Wednesday, February 3, 2016

Test the Spirits -- I John 4: 1-6

My roommate was a musician. Sometimes he would say, “The Lord gave me this song.”  I never could understand why, if the Lord gave him that song, it wasn’t so dull and repetitive. Surely the Lord could have given him a better song.
We should not confuse our voice with God’s voice. The Bible teaches that our reason, intellect, will, emotions, and even the impressions in our mind are affected by our sinful nature. There is still a lot of good in us, but it can’t save us completely from making mistakes or doing wrong.
The early church believed God spoke to them through apostles, teachers, and prophets. The apostles were with Jesus. Teachers taught the Bible and the words of the apostles. Prophets listened to God and spoke what God spoke to them. The apostles died out, but they left their words, so the teachers kept teaching it. Prophets and teachers remained. They spoke as the thought they heard from God, but original sin tainted what they said, and they could be wrong. This was the reason that they usually spoke in twos or three, and not alone. 
There was another problem, too.  False prophets and teachers started churches and ministries aimed at deception. They came among the flock looking for money, power, and sex. They used their influence to take what they wanted from the flock.
We still have the same problem today. This is why John wrote, “Believe not every Spirit but test the Spirits, to see whether they are from God.”
We use another word for testing the Spirits. We call it critical thinking.
Testing the spirits is not something we do by praying really hard. It is what we do when we hold up a subjective impression or proposed action against the objective reality of what God has already said.
We call the Bible the Canon. Canon means a plumb line, something we use to test the straightness of a wall. To test the Spirit, we don’t use feelings; we use our brain. We employ the same critical thinking we use to test everything else in our lives.
Suppose you buy a car. You don’t walk across a car lot praying for discernment. If you are smart, you will do your homework, and check out the gas mileage and resale values. We use our brains to test our hunches. We use critical thinking to test what car we buy, what food we eat, and where we go on vacation. It seems ridiculous not to. Why shouldn’t we also use critical thinking when it comes to finding God’s will in our lives about spiritual matters?
God may speak to our hearts through intuition, or He may not. But He has already spoken to us in two places.  First through the Bible. The authority of the Bible in our lives come from the authority of Jesus. Jesus gave the words of the Gospel. His disciples faithfully wrote them down. He promised that the Holy Spirit would lead the apostles to write down more. He also believed the Old Testament, saying not one dot of an “I” or cross of a “T” of revelation would disappear until it was no longer useful, but fulfilled in the Kingdom of God.  It provides the source of our knowledge for this world.
 Along with the Bible, He speaks through the person and work of Jesus. If you want to know how you ought to behave, then look at Jesus. If there’s something in your life that doesn’t match with Jesus, then you should change. Jesus is the model for our thoughts, feelings, and behavior. 
There’s more to believing that Jesus came in the flesh than just obeying Him. We also should believe in who he was and what He came to do. He is God’s only begotten Son who died for our sins. Faith in Him is the only way of salvation. 
False prophets with either add to or subtract from this. They either say, “You don’t really need Jesus. All you have to do is work hard and go to my church.” Or they add to the message by saying, “You need to believe in Jesus, be baptized, go to my church, have this experience, tithe, live a perfect life, etc. etc.” By the time they get through adding to what you need to be a believer, no one can be saved!
The Word and Jesus inform our decision making, and enable us to tell truth from error. What about questions such as who we should marry, what job we should take, or what church we should join? For those questions God expects to use critical thinking and our own intuition, informed by the Word of God and the person of Christ.
There are many people who would willingly and joyfully play the prophet in your life. They will freely give you the answers to all your questions. But they don’t know you, or the Spirit.  They give you advice, but they steal something from you while they are giving it. They are stealing your ability to think critically. They do not help you see the truth. They give you the truth—or at least, their version of it. In return, they gain a disciple to themselves.
There are also deceptive voices in your head, ready to give you the wrong answers.  A young man sees a pretty girl and something inside says, “She’s God’s will for you!” But is it right, or is it our own feelings? It’s our own feelings. 
That doesn’t mean its’ wrong. Just because our feelings or intuitions are not from God doesn’t mean they are wrong. God’s will is not a guessing game where there is only one right answer and everything else is wrong. God allows us freedom to create our own life, as long as our lives are in accordance with His word in Christ. If we make a very wrong answer, then He will let us know. If we make a mistake, he will correct us. But our intuition and feelings are not God’s voice. God’s voice comes from outside our heads, not inside it. It comes from Jesus and the Word of God, not from our personal intuition.
God uses our fallible and fallen flesh to reveal His good and perfect will, but it is still not to be trusted by itself. This is not unusual for Him. He spoke to Moses through the burning bush. He spoke to Baal though the mouth of a jackass, but that doesn’t mean the next time we have a spiritual question we should start listening to bushes and jackasses. We should trust the perfect Word, not imperfect feelings.
Jesus has come in the flesh. Divinity had taken on mortality. In this, He has shown us that God can reveal Himself to us through mortal means. Because He has come in the flesh, we can see Jesus through the means of flesh—through sound judgment and common sense. The problem with it is not that we don’t trust our minds, but we don’t trust them enough.
Philip Cary in his book Good News for Anxious Christians describes a common situation at Christian colleges. A young man believes it is God’s will that a girl he’s dating marries him. But the girl feels that it is God’s will that they should break up. Who’s right?  Cary says the young man is just being silly. Nowhere in the Word does it say that a particular boy should marry a particular girl, but only that they should marry Christians, and stay together for life. He is listening to his feelings, not to God. But the girl is doing something worse. She can’t say no without saying, “God says no.”  She thinks she has to have a spiritual reason for saying “no”—that her own judgment is not good enough. Unable to muster the strength to say what’s really in her heart, she must put it in spiritual terms.
There’s nothing wrong with this girl’s judgment. She just thinks there is. There’s nothing wrong with us deciding as long as that decision is not against the Word. God gave us the responsibility of using our best judgment. We are stewards of our minds. But not using our minds, and learning the skill of critical, rational thinking, as well as listening to our intuition is laziness, and a sin. God called us to serve Him not as puppets but as stewards. Critical thinking is stewardship of the mind.
The problem with most of us is not that we are mentally lazy. We expect God to do to the work of deciding for us. We need to develop sound judgment so we can tell true prophets from false prophets. We do this not based on our feelings, but on God’s Word in Christ.
How do we develop critical thinking? Here are some pointers:
First, know God’s Word. Don’t just think you know the Bible—know it! Read it on a daily basis. Many Christians know what people say about the Bible, but they don’t know the Bible. This makes them easy prey for false prophets, since all a false prophet has to do is quote a lot of Scripture and act like an authority. Don’t be fooled by this. Read it and study it yourself.
Second, study the experts. Study people who actually know what they are talking about. A true expert has devoted himself or herself to a serious theological and academic education. A true expert has the backing to prove what he says. He also has the humility to know what he doesn’t know. A true expert has trusted credentials. He didn’t get his expertise from Wikipedia or from an article he saw on Facebook. He went to school and earned his knowledge though years of study.
Third, ask questions. False prophets hate questions, because questions reveal what they don’t know. People who keep asking questions eventually get answers.
 One caveat though—question your questions. Just because you don’t get answered to your satisfaction doesn’t mean the other guy is wrong. It may mean that you may not understand the answers!  Real experts don’t take it personally when you disagree, but recognize the importance of open discussion and debate.
Fourth, listen to tradition. A friend of mine had once had this discussion with a man handing out religious literature. The man said, “I’ve found the Messiah! I was lost in sin and this man changed my life!  He’s the Son of God! And he’s living right her in Chicago, and his name is______!”
My friend answered.  “I’ve also found the messiah too, and His name is Jesus!  He not only changed my life, but the life of people for two thousand years!  He has stood the test of centuries, and His word has survived.  Tell me, how long has your Messiah been around?”
Tradition isn’t gospel. We can’t always trust the wisdom of the past, but we are bigger fools to casually throw it out. Tradition is how people of the past struggled with what they meant to say, “Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.” It is the record of Spirit’s work in past generations.
Fifth, don’t take yourself too seriously, but accept your fallibility. Don’t beat yourself up when you get things wrong. We all do. Instead, correct your errors of thinking and go back to studying God’s word.
My mission is not to get you to agree with everything I say, or have you do everything the way I want it. It is to teach you the Word of God, and to get you using your brain. I think I’m right on most things, but I also know I’m surely wrong on some things. Don’t follow me, but to follow the Word of God. 

Jesus Christ has come in fallible flesh. We must use our judgment, formed by the Word of God and the Spirit of God, to see though that veil of flesh and see God’s Son.

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