“Faith and integrity are the foundations of a relational hermeneutic.” David Mackin
It is impossible to come to the text of the Bible without preconceptions. Our language, our various cultures, our questions, our way of reasoning, what we have been taught, our history, all these and more will color what we read. Because of this, how we interpret the Bible will probably reflect just as much on who we are and who we are willing to become as on what the Bible says. We need to remember that we may start off approaching the Bible as a discerner of truth but, in the end, the Bible will be discern the truth about us.
Does this mean that no one can know with confidence what the Bible means? Definitely not! My main premise is this: If we believe the Bible, the Holy Spirit can teach us, over time, how the Bible is to be interpreted and understood. Understanding the Bible is more than a process of reading the words and trying to figure out what they mean. Of course what they mean is of utmost importance, yet what they mean needs to be coupled with belief in order to be understood. Learning to understand the Bible is like getting to know a person who grows into your best friend or marriage partner. It is a continual process of discovery. Sometimes you are confused about their behavior, but with careful listening, trust, humility, and patience these problems can be worked out. If we approach the scriptures relationally, instead of as a mere observer, we put ourselves into the best position to genuinely understand them.
Millions of people over the centuries have discovered that through the words of the Bible a relationship with the true God, the one who made it all, can be experienced. It is this relationship that the understanding of the Bible fosters. Of course, this assertion is open to contradiction and a need for proof. This is also recognized within the pages of the Bible itself. Elijah had such a controversy with the prophets of Baal. Elijah and those followers of Baal agreed that the god who answered by fire would be the true God. So today, the god who listens and responds is the true God.
So this relationship with God through the Bible is not a philosophy, although we can develop philosophies about it. Nor is it a religion, although religion can and should be formed around it. It is a relationship with the true creator of it all, with God who responds to us – answers prayers, guides our steps, corrects our behavior, teaches us truth, demonstrates love, becomes our friend and our God. My contention is that all this can come through a belief of the content of the Bible.
To understand what the authors of the Bible wanted us to understand by their writings we must believe what they have written because they expected to be believed. Just like when we are getting to know a new person criticism does not provide a framework for friendship, so approaching the Bible with a disbelieving, critical frame of mind will close the book to us. True understanding is firmly rooted in believing what is written.
As philosophers have taught us, all learning takes place in a context that is in itself defined by a larger context, and so on and on. Experiencing the intended reality of what was written is both the Biblical writers' and the Holy Spirit’s context and goal. The Apostle John is explicit about this when near the end of his gospel we read, “Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” This experience of the reality of what the Bible refers to is a product of faith, integrity, understanding, and obedience.
Paul taught that we are to use his teaching as a pattern for our teaching. In order to see his pattern we need to be aware of how we affect our interpretation. It is vitally important that we become aware of who we are and how we affect the information we take in. Too often we are tempted to conform Paul to our own way of thinking. By allowing Paul the freedom to be Paul we can then have him teach us. This is true of all the scripture. Approaching scripture as a learner, a disciple, will bring us into the arena in which the authors of the Bible wanted us to be. More than that, approaching the Bible as a newborn child of God will assure us of a set of preconceptions that conform to the Biblical writers hope for us, and will thereby help us greatly in understanding the scripture in the way intended by those authors.
I want to give you an idea of what some of my preconceptions were. Since none of us can avoid them, you should know which were mine. I was not raised as a Christian, but as an atheist who, wanting to be open and broadminded, called himself an agnostic. Still, I was competitive enough to show those people who did believe in a ‘god’ how unfounded their beliefs were. I was even asked to leave the Boy Scouts because I was irreligious. If I had to pick a religion or philosophy to believe, Christianity would be well after the last on my list!
One evening when I was about sixteen I was lying on the floor listening to some music it occurred to me that there must be some kind of objective reality, some kind of ultimate truth. That night I started my quest. I had no idea where I was going. All I knew was that I did not know. I searched drugs to “expand” my consciousness. I read about and dabbled in some of the “--isms”: Buddhism (Zen and Tibetan), Taoism, Shamanism, hedonism (if it feels good, do it) and Epicureanism. I also searched philosophy, astrology, palmistry, I Ching divination and the writings of Madam Blavatsky. Whatever I was looking for, it was not there. I grew depressed. The Viet Nam war was taking its toll on our society. The phoniness of the society screamed at me from the type of houses people lived in, to the way the streets were laid out, to the way money was adored. They all shouted nothingness. The depression became profound.
It was about 8:00 p.m. on December 28, 1970 when my sister called me on the telephone from Port Townsend, Washington. I was in Detroit, Michigan. She led me to the Lord over the telephone. I confessed that it was my sin that had separated me from God, while asking God for forgiveness with an appeal for Him to become the Lord of my life. When we were done with the conversation I knew that I knew just three simple things: I met God, His name is Jesus, and the Bible is true. My quest was over.
These three simple things now formed the bedrock of my Christianity. The part that is most germane to our present discussion is the realization about the Bible being true. I came to the Bible as a believer. Prior to my conversion I remember reading only three portions of the Bible. One portion was the first few chapters of Genesis. I had a friend who, as a Catholic, believed the Bible. I knew from my parents, who were Unitarians, that the Bible was filled with contradictions. I told him so and he protested. I decided to prove it to him right then and there. So I began reading the Bible at the beginning, in Genesis. Before too long I had my first contradiction. It read that on the first day God made light. Yet on the fourth day the sun was made. Now how can you have light without the sun? I pointed this out to my friend. I was as smug as I could be. I had just succeeded in taking one of the more difficult passages of scripture and twisting it to my own ends.
The second portion of the Bible was Ecclesiastes. The person who recommended it felt I could identify with its sentiments. Since I was already depressed over the meaninglessness of life, they were right. After reading this book of the Bible I dropped out of High School and society and the alternate culture of the day caught me. I did not truly understand what was written, I could only see those parts with which I could empathize. Since I could not see the hope at the end of the book, I was left with a vision of life ‘under the sun’, a life without the light of God. I agreed with its sentiment that life seems meaningless. I received no light there.
The third portion of the Bible that I read was 1 John. Someone asked me to read it, so I did. It made no sense at all. It was like random words on a page, left by someone for who knows what reason. All it did was leave a guilty feeling. Who needed that? I certainly did not appreciate these guilty feelings. The philosophy of the age rejected guilt as something from the ‘uptight’ Victorian era. I was a modern person who knew that guilt was a feeling based on false premises like right and wrong. We all knew that right and wrong were relative concepts, thus making guilt a pain that had no meaning. Consequently, guilt must be rejected. So I did not reread 1 John.
These perceptions of the Bible, which I had before I met God, never could provided an adequate foundation for the interpretation of Scripture. My primary preconceptions are those that I received when I became a Christian. The Bible is true, and Jesus, whom I met, is the Son of the God of whom the Bible speaks. This is what the Holy Spirit taught me. My approach to the Bible from this beginning was one of a believer who wanted to learn. Over time, this basic presupposition has proved itself correct over and over again. Therefore, I am unabashedly Christocentric in my approach to the Bible. Reading the Bible in the light of the faith provide by the Holy Spirit, I believe, is a must in order to understand it. This is the great premise upon which everything stands!
So you, as a potential interpreter, need to first examine your own heart and see what your motivations are in approaching the Bible. Remember when Jesus was asked by the lawyer in Luke 10:25-29 (NIV) about inheriting eternal life. Jesus replied, "What is written in the Law? How do you read it?" And the lawyer answered: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'" Jesus replied, "You have answered correctly. Do this and you will live." But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" Our motivation is critical for understanding. Is your motivation to be a believer and love God, or something else, like justifying yourself? Where you start determines much of where you will end up.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Taste and See that the Lord is Good
I've been thinking about Heb 6:4-8 NASU which reads:
For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God and put Him to open shame. For ground that drinks the rain which often falls on it and brings forth vegetation useful to those for whose sake it is also tilled, receives a blessing from God; but if it yields thorns and thistles, it is worthless and close to being cursed, and it ends up being burned.
Here the writer of Hebrews is attempting to define what marks a Christian. Five things are listed:
1. enlightened
2. tasted the heavenly gift
3. partaker in the Holy Spirit
4. tasted the good word of God, and
5. tasted of the powers of the age to come.
The question is, how do these concepts relate to each other? Do they all refer to the same thing, are they sequential, or something else?
Enlightened must refer to coming into a knowledge that you didn't have before. A light bulb just turned on over your head. The same writer uses this term to refer to conversion in Heb 10:32. Paul in Eph 1:18 prays that the eyes of our understanding be enlightened. So not only does this term relate to conversion, but to our ongoing relationship with the Lord. John 1:9 tells us that Jesus is the true light that enlightens (gives light to) every man. It means to receive the knowledge of the truth. So being a Christian means being enlightened.
To what does 'tasting of the heavenly gift refer'? Justification - the forgiveness of sins - is a gift. Salvation is a gift. The Holy Spirit is a gift. The gifts of the Spirit are a gift. Jesus himself is God's gift to us. We are to eat his flesh and drink his blood, metaphorically speaking of course. So it could relate to communion. Maybe our attention needs to be on tasting instead of gift. Since in Heb 2:9 Jesus tasted death for us all, tasting cannot mean a brief, shallow, experience. Peter tells us (1Pet 2:3) that we have tasted the kindness of the Lord. The Psalmist (Ps 34:8) exhorts us to taste and see that the Lord is good. To taste is to experience, to know through experience. We've tasted - experienced - the salvation that God has given to us in Christ. It would be hard to nail it down any finer than this. But notice the emphasis on taste - experience.
A partaker in the Holy Spirit is someone who has experienced the Holy Spirit. The Samaritans and the Ephesian disciples lacked this, and it was noticeable. We are all given the Holy Spirit to drink, but drink we must. And when we do drink, we experience.
Tasted the good word is to experience the gospel.
And taste the powers (dunamis) of the age to come. This seems to refer to those powers or gifts of the Spirit that the Spirit gives to us all. I like what Hughes says in his commentary on Hebrews. "These powers may confidently be identified with the signs, wonders, and miracles mentioned earlier in 2:4 as accompaniments of the preaching of the gospel. They are the dynamic evidence of the activity of the Holy Spirit within the community of believers, manifested particularly perhaps in miraculous healings and deliverances. As such, moreover, they testify to the fact that "the age to come" is already upon them, since its powers are operative in their midst."
It seems that according to the writer of Hebrews that the baptism in the Holy Spirit is part of what makes a Christian a Christian. Yet so many have not drunk what they have been given to drink. Or maybe the land that drinks is not producing fruit? I hope not. Like the writer goes on to say, we are convinced of better things of you. The exhortation is to experience what God has given. Mental assent is not what it is all about. A theoretical belief is inadequate. Experiencing the reality of salvation, the gospel, and the Holy Spirit is our portion of the edible God.
For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God and put Him to open shame. For ground that drinks the rain which often falls on it and brings forth vegetation useful to those for whose sake it is also tilled, receives a blessing from God; but if it yields thorns and thistles, it is worthless and close to being cursed, and it ends up being burned.
Here the writer of Hebrews is attempting to define what marks a Christian. Five things are listed:
1. enlightened
2. tasted the heavenly gift
3. partaker in the Holy Spirit
4. tasted the good word of God, and
5. tasted of the powers of the age to come.
The question is, how do these concepts relate to each other? Do they all refer to the same thing, are they sequential, or something else?
Enlightened must refer to coming into a knowledge that you didn't have before. A light bulb just turned on over your head. The same writer uses this term to refer to conversion in Heb 10:32. Paul in Eph 1:18 prays that the eyes of our understanding be enlightened. So not only does this term relate to conversion, but to our ongoing relationship with the Lord. John 1:9 tells us that Jesus is the true light that enlightens (gives light to) every man. It means to receive the knowledge of the truth. So being a Christian means being enlightened.
To what does 'tasting of the heavenly gift refer'? Justification - the forgiveness of sins - is a gift. Salvation is a gift. The Holy Spirit is a gift. The gifts of the Spirit are a gift. Jesus himself is God's gift to us. We are to eat his flesh and drink his blood, metaphorically speaking of course. So it could relate to communion. Maybe our attention needs to be on tasting instead of gift. Since in Heb 2:9 Jesus tasted death for us all, tasting cannot mean a brief, shallow, experience. Peter tells us (1Pet 2:3) that we have tasted the kindness of the Lord. The Psalmist (Ps 34:8) exhorts us to taste and see that the Lord is good. To taste is to experience, to know through experience. We've tasted - experienced - the salvation that God has given to us in Christ. It would be hard to nail it down any finer than this. But notice the emphasis on taste - experience.
A partaker in the Holy Spirit is someone who has experienced the Holy Spirit. The Samaritans and the Ephesian disciples lacked this, and it was noticeable. We are all given the Holy Spirit to drink, but drink we must. And when we do drink, we experience.
Tasted the good word is to experience the gospel.
And taste the powers (dunamis) of the age to come. This seems to refer to those powers or gifts of the Spirit that the Spirit gives to us all. I like what Hughes says in his commentary on Hebrews. "These powers may confidently be identified with the signs, wonders, and miracles mentioned earlier in 2:4 as accompaniments of the preaching of the gospel. They are the dynamic evidence of the activity of the Holy Spirit within the community of believers, manifested particularly perhaps in miraculous healings and deliverances. As such, moreover, they testify to the fact that "the age to come" is already upon them, since its powers are operative in their midst."
It seems that according to the writer of Hebrews that the baptism in the Holy Spirit is part of what makes a Christian a Christian. Yet so many have not drunk what they have been given to drink. Or maybe the land that drinks is not producing fruit? I hope not. Like the writer goes on to say, we are convinced of better things of you. The exhortation is to experience what God has given. Mental assent is not what it is all about. A theoretical belief is inadequate. Experiencing the reality of salvation, the gospel, and the Holy Spirit is our portion of the edible God.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Worship or Worshipers?
I don't think that God is so interested in being worshiped, like some egomaniac, but in worshipers. God knows that when you begin to see Him as He is, the only response is worship. In finding worshipers, God finds those who see Him. And only those whose hearts are pure will see Him.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Particle or Wave, Part 2
Nowhere is the particle or wave dichotomy more evident than in the different stories that John in his gospel and Luke in the book of Acts give for the reception of the Spirit. All throughout the gospel of John the Holy Spirit is given prominence. Jesus promised the Apostles (and through them us) another Advocate or Comforter just like him. By this name Jesus was referring to the Holy Spirit. John 7:39 even makes mention of the Spirit not being given yet because Jesus is not yet glorified. Thus John builds an expectation of a reception of the Holy Spirit to continue Jesus’ work in the world with and through the disciples.
This expectation reaches a climax when Jesus, after his resurrection but before the ascension, breathes on the disciples in a prophetic act and commands them to receive the Holy Spirit. If they did receive it then, then the disciples received the Spirit again after Jesus’ ascension as recorded by Luke. Putting John and Luke side by side produces two receptions of the Spirit by the disciples. Many modern commentators try to harmonize these two stories by making what John wrote a metaphor for what happened in Luke/Acts. By my way of thinking this is very unlikely because it runs uncaringly over the plain meaning of John’s words.
Yet this leaves us in the uncomfortable position of having the disciples receive the Holy Spirit two times, the second of which was called the baptism in the Holy Spirit by Jesus as written by Luke. So far every resolution that tries to harmonize these two stories is based on speculation. I do not mean by this that these two stories cannot be harmonized. I just mean that without interviewing both Luke and John personally the harmonization may be beyond our grasp. So I am not saying that different authors of books in the Bible have conflicting theologies. I am just saying that from our view of 2000 years later we do not have enough evidence to produce a full harmonization.
But we can still draw insight from this. We have two different stories regarding the reception of the Holy Spirit that are treated as harmonious. I find evidence for this kind of two and three part harmony all throughout the gospels. Jesus Himself was conceived by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit mediated the presence of the Father and the Son to Mary. Christians too are born of the Spirit when they receive Jesus. One cannot say that a person born of the Spirit does not have the Spirit. Remember how tricky it is that Jesus could be both in heaven and in our heart at the same time. If Jesus is in our hearts through the Spirit, then the Spirit must be there too. Yet receiving the Spirit, personally, is different than receiving Jesus. Yet by receiving Jesus we also get the Father and the Spirit.
In John 14:23 (NIV) Jesus replied, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” So when we get the Son we get the Father too. But it is the Spirit who mediates both the Son and the Father to us, making them present within.
Whew, this is a puzzle. One for all and all for one!
This expectation reaches a climax when Jesus, after his resurrection but before the ascension, breathes on the disciples in a prophetic act and commands them to receive the Holy Spirit. If they did receive it then, then the disciples received the Spirit again after Jesus’ ascension as recorded by Luke. Putting John and Luke side by side produces two receptions of the Spirit by the disciples. Many modern commentators try to harmonize these two stories by making what John wrote a metaphor for what happened in Luke/Acts. By my way of thinking this is very unlikely because it runs uncaringly over the plain meaning of John’s words.
Yet this leaves us in the uncomfortable position of having the disciples receive the Holy Spirit two times, the second of which was called the baptism in the Holy Spirit by Jesus as written by Luke. So far every resolution that tries to harmonize these two stories is based on speculation. I do not mean by this that these two stories cannot be harmonized. I just mean that without interviewing both Luke and John personally the harmonization may be beyond our grasp. So I am not saying that different authors of books in the Bible have conflicting theologies. I am just saying that from our view of 2000 years later we do not have enough evidence to produce a full harmonization.
But we can still draw insight from this. We have two different stories regarding the reception of the Holy Spirit that are treated as harmonious. I find evidence for this kind of two and three part harmony all throughout the gospels. Jesus Himself was conceived by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit mediated the presence of the Father and the Son to Mary. Christians too are born of the Spirit when they receive Jesus. One cannot say that a person born of the Spirit does not have the Spirit. Remember how tricky it is that Jesus could be both in heaven and in our heart at the same time. If Jesus is in our hearts through the Spirit, then the Spirit must be there too. Yet receiving the Spirit, personally, is different than receiving Jesus. Yet by receiving Jesus we also get the Father and the Spirit.
In John 14:23 (NIV) Jesus replied, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” So when we get the Son we get the Father too. But it is the Spirit who mediates both the Son and the Father to us, making them present within.
Whew, this is a puzzle. One for all and all for one!
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Lake Louise Michigan
Here is a story of something that happened to me regarding the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
In the summer of 1972, I was a camp counselor at Lake Louise in northern Michigan. It was a Baptist camp for 7th and 8th graders, both boys and girls. An ordinary camp with exercises first thing in the morning, games, food-like-stuff to eat, swimming, campfires, all with very normal people. At the Wednesday night campfire we were singing “Give Me Oil in My Lamp’, (you know the song about gas in the Ford™) a song that must have been sung billions of times at campfires all over the world, when one of the counselors started yelling at the top of his lungs that God was pouring out His Spirit. He kept repeating this at the highest of volumes.
I was near the outer edge of the group and watched to see what would happen. Within seconds two things started to happen. The first was that all the young kids that I could see began to either cry, or hold onto one another, or fall on the ground, or pray, or speak in tongues (that is a language they did not know). It was very chaotic and the leader looked panicked. At the same time it also began to rain. I looked up and saw no clouds overhead, but I did see a few off to the side in the moonlight. I wondered where the rain was coming from.
After a while the leader got us all back to our cabins. The boys in my cabin were writing a group poem to Jesus on a long length of paper towel. The boy next to me just said out loud, to no one in particular, “I get it now. Jesus is God.” You could hear shouts from one cabin to another of “Jesus is Lord”, or “Praise God!” These were 12-14 year old boys. Normal, fun-loving, physically hyper, trick playing, boys. No one coached them. It just poured out of them.
The next morning, the camp director, who was a conservative Baptist pastor from Bad Axe, Michigan, cornered me and one of the other counselors and accused us of being ‘holiness’. No, I said, I am a Christian. I didn’t know the terminology. He told us that there was going to be a meeting for all the counselors shortly and that we must attend.
At the meeting, he was very upset. The camp had gotten out of control. Kids were doing crazy things, like having spontaneous prayer meetings without counselors present. Who knows what trouble they could be getting into? What would their parents think?
We got into a discussion if what had happened was from God or not. At the end of the meeting the director agreed to pray and ask God if what was happening was from God or not.
All I remember is that I was abnormally tired that afternoon. My arms and legs felt like lead wire. I had made my way to the front door of my cabin and I was just standing there. The camp director was slowing walking over towards me. As he came close I noticed that it looked like someone had thrown a bucket of water onto his face. He explained that he had been crying. Then he just told me that he never had understood the power of prayer. When he asked in prayer if this episode the night before was from God or not, he evidently experienced the same thing all the kids had. Then he knew it was indeed from God.
Other remarkable events continued to happen that week. Some girls wanted me to come to a prayer meeting they were having in the dinning hall. About 6 kids or so were there. As we prayed I had a vision of Jesus. I remember wrapping my arms around his knees as he stood in the center of our group. It was like a waking dream, only additionally tactile. I could see and feel, yet it was like a dream, only I was awake. I now call it a vision. I remember that when he put his hand on my shoulder I cried and cried because I knew that he knew me as I was in the very depths of my heart and loved me.
Another time my friend, George, and I were leading the kids through a hike in the woods. We were chatting as we walked. Suddenly my friend turns to me and asked me if I had just said “Oregon”? No, I responded, why? His face blanched and he said that God had just spoken to him out loud and told him to drop everything he is doing and go to Oregon.
Years later I met people who were affected by that camp meeting. One of the girls who was at the camp later came to our church in Port Huron. She told of how when she went home what had happened to her happened also to her parents. They wound up going into the ministry because of it. The pastor from Bad Axe was called to account for the stuff that happened at the camp. His congregation voted 51% for him and 49% against him. He left, I do not know where.
In the summer of 1972, I was a camp counselor at Lake Louise in northern Michigan. It was a Baptist camp for 7th and 8th graders, both boys and girls. An ordinary camp with exercises first thing in the morning, games, food-like-stuff to eat, swimming, campfires, all with very normal people. At the Wednesday night campfire we were singing “Give Me Oil in My Lamp’, (you know the song about gas in the Ford™) a song that must have been sung billions of times at campfires all over the world, when one of the counselors started yelling at the top of his lungs that God was pouring out His Spirit. He kept repeating this at the highest of volumes.
I was near the outer edge of the group and watched to see what would happen. Within seconds two things started to happen. The first was that all the young kids that I could see began to either cry, or hold onto one another, or fall on the ground, or pray, or speak in tongues (that is a language they did not know). It was very chaotic and the leader looked panicked. At the same time it also began to rain. I looked up and saw no clouds overhead, but I did see a few off to the side in the moonlight. I wondered where the rain was coming from.
After a while the leader got us all back to our cabins. The boys in my cabin were writing a group poem to Jesus on a long length of paper towel. The boy next to me just said out loud, to no one in particular, “I get it now. Jesus is God.” You could hear shouts from one cabin to another of “Jesus is Lord”, or “Praise God!” These were 12-14 year old boys. Normal, fun-loving, physically hyper, trick playing, boys. No one coached them. It just poured out of them.
The next morning, the camp director, who was a conservative Baptist pastor from Bad Axe, Michigan, cornered me and one of the other counselors and accused us of being ‘holiness’. No, I said, I am a Christian. I didn’t know the terminology. He told us that there was going to be a meeting for all the counselors shortly and that we must attend.
At the meeting, he was very upset. The camp had gotten out of control. Kids were doing crazy things, like having spontaneous prayer meetings without counselors present. Who knows what trouble they could be getting into? What would their parents think?
We got into a discussion if what had happened was from God or not. At the end of the meeting the director agreed to pray and ask God if what was happening was from God or not.
All I remember is that I was abnormally tired that afternoon. My arms and legs felt like lead wire. I had made my way to the front door of my cabin and I was just standing there. The camp director was slowing walking over towards me. As he came close I noticed that it looked like someone had thrown a bucket of water onto his face. He explained that he had been crying. Then he just told me that he never had understood the power of prayer. When he asked in prayer if this episode the night before was from God or not, he evidently experienced the same thing all the kids had. Then he knew it was indeed from God.
Other remarkable events continued to happen that week. Some girls wanted me to come to a prayer meeting they were having in the dinning hall. About 6 kids or so were there. As we prayed I had a vision of Jesus. I remember wrapping my arms around his knees as he stood in the center of our group. It was like a waking dream, only additionally tactile. I could see and feel, yet it was like a dream, only I was awake. I now call it a vision. I remember that when he put his hand on my shoulder I cried and cried because I knew that he knew me as I was in the very depths of my heart and loved me.
Another time my friend, George, and I were leading the kids through a hike in the woods. We were chatting as we walked. Suddenly my friend turns to me and asked me if I had just said “Oregon”? No, I responded, why? His face blanched and he said that God had just spoken to him out loud and told him to drop everything he is doing and go to Oregon.
Years later I met people who were affected by that camp meeting. One of the girls who was at the camp later came to our church in Port Huron. She told of how when she went home what had happened to her happened also to her parents. They wound up going into the ministry because of it. The pastor from Bad Axe was called to account for the stuff that happened at the camp. His congregation voted 51% for him and 49% against him. He left, I do not know where.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
A Particle or a Wave?
We have to take things to where the evidence leads us. When people studied light they came up with conflicting models as to what is light. Some evidence would give us the impression that light is a point, a photon. Some experiments would seem to prove this. Other experiments seem to prove that light acts like a wave by traveling omnidirectionally. But something cannot be in two places at the same time, can it? Yet the facts about light merely expose our presuppositions and our ignorance as to what light really is. To our way of thinking it acts like both a wave and a particle, yet also in our way of thinking that is not possible. But it is, so we must be ignorant of something.
Many of the teachings we get from scripture are like this. So when we add up all the evidence we get a picture of something we have a hard time conceiving. Like is Jesus actually a true human in every way, or is he God's only son, the exact image of God Himself, eternal creator and Lord of all? All the evidence points to the inescapable conclusion that the answer is yes. But that conclusion takes us beyond our past experience to something that looks like a contradiction. It is not truly a contradiction, it only appears so because of our ignorance.
What about the trinity? How could one be three and three be one? All our analogies look weak. The water vapor, water, ice trinity has only one point of correspondence - three different modes of the same molecule. But the Father - Son - Spirit are not three different modes of God. They are three different beings who are individually and corporately the one God who made it all. That stretches our understanding a bit, doesn't it.
This kind of thinking is not knew. Most world views have some way of unifying contradiction. Yin-Yang is well known as the two sides of the same thing. Though what the thing is is hard to explain or imagine. Explaining it as in evil the seeds of good are sown and in good the seeds of evil are sown is inadequate. It is inadequate because the fields of good and evil must be defined by some objective standard which is assumed. This relates to the eating of the fruit of the tree of good and evil as seen in the book of Genesis. Human nature is defined by its drive to put everything into the categories of good and evil. The most you can say for the Yin-Yang concept is that it clearly defines human nature after the fall.
Yet the scripture keeps pushing us further than where our experience has gone. This is how we grow in understanding. I do not intend to say that contradiction is the evidence of truth, as some mystical world views would have it. I say that contradiction, by itself, proves nothing. This is because contradiction can either be the proof that something is not true or the evidence that we have misunderstood something. How can we tell which it is? By how much faith we have in our evidence. (Just because we have faith in our evidence does not, by itself, make something true. Yet we have no other option open to us. So the perception of truth becomes an hermeneutical issue. It becomes an issue of how we understand, how we interpret, evidence.)
So is receiving the Spirit a particle, a single point in time, or a wave affecting many points at the same time? Yes. We receive the Spirit when we receive Jesus. Yet can we receive the Spirit at another point too. It seems our understanding of the Spirit needs growing.
Many of the teachings we get from scripture are like this. So when we add up all the evidence we get a picture of something we have a hard time conceiving. Like is Jesus actually a true human in every way, or is he God's only son, the exact image of God Himself, eternal creator and Lord of all? All the evidence points to the inescapable conclusion that the answer is yes. But that conclusion takes us beyond our past experience to something that looks like a contradiction. It is not truly a contradiction, it only appears so because of our ignorance.
What about the trinity? How could one be three and three be one? All our analogies look weak. The water vapor, water, ice trinity has only one point of correspondence - three different modes of the same molecule. But the Father - Son - Spirit are not three different modes of God. They are three different beings who are individually and corporately the one God who made it all. That stretches our understanding a bit, doesn't it.
This kind of thinking is not knew. Most world views have some way of unifying contradiction. Yin-Yang is well known as the two sides of the same thing. Though what the thing is is hard to explain or imagine. Explaining it as in evil the seeds of good are sown and in good the seeds of evil are sown is inadequate. It is inadequate because the fields of good and evil must be defined by some objective standard which is assumed. This relates to the eating of the fruit of the tree of good and evil as seen in the book of Genesis. Human nature is defined by its drive to put everything into the categories of good and evil. The most you can say for the Yin-Yang concept is that it clearly defines human nature after the fall.
Yet the scripture keeps pushing us further than where our experience has gone. This is how we grow in understanding. I do not intend to say that contradiction is the evidence of truth, as some mystical world views would have it. I say that contradiction, by itself, proves nothing. This is because contradiction can either be the proof that something is not true or the evidence that we have misunderstood something. How can we tell which it is? By how much faith we have in our evidence. (Just because we have faith in our evidence does not, by itself, make something true. Yet we have no other option open to us. So the perception of truth becomes an hermeneutical issue. It becomes an issue of how we understand, how we interpret, evidence.)
So is receiving the Spirit a particle, a single point in time, or a wave affecting many points at the same time? Yes. We receive the Spirit when we receive Jesus. Yet can we receive the Spirit at another point too. It seems our understanding of the Spirit needs growing.
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