Some years ago in an adult Sunday school class, I remember an illuminating misunderstanding taking place.  A dear older servant of the Lord, who had given over a decade of her life to missions in Central Asia, commented that, measured by conversion growth, Christianity is the fastest growing religion in the world.  Another class member, a college professor, asked what kind of Christianity she was referring to.  She replied, “Evangelical Christians.”  The professor’s response was “That’s scary.”  The missionary lady looked a little taken aback but said nothing.

The church was an American Baptist congregation with strong Willow Creek influences.  The messages that were presented from the pulpit were Biblically based and upheld the authority of scripture and faith in Jesus as necessary for salvation.  So what was going on in this particular situation?  Was there a fundamental difference of perspective, or were the two parties missing each other in communication?

Although I did not interview these people after the fact, I strongly suspect that the real issue was not doctrinal difference, but different understandings of labels.  In missions circles, it is common to define the term evangelical like this:

[Evangelical Christians] are all who emphasize and adhere to all four of the following:

• The Lord Jesus Christ as the sole source of salvation through faith in Him, as validated by His crucifixion and resurrection. 
• Personal faith and conversion with regeneration by the Holy Spirit. 
• Recognition of the inspired Word of God as the ultimate basis and authority for faith and Christian living. 
• Commitment to biblical witness, evangelism and mission that brings others to faith in Christ.

Evangelicals are largely Protestant, Independent or Anglican, but some are Catholic or Orthodox. It is one of the TransBloc movements in this book. …
(http://www.operationworld.org/glossary)

However, for the college professor and her husband, the word likely carried a rather different set of connotations.  As far as I know, they would indeed affirm the four points above; at another time, I heard them describe themselves as “confessional Christians.”  In their politics, however, they leaned to the left.  Thus, the word “evangelical” carried baggage for them which made it uncomfortable and even “scary” – names like Jerry Falwell, Ronald Reagan, Pat Robertson, George W. Bush, etc. and phrases like “Moral Majority,” “Christian Coalition,” and “Religious Right.”  For them to imagine the strand of Christianity which birthed such political movements exported to all the nations as the world’s fastest growing religion was understandably, and perhaps even deservedly, scary.

I bring up this story in order to confess my own stumble into confusion over labels.  Over the few years that I transitioned from the church that I described above into IHOP-KC, my latent belief that the gifts of the Spirit continued to operate today flowered into full-fledged participation in the gifts of tongues, healings, and prophecy.  In this transition, I began to refer to myself, rather incautiously, as a “charismatic.”  What I meant by the term is very much what Operation World means by it:

Those who testify to a renewing experience of the Holy Spirit and present exercise of the gifts of the Spirit such as glossalalia, healing, prophecy and miracles. The charismatic renewal, or “Second Wave” Pentecostalism, has generally remained within mainline denominations. A further “Third Wave” renewal movement occurred with many characteristics of the Second Wave, but with less open identification with formal Pentecostalism or the charismatic movement. Second and Third Wave charismatics are counted as a single entity in this book. In our global survey of denominations, we have assessed percentages of affiliated charismatic Christians for each of the 37,500 denominations in the world from 1990-2010. The assessment largely excludes those no longer actively associated with charismatic renewal.
(http://www.operationworld.org/glossary)

I discovered, however, that not every one thinks of this definition when they hear the word.  What may come to mind instead is two-tier system of Christianity, in which those who are Spirit-baptized are superior to those “without the Spirit,” or perhaps a ministry rife with unbridled emotionalism and manipulation, or worst of all, a church in which Biblical teaching has been abandoned in favor of the latest dream or vision from the “anointed prophet” who has a unique revelation from God, not to be questioned by the unanointed layman.

Fortunately, IHOP-KC is none of the above, nor would I be a part of the organization if it were.  IHOP-KC’s statement of faith places it squarely within the stream of the “Third Wave” charismatic movement, which clearly affirms that every born-again believer has the Holy Spirit living within them, though many forego the benefit of conscious experience of the Holy Spirit’s power that comes by being “filled” with the Spirit (Eph 5:18).  As for emotionalism and manipulation, I have rarely experienced more level-headed Biblically-based ministry times as those at IHOP-KC.  Mike Bickle follows closely in the footsteps of John Wimber, who strongly encouraged leaders in his movement to avoid every kind of hype and showmanship and to be “supernaturally natural” in platform ministry.  As for abandoning the Bible because of the latest dream or vision, I have read my Bible more, studied it harder, and been more impressed at the clarity and depth of Bible teaching at IHOP-KC than at any previous point in my walk with the Lord.

So perhaps, I am not a “charismatic.”  But I unashamedly affirm and practice the gifts that the Holy Spirit has given His church.  Labels will always be dangerous, but fortunately the Lord Himself has prayed that His Church be unified around allegiance to Him (John 17:21-23).  When men and women of goodwill who love Jesus meet, even if their respective labels should make them enemies, I am convinced that the Holy Spirit can and will make them friends.

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“Christianity is the only religion on earth that has felt that omnipotence made God incomplete. Christianity alone has felt that God, to be wholly God, must have been a rebel as well as a king. Alone of all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator. For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point and does not break.” – G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (“The Romance of Orthodoxy”)

If we could look from the perspective of heaven, perhaps it would not be very surprising that when God visited His people He would be regarded as a troublemaker and a rebel. He had warned them for centuries that He was not on their side. Either they were on His side, or they were against Him. Looking frankly at the history of Israel, most of the time they were opposed to Him. He had spoken to them in judgment, in deliverance, in blessing and in cursing, and still they persisted in their own way.

So He came to them as a subversive. He began to put the world right by turning it inside out and upside down. The poor are rich, the persecuted are joyful, suffering is pleasure (2 Cor 12:10), and death by crucifixion is glory. And what is highly exalted among people is an abomination to God (Lk 16:15). The age to come will vindicate those who side with God, no matter how foolish they look now.

We have been invited into the Grand Conspiracy to fix the world by turning it on its head. But we immediately run into our own fear. Turning the world upside down and making pretty much everybody mad is scary stuff. We’d be a lot more comfortable if we could preach moderation. Or if we could pick a side and make sure “the good guys” win. But we don’t get to do that. Our King took no one’s side except His Father’s, received no honor from human beings (Jn 5:41), and was utterly fearless. We learn what courage looks like by looking at Jesus. There’s never been a Man more brave.

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The Hermeneutical Spiral is a book that I never read, but the title changed my life. Well, perhaps “changed my life” is an exaggeration, but it really helped me understand Bible study. The idea is that knowing what whole books are about helps understand what individual verses mean, which in turn helps understand the whole book, which helps understand the verses, and so on. The process of understanding the Bible is “the parts interpret the whole interpret the parts, etc.”

I’d like to suggest that something similar happens when we meditate on the Incarnation. It has been well said that we completely miss the significance of the stable in Bethlehem unless we keep fully in mind Who it is that is lying in the feeding trough. The story slides into sentimentality unless we remember that the helpless Baby born in squalor is the very God who created the heavens and the earth with a word… who in judgment for sin, wiped the entire human race from the planet except Noah’s family… who demolished the global superpower Egypt to rescue slaves and make them the His own special people... who sent them into exile when the rebelled against Him… and promised them a restoration beyond hope. Unless we remember that it is this same God of creation, covenant, exodus, exile, and restoration who is now lying in a manger, we miss the entire point of Christmas.

But we need to go one step farther. God incarnate in Jesus reveals the God of Sinai in ways that are unthinkable otherwise. How would we know about the humility of God if it were not for Jesus? His gentleness with sinners? His joy? Gratitude? Courage? The Son interprets the Father for us.

As we meditate on the Incarnation, let us remember that it is Yahweh who became flesh – and that through His flesh He revealed what we could never have known about Him any other way. It is in this “spiral of adoration” that we will find ourselves, as Wesley wrote, “lost in wonder, love, and praise.”

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An acquaintance of mine, a follower of Jesus, recently took his own life, apparently in the midst of a bad bout of depression.  This is the second time a Christian I have known has killed himself in the past 10 years.  Aside from grief and anger over the situation, I have another reason to hate suicide.  The story below happened to me about 6-7 years ago. 

I am convinced that every suicide – especially of believers – is a victory for Satan and a victory of deception over truth.  This is not to say that I believe that Christians who commit suicide go to Hell.  I’m not the Judge, and I don’t know their hearts, but I have reason to believe that both Paul and Ed had sincerely trusted Jesus for salvation and that they are in His presence today.  But to give up hope is to forget or ignore Jesus and the Gospel, and to believe a lie.

 

I was driving home one night under a heavy burden of depression. I had just given into temptation and yielded yet again in an area of habitual sin which had hindered my life and my calling in God at every turn. As I was driving home, familiar feelings of shame and hopelessness assailed me. “You are a failure. You’ve done nothing with your life. You’re pathetic…” And so on. All of this seemed to be my own mind, and certainly at the time I agreed with most of the sentiments. I felt pathetic. I felt like a loser. I felt like I was accomplishing nothing and I was in a dead-end job. I felt my sin disqualified me from any possible destiny in God.

These thoughts began to take a particularly nasty turn that night, however. I began to feel that life was not worth living any more. Depression began to harden into despair. Suicidal thoughts began to float through my mind. I looked at a bridge I was driving past and had thoughts of driving my car into a concrete abutment or off of a cliff. For a few moments I wallowed in these feelings, and they began to crystallize into a suggestion. “Why don’t you just do it? Why don’t you just end it now?” I continued in my self-pity and depression another moment, but the suggestion became more insistent. Suddenly a new thought crossed my mind.

This isn’t me.

Nearly automatically, I said out loud in the car, “Spirit, I rebuke you in Jesus’ name!”

And it stopped. The voice stopped instantly and completely. Suddenly, I wasn’t thinking suicidal thoughts. I wasn’t pitying myself for my pathetic life. I wasn’t depressed. I wasn’t even feeling shame anymore. Instead, I felt like I was waking up from a dream. What had I just been listening to for the past 15 minutes?

If you are struggling with suicidal thoughts, I urge you to get help.  Tell someone.  Call 911 if you need to.  But above all, believe the Gospel.  Jesus Christ has paid the price for the redemption of the entire earth – for your freedom as well as your forgiveness.  Repent of your sins, trust Jesus Christ for salvation, and then take hold of the authority that is yours as a child of God.  Resist the devil and he will flee from you.  Suicidal thoughts are not your portion as a believer in Jesus.  Find people to pray for you, ask the Holy Spirit to help, and renounce the lie that you are destined to be depressed and suicidal your whole life.  DO NOT GIVE UP.  There is always hope.  Jesus has set many people free before you.  There are thousands of people all around the world who wanted to kill themselves before Jesus rescued them.

One place you can find dozens of testimonies of people who have been freed from suicidal thoughts is the IHOPU Student Awakening.  Watch the video testimonies and believe that what Jesus did for those people He can – and will – do for you!  It’s not about IHOP, it’s about Jesus.  This is what He’s like.  He’s the Savior, and so He saves.  He’s the Deliverer, and so He sets people free.  He will set you free IF YOU DON’T GIVE UP.

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Heaven's not a vapor
And God's not a cloud
He's in a physical temple
On the top of a mount
(Chorus from the IHOP-KC Prayer Room, June 2010)

One of the criticisms occasionally leveled against "charismatic" teachers and groups¹ is that they are anthropomorphites (e.g. Catholic Answers). That is, they believe that God the Father - in addition to God the Son - has a human form.

At first glance, the topic may appear to be as straightforward as Catholic Answers suggests - people are merely taking imagery like "The right hand of YHWH" (Ps 118:15-16) literally and coming to overly simplistic conclusions. But on closer inspection, there is a case to be made for the anthropomorphism even of the Father. Abraham apparently had YHWH to his tent for dinner and then talked with Him about Isaac and the fate of Sodom (Gen 18). Moses and seventy elders of Israel "saw the God of Israel" and He had feet (Ex 24:10). Isaiah saw YHWH sitting on a throne and wearing a robe (Is 6:1,5). Ezekiel saw "the glory of YHWH" and he had "a likeness with human appearance." (Ezek 1:26,28, see also Ezek 3:23; 8:4; 9:3; 10:4, 18).

The standard theological response to these verses has been to regard them as Old Testament Christophanies (pre-Incarnate appearances of the Second Person of the Trinity). Various New Testament scriptures do provide legitimacy for that view (e.g. Jn 1:18, 1 Jn 4:12; and Jn 12:41, which states clearly that Isaiah saw a Christophany). But it must be noted that with the exception of John 12:41, Scripture itself is silent on Old Testament Christophanies.

The early church fathers are helpful to a degree (see the extensive selection of quotes at the Catholic Answers link above), but it must be recognized that the apologists and early theologians of the Church virtually all imported a large number of Hellenistic assumptions into their theological works. These ideas were alien to the Hebrew worldview in which the Torah was received and into which the Messiah and all His apostles were born. This can be seen clearly in some of the earliest quotes on the topic, where the church fathers go beyond scripture and import propositions from Greek philosophy, e.g.:

Athenagoras

"I have sufficiently demonstrated that we are not atheists, since we acknowledge one God, unbegotten, eternal, invisible, incapable of being acted upon, incomprehensible, unbounded, who is known only by understanding and reason, who is encompassed by light and beauty and spirit and indescribable power, by whom all things, through his Word, have been produced and set in order and are kept in existence" (Plea for the Christians 10 [A.D. 177]).
(http://www.catholic.com/library/God_Has_No_Body.asp)

You will not find the idea that God is "incapable of being acted upon" in the Bible. In fact, it's hard not to get the impression that He is very much affected by our choices - not least our sins. (e.g. Jer 12:7-8) Or try telling Abraham that God is "known only through understanding and reason." His answer might be, "No, He talked with me and He visited my tent." (Gen 18)

But aside from throwing Bible verses back and forth, there is actually an important pastoral issue involved. I recently finished reading Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, by C.S. Lewis, and I found Lewis' thoughts on anthropomorphisms in scripture to be the best I've heard:

This talk of “meeting" is, no doubt, anthropomorphic; as if God and I could be face to face, like two fellow-creatures, when in reality He is above me and within me and below me and all about me. That is why it must be balanced by all manner of metaphysical and theological abstractions. But never, here or anywhere else, let us think that while anthropomorphic images are a concession to our weakness, the abstractions are the literal truth. Both are equally concessions - each singly misleading, and the two together mutually corrective. Unless you sit to it very tightly, continually murmuring “Not thus, not thus, neither is this Thou,” the abstraction is fatal. It will make the life of lives inanimate and the love of loves impersonal. The naïf image is mischievous chiefly in so far as it holds unbelievers back from conversion. It does believers, even at its crudest, no harm. what soul ever perished for believing that God the Father really has a beard? (Pg 22)

Scripture doesn't take the slightest pain to guard the doctrine of Divine Impassibility. We are constantly represented as exciting the Divine wrath or pity - even as "grieving" God. I know this language is analogical. But when we say that, we must not smuggle in the idea that we can throw the analogy away and, as it were, get in behind it to a purely literal truth. All we can really substitute for the analogical expression is some theological abstraction. And the abstraction's value is almost entirely negative. It warns us against drawing absurd consequences from the analogical expression by prosaic extrapolations. By itself, the abstraction "impassible"can get us nowhere. It might even suggest something far more misleading than the most naïf Old Testament picture of a stormily emotional Jehovah. Either something inert, or something which was “Pure Act” in such a sense that it could take no account of events within the universe it had created.

I suggest two rules for exegetics: 1) Never take the images literally. 2) When the purport of the images—what they say to our fear and hope and will and affections—seems to conflict with the theological abstractions, trust the purport of the images every time. For our abstract thinking is itself a tissue of analogies: a continual modelling of spiritual reality in legal or chemical or mechanical terms. Are these likely to be more adequate than the sensuous, organic, and personal images of Scripture—light and darkness, river and well, seed and harvest, master and servant, hen and chickens, father and child? The footprints of the Divine are more visible in that rich soil than across rocks or slag-heaps. Hence what they now call “demythologising” Christianity can easily be “re-mythologising” it—and substituting a poorer mythology for a richer. (Pg 51-52)

In essence, Lewis is saying that anthropomorphism is far less dangerous than mechanomorphism (imagining God to be like a machine), which is all we have left if we think that words like "omnipresent," "omnipotent," and "impassible" are literal truth that doesn't need to be qualified or explained.

God's impassibility is probably the weakest of the "attributes of God" discussed by theologians - the least Biblically supported and the most liable to dangerous misunderstanding. There are some Biblical reasons to support it (e.g. "God is not a man that He should lie or a son of man that He should change His mind…" Num 23:19, and the very fact that the Lake of Fire is a place of everlasting wrath - everlasting wrath is an impossible emotion for human beings). But we are much safer to think of God's emotions as analogous to ours than to think of them as something abstract and static. If we focus on the idea that God's emotions are utterly unlike ours, we will ruin our emotional relationship with Him, and we will actually make void the many things that He tells us about His emotions through scripture.

We run into a similar problem when we think about God's relationship to time. It is all but unthinkable that God could experience time in the same way as us, as a slave of the future, not knowing with certainty what will happen. To think of God like that reduces His promises from certainties to probabilities, and His sovereignty from utterly trustworthy rule to the best bet among uncertain options. Further, if the theory of relativity is correct in that time and space are inextricably linked - to the point that travel through space at speeds approaching the speed of light actually affects time - then to make God subject to time is to make God subject to space, and therefore to His own creation. It would be a self-contradiction.

However, when we consider the alternative - of declaring God to be "outside time" or "timeless," the distortion that enters in is again far more spiritually dangerous than the intellectual difficulty of picturing God within time. When we think of "timelessness," we inevitably think of something static. And in fact, that was precisely how Plato pictured the First Cause - the "Unmoved Mover", the "Ultimate Form" from which all else was derived. It reduces the personal and deeply involved YHWH of Israel to a pretty statue and renders the Incarnation an irreconcilable contradiction in terms.

So, as Lewis wrote, we are far safer to approach God using the imagery and language that He has given us, even recognizing that the Bible itself warns us against taking the images rigidly (e.g. we are told "He does not change His mind," and yet on several occasions, the story records that He did precisely that). It is much better to cry with Moses, "Turn from Your burning anger," (Ex 32:12) than to sit back with the false piety of Ahaz saying, "I will not ask, and I will not put YHWH to the test." (Is 7:12)

 

¹ Note that I am using the word "Charismatic" loosely to refer to a broad spectrum of groups and denominations who believe in the present operation of the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

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In the news today, another well-known Christian singer has come out as a homosexual. I found what Jennifer Knapp had to say about her story to be interesting:

The Signal - Christian singer Jennifer Knapp comes out as a lesbian
“I still consider my hope to be a whole human being, to be a person of love and grace. So it’s difficult for me to say that I’ve struggled within myself, because I haven’t. I’ve struggled with other people. I’ve struggled with what that means in my own faith. I have struggled with how that perception of me will affect the way I feel about myself.”

I will not attempt to say that I fully understand what she has experienced in the tension between sexual attraction to her own gender and what the Bible says. I have no first-hand experience of same-sex attraction, so I will frankly say that I don't "get it." But I do have first-hand experience of powerful and overwhelming urges to do things which our society considers normal, but which the Bible condemns as sin. In fact, for a large part of my life, I have felt trapped in a habit (or even an addiction) which I cannot seem to escape, despite trying virtually everything that has been recommended to me. Over and over again, I have felt how much easier it would be to give up the struggle, quit fighting it, and simply live the way it seems most Americans do.

But when I look at the Bible, I find that rather than "being a whole human being" who is free from internal struggle, what the New Testament urges is much closer to my experience of constant internal battle.

The writer of Hebrews described this life as a footrace, and suggested that we should do whatever it takes to be free of encumbrance so that we can run this race to the finish line. (Heb 12:1-2) The finish line, it is clear from the context, is the end of this life. (Heb 11:39) So the Christian life can be compared to running a marathon which lasts your entire life. There may be glory in a marathon, but it not comfortable or easy.

Peter and Paul both take comparison up a notch and equate this life to a war. Peter urges Christians to abstain from the lusts of our flesh, because they wage war against our souls. (1 Peter 2:11) Paul encourages Timothy to "share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus" (2 Tim 2:3-4), and writes to the Ephesians that they are to put on a full suit of spiritual armor to withstand every attack of demonic forces against them. (Eph 6:10-20)

Most disturbingly of all, from the very lips of the Master Himself, we are told that this life is a voluntary process of self-execution. He calls us to live in such a way that it is like giving ourselves up to humiliation, torture, and a slow, agonizing death by one of the most horrific means of execution ever devised. That is what "Take up your cross" means, after all. And of all the great leaders in history, this Man is the only One who can with absolute unquestionable authority call us to that voluntary self-destruction.  He is not asking us to do anything He did not do first! (Mt 16:24-25, Lk 9:23-24, Mk 8:34-35)

Today we are constantly hearing that it is too hard and too unkind for Christians to insist that those with same-sex attraction resist it just because the Bible says so.  In light of the strong – and even ruthless – words we have just surveyed from the Founder and the fathers of our faith, such arguments seem anemic and pathetic.

The reason that anemic and pathetic arguments carry so much weight today, however, is because the contemporary American Church is by and large anemic and pathetic. Gay activists are very nearly right in saying that Jesus never talked about homosexuality (though note His restatement of God's intention for male and female in Mt 19:3-9 and parallels). The issues to which He did apply His call to violent holiness have a much broader application:

• We have to die to religious pride. (Lk 18:9-14, Mt 7:1-4)
  
• We have to die to love of money. (Lk 16:10-15)
  
• We have to die to idle and unprofitable speech. (Mt 12:36-37)
  
• We have to die to our right to be angry. (Mt 5:21-26)
  
• We have to die to even looking lustfully at another human being (of either gender). (Mt 5:27-30)
  
• We have to die to getting what is due to us. (Mt 5:38-42)
  
• We may well have to suffer persecution and even die physically. (Mt 5:10-12, Rev 2:10)

Internal struggle - even internal warfare unto continual death to self - is what Jesus calls us to. Let us forget our ignorant dream of being comfortable and happy in this life and instead do whatever it takes to be holy. What we will find is that there is a better joy, a better peace, and a better comfort - a comfort beyond imagination - coming in the age to come for those who refuse to give up. 

And even in this age there is a downpayment of that joy to be had. People really do find freedom from all kinds of besetting sins, including same-sex attraction.  People really can, by the power of the Holy Spirit, live with an increasing measure of holiness in this life. I really do have hope that in this life I will have consistent and lasting victory over sinful habits.

But victory only comes to those who fight.

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I found this blog post today, after observing that there has been at least one headlines-worthy earthquake every month in 2010 so far...

City Brights: Zennie Abraham : More big earthquakes projected for 2010 than 2009, 2008, and 2007: "One reason for this increase in number may be improved earthquake sensing technology. Indeed, the USGS reports that this is the case. But there's a problem in the basic logic presented by the USGS, a large earthquake has damaging impacts such that more sensitive technology would make no difference, a large quake is just that: big. People know when an earthquake larger than 6 on the Richter Scale strikes. Moreover the USGS points to improved technology between 1931 and today, not within the last decade."

Matthew 24:6–8 (ESV)
6 And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. 7 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. 8 All these are but the beginning of the birth pains.

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