Comment by ilona

July 24, 2007 @ 5:50 pm

maybe not in the same way… but I think it is concerned with those things.

I came from a religious stream that maintained that you only went to God with the “big things” and that He wasn’t concerned about your little things. But love is concerned with the little things.

While I am in more in agreement with your protest about the “Do more, be more, become more.” pressure I think some of the meaning of “hesed” could be applied to this to better flesh out the balance. Sometimes determined will to turn toward God can be mistaken for a type of legalistic effort, perhaps because there is more than one level of what is happening in these very important efforts to serve God and respond to Him properly.

Comment by Jenn

July 25, 2007 @ 9:32 am

ilona,
I think I understand what you are saying - and I don’t disagree with you. I have a problem with those things (I’m assuming you were referring to Jared’s reference to “health, wealth, prosperity, [and] conquering dysfunction”) when they become the focus, the goal or the result of Christianity. Or even a means by which to measure one’s spirituality.

I think the gospel tells of a God who wants to extend grace to those who trust in Him no matter the monetary or bodily circumstances. When our churches teach that God will cosmically manipulate our circumstances in our favor, that becomes the singular impetus for some to have faith. I think this is the “anti-gospel” that Jared refers to here. When we replace Christ at the center of the gospel with anything else, we misrepresent Scripture and our Lord himself.

Now that I got that off my chest…

I am intrigued by what you write at the end of your comment:
Sometimes determined will to turn toward God can be mistaken for a type of legalistic effort, perhaps because there is more than one level of what is happening in these very important efforts to serve God and respond to Him properly.
I have often struggled with finding this balance. Thank you for putting it into such clear language (without the lingo).

Comment by Brian

July 25, 2007 @ 11:06 am

Ran across this quote today in a post at Eucatastrophe. It seems to be relevant.

The great gospel imperatives to holiness are ever rooted in indicatives of grace that are able to sustain the weight of those imperatives. The Apostles do not make the mistake that’s often made in Christian ministry. [For the Apostles] the indicatives are more powerful than the imperatives in gospel preaching. So often in our preaching our indicatives are not strong enough, great enough, holy enough, or gracious enough to sustain the power of the imperatives. And so our teaching on holiness becomes a whip or a rod to beat our people’s backs because we’ve looked at the New Testament and that’s all we ourselves have seen. We’ve seen our own failure and we’ve seen the imperatives to holiness and we’ve lost sight of the great indicatives of the gospel that sustain those imperatives. … Woven into the warp and woof of the New Testament’s exposition of what it means for us to be holy is the great groundwork that the self-existent, thrice holy, triune God has — in Himself, by Himself and for Himself — committed Himself and all three Persons of His being to bringing about the holiness of His own people. This is the Father’s purpose, the Son’s purchase and the Spirit’s ministry (Sinclair Ferguson).

Comment by Kathy

July 26, 2007 @ 11:26 pm

That article from the Thinklings has been on my mind all day today…kinda sorting through it.

And Brian, regarding the quote from Sinclair Ferguson:

6 months ago my eyes would have glazed over because I wouldn’t have understood what was meant by imperatives and indicatives. I’m glad I caught on to that terminology somewhere along the line, because that is a treasure of a quote.

The person who showed me that truth is none other than Alison Krauss’s banjo player, Ron Block. I was having an email conversation with him and was struggling with some radically grace-stuffed thing that he was saying, and I asked, “but aren’t you overlooking all those commands that Paul lays out in the New Testament?”

And he replied something like, “if you look at them, you’ll see that in almost every case, the command is hitched behind the engine of a wonderful passage exhorting the church to understand and feel more deeply the surpassing greatness of the love and mercy and grace of God in which was theirs in Christ. In view of that treasure, says Paul, do thus and so.

It was amazing to me when I looked in my Bible and saw that what he said was very true.

Thanks for sharing those quotes, Brian and Jenn.

Comment by ilona

July 31, 2007 @ 11:53 pm

you don’t have to agree with me, if you disagree that is ok:) Might mean more discussion than some would like, but still ok;)

Anyway, I realize that many have sincere difficulties with teaching and preaching on “health, wealth, prosperity” etc. I agree that “the gospel tells of a God who wants to extend grace to those who trust in Him no matter the monetary or bodily circumstances”. Absolutely, and I think we have testings along those lines. Some of our circumstances and situations reveal our motivations and need for grace, but I don’t think that negates the promises and blessings of God. I see it as and/and not either/or.

In times of learning to better think critically about reasonings I found that we often mistake detours that people take a concept as a disqualification the truth of that concept. It is rather testimony to the ability of people to twist things to their own purposes, oftentimes, and I think we need to be careful to make that distinction when we see it happen. I feel this statement “that becomes the singular impetus for some to have faith.” is a case of mistaking observable problems as arising from teaching of the positive aspects of doctrine, instead of what it is… people taking detours from the truth.

“When our churches teach that God will cosmically manipulate our circumstances in our favor” tells me something. It tells me that one side only of how hope and expectations of faith are presented, and/or perceived. Apart from this post and conversation I have been looking at some arguments against “Pentecostalism” ( not what this is, but related-trust me). It was on the topic of healing -which is a hard one for me personally, but anyway… the arguments presented just don’t jive with how we live as Christians. If we say we don’t think it should be taught that God will “cosmically manipulate our circumstances in our favor”, just what are we saying about prayer? Why would we pray for change in any world problem or individual one if we didn’t on some level truly believe that God *would* move heaven and earth to answer our requests. Is it only a matter of how we ourselves judge the “righteousness” of the request? As if it is ok to ask for relief of suffering in Darfur, or help for some missionary in a far off land…but not ok to meet our financial needs , etc? You see, there isn’t a difference on God’s part, but ours.

Faith is faith in my estimation, and if we come as little children we are gazing upon a loving father, and not weighing our requests for worthiness. This, too, is grace in action, don’t you think?

I always take issue with the carte blanc approach to setting aside all “health, wealth, prosperity” preaching. I probably should post on why I believe that way seeing how long I have made this comment!

Comment by Jenn

August 1, 2007 @ 9:20 am

ilona,

Believe it or not, I really don’t have a problem with most of what you say here. (and I don’t mind the discussion at all!)

I always take issue with the carte blanc approach to setting aside all “health, wealth, prosperity” preaching.

I, too, have a problem with this. When speaking with an individual, I’ve learned that it’s highly beneficial to listen to what they say they believe instead of clumping them into one camp or another simply because of phraseology or some other small matter. I’ve found that if I’m willing to look for them, there are almost always those who don’t embrace any given topic fully. When blogging, though, it’s much easier to speak to the general camp. I really was not intending to over-generalize, but maybe I did.

Mostly, what I was referring to here are those that make health, wealth, and prosperity central to - or even equal to - the gospel. As Brian has stated so well on this blog before, when anything other than Jesus becomes the focus of our teaching we’ve missed the mark. Unfortunately, I think that’s quite easy to do. I find it similar to when churches place their focus on the gifts of the Spirit, rather than the Giver of the gifts. The fact that some might misrepresent or misuse their gifts doesn’t negate the existence of the gifts themselves, nor does it change the purpose for which the Giver has given them. I have several close friends in pentecostal churches and I respect them (at least most of them) for walking that tightrope so humbly. It’s those who say they’ve got the right way and I need their way in my life or I’m not pleasing God that I take issue with.

Some of our circumstances and situations reveal our motivations and need for grace, but I don’t think that negates the promises and blessings of God. I see it as and/and not either/or.

I guess that it comes down to whether we agree on what the promises and blessings of God are then.

Just to be fair, I don’t have a problem saying that God could use/give sickness or poverty to achieve His purposes. But that part you don’t hear about. Those things are never talked about when the topic is “blessings,” are they? But why couldn’t God use them for just that purpose? Seeing those things as possible blessings requires us to look beyond the here and now and strive to see the bigger picture.

And then the splinter issues arise. If I’ve been taught that with enough faith, God will manipulate my circumstances to my favor, what happens when those things don’t happen? Exactly how much faith is enough? How do I know? What happens if what works in my best interest works in someone else’s disinterest? Whose prayers are answered in their favor? Whichever person has more faith? And what about those fairly recent disasters like the tsunami and 9/11? Are we to assume that out of those thousands of people that lost their lives, none of them had enough faith to make God act on their behalf?

I hope that I’m not offending by asking these questions. I’m taking the extreme here on purpose. It’s been my experience that so often where this teaching is present, the core of the teaching is very much centered on me in the present. There is no concern with how this theology plays out in the big picture or how it might affect others. People are drawn to believe that God wants to make my life pretty because people are selfish and want what they define as best for them. If God is the way to get it, then God is the best choice. And while not all those who fall into the health, wealth, prosperity camp embrace that selfish, me-first ideology, they don’t speak out against it either (in general), leaving the door wide open for some pretty wild thoughts about God to sneak in - those “detours from the truth” you refer to?

As for me personally, I am still a selfish person and want what’s best for me, but I’ve learned enough to know that I don’t always know what that means. I trust God to change my perspective and to increase my faith as I walk all of this out.

And that brings me to your comments on prayer. That’s a great discussion all in itself ! I think that I’ll just wait to see what you post before this comment gets so long that no one reads it. Or is it already too late for that?