A.W. Tozer on Setting Expectations

In Liv­ing as a Chris­t­ian, A.W. Tozer writes (p. 135):

Christ had in him one Spirit, and all the world around Him had another; and no mat­ter what sim­ple, inno­cent thing Christ did, they were on Him in a minute, not because of what He did, or of what He said, but because of what He was. So count on it. When some­thing like this is men­tioned, some peo­ple worry that it will dis­cour­age young peo­ple from becom­ing a Chris­t­ian. If you tell them that if they become Chris­t­ian and the world will be against them, you will dis­cour­age them. Truth never stopped God’s work, and to tell the truth, never pre­vented any­body from being a Chris­t­ian. It is a ter­ri­ble decep­tion pre­sent­ing only a half-Christianity to a young per­son; and then when the pres­sure comes and the spit­balls begin to fly in his direc­tion, he loses heart and quits, and we call him a back­slider. No, he is not a back­slider; he is some­one that never knew what he had hold of or what had hold of him. Tell them the truth from the beginning.

The Preacher’s Responsibility

In Liv­ing as a Chris­t­ian, A.W. Tozer writes:

The doc­tor who mis­counts the amount of a med­i­cine that he gives a patient may kill the patient, which would be only to destroy a body. The preacher who mis­judges or mis­counts the truth con­cern sin and man and God will damn his hearer, which is infi­nitely more ter­ri­ble. Truth con­cern­ing God means I must accept God’s sov­er­eignty, God’s holi­ness, God’s jus­tice, God’s grace, God’s love and all the Bible says about God. Con­cern­ing me, it requires that I must believe myself a fallen image of God, one who wants more to His image fell short.¹

This is per­haps one of the most intim­i­dat­ing aspects of being a preacher, teacher, or oth­er­wise claim­ing spir­i­tual author­ity of some sort. At the same time, cer­tain notions have called into ques­tion the idea that truth can be known or that the mean­ing of a text can be prop­erly inter­preted and con­veyed. The intim­i­dat­ing respon­si­bil­ity of the preacher or teacher, which A.W. Tozer under­stood so many decades ago, is now being called into ques­tion and down­played. Hid­ing under­neath such phrases as ‘God will under­stand, I’m only sin­cerely seek­ing’ or ‘I’m just ask­ing ques­tions,’ all man­ner of unbib­li­cal doc­trine is being taught.

There exists bib­li­cal doc­trine of such sound­ness that they are beyond ques­tion­ing. It is beyond ques­tion that human­ity is fallen and sin­ful. It is beyond ques­tion that God cre­ated and sus­tains all cre­ation. It is beyond ques­tion that Jesus is God incar­nate, cru­ci­fied and res­ur­rected for the sins of the world. It is beyond ques­tion that you and I and every­one else are damned with­out Christ Jesus. It is beyond ques­tion that not every­one will be saved. The preacher, teacher or leader who ques­tions teach­ings so cen­tral as these is on very dan­ger­ous ground. A preacher, teacher or leader has to be respon­si­ble and pre­cise in what they say, because some­one will take what they say as teach­ing, regard­less of intent. Let’s briefly look at an example.

‘God is big­ger than the Chris­t­ian faith.‘²

I like ‘rev­e­la­tion’, the idea that God reveals Him­self to us through nature or spe­cial cir­cum­stance. The above quote is from Rob Bell, and is taken out of my favourite chap­ter of Vel­vet Elvis (the first chap­ter). There is an extent to which I can agree with Bell, because if you read the chap­ter you’ll hope­fully agree with me that what’s being said, is that there is much more to God than what has been revealed to us. My dis­agree­ment with Bell rises from my under­stand­ing of the Chris­t­ian faith. I under­stand Chris­t­ian faith as being founded on the var­ied and many rev­e­la­tions of God to human­ity. I there­fore think it more proper to say that there is more to God than what He has revealed to us, but not so much more that what He has revealed is some­how erro­neous. If you want to take that as being summed up in the phrase ‘God is big­ger than the Chris­t­ian faith’ then be my guest, but I can’t help feel­ing as if this isn’t what Bell had in mind.

Cer­tainly there is the ques­tion of how we are to under­stand what has been revealed to us. This leads me to the ridicu­lous dif­fer­ence between bricks and springs.

Bell has rather famously used the metaphor of a brick wall and springs on a tram­po­line to describe the proper atti­tude (he thinks) a Chris­t­ian should have. Is the Chris­t­ian faith a stack of bricks, which may crum­ble if ques­tioned; or is it a spring in a tram­po­line, which even if removed won’t make much of a dif­fer­ence? It’s a metaphor that sells books, but it’s rather inept when you think about it.

Really think about it. My Chris­tian­ity is bet­ter than yours because I have to remove mul­ti­ple springs before any dam­age is caused, whereas by remov­ing just one brick you’ve top­pled the whole thing. I don’t think that con­veys a proper atti­tude towards doc­trine — it’s just one spring among many, after all. It’s just one doc­trine among many. Yet this is what is taught to young Chris­tians. I sug­gest that Bell is being fool­ishly impre­cise, and ignor­ing the respon­si­bil­ity he has as a pas­tor. A leader rais­ing ques­tions is still a leader teaching.

I sub­mit that Chris­tian­ity is both. It is a brick wall, and it is a tram­po­line. The brick wall is made up of the unques­tion­able teach­ings (above — lets call these ‘first-order doc­trine’), while the tram­po­line is made up of sec­ondary issues (lets call these ‘second-order doc­trine’), like preter­ism and the many con­cep­tions of the rap­ture and 1,000 year reign. I don’t par­tic­u­lar like the metaphor of brick walls and tram­po­line springs, but I may as well keep with it.

Because again I agree to an extent with Bell when he says, ‘But if the whole faith falls apart when we reex­am­ine and rethink one spring, then it wasn’t that strong in the first place, was it?’ ³ If some­thing is indeed taught in Scrip­ture, then it will stand up to scrutiny. But again, there are things that if rethought or removed, would under­mine com­pletely the Chris­t­ian faith (e.g. the resurrection).

This is the demon of impre­ci­sion. It cre­ates false dichotomy’s (brick walls and tram­po­line springs); it cre­ates car­i­ca­tures; it down­plays the impor­tance of doc­trine. It fails to dis­tin­guish between first– and second-order doc­trine. When­ever any­one claim­ing author­ity teaches any­thing, it ought always come back to the Bible. The preacher has the awe­some respon­si­bil­ity of con­vey­ing God’s mes­sage to the world (as, in fact, we all do). To con­vey that mes­sage improp­erly is a griev­ous lack of wis­dom. If any of us wish to raise ques­tions or kick-start anyone’s think­ing process, then we must do so very care­fully and prayer­fully. The exam­ple Bell has set ought to be avoided.

Frustration

Would you believe that words like ‘frus­tra­tion,’ ‘frus­trated’ and ‘I’m frus­trated’ are the most com­mon search words to this web­site? I sus­pect it’s because I wrote a post on my own frus­tra­tion, and ever since then I’ve learned — to my hor­ror — that the num­ber of peo­ple who are also frus­trated is quite extra­or­di­nary. The ques­tion on my mind is why so much frus­tra­tion? Frus­trated to the point of search­ing the term online.

In fact, I’m still frus­trated, and let me tell you why:

• I can’t afford the books I want to read. This is espe­cially frus­trat­ing for me as I had taken a shot in the dark and emailed Dr. Peter Kreeft and author Philip Yancey ask­ing for book rec­om­men­da­tions. Wouldn’t you know they both replied! The frus­trat­ing part is this: I don’t have access to any of the books. I don’t have money to buy them, and there is no ade­quate ‘Eng­lish’ library here (that is, a library with books writ­ten in English).

• I’ve got­ten one call for an inter­view in the last year of look­ing for a job. That’s it, one call. This is the longest I’ve gone with­out work­ing ever since I started my paper route when I was who knows hold old. It’s great that I have a lot of free time, but it’s not like I have the books I want to read in this free time…

• I don’t have any money. None. This is really frustrating.

• I don’t have any ‘friends’. It’s a French city, so I’m fairly isolated.

• There is noth­ing to do here. Lit­er­ally, there isn’t. And it’s not as if I could sim­ply drive some­where, as the clos­est any­thing is five hours away.

• I’m frus­trated because when my wife is hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ties in her min­istry, there’s not much I can do. There are a few peo­ple I’d like to slap — appar­ently the Jesus that lives here isn’t one to hang around with sin­ful folk. We’ve got per­fectly groomed Swedish Jesus in these parts.

• I’m frus­trated because I’m doing noth­ing. Hav­ing too much free time is no good, because I use all my free time to sit around and think about all my free time and how I could be doing other things. It kills my moti­va­tion to be doing the things I need to be doing.

So the ques­tion is, how do I deal with my frus­tra­tion? Good ques­tion.

The first way I deal with it is by doing the things I know I should be doing. I force myself to study French, because I really do need to know it. I force myself to exer­cise, or do the yard work (the lat­ter espe­cially). I force myself to read and write (even if I choose not to pub­lish what I’ve writ­ten). I’m try­ing to turn these things into habits, but I don’t know how suc­ces­ful I’ll be.

The sec­ond way I deal with frus­tra­tion is know­ing that this won’t last for­ever. It is only a tem­po­rary state of affairs, so I should (ide­al­is­ti­cally) make the most of it. The dif­fi­culty in this is remain­ing focused on the here-and-now, and not get­ting tied off in thoughts of ‘one day…’

The final way I deal with frus­tra­tion is ‘tak­ing it out’. I’ll admit, I like play­ing video games, and I like play­ing video games where I can shoot things. If I’m really frus­trated, I’ll load up Cry­sis 2 (not as good as Cry­sis 1) and ‘kill’ a few dozen alien whatchamacal­lits. Or per­haps I’ll immerse myself in the world of a cer­tain RPG (I sup­pose this is more escapism than anything).

I think the thing is, though, that when I can’t change my cir­cum­stances, I have to change my per­spec­tive, and that’s a hard thing to do.

1 Timothy 2:9–15, by N.T. Wright

In research­ing the ‘issue’ of women pas­tors, I’ve run across the fol­low­ing inter­pre­ta­tion of 1 Tim­o­thy 2:9–15, by N.T. Wright:

So this is what I want: the men should pray in every place, lift­ing up holy hands, with no anger or dis­put­ing.  9In the same way the women, too, should clothe them­selves in an appro­pri­ate man­ner, mod­estly and sen­si­bly. They should not go in for elab­o­rate hair-styles, or gold, or pearls, or expen­sive clothes;   10instead, as is appro­pri­ate for women who pro­fess to be godly, they should adorn them­selves with good works.  11They must be allowed to study undis­turbed, in full sub­mis­sion to God.  12I’m not say­ing that women should teach men, or try to dic­tate to them; they should be left undis­turbed.  13Adam was cre­ated first, you see, and then Eve;  14and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived, and fell into tres­pass.  15She will, how­ever, be kept safe through the process of child­birth, if she con­tin­ues in faith, love and holi­ness with prudence.

Surely puts a new twist on things.

Source: http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Women_Service_Church.htm

There’s Something About This Place

You know, there’s some­thing about this place that makes it hard to focus. There’s some­thing about this place that makes it hard to think, because it’s hard to focus. And it’s hard to focus, because it’s hard to stay awake. I find it hard to stay awake, because there’s some­thing about this place that makes it hard to stay moti­vated. I didn’t real­ize there was some­thing about this place — I thought it was me — until I left for a week. A week where I didn’t have trou­ble sleep­ing, or think­ing, or focus­ing, or remain­ing moti­vated. But now that I’m back, I can’t help but won­der if there’s some­thing bad about this place.

Women as pastors, or teachers.

If women ought not be ‘pas­tors,’ as many today con­tend; then by the same merit, might we also refuse women the right to teach, or become police offi­cer or judges? For that mat­ter, ought we tell women that they may not fill any posi­tion which entails ‘author­ity’ over men?

Back

After a very pleas­ant visit with my par­ents, I’ve returned. My first order of busi­ness is a song — Apocalytica’s ‘Beautiful’.

A Little Vacation

…Gone to visit fam­ily
Be back next week sometime…

Writing

I know one thing for cer­tain about my writ­ing this year; it is that in a years time I’ll read it and want to revise it, just as I’m read­ing and want to revise every­thing I’ve writ­ten last year. I sup­pose that is the cost of improvement.

Some Thoughts on Love Wins

I woke up the other day, with the idea of writ­ing on ‘uncon­di­tional sal­va­tion,’ but then real­ized that I’d only be repeat­ing myself. So instead, I’ve decided to say some­thing about Love Wins (Rob Bell’s most recent book).

Some­thing both­ers me; some­thing both­ers me about the way Bell has writ­ten Love Wins. Two things bother me, in fact. The first I’ve already writ­ten about, and the sec­ond thing is what I’ll dis­cuss here. You see, I don’t under­stand what Bell’s point is. Well, actu­ally that’s not entirely true; I do under­stand what Bell’s point is, but I don’t under­stand why it matters.

A few months ago, an inter­view between Rob Bell and Mar­tin Bashir began cir­cu­lat­ing. Irre­spec­tive of the con­tro­versy sur­round­ing this inter­view, Mar­tin Bashir asked one par­tic­u­lar ques­tion (which I’ll para­phrase) that sum­ma­rizes the ‘some­thing’ that both­ers me about Love Wins: if in the end ‘love wins,’ and God ‘gets His way’ and every­one even­tu­ally comes to be rec­on­ciled with God (either before or after death), then why do our actions here on earth, right now, mat­ter? Bell’s reply, as I recall, did lit­tle more than dodge the ques­tion, say­ing some­thing to the effect of, “What hap­pens after death is spec­u­la­tion, and that is why the Chris­t­ian con­ver­sa­tion is so diverse”. (If this is all spec­u­la­tion, I won­der why Bell went out of his way to write Love Wins to begin with.)

That is the irony of the sit­u­a­tion, I think. Here is Bell teach­ing about social jus­tice and show­ing God’s love and being true ambas­sadors of God (to the world) and it just doesn’t mat­ter. The ‘heaven’ or ‘hell’ we each cre­ate right now doesn’t mat­ter. God is going to renew it all in the end any­way. Let some­one else ‘do the work,’ and be obe­di­ent and con­form to the image of Christ; I’ll hop on the band­wagon after it’s all done. So on the one hand we have ‘Evan­gel­i­cal­ism,’ which is accused of being too focused on eter­nity to the exclu­sion of the ‘here-and-now,’ but on the other hand is the view Bell is advo­cat­ing, where it doesn’t mat­ter if one focuses on eter­nity, or on earth, or nei­ther. ‘God’s work’ isn’t really par­tic­i­pa­tory, if regard­less of what we do God ‘gets his way’. It’s the same prob­lem nihilism or nat­u­ral­ism has, except in reverse.

Antic­i­pat­ing this, Bell writes:

Time does not repeat itself. Nei­ther does life. While we con­tin­u­ally find grace wait­ing to pick us up off the ground after we have fallen, there are real­i­ties to our choices. While we may get other oppor­tu­ni­ties, we won’t get the one right in front of us again. That spe­cific moment will pass and we will not see it again. It comes, it’s here, it goes, and then it’s gone. Jesus reminds us in a num­ber of was that it is vitally impor­tant we take our choices here and now as seri­ously as we pos­si­bly can because they mat­ter more than we can begin to imag­ine. (Love Wins, 197)

But lis­ten, I think Bell is being unfairly neg­a­tive. I have a bet­ter story, one in which the oppor­tu­ni­ties we miss are fol­lowed up by oppor­tu­ni­ties we couldn’t pos­si­bly dream of — an eter­nity of oppor­tu­ni­ties, in fact. And yet, I can’t see why our choices ‘mat­ter more than we can begin to imag­ine’. I mean, I can see how they mat­ter now, but ulti­mately everyone’s des­ti­na­tion is the same, right? In view of eter­nity, how insignif­i­cant this life seems. If the only rea­son I should fol­low Jesus in this life is so that I don’t miss oppor­tu­ni­ties, then I don’t have much to worry about (see bove). Bell’s view just seems like empty rhetoric; a view with a foun­da­tion of ques­tions, which is no foun­da­tion at all.

And so I haven’t walked away with the feel­ing that Bell is say­ing any­thing sub­stan­tial. I mean, Love Wins opens with a flurry of ques­tions you’d expect to see an ‘inter­net athe­ist’ raise, which are then fol­lowed up by a the­sis that under­mines that rest of what Bell says. It’s as if Bell made a con­scious effort to avoid the typ­i­cal ‘uni­verasal­ist’ posi­tion, but then ignored (or didn’t real­ize) the defi­cien­cies of his own view. But ulti­mately, I’m treat­ing Bell as if he and I had the same Christ and Chris­tian­ity in mind, and I think it’s fair to say that we don’t.

If I could ask Bell one ques­tion, it would be this: why does it mat­ter what we do, if in the end love wins and every­one is saved? I don’t believe Bell has given a sat­is­fac­tory rea­son to think why this isn’t a prob­lem for him.