Christ

And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ. (Gal. 4:6-7)

Whenever someone states that Jesus was a “radical”, my eyes roll. How convenient to paint Him as such when it suits the cause. Yes, He was a radical departure from the perceived norms. But, no, I personally don’t think He was a “radical” if by that we mean that He was an extremist or that He started some kind of social and moral reforms. Jesus was a normal man in an abnormal world and the world couldn’t stand it. His righteousness reflected on their turpitude. He was the only truly normal man who ever lived, and in that sense perhaps He might be termed a “radical”.

But when most people talk about a “radical”, they mean someone on the extreme end of a linear graph. In today’s world, ideas and postures are usually connected to “left/right” or “liberal/conservative” thinking. Self-identified “liberals” and “conservatives” insist that Jesus was one of their own, favoring government sponsored social programs or enforced moral behavior. In first-century Palestine, neither Sadducees nor Pharisees claimed Him. He was, frankly, a lot of trouble.

Years ago when first considering where Jesus fell in the scheme of things, I realized that He didn’t fall in the continuum.  He was a radically different kind of man — not a new kind of idealist. He didn’t promote a point of view that could be apprehended on the “dog run” of human reason. We are told that He spoke with authority and not as the scribes. His radicality was a matter of the creation He belonged to, not a school of thought.

We may call His way the “middle way” because it often fell midway between factions, yet it was not compromise for the sake of uniting opposite views. It was not even exactly what we call a “moderate” point of view because it ran totally off the continuum of “less and more” or “right and left”. Had it been about compromise it might have afforded some safety, yet it is not altogether without risk, misunderstanding or controversy:

Then took they up stones to cast at him: but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by. (John 8:59)

Mark 12 contains two main accounts where Jesus turns the questions of the Pharisees and the Sadducees upside down. In both instances, they plan to trap Him in a game of logic. The Pharisees bring up a matter of taxes, and the Sadducees bring up a matter of marriage and divorce in the resurrection. This passage was not written to illustrate the cleverness and genius of Jesus against those who play mind games. It was written to show the qualitative difference between the mind of God and the carnal mind.

Jesus did not have the carnal mind of mankind. He had the God-mind of a new kind of creature. Consequently, He saw through His spiritual understanding rather than through a fragmentation of reality. (See “Living By His Words“) Paul, in the course of writing his epistle to the Galatians, touched on the mind that was in Jesus. When all is said and done, the point of Galatians is not really about our choice to observe customs and habits but whether the Law can do anything new in us. It cannot, and so Paul defaults to the power of the Cross to reduce us to ashes and then to resurrect us as new creatures.

But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature. (Gal. 6:14-15)

Although Paul speaks here of circumcision and uncircumcision, this has less to do with the particulars of the Jewish/Gentile divide in the church and more to do with our status as new creatures in Christ. Finally, we begin to understand the reason for Jesus’ “radical” point of view. He was not of the old creation but of the new. He derived His understanding directly from the Father.

But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know [them], because they are spiritually discerned. … For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ. (1 Cor. 2:14-16)

Who says Protestants don’t have icons? I stumbled across a site dedicated to the Warner Sallman Collection of illustrations that became ubiquitous after the 1940s. Many over the age of 45 will recognize them immediately, having seen them in people’s homes all the time.

The irony of it all – many of us attended institutional churches without pictures on the walls and scarcely even a cross. We were taught the evils of images and statuary, yet our Bible story books were rife with images. Our Sunday schools used flannelgraph boards, we had pictures on the walls of our homes,  our hand fans decorated with Bible scenes littered the church pews, and we sent greeting cards to one another with illustrations of biblical scenes and Bible verses.

I am pleased to see a site that articulates what I have felt intuitively for some few years — that icons and statues are not much different from Bible illustrations. They are the means by which the biblical narrative is kept alive and passed on. Few illustrations are more familiar to the Protestant than Sallman’s, and while it may be true that they were used less directly in matters of prayer, it could be argued that they were no less influential in shaping the meditation of a generation than objects of conscious adoration.

While purists may protest that Sallman’s Christ depicts a European male instead of an ethnic Jew, it may be argued that the significance is not the man Jesus, but God incarnate behind the face of the carpenter. In this sense, Sallman’s paintings stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Orthodox icons, where the idea is to depict humanity raised into divinity. I will leave the reader to sort these matters out privately. In any case, the site is a good read.

A growing trend in the churches of the Western World deeply troubles me. Call it apostasy, call it “doctrines of demons”, call it humanism and it is all one and the same boiling cauldron of lawlessness. The worldly church loves with an unholy love stripped of all righteousness and justice and calls it “the love of God”. They teach their fellows that there is no difference between the repentant and the [willful] sinner, that all may participate in the celebratory victory of Jesus Christ.

To that, I raise the question: How can you enter resurrection if you’ve never passed through death? How can you have forgiveness if you’ve never had repentance? For if you don’t have those things first, you have no right to drink of the cup of Christ. “But, but, but…..,” protest the rising voices. “You are unloving.” But I reflect on this:

Jhn 13:35 By this shall all [men] know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.

“One to another” in the context here does not refer to everyone in the world, but to disciples. And my objection is that these love everyone except the Lord’s disciples. Nor can they love the disciples unless they first subvert them into lovers of the world. In fact, they persecute the disciples, wearing them down if possible to bring them into submission to their humanistic gospel.

There is a naive idea that we ought to fellowship with any and all believers, even if they bring uncleanness into the equation. This is spiritual harlotry. The spirit is seductive and will suck the unaware into academic circular discussions and spiritual filth that will militate against their own souls. How can light have fellowship with darkness, righteousness with unrighteousness? Some, bless their hearts, want to dialogue with these firebrands, in hopes of bringing them back.

And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all [men], apt to teach, patient, In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth; [2 Tim 2:24-25]

If, on the other hand, we are dealing with those who think themselves to be mature teachers and will not regard sound doctrine, we have advice from the first century church:

…but if the teacher himself turn and teach another doctrine with a view to subvert you, hearken not to him; [The Didache, 11:2]

Timothy continues in this vein:

…in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves … Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. [2 Tim 3:1-7]

We are there. I have seen it with my own eyes. I have tasted and handled. I believe we are living in the days of a ripened humanism.

…humanism is a philosophical statement that declares the end of all being is the happiness of man. The reason for existence is man’s happiness. Now according to humanism, salvation is simply a matter of getting all the happiness you can out of life. [Paris Reidhead, "Ten Shekels and a Shirt", sermon]

Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit will guide us into all truth [John16:13]. Not one person I have ever heard argue for the humanistic gospel has testified of being apprehended by God, brought to his knees in repentance, and radically transformed from a state of death and sin into a state of life. They read books, gather speakers and teachers; they swim in suppositions about things that may or may not be and declare them as fact. They posture and they strut, but not one ever speaks of the ongoing reality of the Cross or the power of the blood of Jesus in his own soul! Nor do they open the way that others may access the Door of the Kingdom.

I’m afraid that it’s become so subtle that it goes everywhere. What is it? In essence it’s this! That this philosophical postulate that the end of all being is the happiness of man, has been sort of covered over with evangelical terms and Biblical doctrine until God reigns in heaven for the happiness of man, Jesus Christ was incarnate for the happiness of man, all the angels exist in the…, Everything is for the happiness of man! AND I SUBMIT TO YOU THAT THIS IS UNCHRISTIAN !!! Isn’t man happy? Didn’t God intend to make man happy? Yes. But as a by-product and not a prime-product! [Reidhead]

The humanistic gospel is the most self-righteous and self-serving gospel I have ever heard. It is the gospel of “niceness” rather than love and salvation. Its adherents compass land and sea to make one proselyte and then make him twice the child of hell as themselves [Mat. 23:15]. The worst humanists are the ones who call themselves believers. Flee this pollution!

It’s beginning to make sense. Yes it does. I’m talking about the strange behavior on a couple of on-line forums I visited recently — one was a “free believer” site and one was a “house church” site. Without getting longwinded about it, both counted persons of anti-institutional church sentiments among their members, some of who were in various stages of de-toxing from traditional church or who had made some measure of peace about their experience.

A curious thing happens when people step out to find freedom. The first instance of refusing to go to traditional church can induce fear as well as giddiness at the prospect of defying an invisible taskmaster. Survival can be heady indeed, and with success come ever-increasing opportunities of putting the toe over the line.  Perhaps there is some kind of law to describe what comes next – I don’t know what it is — we shall call it “SaltSister’s Law” for the time being.  The law goes like this: For every ditch there is a corresponding ditch on the opposite side of an issue which one is likely to fall into while escaping the first ditch. 

The “ditch” in question may manifest in numerous ways. It is a ditch related to anger, to bitterness, to rebellion and — once in it – a person may be as easily deceived as when they indiscriminately swallowed the doctrines of Churchianity. In fact, one way to erase unwanted identification with Churchianity is to get oneself labeled as opposite as possible to what one has been.

Snarls are often heard from the direction of groups and individuals who resent what they perceive as having been duped or backstabbed by the institutional churches, but that should not surprise anyone. After all, many suffer acute distress and pain.  But the saddest part is that so many remain in the ditch of distrust, unforgiveness, frustration — and are thus ripe for further deception when a guru proposes novel ways of looking at the mess. The ditch-jumpers may start to question everything they have ever believed. It’s a complex job, this sorting out of all things. Being sure the guru is of sound mind is another hurdle. What do they have to measure the guru’s teachings and opinions against? Tricky, yes.

They read books…lots and lots of books and articles…and go to conferences. Each anti-institutional movement has its articulators — those who describe what we have each been feeling secretly and couldn’t tell anyone.  There are three main movements in the U.S. in opposition to the institutions — the emergent church movement, the house church movment and the free believers movement. Each has its leaders, each has its safe havens. But these articulators — they can describe the symptoms of the problems, but have they really got the cure? They can lead the flock out but can they lead them through the wilderness into the Promised Land?

Cutting to the chase, each of the on-line forums (free believer and house church) I tested demonstrated itself to be in confusion and without a rule of measure to know where it stood. The search for authenticity has now disintegrated into a wasteland where no one knows what truth is. Some claim that “we see through a glass darkly” and decry those who are sure of anything, though the apostle who wrote those words was very sure about some things.  When you are sure of nothing, then you will swallow anything.

Some of us tested these leaders to see what they stood for. They could not tell us. At least they hemmed and hawed about it, claiming either that they were not theologians or that they were tickled that everyone felt welcome (even at the expense of the testimony of Christ). We wondered what had got into some of these people, for we certainly never took them for universalists or ultimate reconciliationists. Rumor had it later that one of the main movers was exactly that, though if it’s true, he made a great to-do to hide it in a podcast interview. 

What some of us thought were places for church escapees to swap information on walking out this life, we found to be places of such flexibility as to have no particular view on anything. No certain sound was made. Hence, when unbelievers came aboard, they were not merely welcomed, but they converted the believers into things not believed by People of the Way in any century. I believe it was partly naivete on the part of the owners of these sites.

One of them threatened to shut down altogether if people didn’t monitor themselves. When he gave his reasons, I wanted to shout, “Grow up!” I had cut him slack, but when he finally tipped his hand, I saw several reasons he may have had for refusing to deal with major doctrinal controversy and problem behavior. But the biggest thing that stood out, which also stood out in retrospect to the owner of the other site was this scripture:

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. [John 10:11-13]

Perhaps the owners would argue that they are not shepherds, but I beg to differ with them. When they provide a haven and invite people to further their spiritual journey there, they are very much in the position of shepherds (in this case, read “monitor”). When I saw the truth of what had happened, I realized very quickly that in both cases, the sites were run by hirelings — nice, sincere men perhaps — but hirelings nevertheless who have no self-abnegating love for the sheep.

Further, I began to realize that the same aberrations afflict all major anti-institutional movements (or extra-institutional in some emergent church cases). All are rapidly abandoning the faith of Christ in favor of ideas that are flowing into universalism (even though some repudiate this idea, they have unwittingly set the stage for it). All are perfectly willing to toss most of the scriptures out on their head as unauthoritative, yet they are willing to adopt Gnostic writings based on less authority than the scriptures they want to get rid of. Many have adopted a spirit vs. word preference in a misguided effort to know the Person of Jesus Christ, and yet it is that rejected word by which they have even heard of Him! 

The leaders of all three groups are nearly one and the same, each speaking to each others’ audiences – is this a clue? There is one spirit and one apostasy running through these movements. And the people follow the writers of books, but what about the shepherds? Where are they?

[To be continued]