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.
No comments:
Post a Comment