Why this use of the Bible is problematic in practice…

Posted on September 7, 2011 by Speakfaithfully

[In my previous post I described how the dominant approach to the Bible I have seen in Christianity is problematic, if not outright impossible, to use given the development and the nature of the Bible.  In this post I want to look at some practical reasons why this approach fails when it is attempted.]

Despite the problems with the “Truth mine” approach to scripture that I have seen from the text, this approach is still the dominant approach to the Bible I have seen.  If this approach is problematic in its nature it is even more problematic in practice.  I just want to highlight a number of the practical problems I have seen with this approach.

1. Few Christians read or understand the Bible:  Many Christians have not read the entire Bible, nor have they deeply studied or thought about what they have read.  The most common situation is that Christians have uncritically read a handful of select passages from the Bible themselves and beyond that they trust authority figures to teach them the rest and tell them what the Bible says.  Authority figures can be their local clergy, teaching resources or the general consensus around them.

The issue: If the Bible is a Truth mine, many Christians are apparently farmers by trade and could not find the right mine to save their life.  Most Christians uncritically accept the spiritual truths taught to them by the religious leaders over them or what is the general consensus of their specific community, regardless of the actual merit or truth in these beliefs. Practically speaking, anytime such power is concentrated in the hands of a few, and people go along with the dominant view of those around them, abuses and half-truths exist, if not flourish.

2. Christians read and use the Bible inconsistently and selectively: Christians very selectively read their Bibles and then inconsistently apply the “Truth mine” approach to what they decide to read. Passages that suit their pre-existing beliefs are read and treated as timeless truths for all time. Passages that would challenge their beliefs are ignored or begrudgingly accepted as part of the Bible but then explained away in some fashion.

Scott McKnight wrote an entire book, Blue Parakeets, dedicated to show how all Christians “pick and choose” which verses to apply to contemporary life. I would greatly encourage any interested in examining this issue further to read this book. I have attached a few examples of my own of this issue at the bottom of the post.

The Issue:  In practice, it is Christians, not God, who decide which parts of the Bible are diamonds of eternal and divine truth to be obeyed today and treasured forever and which parts of the Bible are to be considered the dirt around the diamond to be discarded and ignored. Practically speaking, Christians find statements in the Bible that support their positions, and then suggest their position is the only “biblical truth” on the subject.

3. Christian interpretation of the Bible is highly subjective: There are many factors (such as one’s culture, one’s own life experiences, one’s religious upbringing, etc.) that impact one’s interpretation of the Bible. This means that two Christians presented with the same passage from the Bible will interpret it differently.  Most people are unaware of these factors, and even when they are examined and explained, they are often equally valid. This makes it difficult, if not impossible to determine whose interpretation is correct.

The Issue: If the Bible is a “Truth mine,” it seems that the timeless truths are subject to change depending on a wide variety of factors that have absolutely nothing to do with the text.

4. Morality and ethics change over time: The Bible, read literally, contains passages that explain, encourage and endorse slavery, sexism, racism, and a variety of other social and individual practices that by contemporary standards are immoral or unethical.  We ignore many of these passages. For example, the Bible commands that if a man rapes a woman he has to pay money to her father and then marry her.  I think most people would be horrified if they were told the “biblical truth” regarding rape was that the raped woman would be forced to marry her rapist.  The reason they are now considered immoral and unethical is that morality and ethics change over time. Morality and ethics change over time because what is moral and what is ethical is determined by the dominant culture.

The Issue: How can divine and eternal rules about morality and ethics be mined from the Bible and applied when the morality of culture changes? The Bible commands people to kill witches. Now some might suggest that the fact that morality and ethics are changing is the sinful encroachment of culture upon “biblical morality” or “family values.” This is incorrect on two levels.  First, morality and ethics have changed for the better, not just for the worst.  I am glad slavery is now widely regarded as wrong. Second, the morality and ethics of the people of God also change over time. From which era do we extract “biblical morality” or “family values” from?  Is it when polygamy was okay or when monogamy was the norm? Additionally, what do we do when commands in the Bible are immoral?

[So the “Truth mine” approach to the Bible is problematic from both the development and nature of the Bible itself and anyone can see the practical problems with this approach.  So why do we keep using it? In my next post I want to suggest at least three reasons I suspect this fundamental approach to the Bible persists. (ignorance, fear, power)]

P.S.: I mentioned I wanted to add some example of inconsistent uses of the Bible. I want to bring out these examples to show how gravely problematic these issues can become. Here are three.

1. As McKnight points out in his book there are certain Christian traditions that require women to dress a certain way to be modest and preclude them from having any authority in the church or fulfilling any leadership role. This is all to be obedient to the Biblical commands found in 1 Timothy 2.  However, McKnight points out, none of these traditions require men to raise their hands in prayer, “without wrath and dissension,” a command that is located literally a sentence before Paul begins to talk about women.  If one command is to be taken literally in a letter, should we not take all the commands from the letter literally?

2. In a blog that was recently promoted on Fuller’s website, Rev Mary Naegeli, a Presbyterian minister, condemns homosexuality from the handful of passages in the Bible that refer to it. She talks elsewhere on her blog about how rogue elements in her church have hijacked it and they have done a dramatic about-face on the issue of homosexuality and gone against centuries of tradition and scripture itself. However, I assume Rev. Naegeli is grateful that her denomination, a break-off branch of Presbyterian church, did a dramatic about-face on the issue of women in leadership, breaking with centuries of tradition and scripture itself.  If the Bible’s condemnation of homosexuality is for today, why is the Bible’s prohibition of women in leadership not for today?

3. I want to take this moment to thank the homosexual community for bringing out our inconsistent reading of the Bible when Proposition 8 hit here in California, especially in regards to our use of certain Old Testament passages.

Like Rev. Naegeli, many Christians would support the condemnation of homosexuality, at least in part, from a passage in Leviticus.  However, a broader reading of Leviticus will reveal many commandments that Christians are ignoring and not claiming to be authoritative for today. Another blogger has brought up many of these. No one seems to be clamoring to enforce these clear commandments from scripture today or suggest that because we no longer follow them, evil secular culture is eroding our morality.

These three examples are but a few examples of how Christians cherry-pick passages from the Bible, with no explanation, to support their positions.

Posted in Faith, Personal Commentary, Why do we believe... | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Why this use of the Bible is problematic due to the Bible we have…

Posted on September 4, 2011 by Speakfaithfully

[In my previous post I have described how I have seen the Bible essentially treated as a “Truth mine.” The Bible is “mined” for eternal truths from God. These truths are often then used to guide and govern Christian behavior and belief. These “biblical truths” often ultimately serve to determine who is a “real” Christian and who is not.  In this post I want to explain why this approach to the Bible, fundamental to both highly academic theology and conventional Christian wisdom passed around in the church, is highly problematic due to the history of development and actual nature of the Bible.]

Very few Christians have thought about where the Bible came from, or thought critically about the actual nature of the Bible.  I certainly fit this description for most of my life.  I blindly went along with what I was told about the Bible and never really stopped to think about it, where it came from, and how it was used.

It is no surprise then that when I began my college studies in the Bible I was blind-sided by a lot of issues. As I learned about the development of the Bible and nature of the Bible, it seemed really troublesome to continue using the “Truth mine” approach, but this was all I had known.  I wrestled with this for many years but really buried my head in the sand so to speak and avoided the real issues.  However, the more I studied and thought about the Bible, the more the way I had been taught to use it continued to fall apart.  I finally came to acknowledge that the way I was taught to use the Bible was incompatible with the Bible we have.

I probably cannot explain this long process in a single post but below I have provided eight points about the development and the nature of the Bible that should serve to highlight at least some of the main issues. Many books have been written on these topics by better and more intelligent men and women than myself.  I would encourage those sincerely interested in these issues to read the introduction to Dr. Michael Coogan’s book God and Sex: What the Bible Really Says as it is an incredible succinct and accurate overview of the many issues I am going to bring up here.  (I would encourage those sincerely interested on thinking about human sexuality in light of the Bible to read the rest of the book.)

1. The biblical texts are a small part of a much larger pool of spiritual texts: The various books of the Bible are just a very small representation of a much larger pool of Israelite, Jewish and Christian spiritual writing. We know this because we have found copies of some of these spiritual writings while other writings, or concepts and stories contained in other writings, are referenced in the Bible while the writings themselves are not in the Bible. One example is the fact that Paul references a letter to church in Laodicea and encouraged the Colossians to read it…but we do not have a book in our Bible entitled Laodicean. Considering Paul alone, it appears clear, and it would make sense, that Paul wrote more letters than the handful of letters that appear in our Bible.

The Issues: First, this begs many issues about interpretation.  Considering Paul’s writing alone, we know he wrote many letters that did not make their way into our Bible.  Were all of Paul’s letters inspired or just some?

Second,  if the Bible is a “Truth mine,” but the books that make up the Bible come from a much larger pool, how do we know where to stop digging?

2. The biblical books we have were selected from that pool: Traditionally the answer has been the only spiritual texts we are to mine eternal and divine truths out of, are those in the Bible. But who decided which texts from this large pool of spiritual writings made it into the Bible? The answer is that both Jewish and Christian religious leaders made decisions about what books were to be accepted and authoritative and which books were not as important, to be ignored, or even destroyed.

The Issues: First, humans had a huge hand in this process of decided which books were authoritative and which books were not. Given human nature, I am suspicious that every decision in canon formation was Spirit led. Not all of these decisions were made from some widespread consensus and sometimes we have no reason why a particular book was rejected where others very similar to it were accepted.

Second, even if this entire process was completely God guided and God protected, this process lasted at least a few centuries and it would be many more centuries before most Christians had access to the whole Bible in their language.  If the Bible is the only authoritative guide for Christian belief and Christian living, what about the followers of Jesus who lived before they had access to the Bible?  Did God guide them less than He did those who live today? Were they left to fend for themselves on many issues?  Were they somehow “less” Christian than we are today because they did not have the right “biblical answers” to many of life’s questions?

3. There are different Bibles: To further complicate things not every Christian group agreed on the decisions that were made during canon formation.  The result is that different Bibles exist.  When I say Bible I assume most of my readers think of a bigger book containing sixty six different smaller books.  However, this is just the Protestant Bible. The Hebrew Bible contains less books and is organized differently than our Old Testament.  The Greek Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church also have different books in their Bible we do not have. If we are to suggest that God guided and protected the process of which books made it into our Bible we must admit that for some reason He did not guide us into a unanimous position.

The Issue: So if the Bible is a “Truth mine,” which Bible is the right mine?  How certain are we, and how certain can we be, that our Bible (whichever Bible that is) is the right Bible? For Protestants, if all the Bible is filled with eternal and divine truth, then are we missing eternal and divine truths that are in Tobit or Maccabees?  Are our Catholic brothers and sisters more informed or mis-informed because they have access to these books?

4. There are many different genres in the Bible: The books of the Bible contain a variety of different genres or styles of literary writing from different cultures.  Poetry, erotica, Hebrew narratives, wisdom literature, parables, prophetic utterances, the Gospels, Graeco-Roman letters, Ancient Near Eastern political treaties, apocryphal literature and other genres exist in the Bible. Each of these genres has literary rules and conventions that govern them.  Each of these genres has a different purpose in mind.  Each of these genres has a different intention regarding how historically, literally, and factually they were to be read and understood.

The issue: The “Truth mine” approach is a one-size-fits-all approach to these many different genres.  This rides roughshod over the fact that the many differences within these genres. This is just as problematic as if I were to tell you to read every type of English and Spanish literature, past or present, 16th century sonnet or science fiction novel, 4th century canción or modern day script for a telenovela, as an English textbook on math.

Sometimes we take a more nuanced approach, and for example do not build too many literal truth claims from the poetry of Psalms.  However, why is it not okay to do this with the poetry of Psalms but it is okay to do it to the Hebrew narratives concerning the Patriarchs, the letters to various churches, records of visions from God, or the etiology stories in Genesis?

A handful of select people (mostly scholars) who actually pay attention to this issue seek to reconstruct the literary rules these genres by comparing them to other similar writings we have found.  However, this leads down a highly subjective road where there is room for debate and it would require every Christian (or at least every Christian teacher) to know these rules and apply them correctly.

5. There are inconsistencies and contradictions within the Bible: Anyone who reads the Bible from cover to cover will see that while many prophecies are fulfilled and there is consistency on a number of issues, there are also inconsistencies and contradictions. These are salted throughout the texts and are of varying degrees of importance.   This is a graph of inconsistencies in the Bible.

This is a link to Project Reason, the source of this graph and hi-res versions. Every red strand in the image represents a statement that contradicts another in the Bible. Some of these contradictions are in minute details while others are of more importance or are more abstract in nature.

The Issue:  The issue for the “Truth mine” approach is quite simply that these inconsistencies exist. However one might explain them, there are a variety of subjects where the Bible says multiple things.  How can there be one authoritative “biblical answer” to something if the Bible actual provides different statements about the same thing?

6. The biblical texts were written to and from cultures that no longer exist: The literature of the Bible is forever locked in cultures and languages that no longer exist. To further complicate matters much of these writings, especially in our Old Testament, were written over several centuries.  During this time the people of God experienced many dramatic changes in their political, social, and religious life.

The Issue: To get at a “biblical truth,” the “Truth mine” approach can either translate and obey the Bible literally, ignoring the change in cultures and the culture that any given passage was written to, or one can seek to understand what the words and sentences meant to their original readers to extract the “biblical truth” from the passage and then reason out its meaning and application for a contemporary reader.  Both of these approaches are problematic.

First, while the words of the Bible has stayed locked in time, the world has not.  So if we take the Bible literally, with no regard for the fact that they were written to and from cultures that no longer exist, we are left with “biblical truths” that do not make sense, do not apply, or are even immoral in current circumstances?

Second, if we attempt to reconstruct the context they were written to, find a “biblical truth” in there, and then apply it to the contemporary world today, we head down a very subjective and contextual path that can produces many different results for different contexts.

7. The Bible leaves much unexplained or unmentioned: In the Bible there is a lot of truth that is left unexplained and many issues that are not addressed.

One example of this is the practices and teachings of the Nicolaitans mentioned in Revelations.  Jesus judges condemns one church for falling into it and commends another church for avoiding it, so it seems important to understand what it was. However, the Bible does not explain what these practices actually were.

On a bigger level, the Bible simply does not contain an exhaustive account of truth.  Not everything that is true is directly stated in the Bible and the Bible does not have a clear unambiguous answer for every moral, ethical, doctrinal or practical concern that Christians have been, are, and will be faced with.

The Issue:  For the “Truth mine” approach, the problem is that not every diamond is in the mine. There are eternal and divine truths that exist that are not recorded in the Bible and there are questions the Bible fails to answer.  How can we get the “biblical truth” and the “biblical answer” to some question from the Bible when the Bible does not have something to say on everything? If the Bible is our guide, what do we do when we fail to find guidance in its pages on a particular issue?

8. The Bible is open to interpretation: If God saw fit to inspire every word of at least some of the Israelite, Jewish and Christian spiritual writings, and then guided each of these writings into the Bible, it appears God has failed to guide the most important step: the interpretation of scripture. Any given scriptural passage can be read in a variety of ways.  Additionally, through selectively reading scripture, mix-matching verses, and other simple tactics one can make the Bible sound like it is saying just about anything.

The Issue: The fact that scriptures are open to interpretation make it difficult, if not impossible, for there to be one “biblical truth” about any given subject. How can one be sure that your personal interpretation of a passage or the interpretation of a passage that dominates your particular tradition is actually the correct one that is authoritative for everyone, including those who would interpret the passage differently?

In conclusion, due to the development and nature of the Bible, I think it is incredibly problematic to approach the Bible as a “Truth mine.”  Wherever this approach exists, be it at the core of Calvin’s institutes, the sermon of a pastor, or a cliché Christian statement that starts “What the Bible says about (topic)…,” such doctrines, teachings and statements are in my opinion highly suspect.  Because of this, I would suggest maybe 20% of truth claims I have heard Christian pastors, theologians, and laypersons make are actually accurate. The rest has been either personal opinion supported with a biblical text, or a truth for a particular community in a particular context.

[This is all pretty academic stuff, and I’m sure I lost some of my readers, so in my next post I want to discuss how the “Truth mine” approach is problematic at a practical level when it is actually used.

Posted in Class or Paper Take Away, Faith, Personal Commentary, Why do we believe... | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

How I have seen the Bible used…

Posted on August 23, 2011 by Speakfaithfully

When it comes to answering the question, “How should Christians understand and use the Bible?” thousands of answers, traditions and streams of thought exist. Many books have been written on this subject. It would be presumptuous to suggest that I could explore and evaluate the answer every Christian tribe and sect provides to this question do them justice in a post.  But this is not my goal.

In this post (as the title would suggest) I want to explain how I  have seen the Bible used.

In my time in Christianity I have seen the Bible used in many ways, in many different traditions and have been taught a variety of different competing theories as to how the Bible is to be interpreted and applied. However, while on the surface these approaches may vary greatly, I think underneath their differences there is an understanding of the Bible that is at the foundation of all of these ways.  It is this common thread that I want to explore in this post.

This foundational understanding of the Bible common to everything I have experienced is that the Bible is understood and treated as a “Truth mine.”

In this mine, that is the Bible, there are “biblical truths.” These truths were inspired by God and are eternal. This means that they carry divine authority that overrides any other type of authority and they do not decay or change over time regardless of how the world changes.

However, these “biblical truth” are hidden and buried in the text and they must be excavated through interpretation.  The different shovels and picks people use to excavate the truth from the Bible would be the different ways people interpret the Bible.

In this whole process, certain parts of the Bible are treated like the dirt around a diamond and they disregarded, thrown away, or ignored.

Once found, these “biblical truths” are suggested to be the authoritative and final word on any given issue. These “biblical truths” are almost always then turned into a law or rule concerning the way all Christians everywhere throughout space and time should think or should act. After all, it is what the Bible has to say on any given subject and because the Bible is divinely inspired, this “biblical truth” is authoritative of all Christians.

In practice, these laws and rules and then turned around and used to determine who is really a Christian.  A “real” Christian is someone who believes and acts in line with the “biblical truths” that have been found. After all, any “real” Christian would obey what God has revealed in the Bible.

From this understanding of the Bible, it is assumed that the reason (or at least a reason) God inspired the Bible and guarded its transmission through the centuries is to reveal how a Christian should think and how a Christian should act.

This foundational approach to scripture is found in the most sophisticated Western systematic theology I have encountered down to the conventional Christian wisdom that is passed around the Church pews. This approach to scripture has been around for centuries and can be commonly found in a broad spectrum of Christian churches, denominations and traditions.

Before I continue I should make something clear: I believe that there is truth to this approach to an extent.

I believe there are things that followers of Jesus should and should not do and things followers of Jesus should and should not believe.  I believe the Bible is a unique form of guidance and source of truth on many of these issues.

However, this approach to scripture is problematic due to the nature of the Bible itself and several practical reasons.  From these many issues, I see how an over-confidence in and over-reliance upon this way of understanding the Bible has been incredibly problematic, hurt millions of people, and led many away from following Jesus.

In my next two posts I want to explore the problems this approach to the Bible is faced by the nature of the Bible itself, and several practical reasons.

Posted in Faith, Personal Commentary, Why do we believe... | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Why I left Christianity.

Posted on August 19, 2011 by Speakfaithfully

Recently I left Christianity.

While I have had some amazingly positive experiences in my twenty some years in Christianity, including moments where I truly experienced the love of God, shared true heart-warming fellowship with other Christians, and even times where I saw the Kingdom of God and believed it was worth everything I am and have, these experiences have been the rare exception.

Most of my experiences with Christianity have been negative and have led me to this simple conclusion…

Christianity is a highly segregated (internally and externally, doctrinally, racially and socio-economically), hypocritical, biblically illiterate, highly secular, abusive religious system.

Many people have recognized this and have promptly discarded their faith along with their involvement with Christianity.  If you google “why I left Christianity” you will see what I am talking about.

I am a bit of an oddity in that while I have left Christianity, I continue to be a theist.  I did not condemn spirituality and theism categorically because of their alleged ties to Christianity.  I am an oddity among oddities because I do not adhere to some nebulous spirituality. I believe in a God that exists in three persons, in the Father, the Son (Jesus Christ) and the Holy Spirit.  It was following this God that led me out of Christianity and I hope to continue following where He leads me.

I know people who have been deeply hurt by Christianity will be tempted to think that my statement that I have left Christianity is a semantics game, that I am going to end my post with an invitation to church, or that I am covertly defending Christianity. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I know people who have deeply invested in the Christian religious system will be tempted to think that my statement that I have left Christianity is a semantics game, that I am really still a Christian, or conversely that I am covertly attacking faith in Jesus Christ.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

Many months ago I began beating around the bush with my “Why do we (Christians) believe…” series.  In these posts I have questioned long-held tenants of Christianity as well as some of common and widespread practices of Christians.

(Sidenote: The topics I have covered and are available on this blog are:

Why do we believe…

  • … that the Holy Spirit is something to be feared or suspicious of?
  • …such wonky things about Satan?
  • …that God is not a threat?
  • …church attendance is about getting our needs met?
  • ….that the church should be run like any other secular organization?
  • …that women cannot lead in the church?
  • …that Christians are not sinners?
  • …dating is only appropriate if we are considering marriage…and in the concept of “The One?”
  • …that banning homosexual marriages strengthens or protects Christian marriages?
  • …such problematic things about Christian discipline?
  • …that the U.S.A. is a “Christian” nation?

The topics I am may cover in the future are….

Why do we believe…

  • …local missions trips are effective?
  • …that shallow positive responses are what God calls for in all circumstances?
  • …that co-dependency is a Christian virtue?
  • …that youth ministry will sufficiently disciple Christian youth?
  • …that the local church exists to benefit Christians?
  • …that there is no ethical dilemma with Christians serving in the military?
  • …in complementarianism?
  • …such horrible things about immigration?
  • …that burnout in ministry is to be expected and that is okay?

Please send me a message if you want me to write on one of these, or something else, and I’ll try to make it more of a priority.)

However, these posts are more like addressing the symptoms rather than treating the disease.  While these posts may have pointed to the existence of a problem; these posts have not addressed the root issues.

In a number of future posts I want to start calling out the disease and address the root issues in Christianity.  I want to discuss several core aspects of Christianity that are fundamentally wrong:

  • I want to discuss how Christians have misused and abused scripture, why this is wrong, why we have done so and suggest an alternative approach.
  • I want to discuss how Christianity is highly secular, and suggest how this might be rectified.
  • I want to discuss how, where actually present, Christian spirituality is often dysfunctional, self-destructive and/or abusive and suggest an alternative paradigm for understanding a relationship with Jesus Christ.
  • I want to discuss how Christian communities are often so preoccupied with excluding and vilifying other people, including both non-Christians and other Christians, that they cannot bring people into a relationship with Jesus Christ or be the family God always intended.

These issues have been cancerous tumors poisoning the Body of Christ, at times for centuries.

I will outright say what Francis Chan alludes to and Mark Driscoll and Joshua Harris disagree with: Christianity, at least in the West, is beyond hope. Tweaking Christianity more is not the answer and I do not believe the solution can be found in reform or revival.

People who honestly desire to follow Jesus Christ need to start anew and dramatically re-think what it means to follow Jesus, what it means for us to gather together, and what we should and should not be doing in light of what we believe.

This is more than a semantics game for me.

In these posts, I realize that I am using terminology that means many things to many people.

I know some Christians who are content in your faith and your faith communities will disagree with my estimation of Christianity. Please understand that if your experience of Christianity is very different from mine (for the better), I want you to do two things. First, praise God. You are one of the lucky few. Second, please read the rest of these posts with the understanding that when I say “Christianity,” I am signaling back to my definition of Christianity, not your experience.

However, if you identify with my experience a lot or you cannot reasonably resolve some of the fundamental tensions I am going to bring up in regards to Christianity, I invite you to consider re-examining your faith and how you understand Christianity.  You may need to leave Christianity as well.  If, at the end of the day, my definition of Christianity rings true for you, why wouldn’t you leave?

For those of you who have had a similar experience of Christianity and have left faith or faith in Jesus behind, I would ask that you read these posts as well.  Feel free to share your experiences in comments or in an email.

However, if you identify with my experience a lot or you cannot explain some of the experiences of I have had of the love and power of Jesus Christ, I invite you to consider re-examining your stance on God and Jesus. It is possible to known, be loved by and follow Jesus and not have anything to do with Christianity.

My first post will begin with the Bible…

Posted in Faith, Personal Commentary, Why do we believe... | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 16 Comments

How do you understand the Bible?

Posted on August 19, 2011 by Speakfaithfully

As mentioned, I want to discuss how Christians have misused and abused scripture, why this is wrong, and why we have done so in my next several posts.

Usually I write what I have to say and then ask my readers questions but I would like to reverse that order for these posts. I would like to my readers to ponder several questions about the Bible. While I want everyone to feel free to leave any answers, comments or thoughts on this post, the purpose of these question are more to get people thinking about something they probably have not thought about.  The Bible.

So in no particular order…

  • How would you describe the Bible?  (In other words, what is it? Who gave it to humanity?  How was it given to humanity?  Why was it given to humanity?)
  • How should the Bible be used? How should the Bible not be used?  (Many Christians would have stories where they have seen the Bible misused or intentional abused.  How do you determine what the wrong ways and the right ways of using the Bible are?)
  • How do you interpret the Bible, or in other words, how do you understand what the Bible communicates? (When there are some passages that are difficult to understand what do you do?  Do you re-read them?  Do you go with your “gut?”  Do you search for answers from authority figures like people or study resources? What do you do when another Christian interprets the same passage differently than you?)
  • What is the main message of the Bible? What exactly is the Gospel of Jesus Christ or the good news that is proclaimed in the New Testament?  Why does the Old Testament matter to this message?
  • If and when you understand what the Bible communicates, how do you go about putting this into practice?  (The Bible has thousands of commandments and admonitions to specific people and more broadly to people of faith.  Which of these do you try to follow in your life?  Why not the others?)
  • How and why is the Bible authoritative? Is the Bible authoritative for non-Christians?
  • How literal is the Bible to be understood?

Feel free to provide your answers to these questions, or general questions, comments, or concerns about the Bible in the comments section below. If you ever had a question about the Bible that you were afraid to ask, this is a place to ask them.  Feel free to use a false name if you need to.

[Before I continue with the rest of these posts I want to share a bit of a personal story that bears on any discussion I have about the Bible.]

Readers of my blog will be aware that while I was a Christian most of my life I did not read the Bible regularly.  It is only recently that I read the Bible from cover to cover, a project that took me 87 days. (It was a 90 day program and I am a over achiever and a religious performer.)

It might seem odd then that while I held such a lax attitude towards the Bible most of my life I earned my B.A. in Biblical Studies and to graduated with honors.  Most of my friends in high school are shocked that I did not enter the military but instead went into ministry.  This was a dramatic about-face.  What the heck happened?

The leap from not-really-caring-about-the-Bible-but- being-told-I-should to being trained in its original languages and studying it extensively was not just a conviction that fell out of the sky.  In fact, it had to do with a very painful time in my life.

I was a pall bearer at my Grandmother’s funeral.  I, and her other seven male grandchildren, carried her lavender casket (lavender was her favorite color) towards her burial site a Lakewood memorial in Modesto, CA.

My Grandmother passed from her second battle of melanoma (skin cancer) during my first real battle with depression.  I had recently been informed that the Naval Academy had rejected me because of my arthritis without even looking at my application. This was a crucial aspect of my future plans that I had so far built my life about.  I had lost all motivation to move forward in life, stopped attending school, quit several extracurricular programs, was raging at God for giving me arthritis which prevented me from doing what I wanted to in life and was contemplating suicide.

When I heard my Grandmother had passed my initial reaction was, “Whatever God!  I can take whatever you can throw at me!”  The world truly did revolve around Kevin at that time and the death of my Grandmother was just an insult from God.  However, carrying her lavender casket, it really sunk in that my Grandmother was dead.

My Grandmother was the most peaceful and serene woman I have ever known.  While I really only had very limited experiences of my Grandmother and was very young for most of them, almost all of these memories were positive and loving. I never heard her once raise her voice.  This was in stark contrast to the instability and insanity that reigned in my home. This peace like a river was also something I was desperately craving in my time of turmoil.

As the funeral continued I tried not to cry in order to support my mother who is an easy crier.  This was odd considering that I hated my mother at the time, but it was deeply ingrained in me that I was responsible for managing my mother’s emotions, and this ingrained habit was deeper than my attitude towards my mother.

I did very well until the pastor hit a certain point in his sermon.

When discussing what he knew of my Grandmother he admitted he did not know her well, but revealed he had asked to see her Bible after she had passed.  He held up her Bible and said, “As I looked over this Bible I could see highlighter and pen marks on every page.  I found sermon notes from fifteen years ago.  This was a woman of God who was in the Bible every day of her life.”

I started bawling.

In my head I see now that I equated the peace and serenity my Grandmother had with the words in her Bible. The next day I went to a park near my house and let my Bible fall open and invited God, who I hated at the time, to show up.  He brought me to Psalms 95 and I was convicted that God had not abandoned me but I had tested Him.  In retrospect I see that I continued down a path God had clearly said “No,” a path I knew was not going to work out, and then blamed God when I ran into the inevitable.

Several years of study, ministry and devotionals later and I came to a place where I had no idea what to make of the Bible anymore.  The way I was trained and taught to use the Bible appeared to be highly problematic.  The biggest problem was the biblical texts themselves.  It seemed like their very nature and content defied how I was taught we should approach them.  We were trying to force a round ball (the Bible) down a square peg (the way I was taught to understand and use it) and this was causing problems.

I started to write the following posts to try and get some of my thoughts down on paper but then I ran into something.  One day during this time I went to grab my Bible and noticed something.

My Bible looked like this:

Later, when my friend Rebekah and I were sitting down talking about Acts, she made the comment, “Look at your Bible!” She was flipping through the pages and seeing the fact that most of the pages of my Bibles look like this:

I was stunned by the fact that my Bibles do not look that different from my Grandmother’s. There are book marks, sermon notes, a card from “The Week” (a powerful time in my life), highlighter and pencil marks on every page.

For better or for worse, since her funeral I have truly turned into a man well versed the Bible.

However, while I searched the scriptures peace eluded me.  It was only recently, when Jesus miraculously healed a lot of old emotional and spiritual wounds through prayer, that I have come to a place of peace.

I say all this upfront so that people do not think I have a low view of scripture, scripture is unimportant to me or I that I write the following posts from a jaded or embittered place.  It would be an error for anyone to dismiss what I have to say by suggesting that I don’t care about the Bible or respect how powerful God is and how God has used the Bible in the lives of His saints.

I also want to point out the fact that I am not uneducated. While I know there are many people more educated in the Bible and theology than myself, I have studied the Bible more than most Christians I personally know. This year also marks my sixth year of formal theological education.  I do not say this to boast about myself, but like Paul, want to point out the fact that I am a religious expert. My knowledge of the Bible does not make me a “good” or “better” follower of Jesus than others, but it would be an error for anyone to dismiss what I have to say by suggesting that I am uneducated or uninformed about the Bible.

In the next several posts I am going to question the fundamental way most Christians I know, as well as many Christians in history, have approached the Bible. If my concerns are valid, this has profound implications for theology, and many people’s understanding of God, the world, sin, and what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

Posted in Faith, Personal Commentary | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Jesus, please do not let go of the wheel: How I explain what happened in my life last year to non-Christians…

Posted on August 18, 2011 by Speakfaithfully

I realize that I use a lot of religious language in my writing and it really only makes sense to Christians. However, many of my friends do not come from any organized spiritual or religious tradition to speak of and a couple of them have told me they are now reading my blog.

During the last year I went through an existential crisis and crisis of faith. After years of certainty I did not know what I truly believed about God and faith. This led me to question basically every major decision of my life.  I also wondered what my life would look like if I left Christianity. This was an incredibly painful and scary process. I wanted to attempt to explain what happened last year with me in a way that people with no connection to Christianity or any organized faith could understand.

To this end, I want to use a scene from a movie as a window into what I just went through.

A few months ago I re-watched Fight Club. I was shocked as a scene from the movie that centered around a conversation between the Narrator and Tyler Durden essentially mirrored the conversation I was having with God. Not only did watching this scene encourage me to go farther in questioning my faith than I ever had before in my life, but as I look back even the whole scene fits what I experienced with God after I did continue to question and think about my faith.

Before delving into the scene I should probably provide a little background information on me so it makes more sense. Most of my life I have lived a double-life. Most of my friends, especially those who met me in high school, (and may be tuning in for the first time) really have no clue who I am.  While I have written extensively about a lot of what’s really gone on in my life there are just a few central things you need to know about me for me to explain the last year and a half. (I’ve provided links to where I talk about this stuff in more detail.)

  • While our outside appearance was carefully maintained at any cost, my home was religious, dysfunctional and abusive.
  • One of the ways I coped with what went on in my home was by hiding.  I did this by keeping people at a distance and isolating, often burying myself in books, a fantasy world, video-games or pornography.
  • While I was a self-declared Christian and went to college to study ministry I always feared God hated me. This was the most reasonable explanation of my family life, my diagnosis with arthritis, and God’s silence.  I never explored this fear and I eventually related to God like I related to my father: I tried to be good enough to not get hit.
  • I was constantly trying to find out what God’s plan for my life was and obey it. Following God’s plan for my life was the reason I gave up on my plans to enter the military and instead went to a private religious school to study the Bible.
  • I own the fact that I have been incredibly legalistic, self-righteous, duplicitous, and hypocritical and the fact that my “faith” was a very performance based understanding of how one relates to God. In short, I never truly followed Jesus thought I claimed that I was.
  • Most recently, I became convinced that it was the will of God for me to pursue a relationship with my ex-girlfriend and attend a religious graduate school for more training.  In the span of a few short months my Ex broke up with me, I was incredibly dissatisfied with seminary, and for the first time I started dealing with the abuse in my family.
  • Looking back I saw most major seasons of my life marked by pain and disappointment.  This made me question if all of my religious performance worth it. Additionally, my understanding of faith was clearly failing me but it was all I had ever known.  At the time it appeared the two options I had were a) persist in my so-called-faith, try harder and hope it worked out better the next time (I had done so before, and it never worked out.) or b) quit religion all together (a truly scary prospect since I had bet my life on God and had no tangible skills to make a living).

Now onto the real content of this post…

First, let’s watch the scene together…

Second, I want to just creatively edit the dialogue of this scene, putting myself, God and some other generic Christians in it [and add some commentary in italics where appropriate] so you get what happened this last year and how deeply I connected with it.

  • INT. STOLEN CAR – MOVING – LATER
  • RAIN GUSHES down.  KEVIN stews, silent.  The car moves down
  • A HIGHWAY, intermittently illuminated by oncoming headlights.

JESUS: Something on your mind Dear?

KEVIN: No.

  •      JESUS shrugs; turns on the RADIO, ignores KEVIN.

KEVIN: Alright yeah. Why did everything fall apart this year?

CHRISITIAN #1 and CHRISTIAN #2 (together): The first rule of Christianity is you do not question God.

JESUS: What are you talking about?

KEVIN: If you had planned for my Ex to break up with me and to have me go to a seminary I would hate all along, why didn’t you include me in the beginning? Why should I stay within Christianity and keep following you if things keep ending up like this?

JESUS: Christianity was the beginning.  Now it’s out of the church and there’s a name for it…faith.

KEVIN: I have been obedient to following you since high school, no matter the cost. Do you remember that? I have given up so much for you. You should give something to me once in a while!

JESUS: Is this about you and me?

[My religion really was not about me and Jesus.  My faith was about me being good and getting rewarded or at least being good enough not to get punished by God.  I had learned to relate to God like I had learned to relate to my father: I tried to be good enough not to get hit.]

KEVIN: Yeah! I thought if you did what you asked of me, at some point and time, things would pan out for me. That’s the deal.

JESUS: You’re missing the point. I do not operate like that. The world does not revolve around you.  My plans are bigger than making sure you get what you feel you deserve and are comfortable. You are not special.

KEVIN: Fuck that! If your plans involved somehow using my break up and disappointment with school for your purposes you should have told me! You shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up like that!

  •      They almost have a car accident.

KEVIN: Hey Jesus!  Dammit Jesus!

JESUS: What do you want?  A statement of purpose? Should I email you?  Should I put this on your action item list?

[Most of my life I have striven to have everything laid out in a logical manner, I have sought to understand everything and desired to live in very structured and predictable environments. This desire for certainty comes from a deep place in me where from my home I felt anything that was uncertain was automatically dangerous. This extended to my faith as well and my faith left little if any room for mystery. This includes my faith.  I wanted to know exactly what God wanted of me, so I do exactly that, and be 100% certain I was “good” and would not get punished.

In short, I truly did want an action item list.  I would have been very happy to receive and email from God itemizing all the good deed He wanted me to do that day so I could be sure to do them all and feel safe, if only for that day.  

The problem is that God in my experience, or in my reading of the Bible, does not work like that.]

KEVIN: Ah Look…

JESUS: You decide your own level of involvement!

[Following Jesus has always been an at will thing. Some people get to a certain place in their faith and want out, others will follow Jesus no matter what.  We truly decide how far we are willing to follow Jesus.]

KEVIN: I will! I want to know certain things…

[This was about the time I was emboldened to really question God and explore my fear that God hated me.  Instead of just saying, “Faith is bullshit” and walking away – which I was sorely tempted to do – I decided to go deeper and further.]

CHRISTIAN #1    Well you see in Emerging Church, they are orthodox but also in touch with the culture. For example, we have the worship leaders in the back to take the focus off the worship leaders…

CHRISTIAN #2    Many medieval theologians asked if people could do things to please God, they talked about righteous acts receiving half-merits or full-merits.  But adding in Calvin’s treatise on pre-destination…

KEVIN: (to CHRISTIAN #1 and CHRISTIAN #2) Shut up!

[I have been deeply sickened by a lot of the conversation here at my Christian grad school.  The vast majority of it is about Christians and Christian things and this conversation fails to connect with the real world beyond the gated Christian clubs we call churches.  The standard fare of conversation here was also of absolutely no use to me as I questioned God and struggled with faith. I realize in much of my blog I’ve contributed to this.]

KEVIN: (to JESUS) I want to know what you’re thinking.

[Again, I really wanted to know where God was at and what His plan was for my life, if in fact He had one.  Why had He stood silent while the abuse went down in my home?  Why had He not healed my arthritis?  Why did following His will lead me to a massive heartbreak and disappointment…again? If God loved me, was powerful to act on my behalf, and had a plan for my life, He sure had a strange way of showing it.

JESUS: Fuck what you know! You need to forget about what you know.  That’s your problem.  Forget about what you think you know about life, about faith, about friendship, and especially about you and me.

[What I thought I knew truly was my problem. I really did need to forget many mistaken beliefs I had about faith, life, and myself.

Many of my beliefs about myself, relationships, and this world were beliefs that had helped me navigate my home environment.  These beliefs were creative ways to think in order to survive and they did their job.  I did not kill myself and I made it to adulthood.  However, I had left that home environment long ago and for years these beliefs were no longer necessary.  Now they were actually very harmful to having an adult life.  In psychological terms, these ways of thinking had become maladaptive beliefs and behaviors.

Additionally, I am certain Jesus hated what I had know about Him and Christianity on two levels.  First, my understanding of “faith” was not a true faith.  My faith was a burdensome never-ending quest to pleae a God who was never satisfied with me and was always judging me.  This is not Jesus.  Jesus, I am certain, hated that religion had so thoroughly kept me from experiencing His love.  Second, with this destructive understanding of God and faith in hand I claimed to be a Christian and mis-represented Jesus in 1000 and 1 ways.  I was also part of and uncritically supportive of a lot of the evils the Church continues to perpetrate to this very day in His name.

Regardless of how much I knew I needed to let go of these beliefs, it was still very scary.  This was all I had ever known, and anything unknown or uncertain is automatically equated with pain for me. So I realize I really needed something to push me…]

  • JESUS steers the car into the opposite lane, accelerates…
  • Opposing HEADLIGHTS get closer fast…
  • Through the windshield: oncoming headlights — a TRUCK.

KEVIN: What are you doing?

JESUS: Guys what do you wish you had done before you died?

CHRISTIAN #1:     Help victimized women escape sex-trafficking in South East Asia.

CHRISTIAN #2 :    Started a church where homeless people were welcome.

[For all my cynicism towards this Christian graduate school, there are some amazing people here who genuinely want to help others.]

KEVIN: Okay…

  • KEVIN points to oncoming cars.

JESUS:  And you?

KEVIN: I don’t know…nothing nothing…come on!

  • KEVIN fights  to turn the wheel, but JESUS uses both hands.

JESUS: You have to know the answer this question! If you were to die right now how would you feel about your life?

KEVIN: I don’t know. I wouldn’t feel anything good about my life!

[In a conversation earlier this year I almost said this exact phrase.  At the time I really could not think of anything in my life I was happy about.]

  • The oncoming truck HONKS and FLASHES its LIGHTS.

JESUS: Not good enough.

  • JESUS keeps heading into oncoming
  • At the last moment the truck swerves out of the way.

KEVIN: Jesus Christ! God dammit! Fuck you!  Fuck Christianity! Fuck my Ex. I am sick of all your shit.

[At some point and time I was done with what I had called faith.  I had no idea what dramatic changes were to come but I was sure what I had known of Christianity was bullshit and I wanted out.  My understanding of how religion was supposed to work had failed me too many times for me to keep going forward like it was business as usual.]

JESUS: Okay man…okay….

  • JESUS lets go of the wheel.

KEVIN:  What? Quit screwing around. Take the wheel.

  • Kevin reaches over to take the wheel.
[But this too was scary.  I did not really know where I was going to end up, I did not know what life beyond Christianity would look like and I wanted to be in control.  I tried for weeks to rationalize or re-frame what had happened in the last year to “make it work” so that I could go back to business as usual.]

JESUS: Ah look at you.

KEVIN: Take the wheel!

JESUS: Look at you.  Look at you! You’re fucking pathetic!

KEVIN: Why?  Why? What are you talking about?

JESUS: Why do you think I called you to a woman who would break your heart and to attend a seminary that you hate?

KEVIN: What?

JESUS: Hitting bottom isn’t a weekend retreat!  It’s not a god damn seminar!  Stop trying to control everything and just let go.

  • JESUS looks at KEVIN, his hands in the air.
  • KEVIN looks at JESUS with dead eyes.

[The dramatic failing of what I had known as faith was exactly what I needed to finally let go of it.  While painful, I think this was necessary.  Just as the character in Fight Club is launched along the story after everything he owned and had made his life was destroyed, so I was launched along the journey I needed to take after everything I had cared about blew up in my face.]

JESUS: Let go!

KEVIN: Alright… fine…

  • KEVIN takes his hands off the wheel, holds them in the air.
  • JESUS studies KEVIN’s face, impressed.  JESUS makes no move to take the wheel.

[For me “letting go” meant finally exploring my life-long fear that God hated me.  I did this by taking two classes at seminary that would touch on how God could be good while evil exists in the world and another class that would declare and teach that God healed people in this world. This ran against the grain of what I had experienced with my arthritis.  

I honestly did not know what conclusions I would come to and if I would end up a Christian or even a spiritual person after all was said and done.]

  • THROUGH THE WINDSHIELD: a STALLED CAR ahead on the side of the road, surrounded by flares.
  • KEVIN and JESUS’s eyes stay locked as the car drifts onto the shoulder… heading for the stalled car.  Their faces are illuminated by the light of the flares.
  • JESUS smiles.

[While I had been in counseling and Twelve Step recovery programs I now started doing inner healing prayer.  This is a type of prayer that focuses on asking God to heal emotional and spiritual wounds in a person.  While it was incredibly painful to think, talk about, and re-experience many traumatic moments in my life, God showed up in miraculous ways. I had visions of Jesus in many of these painful moments and there was a lot of healing.]

  • They SMASH into the stalled car — AIRBAGS INFLATE!
  • The back of their car whips around and carries it into a ass-over-tea-kettle ROLL down a hill…

[But after this incredible time of healing I went through a very dark time and was seriously contemplating suicide.  My worldview was in incredible flux at a very difficult emotional time and I did not have my old crutches, like pornography or my legalistic faith, to use and feel in control.]

KEVIN (V.O.): I’d never really let go, experienced my pain and explored my fears. This must’ve been what all those other people felt like before I wrote them off as heretics or irreligious people.

  • The car finally hits the bottom, lying on its roof.
  • EXT. OVERTURNED CAR
  • JESUS crawls from the passenger side.  He walks around opens the driver’s side door and drags KEVIN out into the mud.
  • Christian #1 and Christian #2 climb out the broken rear window.
  • JESUS sits beside the stunned, wounded KEVIN.

JESUS: God damn.

  • JESUS laughs.

JESUS: We just had a near-life experience.

[Over the next several weeks the dust settled and it was through this very dark and turbulent time that I was brought to a new life.  

I was able to forgive my parents, my Ex, and am reunited with my parents after being estranged from them.

More importantly, I did leave Christianity. My understanding of “Christianity,” faith, how to use the Bible and how to relate to God were toxic and not how God planned anyone to relate to Him, understand the Bible or treat others.  

After a lot of my dysfunction and pain was healed I became able to experience the love God has for me (and I am thoroughly convinced, for everyone) in a deep and meaningful way. I think now maybe I am exploring a real faith for the first time, one that is about God and me, not me and a math equation and a set of rules.]

Third, I would like to take this opportunity to apologize.  My legalism, hypocrisy, and judgmental attitude towards others, especially non-Christians or irreligious people, I’m sure has hurt or offended many.  I am deeply sorry for that.  Furthermore, I know when I was doing much of this I claimed to be a representative of Jesus and God, making it worse.

It is one thing to have someone tell you you are bad, and it is another to have someone tell you that there is a God and He says your bad.

I was too close to my own bullshit to see it.  If anyone has been hurt by me in this arena, or in any other way really, please message me in private or comment on this post if you feel comfortable doing so.  I honestly desire to make things right.

I would hope in future posts I will be more accessible to all of my readers and if you read something you do not understand or can’t even engage with, please let me know and help me to improve my writing. I would also hope in my future writings people will also see the change in my faith and my entire life that has been brought about by God’s work in my life.

Posted in Faith, Personal Commentary | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Life in marvelous times…

Posted on August 14, 2011 by Speakfaithfully

I think most of my life I have been waiting for an invitation to come and join a party I was already at. My own self-hatred kept me from acknowledging that God and others wanted me even though they did and they do. Now that God has dealt with my self-hatred, I’m finally able to accept myself and accept and receive the love He and others have been offering me for some time.

I have come to the end of myself like the lost prodigal son, and come running back to the Father I ran from. I have let go of the legalism of the older son, who was so near to the Father but was just as lost.

Now it’s time for a party! A party at the table of Jesus Christ, where all are welcome! (I should have known this was coming – I just got into cooking!)

Posted in Faith | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

What it’s like to pray for healing for juvenile arthritis…

Posted on August 13, 2011 by Speakfaithfully

Due to the miraculous healing I have received in inner healing prayer I began to pray for physical healing for arthritis for the first time in many years.

During this time my pain decreased to the point where I forgot to take my bi-monthly shot.  I went back on the medicine not because I had pain but because you are not supposed to just stop taking this medicine cold turkey.  I was taking Humira, a very powerful drug that has some nasty side-effects, but does fight he bone-fusion my arthritis is known for.

When I got back on the medicine I started having dizzy spells, a sign of a severe side-effect relating to nerve damage.  I contacted my doctor immediately and after explaining the situation decided to get off Humira completely.

[I want to be abundantly clear on this point: I would *never* suggest that people need to get off their medications before a healing has happened “to prove” their faith. I would be incredibly wary of any “faith-healers” who suggest you need to do this. If you are praying for healing and think you have received it talk to your doctor about discontinuing medication.

For me, personally, as an individual, in this situation, I felt like God was calling me to step out in faith, get off my medication, and begin praying for healing again. Indeed God not healing me of arthritis as a child really broke down my faith and confidence in prayer and now that I am all of a sudden excited about prayer, I think God is bringing back here for a very specific reason.  How confident can I be in prayer if what eroded my faith in prayer still exists?

Several weeks ago at a Livebones gathering, we ended the night in a time of prayer for healing for my body and for another friend.  We did an exercise known as a “leg-lengthening prayer.”  Apparently a very common issue people have, especially with back pain, is one leg being shorter than the other.  Leg lengthening prayer is prayer for God to miraculously even out your legs.

When I put my back completely flat against a chair and lifted up my legs, my left leg did appear to be an inch or so shorter.  We prayed, and I felt heat, but my left leg did not grow out.

In the moment this struck me as very crazy and even something I would have previously relegated to fringe groups of Christianity.  However, as I looked around at who was praying for me, it was people who I knew, people who I trusted, and people who I knew loved God and loved me.  So it was okay.

That week the whole situation stuck with me and often I sat in the library lifting my legs together and it seemed one leg was certainly shorter than the other.  Additionally, when I stood and balanced my weight completely on each foot I was leaning like 5 degrees to the left, and when I stood 100% level I was putting more weight on my right leg.

Now, I have had my back adjusted before by a chiropractor after he identified that my lower back was messed up, causing my legs to be different lengths, but this appeared to be something else.  My knees would line up, but my left leg from the knee to the ankle appeared to be shorter.

Last Wednesday I had several people over and towards the end of the night we prayed.  I “volunteered” one of my friends to pray for my leg.  I figured, if my faith is going to be stretched, I may as well bring others along with me.  She said later that she felt very out there and on the edge.  Coached and encouraged by another friend she said a very brief prayer for healing in the name of Jesus Christ.

I instantly felt my left leg and hip warming up and as we continued to pray I felt it pushing out against the carpet.  When I lifted my leg there seemed to still be a difference, but about one or two millimeters, not an inch. Something had clearly happened.

Now a cynic might suggest that just as my chiropractor could adjust my back and get my legs aligned, so something similar could have happened, and this was not that miraculous of a thing.  However, this happened sitting in a chair where the only variable was prayer.  There was no chiropractor putting me on my side and adjusting my back through physical force.

Additionally, we prayed for my eye.  I have a condition called Iritis which, when it got out of control, caused glaucoma, which in turn resulted in an eye surgery in 2008.  A major flare up of Iritis came up and I was going to see the doctor last Friday about it.  These flare ups worry me because they could lead to another eye surgery.  We prayed over my eye.

While my vision did not change or improve in that moment, last Friday at the Dr. Dea’s office when he looked into my eye he only saw trace amounts of the inflammation.  I know my Iritis very well, I know what a major flare up looks and feels like, and I know when I have a trace amount of inflammation.

God is at work in healing my body.

When I look back, even at my previous post, I see a man who accepted his arthritis as something fated.  Part of this was probably my feelings of helplessness.  Part of this was also a Christian man speaking into my life saying that this was like “Paul’s thorn in his flesh” and my arthritis was to keep me humble.  However, as I learn more about prayer, and follow the Holy Spirit, I think She is inviting me to pray for full healing from my arthritis and an undoing of the damage it has caused.  What happened at the Livebones meeting and last Wednesday I think are just baby steps on the route to something far bigger and God seeding and watering my faith that He can and does heal people miraculously in this life.

At the end of the day, if my arthritis is something that I am going to live with, if that Christian man was right, God can tell me that directly and that will be okay.  But I sincerely doubt He has brought me to this place of prayer just to say no to my petitions for healing.

In all of this I feel very vulnerable with God.  I am asking Him for help.  I am asking Him for help in an area where He previously did not answer. Will He respond? Will He respond this time?  It just seems like when I keep following the Holy Spirit I keep being brought to these places where I do not feel safe or comfortable, but I think that’s the point.

Readers: Thanks to everyone who prayed for me last Wednesday. If you want to be part of future prayers for healing in person, if you want be put on the edge and have your faith grown, just let me know.

Posted in Faith | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

A farewell present for Andrea Bressler

Posted on August 4, 2011 by Speakfaithfully

Sadly one of my friends at Fuller, Andrea Bressler, shall be moving on from seminary for bigger and better things.

Recently we took a communication class together and after my “Biblical Message” speech she sent me an email in which she encouraged me and wrote, “If you’re comfortable, would you send me your notes from your speech Tuesday?  I think more people need to hear what you said and I’d love to soak it in and be able to tell others…”

So as a bit of a farewell present and a thank you for your encouragement here is the recording of that sermon and the notes.

(Sidenote: Only watching this video and then looking at my notes do I see how much I went “off script.”  I think what I preached is better than what I wrote.)

Kevin Gonzaga

Speech Purpose: To explain how experiencing the love of God is a catalyst for our love.

Introduction:

Brothers and sisters today I want to share a message with you from John’s first epistle.  In it, John devotes an entire chapter to discussing God’s love and the intersection of this divine love with our love. His whole message is wrapped up in on one verse.  First John 4:19 says, “We love because he first loved us.” We love because He first loved us. The message of John, the one that I want to draw your attention to today, is simply that experiencing the love God has for usis to be the catalyst for our love as Christians.

The Status Quo:

  • While this message is a simple and profound truth I fear we in the Church often get it wrong. And I want to start there. Often, we are encouraged to focus on attaining the standard of love for us as Christians, before we know in a deep and meaningful way the love of Christ.
  • When our best attempt at loving unselfishly, loving the less fortunate and loving our enemies fail we can begin to feel like failures or bad Christians. This often leads to a situation where we confuse the causal relationship between divine love and human love. We act as if 1 John 4:19 reads “He loves us because we first loved.” Unsure of God’s love for us, we attempt to earn God’s love through our loving behavior.
  • In this paradigm our attempts to fulfill the exhortations of scripture come from human effort, not a natural response to divine live. Regardless of how close we come, our love will always be a counterfeit of the real thing.
  • I am convinced a misunderstanding of the intersection between the love of God and our love is at the root of many cases where people are involved in apparently successful ministries and churches only to have their ministries end in burn-out, affairs, or financial scandal.

The way it should be:

  • John’s message, that I echo you today, is that knowing the love of God is the only true catalyst for your love and action as a Christian in this world. We can only genuinely love our neighbor, ourselves and our God out of a response to divine live, not out sheer willpower.
  • Only when we experience the love God has for us first will we be able to fulfill the exhortations of scripture and be who we are called to be. Only then will our love not be self-seeking, for knowing the love of God what will we lack and need to make up for in our other relationships?  Only then will we be able to love the less fortunate, for knowing the love of God how can we not see our own neediness and poverty? Only then will our love truly be able to extend to not just our friends but to our enemies as well, for knowing the love of God what will we have to fear from those who would hurt or harm us?
  • While it may sound like I am stating the obvious, as I see it there is simply no way for an authentic Christian life to flow out of an individual without them experiencing the love of God.

Broader Witness:

  • This is also not an isolated message and is found elsewhere in the Bible.
  • Jesus in John 15 states that apart from abiding in Him we can do nothing.  No fruit will be borne outside of a relationship with Jesus, and to know God is to know His love.
  • In Ephesians Paul talks about many things.  However, first he prays in chapter 3 that through the Holy Spirit the Ephesians would come to know the love God has for them so they could be filled with the fullness of God.  Then he talks about unity in the Body of Christ.  Then he talks living righteously in a manner worthy of our calling.  Then he talks about human relationships and mutual submission.  Then he talks about spiritual warfare. It is not that we are not called to act and live in a certain way, or that there are not important things to do in this world, it is important that these things come after our experience of God’s love.

Conclusion:

*Pause*

While we are indeed called to love God and love others in a variety of ways in this life it clear from this passage and others that knowing the love that God has for us is to be primary and foundational to our lives in this world.  We love not because we are good people, or because we tried really hard, or because we know we should, but because He first loved us.

I know many in this room are Christians, have been so for a very long time and have had powerful spiritual experiences.  However, knowing how important this message my exhortation for you today is to truly examine your relationship with God.  Do you truly know that God loves you?  Are you serving before you know this with certainty?  Are you trying to be a good Christian to earn the love of Christ? If at the end of the day you realize something is not right encourage you to seek God, pray, receive ministry, and seek healing until you can say that you know of God’s love for you and this is the catalyst for all your endeavors in this life.

Amen

Posted in Faith | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Letters Between Friends: David P. and hearing from God.

Posted on July 31, 2011 by Speakfaithfully

[This post is a response to David P’s comment on my previous post.  You can read it here.]

Dear David,

Thanks again for taking the time to listen and respond to both of my questions.  I trust that you are earnest in your desire to better understand the Holy Spirit.  Know that my response is done in the same humility you have approached me with, even if we eventually disagree.

Overall I agree with a large part of what you have written.  I probably would have written much the same not six months ago.

However, I feel that your beliefs are too restrictive to the movement of the Holy Spirit and over-limit the ways God can and does speak to His people today.

You suggest that God speaks in two ways. You believe that “God speaks through the expository preaching of Scripture” and that “God speaks through exhortation and encouragement from brothers and sisters in Christ.” Then you suggest that, “The common thread in both of these is that I believe God speaks His Word through people when they are speaking based on His Word.” (I assume from your writing that you mean to suggest God only speaks through these two channels.  If you have other means in mind, please describe these as well. Part of my response is based off of this assumption.)

In my reading of the Bible, a record of God’s interactions with many people, I see God speaking to people through a wide variety of ways.  God has spoken through angels, visions, prophets, a burning bush, a donkey, dreams, directly to people, by writing on a wall, etc.  In a very broad look at Christian history, it appears that God has continued to speak to His people in a variety of ways.  I can see no indication from the scriptures that communications would cease after a certain point or would become more limited.

Therefore, while I am sure God uses them, I see no reason to limit God’s speaking to what is preached by one member of the Body of Christ, nor through words of encouragement from other Christians.

In fact, it appears that over time God has communicated in more way than less.  At the day of Pentecost, Moses’ desire and a prophecy of Joel were fulfilled.  Are we to think that now after the Spirit of God has been poured out on His people, enabling more people to prophesy, have dreams and vision, that God will be communicating less?   The days of the priesthood and a select few prophets and seer speaking for God appear to be over.  The day of Pentecost radically de-centralized who God spoke through and  more people will be more involved in communicating both with and for God.

Because humans are sinful and people do abuse this reality by claiming to speak for God when they do not (out of malice for selfish gain, or out of ignorance and not stewarding their gift) the ability to discern what is from God and what is from man is needed now more than ever.

This is really where we come into a very sharp disagreement.  You would suggest that the scriptures can be used to “filter” what is from God and what is from man.  While I believe this scriptures can be used in this fashion sometimes I truly believe this has not always been the case in history and is not always the case.

I believe what people need in order to be able to discern what is from God and what is from man is a relationship with the Holy Spirit. You yourself bring up John 16:13 which says, “But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth.” It appears (you may correct me on this) that you basically believe the Holy Spirit guides us to the truth in the Bible.  While this is true, I would suggest the truth here is about far more than just what is written in what we now know as Holy Scriptures. I believe someone who has a relationship with the Holy Spirit will be guided to the truth of what others say to us, regardless of if they are claiming to speak for God or having a casual conversation with us.  (This is why, even in my own prophetic prayer sessions, I felt that some of the certain things, even though they might fit my life, simply were not for me.  Yet at the same time other statements, which yes could arguably be made to apply to the lives of others, were clearly for me.)

Relying on the Bible as a filter, instead of the Holy Spirit, is problematic. From the Bible it appears the vast majority of the times when God speaks to His people there is no scriptural precedent to judge it by.  Indeed many of God’s interactions with His people happened before there was such a thing as the Bible.  Abram did not have a Bible to “check” God’s words to him about following God, though he knew not where, on his way to become Abraham.  Moses did not have a Bible to “check” God’s words to Him out of the burning bush.  Joseph did not have a Bible to “check” his interpretation of the dreams of the Pharaoh, or Pharaoh’s servants. Even after what we have come to know as the Old Testament was written, it was not always used, nor capable of checking what the Lord was saying. Agabus prophesied through the Holy Spirit that there was going to be a famine in the land and the apostles made major decisions based on this prophesy.  Neither Agabus, nor the apostles, had a scripture to “check” this prophecy.  I would assume they trusted its veracity because of the leading of the Holy Spirit. When Philip received a word from an angel to go down a road, (that led to the conversion of the eunuch) there was no Old Testament verse to clearly verify that he should trust that angel.

As for the case of the Bereans, Paul is Silas were explaining how Jesus was a fulfillment of prophesies made in the Old Testament.  This occurred many times in Acts and was a very common situation. They commended the Bereans for searching the scriptures themselves to see if this was true. This passage has nothing to do with the Bereans receiving a new word from God (through Paul and Silas) that they then filtered through the Old Testament to check its veracity.  This passage has everything to do with an old word given to the people of Israel that the Bereans came to realize had been fulfilled through the report of Paul and Silas even though they (the Bereans) were themselves not there to witness it. (There is a huge difference.)

In short: I think God speaks to us in many ways.  I think what we need to discern what is from God and what is a relationship with the Holy Spirit and a sensitivity to Her leading.

Some additional comments…

You write, “Given all that, you might (correctly) infer that I have a hard time getting entirely behind prayer sessions where the Holy Spirit is leading a girl to interpret her vision of Cheerios and orange juice as having something to say about who you are, about your life and about your future.”

First, this woman in particular is very gifted and has spoken many true things over me and even something she gave one week was fulfilled in the next, so I am inclined to pay attention to her even if it sounds a bit “out there.”  Even in the moment she suggested she did not know what it all meant. It was not like she said, “Yes orange juice made me think of OJ and this is God calling you to kill someone. THIS IS A WORD FROM THE LORD.”

Second, when we read the Bible we often forget that many of the visions, sights, parables, and messages given employed very mundane and common images from the day.  We are so far removed from these images,clay, goblets, cups, vines, various animals, swords, and so forth, that they sound far more mysterious, mystical and sacred, than they actually were.  When Joseph interpreted the dreams of Pharaoh’s servants they involved mundane things such as vines and baskets of breads.  These images, laden with meaning, were probably just as familiar to them as a bowl of cereal and a glass of orange juice would be to a  modern Western Christian or a bowl of rice would be to an Asian Christian.

You write, “There are two things that I have learned from my experience of interacting with Pentecostals and Charismatics: 1. The older and wiser they are, the more grounded their “words from the Spirit” are in actual Scripture, and the less likely they are to say something that isn’t an application thereof. 2. The older and wiser they are, the more careful they are about saying “this is the Word of the Lord” and the more often they characterize their messages with ‘I have a feeling I should share this’ or ‘I believe God wants me to say this to you.'”

Pihop is very sensible about the whole situation.  If I recall correctly from both of the first audio recordings alone you can hear that they pray and suggest not everything that is spoken will be from God and they actively pray if they made mistakes these words would “fall flat” and encourage me to discern what is from God.  Additionally a number of times they have introduced the Well ministry suggesting these prophetic words should just be confirmation of prophesy we had already received.  They also encourage us to, even if a prophecy does not make sense, to shelve it if we are unsure if it is for us, or for right now.  Sometimes, they suggest, these prophecies are fulfilled later.

You write, “You see, I believe that when God communicates, He does so effectively. God makes Himself understood when He wants to. And at the very least, He makes it absolutely clear that He is doing the talking. This happens throughout the story of the revelation of Scripture. Even when the Jews didn’t understand a certain prophecy from God, they wrote it down and kept it around because they sure as heck did understand that it was a prophecy from God. So I look at that and compare it to the sort of “shotgun prophecy” that seems to go on in so many places, i.e. ‘I’m going to say whatever is coming to my mind now and hope some of it is being said by the Lord’ and I have a hard time putting the two together in the same revelatory basket, so to speak.”

I see a disconnect here.  If the Jews did not understand a certain prophecy, but knew it was from God, and wrote it down for later, how is this different from someone receiving a contemporary prophecy, not understanding it, but knowing (through the Holy Spirit) that it was from God and saving it for later?  You seem to have a low view of people who claim to be prophets.  While there certainly are charlatans out there, and maybe people who are exploring if they have this gift from the Spirit when they do not, I do think there are legitimate prophets that speak for God and we should find them and listen to them.

You write, “This difficulty is compounded when that type of prophecy is mixed in with other encouragements that are clearly based on Scripture and attempt to apply it to your life.”

On one hand I get it and sometimes this felt like people “preaching” at you when they are “praying” for you. On the other hand…Why do you find this difficult?  Many times in scriptures many in the New Testament invoke the writings of the Old Testament in a specific situation and apply it to the people they are speaking to.

You write, “It is even further compounded when even these Scripture-based attempts are made ‘in the blind’ (i.e. without knowledge of who you are and what your life is like), since they become so watered-down and generic that, with all due respect, they almost sound like Christian horoscopes (and I mean no offense here to the sincerity or belief of those who are doing it, I’m just expressing how it sounds to me). Kevin, we come from VERY different backgrounds with VERY different experiences, and when I listened to the prayers a second time and tried to think how I would feel if they were being prayed over me, I felt like I could identify with almost everything they were saying! I’m not saying that what they said wasn’t a powerful experience for you and that it didn’t jive with what you were thinking, feeling, or living. But I am saying that were I in that state of mind, nearly everything they said would have jived with my life and my experience and even things that are going on right now.”

The use of very generic terms and prophecies that could “fit” the lives of many people is a concern of mine that I share within the post.  I think even to the Southpark episode where they mock John Edwards and other “psychics” for doing the same thing.  However, in the room I was convicted some of the words were clearly for me by the Spirit.  While others could “make” such exhortations fit their lives, these were clearly for me.  Also, some of these generic exhortations that I could “make” fit my life, I felt were clearly not for me and I did not take them in.  It’s kind of odd, but I really trust how skeptical I have been my entire life of this stuff, and still am in some ways, as a measure against any human desire to just hear something good and make it work for their life.

You write, “If these words, generic and non-specific as they may be, can have this effect, think of the much deeper effect that words of encouragement, exhortation, confrontation, or communion, based on Scripture and following the understanding and leading of the Holy Spirit, could have in the mouths of a family of faith who sees you regularly, has fellowship with you, and knows you deeply as a person.”

Where is this mythical congregation that actually does these things and how do I get there?  I would gladly be part of it, if it existed.  To be honest, I think I have found such a place in a nebulous community at Pihop and Livebones, a student group on campus, that seem to be far more legitimate and authentic expressions of the Body of Christ, than many churches and small groups I have been a part of.

Finally, two answer your two questions:
1. Given all of the above, don’t you feel you could be underrating the Holy Spirit’s role by encapsulating its voice in the context of a “blind” prayer session where everyone’s voice (or at least some of what they are equipped to share) is assumed to have the same Divine authority, whether what they say is rooted in Scripture or whether they even refer to it? How do you reconcile the revelatory nature of the Holy Spirit’s work in and through the reading/preaching/understanding of Scripture and the revelatory nature that is being claimed in this context?

I would not suggest the Holy Spirit is limited to revealing truth in any way shape or form.  She can reveal things through scripture and inspire our reading and understanding of the scriptures.  She can reveal things through other Christians.  She can reveal things in a more “live and direct” fashion.  As I have written, I oddly enough, would suggest you are underrating the Holy Spirit’s role by limiting Her to scripture.
2. If it is the Holy Spirit communicating, how come we only see the encouragement and communion aspects here? He certainly knows what you struggle with (not just talking about what you’ve shared, but all your struggles), so it would seem to me that there should also be words of confrontation and loving calls to accountability. Perhaps these have in fact happened and you just haven’t shared them, and if that’s the case, then consider this point. However I have been in several similar sessions such as this, and never once did someone come to me (even in private afterwards) and tell me the Holy Spirit wanted me to leave behind my sin of _______ and that the blood of Christ was more than sufficient to make me innocent of that sin, too. This omission of one of the major roles the Holy Spirit plays in our lives (sanctification and calling to accountability), at the very least, gives me pause. Doesn’t it puzzle you as well?

You are correct that the Holy Spirit does convict and prophetic words can and should include calls to repentance.  A friend of mine recently brought this up as well and I am sure he would describe much of what happened in my sessions as words of encouragement and not prophetic words.  I am sure some mix of both actually happened. People do not like to be confronted or disciplined in general and in my (Western) context, with its highly individualistic and relativistic bent, this is especially true.  If you doubt this, try disciplining someone in the church and see how well that goes. However, for me personally, I have spent years coming to a place of humility where I will candidly, openly, and honestly admit my mistakes, confess my sins and seek to improve. I have written in the school newspaper about my sexual addiction.  To be frank, I have not seen my commitment to authenticity, honesty and my desire to be held accountable for my behaviors in many other Christians. Why then, would the Holy Spirit need to convict me through a prophet?  If I had some hidden sin that I was holding onto, a sin I was not confessing, or was just in open sin, then I think She might have words for me in this regard.

=================
You write, “An aside (abottom?) that I almost didn’t include because I don’t want to take away from the main discussion, but which we can discuss later/elsewhere (FB maybe): I’ve noticed your continued use of the female pronoun for the Holy Spirit and that I think I understand why you’re doing it, since you yourself said you like to stir things up and shock people out of their previous modes of thought. However, if I do understand why you’re doing it, then to be consistent you’ll be OK with my use of “Him” and “His” throughout, since I believe you think that what’s important is an understanding of the personhood of the Holy Spirit, and I subscribe to that understanding. As far as my studies lead me to understand, in the NT there are references to the Spirit in both a neutral form [Romans 8 pneuma references for example] and in a masculine form [several references in the Gospel of John by Jesus Himself]. Since I subscribe to the practice of using whatever form is prevalent in the Scriptures to address God, I stick with the neutral or masculine when speaking of the Spirit, with the understanding that both male and female are created to reflect the image of God and than neither can reflect Him completely on their own, and that the use of a pronoun to address God is primarily concerned with acknowledging His personhood. I don’t intend to paint God with a male face by calling Him “Him”, yet I don’t ignore the language He himself used when communicating Scripture.”

Yeah I am totally fine with your use of Him/His.  I have explained my reasons for calling the Holy Spirit She elsewhere, but I know you were not using masculine pronouns in any antagonistic way.

Posted in Letters between friends, Personal Commentary | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment