God: Speaking and Guiding

"Maybe that was just God speaking to you!" Hearing these words I felt my heart start to pump faster, and my cool, collected interior begin to fester with some real theological emotion. Gladly, I didn't do anything I would later have to apologize for, nor did I engage in a conversation with this well-meaning but theologically simple brother in Christ. But, I've encountered far too many Christ-followers in the past year who use this kind of language, and apparently are quite unaware of its dangerous overtones.

Let me state my thesis: God speaks through Scripture; He guides through impressions, perceptions, sensitivities, circumstances, and other things meant to return our minds to the truths of Scripture that we know to be true, and follow them. They - speaking and guiding - are not the same. The Bible is clear that "speaking" is revelatory, while "guiding" is illuminating. The first gives truth; the second shines the light on it.

When He speaks, it is revelation of new and necessary information; when He guides, it is the Spirit using already revealed information to bring out hearts into conformity with revealed truth. When He speaks He is giving us new truth; when He guides, He is using previously revealed truth to harness our wills to obey. You may think the difference is trivial but I can assure you, in the history of revelation and religious experience, it is not. It is vital that we understand the difference, respect that difference, and contend earnestly for the fact that revelation has ended; God is not today adding to the Bible; He is not giving new and necessary information. Rather, He is guiding us to live our lives within the already revealed truth principles and guidelines of Scripture.

In the Bible, when God 'speaks' it is seen as direct revelation. Over 3800 times, the OT prophets preface their declarations with "Thus saith the Lord". God spoke to them, and they repeated it to their audiences. Yes, God speaks! And when He does, it is always understood to be His very voice. The prophet did not have to decide if it was God or not. God's speaking came with its own internal verification. Secondly, that which was spoken was immediately considered as authoritative, and the unquestioned standard for obedient living. Yet, today it is not the same when people say "God spoke to me". They often wonder if it was God; and they most often spend time testing it to see if it really fits into their understanding. Most likely, when folks today say "God is speaking to me" they are actually being really sloppy in their language without knowing the consequences. They most likely are simply referring to an ongoing sense that God is at work in their lives, shaping their decisions, their desires, and their overall direction. This is good! But, it isn't the same as the direct, revelatory work of God described biblically as God "speaking."

What's the harm you might ask? Aren't you just straining at a gnat David? Well, I might just as well respond that I ain't about to swallow a gnat either! But, actually, this is so much bigger than a little gnat. Its an elephant. Here's why:

If we continue to confuse revelation with guidance, we have no choice but to concoct some theology that allows for on-going revelation. We have no defense against those who would add to the Bible the "revelations" of their leaders. They heard the voice of God! God spoke to them! Worse, we have no defense against those who naturally come to place higher priority on the ongoing "voice" of God speaking to them through songs and poems and the wind and ... whatever! ... than on the voice of God speaking through Scripture. After all, Scripture is so old, and hard to understand, and takes too much work! When I sit on my porch at sunset, and hum my favorite praise song, its just so much easier - and personally comforting - to "hear God's voice." Worse still is that we have fundamentally redefined revelation as that which we are able to extract from God through means rather than what He alone initiates, and ends. Apparently, if I supply the music and the time and the quiet place, God is obliged to speak. Lastly, and by far the worst, by unknowingly believing that revelation is continuing, we have no assurance to say that the Bible is sufficient, or even authoritative. How do we know that someone, somewhere, hasn't had a direct revelation from God that supersedes what we have in the New Testament? Maybe God is giving a Newer Testament right now somewhere! In fact, if God spoke to you last night, I sure hope you wrote it down.

So, what do we do? Here's what I believe: Revelation has ended. God has spoken through His prophets and Apostles, and has preserved their written record. This is the "standard" and "treasure" Paul calls upon Timothy to "retain" and "guard" (see: 2 Timothy 1:13,14). This is the Bible. Through the Bible God continues to speak! The Bible is God's Word, His "voice" to us today. The Bible knows nothing of a secondary level of "speaking" or revelation. He doesn't have casual conversations which leave the person warmed, but wondering; when He speaks it is absolutely and undeniably Him, and unquestionably understandable and authoritative. That's what the Bible is, and why we need to protect it from anything that would lead people to believe that, like the World Book Encyclopedia, the Bible is incomplete, and needs yearly updates, and further material from God. Either the Bible is the "final rule and authority for faith and practice" as our doctrinal statements declare, or it isn't. And if you think that you need further revelation from God to live your life, and make your decisions, then in your mind, it isn't! And you better start apologizing to the Roman Catholic Church for sola Scriptura.

Secondly, God still guides. He made the mind and the heart. He has put His Spirit - the 3rd person of the Godhead - as a permanent resident in our hearts. The Spirit uses circumstances, impressions, memory, sensitivities, teaching, reading, meditation, and a whole host of other disciplines and mechanisms to continually illumine our minds to the truths already revealed in Scripture. Jesus Himself said that the Spirit would guide us into all truth by bringing to our minds what God had already revealed (see: John 15:12-15 in context). The Spirit is the agent of illumination, opening our eyes and hearts to understand the truth of God as revealed in Scripture. Guidance is great, because properly understood, we know that we must work hard to grow in grace and knowledge so as to understand more and more what God desire of us, what His good and perfect will is for us. When we try to downsize our personal responsibility in the process of guidance by thinking God will just emotionally or mentally "fax" us the answers we want, we do ourselves, and the theology of revelation a great disservice.

One last word: Peter, the great leader of the 12, and apostle to the Jews, was one of the 3 guys who accompanied Jesus up the mountain. Peter saw the veil of Jesus' humanity drawn back, giving him a glimpse of the glory of God (as did Moses on Mt. Sinai: see: Exodus 33,34). Peter also heard the direct voice of God, along with James and John, on that mountain. Late in his life, as he was nearing death, Peter wrote some letters to instruct his fellow Christ-followers on how they should continue once he was gone. Where should they turn for their authority? Should they look for another apostle? Should they expect God to "speak" directly to them? Peter answered their questions in a poetically worded passage found in 2 Peter 1:16-21. Peter explains that what he and the other apostles taught was not based on myth or fable; rather, they were eyewitnesses to the reality of Jesus Christ. Hadn't they been on the mountain? Hadn't they heard the audible voice of God? Yes! And then he makes this amazing, and clarifying statement: "But we have an even surer prophetic word" or possibly "And so we have the prophetic word made more sure". What does he mean? What could be 'more sure' than the audible voice of God? The answer is, of course, the Scripture, which was produced cooperatively as the Holy Spirit superintended the human authors so that what they wrote down what God was speaking. Get this: More sure, more reliable than even the voice of God you might think you hear in the shower is the written, preserved Word of God, the Bible.

So, help me out. Let's stop saying that God spoke to us. Let's stop giving the impression through sloppy language that we're the recipients of direct revelation. In so many ways, such talk actually appears to be self-promoting, especially to those Christ-followers who wonder why God isn't conversing with them. Let's admit that God speaks through Scripture, and then dedicate ourselves to the hard work of knowing the Bible. And as we do, God's Spirit will use what God has spoken to purify, guide, conform, transform, and mature us, by His grace, and for His glory.

Hope this helps,

David

Time, Certainty, and Social Constructs

Over my vacation I immersed myself in authors and works relating to the issues and substances of postmodernism. This "label" is itself a topic of great controversy with many suggesting that we are, in reality, entering what might better be thought of as "hypermodernism" since at the core, many postmodern (hereafter "pomo") ideas are actually being put forward in purely modern ways, such as books that follow the "modern" paradigm of evidence-argument-conclusion. However, since it is always more cool to use the newest idea-scheme, I'll go with the flow for now.

One of the primary cries of pomo adherents is that absolute truth is actually a fiction, mass produced by what are called "social constructs." These constructs are those elements of society that dictate the values and cultural mores by which things are critiqued as good and bad, valuable or worthless, laudable or worthy of ridicule, and on and on. The natural turn happens when these venerable constructs - having set themselves up as the dictators of the social conscience - are seen to be themselves bad, and worthy of ridicule. Regardless of your views, you'll have to agree that this has happened in our time at an alarming rate of consistency.

Examples abound. Some of the more noticeable constructs are medicine, education, politics, science, and of course, religion. Take medicine. Forty years ago, it was common to believe that progress in medical research would clear the field of the notorious diseases that plagued us. So high was our confidence in this field, that we granted them almost divine status. Even 25 years ago, when you went to the doctor, you left ready to believe what he said, and do what he prescribed. Medicine promised better living through prescriptions, surgeries, and of course, research. But, today we find that America is in worse health, battling diseases and syndromes and conditions we'd never heard of before. Pomo theory tells us that medicine - this monolithic social construct to which we had delegated our health and well-being - was nothing more than an arrogant, power-hungry construct that told us half-truths in order to gain our monetary and intellectual support.

This same story might be told in the field of education (we'll educate the masses and show them how to get along), science (we'll land on the moon, and usher in the age of scientific certainty, and modern convenience), politics (we'll get the right people elected and trust them to rid the country of poverty, racism, disease, and injustice), and of course, religion (follow our way of life and there will be peace on earth).

In all of these realms, we can see that no construct lived up to its promises. We have racial divides still; we have all the modern conveniences, yet no time for family, and the complexities of life are worse than before; our economy is broken, and the politics of factions and competition is worse now than ever; and lastly, our religious institutions are seen to be the source of some of the worst hypocrisy and unrighteous behavior among its leaders, and "culture" wars in the name of religion continue to erode the public trust that God really exists or cares.

I believe all this started in the wake of the Viet Nam War. As our soldiers returned home, they found a nation that no longer trusted in the political/military leadership. We had seen through the promises of peace and stability in that region, and had come to believe that our soldiers and nation were merely ponds in a bigger game. Our distrust in the policical/military leadership fanned the flame of general unrest and distrust in all the organizational social constructs we now saw were dictating "truth" to us. At first, we just became cynical. We stopped believing in the promises of the social constructs, and just wallowed in cynicism, mockery, and despair. But, along the way, we moved from contempt to outright anger, and finally to rebellion. We started looking at the constructs, not merely as institutions that were run by flawed people, but as intentionally designed to push their view of "truth" on us. We considered that what they were, and what they were trying to do to us was unjust, and that, in reality, they didn't have the truth at all. In fact, what they called "truth" was just their construction of it, and should be rejected as a power play.

Today, the pomos are trying hard to shove aside all social constructs. They have followed the above path of "logic" to conclude that there really is no "absolute truth". Their favorite reasoning is that, since nothing can be known perfectly, nothing can be known certainly. Thus, we are asked to replace flawed certainty, with complete ambiguity. All of pomo philosophy flows from this.

Of course, pomo theory cannot stand. It is self-refuting. The statement that there is no absolute truth is put forth as a statement of absolute truth! But, given that pomo ambiguity allows us to hold to opposing truth claims at the same time (turns out something can be both A and NOT A at the same time!), it is not likely that logic will win the hearts of those committed to the pomo ideals.

So, I'd like to propose that there is a fatal flaw in the pomo realm, and it is that most of the pomos I know wear watches. They also have Blackberrys that hold their daily schedules, filled with appointments at specific times. So, given this, I'd like to ask them why they trust "time" when, as Chicago taught us many years ago no one "really knows what time it is."

It is true that you and I can never know, even less express, exactly what time it is. Time is the greatest social construct, simply because society invents it, and says what it is. Somewhere in Greenwich there is an atomic clock, that sets the standard. But, of course, the clock doesn't set it, the guy who sets the clock sets it! And everyone else in the world has it "dictated" to them what time it is. What's more it is impossible to say that my wristwatch matches the atomic clock perfectly. Turns out I can never know what time it is perfectly, and neither can anyone else, including those pomos who insist that you can't ever know anything for sure. Yet, they set appointments for 1:00 pm, just like we all do. And, when they run late, they still call to make sure that the potential new client doesn't think they're flaking out. See what's happening? They are, by their actions, saying that "time" is real, and it matters, and 10 or 15 minutes can make all the difference. Even though we can't know the time perfectly, we still live with the certainty of it as the fundamental backbone of our society.

There are so many other fallacies in the pomo viewpoint that could be easily demonstrated. To dismiss medicine, education, science, and religion because they have not been perfect certainly builds a standard that the pomos won't want for themselves, and it is only by very selective history that these institutions can be so easily written off as destructive overall. But the greatest flaw of pomo thought is that it is primarily destructive rather than constructive. It offers many appropriate critiques of the modern way, while offering little in constructive solutions to the problems of the world. What's more, if and when pomo thinkers begin to provide their answers, they will be hard pressed to develop, design, and communicate them in ways that are not, in themselves, modern. They will write books, provide formulas, use evidence and argument, and largely try to get us to believe that they are not just the latest social construct that is trying to dictate truth on how to live better lives and build a better world.

At the end of the days of my vacation, having read so much of the pomo literature, it was so pleasant to retreat to the sure Word we have from God in the Bible. It occurred to me time after time that the foundation for my confidence, my well-being both now and eternally, isn't grounded in any social construct, even though I believe they exist and can have a beneficial place in society. As the hymn writer J. Wilbur Chapman wrote "Men may fail me, foes assail me; He my Savior makes me whole". The great answer to the modern failures, and the postmodern angst, is the pre-modern message of the Gospel: "Come unto me all you who labor, and are laden down, and I will give you rest." And that's no social construct; that's the Word of God ... eternally true.


Hope this helps,

David