Bennett Blog: 11/01/2013

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

A response to "Confronting the lie: God won’t give you more than you can handle"

I've recently seen a link going around Facebook entitled "Confronting the lie: God won’t give you more than you can handle" in which the author, whom I choose not to name, confronts the notion that God won't give someone more than they can handle. He starts off well enough, but then he starts to talk about spiritual stuff. He asks God 6 questions:

Why? Why not step in? Why not act? Why wouldn’t you make it right? Why couldn’t you part the clouds and provide a moment for us to catch our breath? Why everything at once? Why? - See more at: http://natepyle.com/confronting-the-lie-god-wont-give-you-more-than-you-can-handle/#sthash.ZvrnsSFi.cfpGWPvl.dpuf

Why?
Why not step in?
Why not act?
Why wouldn’t you make it right?
Why couldn’t you part the clouds and provide a moment for us to catch our breath?
Why everything at once?
Why?

And then he swears and uses anecdotal evidence to prove that God does give people more than they can handle. Though in his defense, he does at the end use a scriptural reference. The author claims that it takes "courage" to ask these "holy" and "sacred" questions. It's a bit of stretch to call the questions holy and sacred and it's an equal stretch to say it take courage. But they are important questions because they are questions that all believers must at one point ask on their journey to spiritual maturity. So if I may be so bold, let's just call these questions what they are a sign of:

Spiritual immaturity

If the author ever reads this article I mean no offense by the previous statement. If there is anyone else reading this who feels insulted because I just implied asking these questions was something you did in your spiritual infancy, I hope you also continue reading because this is rather important.

We all start our journey as Christians here:

We all start off as infants in our Christianity as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 3. That's nothing to be offended at or bristle over or be ashamed of, nor is it something for spiritually mature individuals to ridicule you for. It is, however, something to graciously accept and be aware of in all humility. It's also important to remember that just because someone has been a Christian for a long time does not mean they are no longer spiritual infants. In 1st Corinthians 3:2 (emphasis added) Paul writes,

"I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready,"

Paul is saying, "Hey, by now you've been Christians long enough such that we should be off the milk and at least up to cheerios! Why am I still having to feed you milk?" So simple longevity as a Christian does not make one Spiritually mature, and if you've been a Christian for a long time and have yet to graduate to deeper theological matters, then maybe it's time to change the way you do your Bible study or move to a church that does more than shallow teaching of the scriptures because Paul exhorts those who have been in Christ to transition to solid, spiritual food.

So why am I saying these questions are a sign of Spiritual immaturity on the author's part? Well, two reasons.

First, and of lesser importance, there's the swearing.

I know swearing a strangely trendy thing for "hip" "pastors" to do, but it is also a sure fire sign of spiritual immaturity. Setting Romans 12:2 aside in which we are told "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind" which I believe is too open ended to be used as proof against swearing. We are told in James 3:9-12

"With [our tongues] we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water? Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives, or a grapevine produce figs? Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water."

We, as Christians, have been called to tame our tongues and refrain from cursing (as well as coarse/vulgar talking in Ephesians 5:4 and the instruction to abstain from even the appearance of evil in 1 Thess. 5:22). That the author, or any Christian for that matter, has yet to grasp this basic truth is a sign that they are still spiritual infants who have not yet begun to glean anything but very surface level applications when they read passages. While it is not okay that they curse, they need to immediately repent and sin no more on that matter, it is okay that they are still young in Christ and growing in maturity. It is my hope and prayer that he learns these things and grows in his spiritual walk.

(This has nothing to do with anything, but this is a fascinating article about how the brain handles swearing, basically it's not processed as language but as emotion, an interesting concept in conjunction with what God says about people ruled by their emotions)

**Important Disclaimer! With what I am about to say, I am by no means trying to trivialize the very real trials the author had gone through! Some people took pot shots at him in the comments section of his post stating that all the hardship he was facing were a result of sin in his life. If God held us accountable for all our sins in such a manner we'd all be leprous corpses! The belief that you are somehow holier than a sick person is a satanic, Pharisaical, blasphemous mindset. We know it as such because of the interaction between Christ and His Disciples in John 9:1-3

"As He passed by, He saw a man blind from birth. And His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him."

Sickness is actually seldom portrayed in the Bible as a direct punishment from God and more often shown as the result as the tremendous weight of sin in the world (Romans 8:18 ff) or as an event to glorify God. So when I point out the implication of each of his questions, I'm not ridiculing or deeming him. I'm pointing out the reality that these are questions we ask in our spiritual infancy and providing the answers that God has given us in the Bible.

**End of disclaimer**

The second reason these questions are a sign of spiritual infancy is because they are all focused on himself.

Think about what each question implies.

Why? (are You (God) letting this happening to me)
Why not step in? (so this wouldn't happen to me)
Why not act? (So it will stop happening to me)
Why wouldn’t you make it right? (Right as defined by *me*, not You, God)
Why couldn’t you part the clouds and provide a moment for us to catch our breath? (This one is already evidently focused on himself)
Why everything at once? (If You're going to do this why can't it be on *my* schedule instead of Yours, God?)
Why? (are You (God) letting this happening to me) (again)

What do all these questions have in common as their focus?

They all about me. I am the focus of each of these questions. In fact several of them are implicitly stating that we are more aware of our needs than God or that God is somehow absent or uncaring or unaware about what is happening in his life. If God was just paying more attention then He wouldn't have allowed things to happen the way they are.

These were also all questions Job found himself asking when God stripped him of his wealth, his family, and his very health. In the end after 37 grueling chapters of man based theology and his friends telling him it was all because of some secret sin of Job's, God Himself enters the scene and says one of my favorite things in the Bible

"'Now gird up your loins like a man,
And I will ask you, and you instruct Me!
'Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell Me, if you have understanding,Who set its measurements? Since you know.'"

We know from the beginning of Job that the actual cause of all the calamity Job faced was so that the name of God would be glorified. It is truly an amazing and powerful book when you realize that at the end of it Job never get's his questions answered.

Just like us Job was never told why God allowed his children to die and his finances to be destroyed and his health to vanish all in the span of a few minutes. And as we grow in our spiritual maturity we come to understand that the things happen to us because God is Sovereign, because God is Righteous, because God is the ultimate Authority, because It's all about God, not me. Very rarely do we get to know the exact reason for hard times in our lives.

Sadly, the author actually ends the article with the following paragraph. (Emphasis added)

Don’t hear me saying I am rejoicing because of the last couple of weeks. I am not. Not once have I danced around our house shouting, “Yeah suffering!” Instead, in the midst of pain and hurt, I am actively expecting God to do something. I don’t know what. I don’t know when. But I am expecting the God of resurrection to heal us. I am expecting God to restore us. I am expecting him to redeem this situation. I am expecting him to do this and so I will be actively looking and waiting for him to do something.

This is heartbreaking because in his spiritual infancy he doesn't realize that God already is doing something! God is not blind or unaware of his distress. Rather than his response of, "Not once have I danced around our house shouting, "Yeah Suffering!" James has a different perspective in Chapter 1 verse 2-3

"Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds,for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing."

Or in other words, instead of ultimately blaming God for not stepping in on your schedule and doing things the way you think they should be done, you say

While no one expects us to be dancing with joy in the midst of adversity, we are to have an inner peace and joy, comfort if you will, in the knowledge that trials are given to us by God for our benefit.

And that's the thing. The statement "God will not give you more than you can handle" is true, provided you understand it as a spiritually mature Christian. God will give you so much that you will despair and be broken and be brought to lowest you've ever been, but you will be able to handle it because God is the one who has allowed it to happen and it has a purpose as described in 2 Corinthians 2:8-9 (Again, emphasis added)

For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.

The spiritually mature response to trials is to realize that God will never give me more than I can handle in Him. Everything that He gives me is for my edification, when He takes me to the brink it is so that I will cease attempting to rely on myself in my spiritual immaturity, and instead rely wholly on Him as a mature Christian.

Confronting the lie: God won’t give you more than you can handle - See more at: http://natepyle.com/confronting-the-lie-god-wont-give-you-more-than-you-can-handle/#sthash.ZvrnsSFi.cfpGWPvl.dpuf

Monday, November 18, 2013

How Far is Too Far?

There's been a lot of talk as a result of Mark Driscoll crashing the strange fire conference and I'm not going to weigh in those matters at this late point in the game because they're not important to what I want to discuss. What I do want to talk about is a common response I saw in the midst of these discussions. A conversation would be going along about what various people thought about Driscoll's actions and the theological truths of Cessationism versus Continuationism and suddenly someone would chime in with:

"What does it matter?"

I was always taken aback by this response. I know that they weren't trying to be flippant with God's word, and it came from people who I know to be solid mature Christians, but are legitimately asking the question as long as we have the fundamentals down isn't everything else of secondary importance?

So the question that springs to my mind in the midst of all this is at what point have we perverted so much of the rest of the Gospel that we are now teaching a gospel of our own making? At what point do we, like this Justin Bieber fan

go too far? (yikes!)

The short answer is I don't have an answer. I don't think it's possible for anyone but God to weigh the inner most workings of a man's heart and go "This one has truly trusted in Me alone". That said, I think there are three points that are worth considering:

1) Secondary issues are a misnomer
2) We've been given instructions to test the validity of our own faith and the faith of others
3) It shouldn't be about how far we can get on secondary issues (see #1)

(Does this seem too long and you just want to skip to a short summary? Skip to the tl;dr section, and read the rest when you have the time.

1: Secondary issues are a misnomer

2nd Timothy 3:16-17 states that

"All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work."

We also know from Deuteronomy 4:23-25 that God jealously guards the sanctity of His divinity and Leviticus 20 verses 22,23 and 26 states

"You shall therefore keep all my statutes and all my rules and do them, that the land where I am bringing you to live may not vomit you out. And you shall not walk in the customs of the nation that I am driving out before you, for they did all these things, and therefore I detested them.
You shall be holy to me, for I the Lord am holy and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be mine."

This does not paint the picture of a God who doesn't care about "secondary issues" We have been called to live in perfect accordance with God's commandments. We will fail, constantly and miserably fail, but we are called to strive for that perfection of holiness because everything in the scriptures are of primary importance.

Now yes, I understand that when people say "primary" what they mean is that which results in Salvation namely a proper faith in the Gospel that Christ died for our sins, was raised from the dead on the third day, and it is salvation through faith in His works alone that justifies us, that we're all one body of believers and it doesn't matter at the end of the day if you believe that the miraculous works of the Spirit have ended, or if they continue. Which is a great segue to number 2!

2: We've been given instructions to test the validity of our own faith and the faith of others.

There are two main illustrations we are given to test our own faith and the faith of those around us.

John 13:35 - "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

John 14:15 - “If you love me, you will keep my commandments"

The first quote by Christ is rather self explanatory someone who has truly placed their faith in Christ will love the body of believers, but it's the second one that relates to the matter at hand. Someone who has genuinely placed their faith in Christ, what people call the "primary" issue will be directly reflected by how they treat so called "secondary" issues!

Which is why it very much matters how people either misinterpret or fragrantly abuse passages to support/undermine a given position. Now I don't want to get into the meat of Cessationism and Continuationism, I think that would be a great post for another day, however it is worth noting that those who teach that the Spirit still works trough miraculous signs and wonders typically teach that one should speak in tongues because "A spirit language is the greatest gift the Holy Spirit can give a believer." (Reason #4 on this page). Now ignoring for a moment that I would say that the Holy Spirit sealing our salvation for all eternity as taught in Ephesians 1 is the greatest gift given by the Holy Spirit and also ignoring that 1 Corinthians 14:5 states that prophecy is a better gift than tongues, the problem is that 1 Corinthians 14 also gives strict guidelines for speaking in tongues such as

²⁷If anyone speaks in a tongue, two—or at the most three—should speak, one at a time, and someone must interpret. ²⁸If there is no interpreter, the speaker should keep quiet in the church and speak to himself and to God.

This is very clear and direct teachings yet it is completely ignored within the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement.

Now no, I am by no means claiming that as a Christian I keep 100% of the Bible, I am still subject to the flesh and live in a fallen world. However, when confronted with such a clear cut verse that attacks something I enjoy doing, I respond with submission. Oh I will fall, sometimes I will fall so hard I'll find myself living in the old pattern of sin again, but I will strive against the temptation because I love God with all that I am and I desire to do his commandments.

Which brings me to the last thing 3: It shouldn't be about how far we can get on secondary issues (see #1)

My dad used to work in a Nuclear plant when he was in college. He tells a humourous incident in which one of his co-workers was carrying a container marked "Hazardous Waste". As he was transporting it, he accidentally stumbled and dropped the container. Can you imagine this man had just stood there? If he said to himself, "I can safely be exposed for X seconds so there's no rush"? Or if he said, "I need to be 10 feet away to be safe" so he methodically counted out 10 feet then stood there?

From what I'm told, this man, who was rather tall and gangly, resembled something more like this:

As it turned out the container was mislabelled and he was never in any danger at all, but he wasn't going to stick around to find that out!

I posted the question how far is too far? How far can I go down bad theological trails before a denomination ceases to be a part of the church and becomes a cult teaching heretical doctrines? But it shouldn't be about how far someone can go and "still be a Christian" Recognizing that God is a holy God who demands we follow His commandments, when we see a brother or sister following bad doctrine our response should never be, "Oh well, it's a secondary issue so it doesn't matter".

Sadly in modern Christianity, the passage "judge not lest you be judge" has been so badly abused and mistaught that we think you cannot hold anyone accountable for doing something wrong. In 1 Corinthians 5, however, Paul is practically yelling at them "Why are you not judging sin within the church?!"

When we see someone sinning, which includes following false doctrine, we should with all love pull them aside privately and take them to the scriptures so that they can respond to them. Of course we should allow freedom in the Spirit on areas where God has not explicitly stated what we should or should not do, but when the Bible clearly teaches something such as "don't speak in tongues without an interpreter and then limit it to 2 or 3 at a time" and we see whole congregations speaking over one another without any interpretation then we need to call them back to proper worship. If they respond with repentance then we've strengthened their walk in the Lord, if they respond with disdain then using the above passage as a litmus test we can reasonably assume that because they do not delight to keep God's commandments then they are not His followers and we should be bold enough to treat them as such. (i.e. pray for their salvation and witness to them)

tl;dr version/summary:

I don't believe that I or anyone can with all authority say "here is a line in a sand and anyone teaching more than X number of theologically false statements has created a new gospel"

I believe that saying anything in the Bible is a secondary issue is a misnomer and demeans the Holiness of God. While there are grey areas that God has given us freedom to do as the Spirit leads us to do, every theological truth is a primary part of the perfection of God that we have been called to perfectly emulate.

I believe that it is important to test our own faith and the faith of others. We won't agree on everything about the Bible and that's okay, but when we are flagrantly disobey the commands of the Bible then we need to be rebuked. Those who are in Christ will ultimately rejoice at the discipline because they love God and His commandments. Those who continually chafe or lash out against discipline should be regarded as on who is unsaved (as described in Matthew 18 on Church discipline)

I believe that it shouldn't be about how far one can safely go into bad theology before we call them out on it. 1 Corinthains 9:24-27 (emphasis added) says:

"Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified."

We are to be in constant spiritual training constantly strive and checking ourselves and likewise encouraging fellow believers around us so that we can have confidence in our salvation lest we come before the throne of God and find ourselves saying "Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name" only to hear

"I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness"

And I suppose that's kind of the thing. At the end of the day I believe that those who are truly in Christ will leave churches who teach an abundance of false theology because those who are truly in Christ don't desire to be far away from Him at all and that those who stay in such church do so because they cannot stand sound doctrine but desire to have their ear tickled pink.