Lord. The Gospel even covers us when we do things poorly. Dare I say, thank the Lord? But it doesn’t always mean we ought to give up those things. Strive, instead, to do them well.

Warnings About Using Subjective Experience as an Apologetic

WARNINGS ABOUT THE VALIDITY OF SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCE AS AN APOLOGETIC FOR YOUR FAITH

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by C Michael Patton

Why do you believe in God?

“Because I know deep in my heart that he exists.”

Why do you believe Christ rose from the grave?

“Because I have experienced the same power in my life.”

Why do you think the Bible is true?

“Because it speaks to me in places that no other book has.”

Why do you believe God loves you?

“Because I was healed of a disease.”

These are all common answers given by well-meaning Christians concerning the validity of their faith. However, I have made the argument that these types of answers are not good apologetic outposts for the faith and can be misleading and, sometimes, destructive.

I have told this story before, but it is well worth saying again. Three months before my sister committed suicide, I was on suicide watch with her. After all, I lived right by her in Dallas and so the obvious go-to guy to run to her house and check on her. Over the previous year, I had to make that dreadful trip to her house no less than 17 times (if I remember correctly – things have gotten hazy over the years). I remember very clearly the first and the seventeenth. On the first time, I broke down the back door and found her in her bed with an empty bottle of sleeping pills by her bed and a note pad with letters to all of her family. I could not wake her and immediately rushed her to the hospital for treatment. She survived. The last time, I went to her house to check and make sure she was okay. I always feared what I might find and how she might have found a way to pull the plug on her life. Would she be in the bed again? Nah…she knew that I would come and find her too quickly. I figured either the garage or the bathtub. But what I feared most was…a gun. She had talked about a gun a lot lately, believing it would be the quickest way to pull off her departure and she figured it would be the one method my rescue missions would not be able to circumvent. When I got to her house on trip number seventeen, she was not there. I figured she had gone to work or something. I called my mother and told her, but she was not relieved. She said that Angie was particularly bad that day and that she knew Angie was going to try something. I told my mother I was sure it would be a gun since I showed up at her door within 15 min of her being out of contact. I decided to stay around the house to wait and see if she came back. After about 30 minutes she pulled up. I was in her front yard. When she saw me, she took off very fast. This behavior, in my mind, meant only one thing: she had a gun and she was planning on using it at home. I jumped in my car and tried to track her down. However, my diesel was not fast enough to keep up and I lost her after the first turn. I wanted to continue the pursuit, but did not know which direction to go to. Left or right at the stop sign in the neighborhood? Left, right, or straight at the light? Left, right, or straight at the next light? I had no idea. I just started making random turns. At this point, I thought about calling my mother and giving her the bad news: Angie is dead – well, as good as dead. She must have had a gun to react the way she did. But I did not make that call. I just drove around. Where? I don’t know. Whichever way the wind took me. I did not even pray for God to tell me which way to go. It seemed that hopeless. I was exhausted from praying about this and just did not want to put this on his table again at this time. He was going to do what he was going to do. The one rational thought I had was that I, were I to kill myself, would do so closer to Oklahoma City (our home town), not further away. So I made my way to the highway back home. I drove for a bit, thinking how crazy this was. How am I going to find her? However, driving down 121 on my way to I35, I passed a hotel and I was compelled to check there (though I had not been compelled to check anywhere else). I drove around back and there it was: Angie’s black Mercedes. I ran to the front desk in a surprised panic. I told them the situation and was eventually able to call her hotel room. She answered. She was surprised, to say that least. I got into her room and quickly searched for the gun. I could not find one so I asked Angie, “Where is it? The gun…where is it?” Looking even more surprised and deflated, she finally led me back to the bathroom and got it for me. I took it, unloaded it, got Angie in my car, and took her to our mother’s house.

There was no one more excited about this then my mother. The last year had been traumatic for her. Her beloved daughter wanted to die and she could not do anything about it. Her God would not come to the rescue and she had begun to doubt his love and care for her. But after this incident, the last year of doubt, disillusionment, and despair turned as it found a grounding in hope. Her faith began to be based on this incident. Her interpretation was that God was not going to let Angie die. A miracle like this had to mean something. And that something was that God was really on our side. That something was that God was really alive and well in the Patton home. In short, everything in her faith began to rely on to God’s love, as she filtered it through this experience. When all hope was gone, God pulled off the impossible. Angie would live! At least that was one interpretation.

What do we base our hope in God on? How do we interpret the happenings in our life? When has he come to the rescue and what has he obligated himself to in our lives?

I told about my healed back last week. Though there have been times when my back still has a bit of pain, by and large it has been so much better since the guy prayed over it at the Credo House five months ago. This weekend I wrote in a comment on the blog that the pain had returned that day. One commenter (who meant nothing but good) said that it could be that I had yet to acknowledge the miracle and give true thanks to God, therefore my back pain was coming back. The idea is that if I accept it as a miracle then it would stay healed. But if I continued to waver in doubt (as I have, to some degree), then the pain would come back. I don’t know how he could know such a thing. God never promised to heal my back at all, much less do so permanently. Therefore, I have no reason to believe things that God has not promised. The moment I begin to do so is the moment I put words in the mouth of God simply to make myself feel better. Experiences can do that. Experiences can quickly turn into promises and head us for a train wreck in our faith. Who are we to put promises in God’s mouth?

I tried not to put a promise in God’s mouth with the miracle of finding Angie in the summer of 2003. It was a miracle, yes. It was from God; how could it not be? But I did not know what it meant. My mother, who needed to find hope so badly, found her own meaning in the experience. She found a new grounding for her faith. She did as the gentleman suggested I do with regard to my back. She did not waver in the message sent. She believed that God was sending a message from heaven: “I am not going to let Angie die.” Her hope was infectious. In fact, I rode along on this bus a time or two over the next month. However, no matter how much faith my mother gained because of this experience, it was not to be. Just over three months later, Angie died by a gun in her own hand in a hotel room about ten miles from the one where I had previously found her.

The faith my mother found in her experience a month earlier had just betrayed her; this devastated her faith in God. The miracle of stopping Angie before became her primary apologetic for God’s love and her faith, yet it turned on her due to the undue faith she placed in it. But God had never promised to keep Angie alive. It was just what we all wanted to believe.

Our experiences are wonderful. That I found Angie that first and seventeenth time was the hand of God. I don’t know what it meant, but I know it was his hand. That my back has been better for the last five months is the hand of God. I don’t know what it means, but I am grateful for it. If my back goes bad again tomorrow, I pray that my faith will not change, since I am trying not to put promises in the mouth of God. So please understand if I don’t rejoice in some things the way some think I should. I just don’t know how to interpret Him so much of the time. But I don’t need to know. If I did, he would be clear about it. He knows how to be clear.

In the end, we all need to learn how to decorate our faith with our subjective experiences, but we don’t lay our foundation with them. Our foundation for God’s love and presence is found in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. There is a permanence there that is not going to change. God is alive and well in our lives every day. We can be certain of this because of the resurrection. We just don’t often know how to interpret his daily interventions. And this is okay.

Jesus Is Not a Self-Help Guru

Here is a good quote/rant from Jeff Dunn over at Internet Monk. Click for the full rant. I do not necessarily agree with all on the site, but they often offer an interesting and challenging perspective. It was in response to what he felt was a lot of "self help" styled sermons/small groups that he has been seeing.

"Let me just say this straight out. If all you are interested in is becoming is a better person, then Jesus is not your best avenue to get there. You can find lots of self-help books—and in Christian bookstores without embarrassing references to Jesus to worry about—that deal with marriage, health, finances and life-issues you find yourself dealing with. They are piled high on tables leading into the temple. As a matter of fact, you can buy them in many temples every Sunday, credit cards accepted.

Jesus is not a self-help guru. He is not interested in you becoming a better person. He could not care less with you improving in any area of your life. Because in the end that is your life. Yours. And he demands you give it to him. All of it. An unconditional surrender. He did not come to improve you, or encourage you, or spur you on to bigger and better things. He came to raise the dead. And if you insist on living, then you’re on your own. Good luck. Sign up for all the seminars, workshops and marriage improvement weekends that you can, because you’re going to need them.

The Gospel is this: We are dead in our sins. Jesus, too, is dead in our sins. But because he is very God of very God, death could not hold him. He conquered sin and death and rose again. And the only life we are now offered is the life he lives in us. Period. He wants us dead. He’ll do the rest."

He is a little spicy. I like it. He goes on to ask. How many churches are preaching this? - "Come and Die With Us" That is definitely not what packs the sanctuary (or auditorium or stadium). But it seems that, at the least, it ought to be part of the message we hear.

If there is no death of self, then there is no reason for being identified with the resurrection of Christ (through baptism). If there is no death, the resurrection means little. If there is no If there is no bad news, the Good news is meaningless.

Museum of Idolatry- Self Love

Here's a post from the Museum of Idolatry which brings up the points of loving ourself and believing in ourselves. I think that more could and should be said, but I think there is a danger for believers to fall into a self-love, in the pop-psychology/positive thinking realm. Particularly how Jesus is often left out of these "positive thinkers". He is much too divisive.

Here's a wonderful little book written by a very well known "Christian"
minister. Hmmmm...doesn't scripture warn us against self-love?

2 Timothy 3:1 - But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. 2 For people will be lovers of self...5 having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. 6 For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, 7 always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. 8 Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith.

Here's another thought. Where in scripture are we ever told to 'believe
in ourselves'?

Love God, Love Others

I heard this last night:

"The love of Christ is inextricably united with the love of the Church." Dwane L.

One of the things we get when we become a Christian is a new community. (I heard this again from Mark Driscoll yesterday as well)

Dwane continued..."If you say you love Christ, but you do not also love the Church, it is like saying I love you, to someone, but I can't stand your family."

Can we love Christ, yet refuse to go to church and be a part of the assembly and corporate worship and Bible study?

"Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another–and all the more as you see the Day approaching." Heb 10:25

Christianity is a personal Faith, but it is not to be a private Faith. I find that when I go to church, I am less likely to continue being selfish because I interact with other member of God's family. Not completely, but the more I go, the better off I am because I need to keep hearing about the cross. And I need to keep hanging out with His people. Among other things it gives me a boost to go out and share in a more loving manner. So much more can be said, but no time.

DB

Apologetics- Are We Not to Offer a Defense?

This is a response to the question: "What is apologetics and does it matter if I have reasons for my faith?"

I have to say I don't know how to completely respond, largely because I think there are several glaring issues with his response. I think he makes several good points, but I think this just plays into a relativistic form of Christianity. Feel free to comment here or go over and comment on Mr. Dudley's blog.

Do you agree? Is it enough to just share our experience? What about every other religious or nonreligious group's experience? What separates them from the Christian experience? If it were all about my experience, can't I just get experiences anywhere else? Is it enough to sustain us to maturity?

DB

Funny, I was just having a chat today with some of the other pastors of my church that touched on this issue. First we will talk about what the study of apologetics is, then we will discuss whether or not we should have reasons for our faith.

Apologetics is the term we use for the defense of the Christian faith. There is a part of me that really enjoys apologetics because it is, in a sense, a branch of philosophy, and I do enjoy philosophy. There is another part of me though, that is not a very big fan of apologetics, let me explain why.

Apologetics-by definition-teaches Christians to do something that we were never really instructed to do in the Gospel (and yes, I do realize that I am opening a can of worms with that statement). Here’s what I mean: Jesus teaches us not to defend ourselves (I am speaking of course about the idea of turning the other cheek). I don’t think that it is God’s desire for us to let people walk all over us, rather, as always, I think that Jesus is looking to a deeper issue concerning our hearts with this instruction. There are people in this world that are always ready to pick a fight, I don’t think that Christians should be counted among them. When we devote a large portion of our time to studying the defense of our faith, it would seem to me that we are actually feeding the defensive attitude that Jesus seems to be speaking against. The Bible does tell us that we should “study to show ourselves approved” and that we should always be “ready to give an account” of what we believe, but even here, we are not talking about DEFENDING our faith; in both of these senses we are actually talking about (1) growing in our understanding of the word of God for our personal growth and the growth of the church, and (2) sharing our faith experience with others.

Apologetics does neither of these things.

While it is good for me to know some of the logic behind my faith, it is not an academic, philosophical understanding of what I believe that will cause me to grow in my relationship (much less anyone’s else’s relationships) with God. Being someone that enjoys intellectual pursuits, I do enjoy a good apologetic work, but this is not what brings me maturity as a Christian, instead, my maturity is determined by how much I let my relationship with God affect all of my other relationships.

All that being said, I do think it is important to have reasons for what you believe, but allow me to be very specific about this. In Christianity, there is a great deal of mystery that is an important part of what we believe. We believe that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, these are mysteries to me as I can not fully comprehend a being that is all of these things. We believe that God is an eternally existent trinity, that He has always been three (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) and yet only one God. This is a mystery to me, and while I may have a basic understanding of this, it is still difficult to wrap my head around. It’s like the Apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians, “We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be cancelled.”

So what do I mean when I say that we should have “reasons for what we believe?” I mean that we should be able to believe in what we know God has done for us. We should be able to explain what we believe, even when it doesn’t seem to make sense. And often our greatest reasoning comes from our experience. Allow me to conclude with this brief story…

“Once, there was a young Christian that left his small midwest town to attend a major university. On the first day of his Philosophy class, the professor stood up and asked, ‘Are there any born-again Christians in this class?’
The young man stood to his feet, his knees shaking with anxiety, and he answered, ‘Sir, I am a Christian.’
The professor proceeded to belittle the young man’s beliefs and explained to him that his beliefs were silly and out-dated, and altogether impossible. After the professor had finished, the young man looked at the professor and said, ‘Sir, can I ask you a question?’
The professor, nodding his consent said, ‘Go ahead.’
The young man spoke up, ‘I have here the core of an apple that I ate on my way to class. Sir, can you tell me, was this apple sweet, or was it sour?’
The professor, a bit perplexed, shook his head saying, ‘I don’t know, I didn’t taste your apple.’
To which the young man responded, ‘Neither have you tasted my Jesus.’”

Bible Promises- Video

I know recently I posted a few videos dealing with "claiming promises of God" from Scripture. Greg Koukl goes into a little more detail on some of the principles that can help us determine if the promise is ours, Israel's, or someone elses. At the very least, we should be careful not to "claim" them as our own, even if we think "God gave us this verse."

It is about 4 minutes long. Here is the link.

DB

Brit Hume Suggests Tiger Woods Needs Jesus- Oh, The Horror

This week, Brit Hume from Fox News suggested that Tiger Woods abandon his Buddhism, and embrace the forgiveness that Christ offers.

"The extent to which he can recover, it seems to me, depends on his faith. He is said to be a Buddhist. I don't think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. So, my message to Tiger would be, 'Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world."

Here is a commentary by Cal Thomas.

People use the name of Jesus Christ every day. For many, it is employed as a curse. Few seek to silence those who blaspheme using His Name. Speak ill of the Prophet Muhammad and you risk a fatwa and crazies storming your house. Speak ill of Jesus Christ and no one will come to your door. He may be the last "religious" figure one can still crucify without penalty, at least in the short term.

Here is another by Ann Coulter on the subject (as only she can)

In The Washington Post, Tom Shales demanded that Hume apologize, saying he had "dissed about half a billion Buddhists on the planet."

Is Buddhism about forgiveness? Because, if so, Buddhists had better start demanding corrections from every book, magazine article and blog posting ever written on the subject, which claims Buddhists don't believe in God, but try to become their own gods.

Any thoughts?
D.B.

The Bible is All About Jesus

Here is a link to a blog that has a list of 313 prophecies that some attribute to Jesus. They are from the Old Testament and He fulfills them in the New. I have not read through them, but I would be a little skeptical about some of them. I think lists like this sometimes include some that are a little hard to accept. But the vast majority are fulfilled by Jesus and some ae definately quite impressive.

D.

Jesus Was A Community Organizer Like Barack

And Pontius Pilate, who indirectly killed Jesus, was a Governor. The Left can be pretty ridiculous. The Right can too, but I think the scale is tipped in the favor of the Left for wacky comments. It's only 17 seconds, so check it out.

D.