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"We proclaim
Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, so
that we may present every man complete in Christ." |
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Bad Fruit From a Bad Tree(Part 8)So far in this series you have seen two different ways of looking at God’s leading in the decision making process.First, there is what is called the traditional model1 of discerning God’s will. This model teaches that each individual Christian can hear God’s voice in impressions, feelings, nudgings, and circumstances. Accordingly, each believer should develop the discipline of reading signs that God leaves us in the form of open doors, confirmations, and fleeces. I have offered an evaluation of this model in the light of Scripture and examined the texts offered for its support. Second, there is what is called the wisdom model. This is a method of decision making that I have contended is both taught and practiced in Scripture. The wisdom model is: Using the guidelines of God’s Word (moral will and wisdom) I am free to do what I want with God’s blessing. J.I. Packer accurately describes this method by saying, “The principle is that the right course is always to choose the wisest means to the noblest end. Namely, the advancing of God’s kingdom and glory. Moral law delimits the area within which the choice must be made. . . God given wisdom. . ., then leads us within these limits to the best option. . . God enables us to discern this by prayerfully using our minds, thinking how Scripture applies, comparing alternatives, weighing advice, taking account of our heart’s desire, estimating our capabilities. Some call this common sense. The Bible calls it wisdom. It is one of God’s most precious gifts.”2 Up to this point, my evaluation of the traditional model has focused on the texts of Scripture which are typically pressed into service to support it. Fruit InspectorsIt is time to examine the “fruit” of the traditional model. Ideas have consequences and when we are talking about the will of God and the voice of God, those consequences can be substantial. The traditional model and the wisdom model are not two equally valid methods of decision making. Quite the opposite. They present two radically different views of the scriptures, God, and the Christian walk. Below, I have summarized thirteen problems with the traditional model of hearing God’s voice and making decisions. Hardly an exhaustive list, but it is sufficient to illustrate that the traditional model presents a flawed view of the scriptures, God, and the Christian life. If the fruit is bad, what does it say about the tree? Traditional Model and ScriptureThe traditional model ends up undermining Scripture in several ways. 1) It is not supported in Scripture. Taking biblical phrases out of context and redefining them to mean what the author never meant is not a proper use of Scripture, yet this is what the traditional model requires. The proof texts offered by the advocates of the traditional model fail to make their case. This alone should be enough to make any Scripture-loving Christian abandon once and for all the traditional model of hearing God’s voice and making decisions. 2) It denies the sufficiency of Scripture. It doesn’t matter how you color it or what you call it, any teaching that suggests that you and I should be listening for God to speak anywhere but in Scripture is an attack on the doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture. There is no getting around that. 3) It minimizes Scriptural authority. This is always the result of any idea which assaults the sufficiency of Scripture. Whenever anything else is said to be a source of God speaking (be it nudgings, feelings, fleeces or peaces) you will always have two sources of authority. If there are two sources of authority then Scripture is not the sole rule for life and godliness. It’s authority is therefore minimized. In most cases, when these two sources of authority conflict, Scripture gets jettisoned. 4) It elevates experience over Scripture. It does this in two ways. First, when Scripture doesn’t teach something, but someone experiences it, experience will become the guide and Scripture will get ignored. Second, the traditional model encourages Christians to look to their feelings, nudgings, circumstances, or signs received instead of to Scripture. Thus, experience is elevated over Scripture. 5) It leads Christians away from Scripture. This is the logical conclusion of the first four problems with this model. The fact is that Christians are not encouraged to search the Scriptures by the traditional model, but rather to look at what God might be saying to them through their circumstances or their feelings. After all, what do I need the Bible for, if God is going to directly guide me through other means? Why should I search the scriptures to find out what God says about marriage if He is going to reveal through a sign which woman I am to marry? It seems like a waste of time to study the Proverbs, Ephesians 5, 1 Corinthians 7, Colossians 3, and 1 Peter 3 to get God’s wisdom on choosing a spouse, if all I have to do is wait to hear God tell me whom to marry. The traditional model turns out to be the lazy man’s model. It is easier to assign divine authority and the voice of God to my stray thoughts than it is to search the Scriptures and discern the meaning of the Bible’s instruction to me. In fact, I can keep my Bible closed altogether and just wait to get an impression, put out a fleece, see if I have a peace and then wait to have it confirmed by a sign or an open door. If God genuinely speaks through these means, then I don’t need Scripture. That is the bottom line. There is no way to avoid that conclusion. Traditional Model and GodThe traditional model ends up being an assault on Scripture and our view of it. It also presents some problems in its view of God. For instance, 6) It presupposes a wrong view of God. What kind of a God has difficulty communicating with His children? The traditional view suggests that God is whispering gentle hints to us and is sometimes frustrated because we fail to decipher the code or read the signs. It assumes that we miss the will of God because we are not listening. We fail to hear and thus we have to live with second best and God’s will for our life is thwarted. It views God as some sort of cosmic Easter Bunny who hides his will behind a series of mysterious signs and drops hints to us along the way. On the contrary, the wisdom model believes that everything God wants to say, He can say clearly. He does not have a problem communicating His will, and in fact, has done a very good job of it in Scripture. 7) It assigns divine authority to your stray thoughts. I hope this doesn’t come as a shock to you, but just because you thought it, does not mean that God said it. It is amazing how many times I have had friends tell me that some thought or name just “popped” into their minds and therefore they concluded that God was speaking to them. Just because some thought pops into your head does not mean that God is speaking. What have we come to when Christians assign the authority of divine fiat to their stray thoughts? What would cause anyone to conclude that just because they felt something, or thought something, that God was speaking to them? I am at a loss to understand this way of thinking! That leads us to the next problem. 8) It makes every Christian a channel of divine revelation. If God is speaking to you apart from Scripture through your impressions, feelings, and nudgings, then you are the recipient of divine revelation. A person who speaks that way is making the claim (as did the prophets of the Old and New Testaments and the Apostles) that God is speaking to and through them. Do your realize how serious of a claim that is? In Scripture, when a person claimed to speak for God, they took their lives in their hands. It was a serious claim for a person to say that God was speaking to them. In the prophetic role, if what the prophet said did not come to pass, it would cost the “prophet” his life, since it would be proof that the person was not speaking for God but rather leading the people of God astray (Deut. 18:15-22). Today, Christians think nothing of taking such a mantel upon themselves. Phrases like, “God told me to do such and such,” and “God spoke to my heart and told me. . .,” roll off the lips of Christians with a flippancy that is alarming! The inescapable conclusion of such words and thinking is that each believer can and should be a channel of divine revelation. I have no reason from Scripture to think that God is speaking personally and subjectively to each individual Christian, making them the personal recipients of their own divine truth and guidance. If each Christian is a channel of divine revelation, then Scripture is not unique or authoritative. 9) God gets blamed for a lot of silly and foolish decisions. I have had people tell me that God told them to divorce their wife and marry another woman. I went to Bible College with a kid who left the dorm at 8:00 PM one evening and hitchhiked to the nearest town (45 miles away) in the dead of winter because God “told him” to go to the coffee shop to witness all through the night. He disobeyed school policy, dorm rules, and missed class the next day. How do you reason with someone who “heard the voice of God” tell him to do such a thing? I know of a lady who justified her adultery by saying that “God revealed to her” that she was to do this. It is not uncommon to run across people who are “hearing the voice of God” who believe God is telling them something this week and next week it is something different. More often than not God ends up getting blamed for foolish, silly, or even stupid decisions. You can’t point out to such a person that Scripture warned against it, or even prohibited it, since God told them personally that they were to do it. Scripture takes a back seat and harm is done to God’s name as He becomes the source of a foolish (and sadly sometimes immoral) directive. It doesn’t seem to matter how untimely, illogical, or unwise an action is, the results can be blamed on God with a simple statement that begins with, “I felt led to. . . .” God is portrayed as a fumbling, inept, foolish, guidance counselor who has trouble getting the messages through to us clearly. He ends up taking the fall if the decision turns out to be a bad one and the person who made the decision ends up learning nothing from their foolish mistake. After all, what could you possibly have to learn? God led you to do it, so there is no sense in evaluating the decision in the light of scripture or wisdom. Traditional Model and the Christian LifeThe traditional model promotes a wrong view of Scripture, God, and also the Christian life. 10) It creates frustration and confusion for Christians. Was that a closed door, or was the door partly ajar? Did God want me to push on the door and “make a way” or to abandon it? Once I push, did I open the door, or did God use my perseverance to open it? What if that open door is Satan’s trap to trick me into settling for second best? Is this “check in my spirit” God speaking, or my flesh? How can I know? Is that really a peace I feel or am I being fooled? Am I not seeing what I should be seeing? Did God already speak to me through an impression and I missed it? Or should I wait for Him to speak to me? Time is running out and I have to know what to do! Did I miss God’s voice? Was that fleece a clear sign, or maybe it was just coincidence? Did I get that confirmation right, or was Satan trying to trick me? On and on it goes. Looking inward at ourselves, our feelings, and our impressions will always create confusion and frustration. That is why God gave us His objective Word, which, unlike our feelings and thoughts, does not change and is not corruptible. Remember my dilemma at Bible College about coming back for second year? “Frustration,” “anger,” and “confusion” are not even adequate to describe what I was feeling. Why wasn’t I hearing from God and if I was, why couldn’t I make out His voice? Why couldn’t He be more clear?! My suspicion is that all too often, those who practice the traditional model wind up just as frustrated and confused as I did. The result is that a decision is made and then second guessed. They wonder if God was really in it at all. Then they look back over the process and try to find things that would definitely point to God’s “clear leading” in order that they might rest a little easier knowing that God was in it. They then seek to make the decision more spiritual with the words, “God was leading me to . . . .” Why not avoid all the frustration and confusion and just make moral and wise choices based upon the truth found in Scripture and then take responsibility for the choices that are made? 11) It promotes a Gnostic view of the Christian life. In the first century there arose a false teaching later referred to as the Gnostic Heresy. “Gnostic” comes form the Greek word gnosis which means “knowledge.” The teachings of the Gnostics were popping up during the days of the Apostles and were addressed in some New Testament epistles (i.e., 1 John, Colossians). The Gnostics taught that some Christians could belong to an elite group of those who had “special knowledge.” They believed that they had a knowledge of God and spiritual realities that the common Christian did not have. They had the inside track through personal revelation which was communicated by Christ after His resurrection. According to the Gnostics, salvation came by this special enlightenment which was given to some, but not all. Gnostic tendencies can be clearly seen in the traditional model of decision making and knowing God’s will. According to the traditional model, God communicates to all of us, but only some have developed the discipline of hearing His voice. This group of Christians are the ones who have knowledge of God’s will and desires that is simply not available to those who cannot or do not “hear His voice.” They have the inside track as Christ reveals His will to them in special ways. Only they can know it, only they can hear it, and only they can be sure that it is the Spirit. That is nothing more than a repackaged Gnosticism! 12) It was not practiced through Church history. Although it has been tagged the “traditional view” it is a novelty among evangelical Christians. It does not go back any farther than the last century. J.I. Packer actually says it was not practiced any earlier than 150 years ago.3 In other words, for almost 1900 years of church history, you will not read of Christians hearing God’s voice, using fleeces, getting peaces about decisions, or following inner promptings or nudgings. For 1900 years of church history this method was not practiced. In fact, it was condemned for being an attack on Scripture, which is what it is. You will search the records and writings of the saints of God through 1900 years in vain for any mention of hearing God’s voice in this fashion. Spurgeon was right when he said, “I have little confidence in those persons who speak of having received direct revelations from the Lord, as though He appeared otherwise than by and through the gospel. His word is so full, so perfect, that for God to make any fresh revelation to you or me is quite needless. To do so would be to put a dishonor upon the perfection of that word.” Spurgeon was simply reflecting the position of Orthodox Christians through Church history. The only place we see people who claimed to hear from God apart from Scripture is among the heretical groups that denied most cardinal doctrines of Scripture. 13) It promotes a false idea of spirituality. The idea that each Christian can receive direct personal guidance from God leads one to the conclusion that being able to discern such guidance is the epitome of Christian maturity. After all, if God gives guidance through the means taught by the traditional model, then there is no single discipline more fundamental to Christian living than the discipline of hearing the voice of God. Maturity would be characterized by being able to hear the voice, read the signs, and discern the clues. Those truly mature in the faith would be those who could most quickly and clearly hear God’s personal guidance. Yet, this is not how the New Testament characterized Christian maturity. Maturity is having an understanding of Scripture, the ability to apply biblical wisdom in all of life’s circumstances. Scripture characterizes Christian maturity as “no longer being children tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men by craftiness in deceitful scheming” (Eph. 4:14). I have actually talked to people who have doubted the reality of their salvation because they weren’t hearing their own personal voice from God. I had to assure them that maturity in the Christian life is not the ability to receive and listen to additional revelations, but a mastery of and application of the revelation already given (1 Peter 2:1-3). I have given you thirteen negative consequences and fruits of the “hearing the voice of God” theology. If the fruit is bad, I submit, so must be the tree. Without Wax- P.S. Next month’s article will be a Q&A on this subject of hearing the voice of God. If these articles have raised questions for you, please feel free to submit them and I’ll answer them in the next article.
Footnotes: 1. The label actually leads one to believe that this method has been around since the Apostles, when in reality, it is no more than 150 years old. See previous issues of the Kootenai Communicator archived on our Archives page. 2. Hot Tub Religion, Packer, J.I., (Wheaton: Tyndale House, 1987), pg. 109-110. 3. Ibid., pg. 106, 118. |
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