Looking to Learn from Outside the Christian Realm

For a long time I dismissed the idea that unbelievers might have things to teach me in a way that I couldn't learn better from believers. Perhaps this is true of many of us. To open oneself to learning from unbelievers, or even from those who call themselves believers but may hold to a questionable doctrine, a Christian will have to dedicate more thought to weeding through areas of ungodly or unconventional thinking and just plain licentiousness to discern where there might be truths that we don't find addressed in the believing realm. I am daring to explore more of these resources, knowing that they may be fraught with potential potholes, but that there are great things to be discovered whose benefits overarch the dangers. I feel that our Christian resources at times tend to be a little ingrown and not equipped to grapple with some of the more mundane, non-spiritual or even relational difficulties that are part of all of our lives.
Yesterday I happened upon Prevention.com's website. I am acquainted with their materials, but haven't read them for years. I was pleasantly surprised at their website these days. It seems a little less to the left than I remember it being years ago, and more on-center, more usable for everyman. I found an article on marriage that, though it doesn't apply Scripture to its principles, doesn't appear to me to be unscriptural and is actually rather insightful: Lasting Love: Five secrets to keeping a long-term relationship fresh and vibrant. Of course, since it isn't written from a specifically scriptural perspective, incorporating the elements of the article in a scriptural way will launch the success of their advice to a higher and more meaningful level.
Today Katie received some textbooks she had ordered in the mail for next term at college. I sat and looked at one, Disciplines of a Godly Woman, by Barbara Hughes. In the back it had a reading list of recommended Christian books; I recognized many of the authors' names. On this list was one by Watchman Nee, Sit, Walk, Stand, which discusses the book of Ephesians. Some months ago our Pastor Ken preached a sermon that he acknowledged was based on this book. Since I had in times before been told that Watchman Nee had some off-based theology, I was guarded in my response to the material, though I found nothing objectionable in the ideas our pastor gave in his sermon. Since that book was not only used by our pastor but recommended in a book required in one of Katie's courses, I surmise that Watchman Nee presented truth in writing that particular one. Maybe some of his books are off, but I know that there is not a person on earth who has a monopoly on truth, and who is immune to error. Psalm 118:9 says, It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in princes. Psalm 146:3 says, Do not trust in princes, in mortal man, in whom there is no salvation. If you've ever put your trust fully in any human being on earth, you know that they will eventually disappoint you, let you down, break a promise, tell a lie, fail you, mislead you...not because they are so much more evil than other people, but because they are merely human; they are not perfect. It is not a reason to go around being suspicious of people in an overwhelming sense, but it is reason not to put your trust fully in any mere human.
No matter what material we are reading, no matter how much we trust the author, we have to beware of false ideas being presented. No one is perfect except Jesus Christ. Only Jesus Christ and His word will never fail you. So when the Bible says to "examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good," in 1 Thessalonians 5:21, it is for that reason. God's word is the gold standard, that which can be fully trusted, and against which all lies and mis-statements will be shown for what they are. It frees the Christian who knows the Scriptures to be able to discern good from evil, to explore the world with a measuring stick that will expose error and allow useful truths to surface.

A Proxy Vote that Betrays the Heart of Evil

Without realizing it in composing this article, I found that this post would gather attention from various google searches, and as a result I located a website that probably is behind this campaign to end investment in companies that support genocide. I applaud their existence! Now my title links to Investors Against Genocide's website.
Click here also to find a Reuters article on how this vote came to be offered.
Click here to find the sad update regarding this vote.
Click here for Investors Against Genocide's list of suggestions regarding how you can help fight genocide.
I wonder how many things slip by me to which I should pay more attention. Today that matter was made clearer than ever before. We seem to get an awful lot of mail that is just too much for me to fully process on an everyday basis. Junk mail, things requesting or requiring a response, stuff I want to refer back to later...there's just an abundance of seemingly trivial stuff to sort through.
We have a regretfully small amount in a retirement fund for which we get regular mailings. It's through Fidelity. This name would make it seem like it was a company faithful to humanity, with great and honorable goals in mind. Today I sadly and clearly learned that this is hardly the case.
We got a little booklet today and a little form on which we were to vote on a couple of issues regarding the fund in which we have this trivial amount of money. Normally I don't even look at the details on these things; I figure they have us voting for people I don't know anything about and for financial details that are beyond my understanding. Some unusual urge prompted me to open the envelope and read the contents, with a group of names of people they recommended that recipients vote for, and then a matter for which they recommended voting against. The matter was not vague and technical; no, it was clear and concise and to the point. It was a shareholder proposal concerning "oversight procedures to screen out investments in companies that, in the judgment of the board, substantially contribute to genocide, patterns of extraordinary and egregious violations of human rights, or crimes against humanity." (This is the heading in the booklet--I already sealed the envelope so I don't remember the shorter phrasing there.) They recommended a vote against it, and in reading the small print in the book, it was clear that the vote was phrased accurately and a vote for screening was really a vote for screening, so the board lacked any conscience to the point that they didn't mind stating their desire to retain the right to invest in companies that don't mind supporting genocide and other crimes against humanity. They will be accountable at Judgment for every soul that they have had a hand in killing--may God be merciful and save them out of this darkness. (This is one of those prayers that I pray against my own inclinations.)
As a result, we ended up voting for the things Fidelity recommended against, and against the people they recommended voting for. There are a few sad aspects to this whole scenario: The likelihood that others also will have the tendency to throw the proxy material away and not read it to vote according to conscience; the probability that even if a screening against genocide investments should pass, that the "judgment of the board" will remain as tainted and evil as it is currently, rendering it ineffective; the fact that we've had a single cent invested in this company up to this point; the influence that these evil people have in their hands, using the money of other people; and the lost, evil and heinous nature of the hearts of the existing board. Still, God is in control, righteous, and just, and will not let this go unnoticed.
Now Cain said to his brother Abel, "Let's go out to the field." And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.
Then the LORD said to Cain, "Where is your brother Abel?" "I don't know," he replied. "Am I my brother's keeper?" The LORD said, "What have you done? Listen! Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground. Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand." (Genesis 4:8-11)

Problems with an Imbalanced Calvinistic View

After writing this, I want to clarify: as amazingly contradictory as these two aspects seem, I at the same time believe both are true and that they work together, and we all might acknowledge a human confusion could be understandable...but after writing this, I want to reiterate that I know that every person's every breath comes from God. Our ability to respond to Him by grace through faith comes from Him. Our ability to respond by rejecting Him comes because He gives that option. It's not by works of righteousness. We can't claim that it is from any good or wisdom in us, but it is all part of His plan. Still, He gives us the ability to choose Him or to stay in our sins. Does that make sense? If all the Bible is true, it does...if all that humans can clearly understand is all that makes sense, then it doesn't.
I can't say I'm extremely schooled in Calvinism, though our family has attended a very Calvinistic church for years, until recently; still, I'm feeling as though I understand its outworkings better the farther I am from it, sort of like I came to understand algebra better after I graduated high school and saw how it worked in life. Katie presently attends a college that is quite Calvinistic as well. As time goes on and we haven't been so close up to that teaching, more and more the effects of its teachings seem to clearly want balance.
Katie was talking to a schoolmate, who was discussing the Calvinist points of view with her, and Katie was telling her how she sees that both aspects in the Bible are true: God is sovereign, and man has choice. The two work together, mostly in ways that are beyond human comprehension. The girl was amazed. She wondered how Katie could believe that both were true; Katie said, "Well, because they're both in the Bible." The girl said she realized that was the case, but she actually stated that she only believed in the sovereignty of God, not the choice of man. I think there are many who in practice, as their faith works out in their thinking, tend toward this extreme, excluding the portions they don't understand that have to do with man making the choice of salvation. God does indicate that there is a choice; it doesn't appear to be separated entirely from man's will: "Choose you this day whom you will serve..." He exhorts men to search for Him: Prov. 8:17, Jer. 29:13, Acts 17:27 all indicate there might often be a searching process in the heart of a man toward finding God.
In a seemingly contradictory stance, many Calvinists, even while they reject the verses that support man's choice, would at the same time condemn a person for not believing the whole Bible, for example, if they believed in Jesus' work on the cross but not in the biblical creation account. How can a person say they believe the Bible if they pick and choose which part they accept? Never mind if I can understand it, if the Bible says it's true, how can I object if I claim to be a Bible-believing Christian? If I expect to understand the Bible before I can believe it, then I am in trouble when I come across every miracle in the Scriptures. If I expect to understand it before I can believe it, then I must first fully understand God--who is in fact bigger than the highest human understanding. It puts me in the position of having to minimize the infinite God to fit into my human brain's definable limits. If I, in fact, accept His sovereignty as a good thing, I should be relieved and thankful to realize that He works in many ways that are beyond my understanding.
For that matter, if God is so fully sovereign to the point that it excludes any choice on the part of man, what purpose is there in witnessing to unbelievers; what purpose is there in presenting the gospel? I am not here saying that God isn't fully sovereign, but that while He is sovereign, He also delights in allowing a person to come to Him as his own personal decision. He draws him, softens his heart, opens his eyes, but the person has to respond to the truth, to the gospel of their salvation. A person does have the capacity to reject God; that option is obviously open, or the Bible would not discuss it: James 4:4 says, for example, that anyone who chooses to become a friend of the world becomes an enemy toward God.
Another vital aspect of the reality of man having a choice is that if God is fully sovereign and man's response is only subject to God's plan and not one's own choice, how can a person be accountable for his own sin? How can God condemn a person if a person has no personal ability to respond or not? How can a person sin and feel any of the horrible guilt that should rightly result, if God is the one who orchestrated it, not the person himself? This was actually another thing Katie encountered in someone else at her college: he spoke of a time when he was deep in sin, but shrugged it off because it was "all a part of God's sovereign plan." How can he feel any personal guilt and accountability, any need to confess and repent? How can he have offended God if it was basically part of God's plan? This does not fit with the biblical view in any way.
In my Bible, a good while back, I wrote a couple of quotations that I think sum up the seemingly contradictory points that God is fully sovereign and that at the same time, man has choice, voice, and impact: Charles Spurgeon, when asked how he reconciled divine sovereignty and human responsibility: "I never try to reconcile friends." Augustine wrote, "We must pray as though it all depended on God, and work as though it all depended on us." If we believe that the Bible is true, we have to accept God's sovereignty and man's choice. We have to believe in the whole counsel of God or we are going to be stunted and imbalanced, and insensitive to the needs of the unsaved. If we think God's sovereignty fully trumps us and is blind and deaf to our will, it will surely affect how we live out our faith in regard to obedience, witness, and prayer; there will be no aspect of our life that it will not impact.

Labels and Biases, Begone!

Quite recently I tried to express in a blog entry (that I thankfully didn’t post) that as a new believer, the Scriptures influenced me thoroughly enough that I was supposedly not vulnerable to the merely human biases and labels and presuppositions that surrounded me. As a new believer, I had carefully examined and discarded many of the opinions and ideals that I had mistakenly adopted up to that time, and then unthinkingly assumed that the changes that would then occur must therefore be biblical. Strangely enough, during the same time that I was pondering how to express this supposed freedom from biases, I was also pondering how to express the exact opposite idea, just how much my attitudes toward others had in fact been influenced by others in non-scriptural ways. I didn’t realize until this writing just how obviously juxtaposed and contradictory these two concepts were—and thanks to various scenarios that have opened my eyes in recent months, I know that the second view is in fact the truer one.
Somehow (and I am not sure exactly how), very early in my walk of faith, I concluded that the only true Christian was a conservative one, assuming that that the more extremely and thoroughly conservative one’s political leanings, the more they somehow helped to underscore and verify a person’s godliness. I also remember being very carefully taught to suspect, if not in fact reject, the profession of faith of Charismatic Christians; also the validity of certain authors, books, and churches. After some observation of the lives of those who promoted these ideas to me, the lack of regard for truth in their own walk made me more likely to question their views--but it took some doing, because as a result I also had to question my own.
I found that I had walled myself into a fortress of adopted beliefs that I had built brick by brick. I was now enclosed in a small spot where there were few who possessed this faith that was now humanly defined by something more than the biblical concept of salvation; every political stance had a sometimes inexplicable spiritual significance; the walls I had built were high and strong, and the love that Jesus would have me display was more and more difficult to live out. The air in that fortress was heavy and I was suffocating in it.
When I visited the church that had been most vocally criticized, I found that its teachings were stunning and the ministry it was performing appeared to be powerful and effective in reaching the lost for Christ. I got to know a 16-year-old Charismatic Christian whose passion for Christ seemed to far exceed that of most other believers I had met around her age. I also greatly enjoyed two books by Eugene Peterson, an author that I later discovered had written The Message, a book that I had heard strongly ridiculed numerous times.
These experiences help me realize the vital importance of adhering only to Scripture for the purpose of evaluating the teachings, the faith, and the ministry of those who profess faith in Christ. Adopting the biases, the prejudices, the opinions of others without discerning for oneself can only build walls of suspicion, if not hatred, and will prohibit us from living out our faith to the utmost. Though I will continue to hold to my pro-life views as primary indicators of my political choices, I can no longer state unequivocally that I am in all ways conservative. That, along with all other ideas, needs to come under the scrutiny of Scripture, and I hope to open my heart and mind to believing, living, and loving others in such a way that pleases God, and discard the labels and biases that had formed my views for so long. I no longer care to build the walls that confine, reject, judge and condemn, but with God’s help, to tear them down and leap over them.

A Dark Wet Blanket

Today I have been in what is for me a very unusual mood--somewhat restless, unsure what matter is bugging me. The day is dark and wet, and my mood is like a dark wet blanket. Why would that be? I should be in the happiest mood possible! Katie is coming home tonight from three months away at college, and Christmas is coming; that should be all the excitement I need, and yet the fact that I should be excited only seems to make my dark attitude all the more unnerving.
Tim and I came home from getting him some black dress shoes and a black tie for a concert in which I believe he may be playing the recorder (consider yourself warned, bring some cotton). We went from thrift shop to outlet store to discount store and finally found them. It frustrates me to buy them for one wearing when he may never need them again--but someone will be able to use them next year if he doesn't; I guess I'll sign it off to contributing to someone else's cause (sigh). Still, overall today should be a happy and cheery day.
I came home and put the heat on and the Christmas music on the cd player. Tim made me smile when time after time, he'd say, "I love that song!" and asked me at one time why we don't just play Christmas songs all year long. He takes after me, that's what it is. It blesses me, to know he has the same love I did as a kid. He came over, knowing my dark mood, and gave me a great big series of hugs. I always need hugs, and since Katie is my main hugger, I've been lacking for them all these months; Tim's usually less huggy and more bombarding, but he has definitely been discovering the art of the hug as well. He does so in a strong, solid way; he hasn't learned the gentle art of not breaking his mom in the process.
Normally I kind of like having the lights off, or at least I don't think of turning them on; Gary, the opposite, turns them all on when he comes home. I turned them on and that made the place a little cheerier.
Still the empty feeling remains and I'm a bit fidgety; I know that external sources of cheer are just that--external; the real issue is very much internal. Whatever is the matter...such a strange feeling. I'm glad this is unfamiliar for me. There are no doubt many who are well-familiar with such feelings, and I am thankful to usually be coasting along over them. It could be that those frowning faces in stores and on sidewalks are feeling this way inside.
The thing I'm thinking is that it is a "poor in spirit" kind of thing...maybe I'd be well-off to feel it much more often. Thinking on last night's conversation about belongings, feeling a little defensive but convicted this morning, I blogged about it in one vein, but the problem is not fixed. I am a rather reckless consumer perhaps--frugal in many ways, but the proof is in what we have here at home, and so I have to say somewhat reckless. Shopping for the shoes and tie, and the prospect of doing what remains of my Christmas shopping (I've hardly started, and the time is short) only made me think about it more.
I believe that at one point that was perhaps too brief, as a newer believer and more aware of people in missions ministries, I was more careful in what I bought, more aware of the needs of others elsewhere in the world; this care has apparently subsided, yielding to more selfish considerations. How did I let it happen? Well, the thing has happened and I must get back on track. I think the worst thing is that at one point I knew it, and since have fallen away from it--it would be better to gain some new obedience rather than have to regain lost ground. As far as it depends on me, I must not be reckless, I must take what I have and with it do God's will.
That was how last night's lesson at the Foundations study that our pastor did at our house seems to apply to my life--"Follow Me"--follow Christ, as He does God's will and not His own. In fact, it was what the pastor gently addressed with me...and I have to say, he lives it himself. There's no one who can call him materialistic, not from anything I've seen. I can't shrug it off and say, "Well, there's this about him...well, I remember this other thing..." No, it applies to me all the more visibly because I've seen it consistently applied to him. All the more effective his impact, all the more convicting the conversation. He lives on less than any pastor I've known, has a smaller house and an older car, and is content; I've never once heard him complain. To have more such examples! To have more people willing to address sin issues in such a way! That would be a potential for growth in the Church.
It's a big resolution, to be free from recklessness in adding unnecessary items to our household, to not only be frugal but careful in my choices; it's a resolution I really must relearn and keep.

We're all a Mess...

We're all a mess. I'm beginning to conclude, we're all a mess. Wonder of wonders--I knew it, but am knowing it more. Of course, we're all sinners in need of a Savior. We're all very little people trying to grasp hold of a very big Truth, and none of us have a perfect handle on it. Luther, that hallmark of the Reformation, had his flaws, his odd character traits. Yet people accept his stand for truth, and brush his flaws aside. As I blogged earlier, Bonhoeffer had his flaws, his inconsistencies, but he's promoted because of what he had right. There are some who are approved, and some who are not, and where the dividing line lies depends on the individual. I've been working on a reading list, but all the writers are of course flawed. What determines where the line of acceptability is? How do we know whether to accept the teachings of an individual or not? How do we accept the good and throw out the bad teachings, or do we instead not take on any of them?
The one source we can turn to without hesitation is the Bible. That is The One Gold Standard of Truth, and the only thing that can mess it up is our reading of it, how we take it in--or not reading of it so we can't take it in at all. We need to make a habit of testing all influences around us, knowing that we are all sinners, all the other books we are reading are flawed, all speakers, all the influences that flood our culture. A person could take extremes to perfect the information that he receives, in eschewing writings other than the Bible; or he can receive them, praying for the Holy Spirit's help in discernment of what is to be accepted and what is not. Depending on the Holy Spirit, all writings are acceptable for screening; all writings can be evaluated with His help, and the learning, the discipleship, the iron-sharpening-iron that we will receive may be broader than if we consider too many categories suspect.
Psalm 146 tells us not to trust in man, not to trust in princes...no writing, no source other than the Scriptures is fully reliable. We test everything against God's Word, and we are helped. One major test the Bible gives us in evaluating teachers is to watch how a person's grasp of truth is lived out in their lives. Is there an effort to live according to Christ? Has the person gladly made sacrifices along the way? Is that person teachable, humble, and honest? By their fruits we will know them, the Bible tells us, and I have found that it is a good qualifier. I praise God that just because they have their flaws, we aren't forbidden all these resources, all the learning and thinking and writing of men who have gone before; we have His help to pick and choose, and can then do so in confidence and eager expectation.