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 - Endorsed - Indifferent - Contested
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| The Nashville Statement
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Name:Daniel
Home: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
About Me: I used to believe that evolution was reasonable, that homosexuality was genetic, and that people became Christians because they couldn't deal with the 'reality' that this life was all there was. I used to believe, that if there was a heaven - I could get there by being good - and I used to think I was more or less a good person. I was wrong on all counts. One day I finally had my eyes opened and I saw that I was not going to go to heaven, but that I was certainly going to suffer the wrath of God for all my sin. I saw myself as a treasonous rebel at heart - I hated God for creating me just to send me to Hell - and I was wretched beyond my own comprehension. Into this spiritual vacuum Jesus Christ came and he opened my understanding - delivering me from God's wrath into God's grace. I was "saved" as an adult, and now my life is hid in Christ. I am by no means sinless, but by God's grace I am a repenting believer - a born again Christian.
My complete profile...
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Daniel's posts are almost always pastoral and God centered. I appreciate and am challenged by them frequently. He has a great sense of humor as well.
- Marc Heinrich
His posts are either funny or challenging. He is very friendly and nice.
- Rose Cole
[He has] good posts, both the serious like this one, and the humorous like yesterday. [He is] the reason that I have restrained myself from making Canadian jokes in my posts.
- C-Train
This post contains nothing that is of any use to me. What were you thinking? Anyway, it's probably the best I've read all day.
- David Kjos
Daniel, nicely done and much more original than Frank the Turk.
- Jonathan Moorhead
There are some people who are smart, deep, or funny. There are not very many people that are all 3. Daniel is one of those people. His opinion, insight and humor have kept me coming back to his blog since I first visited earlier this year.
- Carla Rolfe
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| Father's Day thoughts that have nothing to do with Father's Day. |
Happy Father's Day all you dad's out there.
There, now that hallmark has had it's way, let's move on.
One of the most difficult things I find, when giving my endorsement of a book, is that there are very few books that I can say that I wholeheartedly agree with everything the author has written. When I was a younger in the faith, and my pride was not quite as obvious to me, I used to think that was because all of Christianity was more or less off in some small way - myself included - and so I chalked these disagreements up to a sort of theological uncertainty principle which, in my pride, really mean that everyone else was theologically uncertain.
As I have grown in my faith and in my walk,presuming of course that I have and that this is the reason my perspective has shifted, I have learned that it is more likely that sometimes I am not so much disagreeing as unable to endorse a thing, because my own opinion in the matter is still undecided.
In Canada we have a multi-party political system. There are three main parties however, basically a (far) left wing party, a liberal middle, and a moderately right wing party. Our family was poor, and my father consistently voted for the party that was most likely to hand out ...well... hand outs - the left wing party. The year I turned old enough to vote, I voted for the same party my parents always voted for, and this only because I had been raised in a home listening to a lot of rhetoric and criticism about the various other parties. As I grew however, and especially as I moved away and was no longer bombarded by such rhetoric, I began to think for myself - to listen to what was said, evaluating each party's platform, and how that fit into my own life - and again, as my own agenda changed, I found myself moving steadily to the right, until now I lament that even our right wing party is more middle than right.
My point is that when I was young I hadn't learned to think for myself yet, but my certainty that I was right in whatever I thought had a blinding effect in me. I presumed that since I was sincere, and reasonably bright, if I disagreed with someone it was because they were dumb, deceived, or insincere. They didn't "get it" like I did, and if they did, they would surely agree with me.
But as wisdom begins to creep in, on the wings of humility, I see that perhaps it has not been their ignorance or guile, but rather that there are some things in the Christian faith that I simply haven't given as much thought as other Christians have. I want to be careful too, having suggested in the previous sentence that I am both wise and humble, that I only mean I have learned from hard experience that I am more sinful than I ever thought, and so weak that unless Christ holds me up, I am certain to fall every time. That kind of knowledge is wisdom, and it has a humbling effect, not because of some great character facet in me, but because of the greatness of our God who opens the eyes of the blind.
I am beginning to see that while it would be foolish and irrational to agree with everything I read, I really do need to consider that even if all things were black and white, not all things are clearly seen; that is, I need to be honest about whether I simply haven't enough experience or knowledge to give a well thought out opinion. I tend to agree or disagree, then move on. I don't find any virtue in the gray area, and I don't think there is any virtue in prolonged ignorance, willful or otherwise. I am not saying, therefore, that I suddenly think it is holy and good to stop forming opinions, or to presume myself correct in what I believe - for that kind of thinking isn't wisdom, it is just fence sitting. But I do need to be honest with myself, being less than omniscient, I must hold some uninformed opinions, and if I am not diligent in examining my opinions as I express them, I am in danger of agreeing or disagreeing with a teaching, not because I have given it any thought, but because I have an opinion that was formed before I gave the thing any thought.
The only "mystical" Christian experience I have every had in my waking life happened the moment I was born again. When I say mystical, I mean something experientially took place that wasn't normative. I didn't hear voices, I didn't see visions, but I did find myself suddenly a new man - united together with God's Christ, and I knew it experientially. Since that day I have never had anything even remotely close to it. My faith has come exactly as scripture said it would - by hearing, and not by feeling. I have tried many times in the infancy of my faith to squirm out from under the necessity of trusting in God directly, and to instead trust in some visible/tangible pointer that "proves" there is a God, and that He is there, and that He hears me, etc. I have longed for some experiential fetch, as it were, that I could look to - for I was no better than the Israelites who preferred a golden calf that they could touch and see to the living God, in that I too longed for a more visceral and tangibly present God. Yet in a day full of grace, the Lord gave me strength to set that aside, and I no longer desire such trite, in fact I abhor the thought, for I have found much strength in faith that would not have been found in sight.
So I am somewhat at odds when a Christian writer or teacher dips into mystical things. Impressions from God being one such area. I am entirely convinced that the Lord is able to give people impressions, but I am just as convinced that God doesn't work that way on purpose, since no man needs to receive an impression who is saturated by God's word and in-dwelt by God's Spirit. The Spirit of God works this way in me: He causes me to want to be pleasing to Him. I know this because God's word says that it is impossible to please God in the flesh - so that when I want to be pleasing to God, I am informed by scripture that my flesh cannot want such a thing, for it is sinful through and through. Thus I understand, not by mystical feelings and impressions, but by a biblically informed conscience, that my desire to be pleasing to God must be coming from Him who dwells in me, and not being generated by my own imagination - if my desire to be pleasing is legitimate. Thus when I want to obey what scripture has informed my conscience to be right and proper for me, I am not following some mystical impression, I am following a biblically informed and spiritually trained conscience - just as the Lord has intended and supplied.
When I hear or read another Christian talk about how one is lead by God, I am careful to filter what is said through what I understand. There are whole Christian denominations out there that are dedicated to knowing the will of God through experiential promptings, and while they talk about the sufficiency of scripture, they (more or less) they often mean that they are using scripture to interpret or validate some experiential, personal revelation from God. They are seeking a tangible God, and think they are being biblical because they use the scriptures - only they are really using the scriptures to frame their experience - like a medium uses the letters on a Ouija board to hear from demons. I use an occult image, not to make what they do seem more wicked than it is, but to show that God's word can saturate one's religion even in a religion where one is looking for personal, experiential revelation rather than being satisfied with faith.
I do believe that God prompts me throughout the day, but such promptings rise from an informed conscience, and not from a personal intervention. I don't get feelings, I just become aware that a thing I am doing is acceptable to God or not, and I know the difference because I know (and believe) the scriptures, and have a desire that I know comes from God, to live pleasing to Him.
When a Christian writes about God's will, this area is sure to come up, and I expect that most of us want to be careful not to say any more or any less than we ought to. I mean, maybe I am simply not spiritual enough to receive constant, individualized, feedback from God in the form of mystical impressions? Okay, seriously, no. Not even in jest. If God were going to give Christians such personalized revelation about which underwear they ought to put on today (or not), the bible would be pointless wouldn't it? I mean why should I study God's word to know Him and know His will if He is supposed to be micro-managing my life through direct intervention in the form of mystical impressions? That would make me more spiritual the more inclined I am to follow impressions. That's find as long as these impressions don't require guess work... but they always do, don't they?
So when a Christian writer broaches these kinds of things, I suspect he or she will want to allow for the possibility that there is more to Christianity than perhaps he or she has personally experienced. That strikes all of us as far more humble that taking a bold stand on some point that one is unsure of. When I wrote than in my infancy I was more inclined to bold stands, but am now finding myself more commonly inclined to anticipate my own possible ignorance, yet in spite of that I find myself quite bold when it comes to the whole point of personal revelation.
I want to honor God by leaving the door open - yes, God can make the sky yellow and black striped on Tuesdays. My God is able - yes, He can give direct personal revelation... But I don't think He does, and even if I am wrong, and God does give such revelation - I am convinced it wouldn't be something flighty, vague, or the kind of thing that would be left open to interpretation. God doesn't mumble. I don't think I am being a spiritual humbug when I say that I am unconvinced of personal revelation, whether that takes the form of a mile high Jesus having breakfast with us in the morning, or imagining our own thoughts are actually God trying to communicate with us if we would only listen.
Have a blessed Lord's day today, and I hope your pastor forgets that it is Father's Day and preaches a message that will be edifying because it suits where your congregation is at spiritually rather than where we are on the calendar, which is just a personal gripe of mine :PLabels: gods will, helpful |
posted by Daniel @
7:12 AM
5 comment(s)
 
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| Unconditional Election in John 10 - part 4 |
 If you want some context for this post, you should read the meta over at Rose's blog, or alternately, you can follow along through the series here:
Part I
Part II
Part III
In conversations of this sort, inevitably someone asks the hard questions. In this case, the question is why would Christ bother giving the Pharisees a chance to repent and be saved if He knew beforehand that they weren't going to be saved. Wouldn't it be sort of disingenuous of Christ to make them an offer when He knew they would not accept it.
I probably haven't answered it as good as I could have, but here is my reply:The Pharisees were culpable for their own sin and God had declared their end from the very beginning - reserving the blackness of darkness forever for them, giving them ears that could not hear, and eyes that could not see.
To be sure, we read about where we get ears to hear and eyes to see beginning in Deuteronomy (29:4), where Moses is explaining to the Israelites that even though they all saw what happened in Egypt with their own eyes, yet in spite of that God did not give the Israelites a heart to perceive, eyes to see, or ears to hear to that very day.
That reminds us that God is the one who opens hearts and eyes, and not our own cleverness or personality - and that God doesn't do it in response to our faith, but rather our faith is in response to God's enabling. Surely there ought to have been at least a few hundred thousand amongst the roughly 2 million Jewish exiles after seeing the ten plagues, after being under the cloud day and night for forty years - that would have had enough information to have their eyes opened, if it were something that we do - so that God could "respond" - but we see that the reason their eyes and ears were not opened was because God hadn't opened them.
We see the same again in Isaiah 6:9-10 - God explains that He is going to make their heart dull, their eyes shut and their ears heavy in order to make it impossible for them to return to Him and be healed until God's appointed time. (c.f. Isaiah 32)
Jeremiah prophesies to a people whom God has made blind and deaf (Jeremiah 5:21) - recall that God told Jeremiah specifically that they would not listen to him, but he was required to call them to repentance.
Paul explains this very idea in Romans 11:7-9 - that the reason Israel failed to embrace Christ was because God had made them blind - and he quotes from similar texts to the ones I have quoted to make his point.
God made them culpable and they remained culpable even when God made them blind and deaf.
It is entirely consistent for Christ to give the Pharisees every opportunity to repent, and even as Jeremiah was instructed to preach to a people whom God had ordained before hand would not listen to his preaching - so too Christ, even though these men were not of His flock, Christ gave them every opportunity, in good faith, to repent.
Recall Christ washing the feet of Judas at a time when He already knew Judas was about to go and betray Him? That is the character of our God - a humble servant, willing to treat all men, even His own betrayer, with the same grace.
Had Christ treated those who were not of His flock differently than those who were of His flock, He would not have been God. God is not partial (c.f. Romans 2:11)
So my answer is that Christ gave them the opportunity to repent because He is God, and God is merciful. Christ knew these men were not of His flock - that is plain enough from the immediate dialog, and we could examine John 2:24-25 if we were still hazy on the idea. Christ knew these were not of His flock, but He gave them the opportunity to repent.
Now if it is a question of motive, why did He do it, I can say this much, my first inclination is to look for some motive common to man - but that has a man centered myopia to it. I like to speculate as much as the next guy, but honestly, sometimes we allow our speculations to drive our interpretation, and when we do that our speculations can cause us to re-interpret what is going on because we are unable to speculate an answer that satisfies our understanding of the character of God.
That is, I might be inclined to say - God is so loving and so merciful, that the only reason God could ever give the Pharisees an opportunity to repent was because he was wringing His hands in hope that just maybe "this time" they would believe. Such a notion is premised upon the idea that God really has no control over salvation - and that is premised upon the errant idea that God would be wicked for saving one man while allowing another to perish.
But that line of reasoning is grounded in our own sense of fairness - If I work all day and another works only one hour, and our boss pays us the same wage - I am offended because I feel that if the boss gives the other fellow the same as he give me - I should get more because I worked more. The true wicked nature of my heart is revealed in that I am offended by the kindness of my boss. I want the other fellow to get less, or alternately I want the boss to pay me more - because I don't understand justice. Maybe when I was a kid my mom used to give us all the same equally, and call that "fairness" - and maybe this is why I have this idea in my head that if the boss shows this guy who worked only an hour and gives him a merciful wage - one he did not earn, that the boss must therefore over compensate me in order to remain "fair" - and that unless this boss hands out mercy according to my understanding of "fairness" he is unjust.
But the reality is, the boss can give the days wage to whomever he wills, and it is not unjust to allow me to receive what I have earned.
Soteriologically speaking, we earn condemnation by our sin, and God is justified in paying every last one of us that wage - and God is not unjust if He, because of His great mercy, gives to some eternal life which they have not earned. It doesn't make him evil if He gives life to some and not all - it makes Him merciful. It is the mind set on a wrong kind of fairness - that cannot see this.
They were given the opportunity to repent, even though Christ knew they weren't going to. They certainly had the ability to repent - it isn't like God was forcing them to =not= repent; that image is grossly cartoonish - rather it is that repentance is a gift given by God (c.f. Acts 11:18, 2 Tim 2:25), and that God was not compelled to give them that gift. These were not innocent men - they were wretched sinners, treasonous rebels who had earned a place in hell a thousand times over through their consistent God slandering rebellion. God's only obligation to them was to give them their wage - hell. God is not wicked for "withholding" the gift of repentance - if repentance were something we had a right to, scripture wouldn't describe it as something God grants.
I may be starting to ramble - there is only so many ways to say the same thing. Let me know if my point is coherent enough to be understood.
I think that is going to be the final post in the series, but perhaps it will come up again. We shall see.
My hope is that God is glorified in this way - that someone reading this exchange will find something in it that draws them closer to the Lord. I have corrected some of my spelling mistakes, but other than that it is verbatim, though I am not always pleased to "publish" anything with rough edges, I prefer to leave it that way just to be true to that discussion.Labels: helpful, Theology, Unconditional Election |
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posted by Daniel @
1:10 PM
4 comment(s)
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| The Gap. |
 As a young man in high school, when the guys would get together and kid around, we used to imitate talking like Elvis for laughs, I can still hear my friends trying to master the art of saying, "I'll ah, I'll have a big 'ole cheese bugga, and ken ya put a whole lotta mayo on that darlin'?" We cracked ourselves up thinking we were so clever and funny.
I mention this so that when I say that there is in many of us a "whole lotta" difference between what we intellectually agree to be true and what we put into practice.
Consider the following quote from Walter Marshall, first published in 1692:Consider these things well, and you may easily perceive that our spirits are not in a fit frame for the doing of them, while we apprehend ourselves under the curse and wrath of God, or while we are under prevailing suspicions that God will prove an enemy to us at last. What Marshall is saying here is that you can't really love God if you always hold onto the secret suspicion that God is really your enemy. The context (and you can go and read the whole book at the link) is that until a believer is convinced in a practical way that they are in fact reconciled to God, they will be unable to accept the truth that God loves them in any practical way.
I think the best path for discipleship is to identify the most common obstacles to (genuine) Christian growth, and deal with them first. But often new believers are either left to their own devices (worse case scenario), or given a brief and systematic overview of the core Christian beliefs and encouraged to study the bible and pray (a little better), or thoroughly indoctrinated into both the core beliefs of the Christian faith and a variety of denominationally appropriate theological dogma (magnificent, but still putting the cart before the horse).
You see, you can be a believer, and have your head filled with all the right interpretations of all the various doctrinal stances your theological persuasion allows - and all the while be hopelessly in bondage to sin because in spite of all your "learning" - you didn't believe some of the very first things you were supposed to learn. There is a "Gap" between what you know to be true intellectually, and what you see happening in your faith.
You know, for example, that God loves you. If someone asks you, you have the right answer - "Jesus loves me this I know, for the bible tells me so" - only deep down, you suspect that every time you failed to be perfect, God stopped loving you. Oh, it was your <whispering> deep, dark secret, </whispering> but you imagined that this doubt was either normative, or more likely, that your faith was somehow flawed, and that if you could just obey more genuinely it would go away. But it never did.
You see, the gap? They are trying to generate God's love by their genuine obedience. Oh it looks crazy when we drag it out into the light and look at it, but that is what can happen.
You see, unbelief is spiritual cancer, it grows over time and gets worse - and unless it is identified for what it is, a person may well wonder why they seem to be getting worse in their faith rather than better, why they seem farther away from God now, than ever before. The problem goes back to the basics:
=If= you are in Christ, you are acceptable to God right now, and no sin that you can ever commit will change that. You cannot make God love you by your "genuine obedience" - God's love cannot be purchased - it is freely given, and if you are in Christ, it is already yours.
You are reconciled - the gap between you and God has been filled entirely because you are in Christ. God loves you right now, and so long as you continue to imagine that God's love is conditioned upon your obedience, you will never be able to believe that God loves you. And though you must become a fool to understand this, since it goes against all our logic - THAT must come first. First you trust God's love, and when you do THEN obedience flows naturally out of you.
Brother, sister, are you convinced intellectually that God loves you? Do you find that secretly you aren't loving God? It is because you are wrongly prefacing God's love upon your obedience - and as long as your conscience refuses to trust in a perfect and completed reconciliation - you will never be released from the guilt of your sin, and until you are released thus, you will not be free to love God from your heart. Your mind may well agree that loving God is proper, but your heart won't be convinced.
So if this was written for you, let the Spirit witness that to you, and do something about it. Crack open your bible while it is still today and settle for yourself whether God prefaces his love towards you on your good works. Learn that God's love is real, and stop giving into unbelief. It is true that you are not worthy of this profound love that God has exercised towards you - but it is high time you excusing your guilty conscience as a pious thing - when your conscience is trained not by truth but by suspicion, it is an evil conscience - you must train it again with the truth, for such will set you free.Labels: encouragement, helpful, Instruction, love, Theology |
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posted by Daniel @
8:51 AM
5 comment(s)
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| To The New Believer... |
I recall watching two men battle one another in one of those arcade style games that involves hitting the right button + joystick combinations to make certain moves. The one fellow seemed to know every move you could make - I think he had them all memorized, yet as he pounced upon his foe, he used the same two or three techniques over and over again. He could have used any of the dozens he knew, but having known all the moves, he used the ones that over time he knew to work the best.
Now come with me into the wilderness for a moment. Here we see our Lord Jesus - not at the end of His ministry, but right at the very beginning - baptized only moments or perhaps days ago, he is here in the wilderness because that is where the Holy Spirit has sent Him - why? To be tested.
Now, when we think of testing, we tend to think of a pass or fail situation, but here the test is more like testing fine gold to demonstrate that it is pure. The test wasn't for God to see if Jesus was the Christ, I mean, God knew that - and Jesus knew it too, but here the validity of His own claim would be revealed to Himself through these temptations.
Now it is interesting that God spoke to Jesus out of the Heavens only days before, declaring audibly that He was God's Son. But the devil finds him out there in the wilderness starving, and what is the first temptation? =IF= you are the son of God, turn this stone into bread.
That is the devil's ace in the hole. He may have trillions of "moves" - but he knows which ones are the most effective, and he uses them immediately on the Christ. He doesn't ask Christ to doubt that there is a God, He wants Christ to doubt that He is God's son, to deny the reality of the spiritual (as opposed to water) baptism He just received. To question if what happened yesterday still applies today - to demand a sign to show that God is still there.
The new believer faces the same temptation and it comes from the same source. They give their life to Christ, but they are babes, they do not know how to deal with indwelling sin in their life, and their failure to be perfect now that they are saved puts them in a wilderness where the enemy comes to them with his polished game - Are you really a Christian? Did you really mean it? Why all this sin then? If you are a son of God, do a miracle or something, call out to God in prayer and see if he obeys your voice?
Brother, sister, if you are new in the Lord expect these temptations - if the enemy plied them against our Lord, they must be the best weapons in his arsenal, and you can expect to be attacked this way.
Don't demand of God "proof" of your salvation by way of miracles. The natural man cannot receive the things of the Spirit of God - know this, if you have a genuine desire to know God, it didn't come from your own heart - scripture makes it plain, no man comes to the Son unless the Father draws him. The very fact that God called you into His Son and you believed is a miracle - and it is sufficient for the temptations to doubt.
Consider this truth - God doesn't hold heaven above you and keep it unattainable - men come to Christ every day, and they come through faith - and when they do their guilt over residual sin makes them vulnerable to the temptations of the enemy - they are primed and ready to doubt the validity of their sonship - and that is when they are most sorely attacked by these temptations.
Only the Holy Spirit can assure you that you are in fact a child of God, I don't pretend to offer any assurance to you on that ground - but assurance is not a feeling that comes to you and wraps you in its arms so that you never doubt - assurance comes from the kind of trust that only God can generate. When we struggle in this area we find little assurance - that is why the apostle Peter writes the following:For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. - 2 Peter 1:5-9 [ESV] Assurance comes when we recognize that the Holy Spirit really is inside us prompting us to obey God - since no unsaved person would every do that (the unsaved mindset cannot obey God).
So take some strength in this thought if you are a new believer and full of doubt - your Savior has walked this same road before you - He was tempted in every way (yes even tempted to believe that He was not God's Son), and this is the same Savior who Himself put you into His own body (the church), and in doing so became inseparably united with you through that spiritual baptism. God did it, not you - and you certainly cannot undo what God has done. Turn your eyes therefore to your Savior when you are in trouble and doubt. He is there, and you can talk to Him. Read His word, see His faith, and rest in it rather than your own power.
Go in grace, you are beloved of God.Labels: helpful, new believers |
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posted by Daniel @
6:22 AM
2 comment(s)
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