truth

A long time ago I posted an article on George Mueller’s “strategy for showing God”. Unfortunately, due to a malfunction somewhere in the system, it was not updated and I lost three months’ worth of posts. Ouch. That hurt. Mueller, as you may know, is famous for the orphanages he ran, though he actually did a lot more besides. John Piper wrote a wonderful article on Mueller, which I linked to at the time and here I link again. I insist that you read it, for if you don’t, I’m convinced that your Christian journey will be stunted forever. (My goodness, I am treating my readers like my children. “Eat your vegetables or you’ll go blind.”)

Mueller’s reason for opening the orphanages was not merely to change the world for the better on a humanistic scale. In his own words, he gave as his main reasons for doing so:

1. That God may be glorified, should He be pleased to furnish me with the means, in its being seen that it is not a vain thing to trust in Him; and that thus the faith of His children may be strengthened. 2. The spiritual welfare of fatherless and motherless children. 3. Their temporal welfare.

So in my unlearnedness in such matters, I decided to post my thoughts on a private forum to see what I might glean from others who have trodden the path of public service before me. So far only one person has responded, but perhaps others will join in. I posted my query because I am tired of straddling the fence on mission projects and causes. There are so many public service projects going on, and half of them I think are as rooted in humanism as anything else even though they have the banner “Christian” over them. In fact, the world has come to expect that the church is there to serve its “felt needs”. While I sympathize with the world in its plight, I do not want to be sucked into slavery trying to save it from itself.

When I was younger I was very interested in many relief projects but my interest was shot down by others on the grounds that 1) to do practical things for people was not going in the “power of the spirit”, i.e., miracles, and 2) it was based on pure humanism.

As to the first, I was thinking the other day about when Jesus told His disciples they would do greater miracles than He did. Jesus couldn’t do miracles in some places because the people lacked faith. But the ones He did the greatest miracles in didn’t believe in Him. When He was sought out by people who wanted to do His works, He told them that the work of the Father was that they should believe on Him. He also said, “Blessed is he who has not seen and yet believes.” Most of the people who have believed in Jesus have died without ever witnessing a true miracle. When you consider how many converts have been made without seeing a miracle, that has to be a great miracle out of the “power of God”. Ironic.

The e-letter that I mentioned by John Fenn in the previous post made me reconsider point number two. He was addressing universalism. He made a very good case concerning God’s provision for those living without knowledge of either the spiritual law or of the specific knowledge of Jesus Christ. He spoke of these “lovers of the truth” who instinctively obey the law written in their hearts as those who will flow into the truth when they hear it and be born again into the kingdom. Paris Reidhead (“Ten Shekels and a Shirt“) made an equally valid point about those living in darkness who knew more about God than he ever imagined, who knew all about the judgment of God and didn’t care — “monsters of iniquity” he called them. It must have been daunting to learn that he went to Africa to help people who didn’t want to be helped. Living in the ungrateful society we inhabit in the West, it is easy to fear that the people we serve may all be of the second variety, but what if many are also of the first kind?

Bruce Olson discovered the first kind among the Motilone Indians of Colombia. How else could it be that they had any idea they needed to know the way back to God? How could they have had a true prophecy among their people that one day God would send them a yellow-haired prophet to show them the way? They already involved God in the affairs of their everyday lives. They just didn’t know who He was exactly. When Olson showed up, they were ready to believe.

If Fenn is correct about how God operates among lovers of the truth who have not yet heard or understood Jesus Christ, it changes the paradigm completely of who we think we are serving in the “dark” world. We know, of course, that we ought to do good until all people in a general sense and that we ought to do good in particular to the brethren.

Gal 6:10 As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all [men], especially unto them who are of the household of faith.

Too often this thinking degenerates into helping only those members of the same “club” which some call “church”. In that “church” are often people as dysfunctional and liable to suck us away as those unwashed masses in the world. Then you have to wonder who are you helping and to what end? It’s not always an easy answer, in any case.

Here I have to bring up the Sermon on the Mount. It is the favorite for religious modern liberal activists. They tend to see this as THE gospel of Christ and very often it is a Cross-less gospel. The point, according to them, is to make the world a better place by making people care for one another. They have no problem loving their neighbor, and in fact, lift love of neighbor ahead of loving God, which is backwards of the commandments. Often they try to enforce love of neighbor through politics according to their own understanding about how to fix others. But Jesus was not talking about a matter of enforcement or changing society. He was talking about a personal choice as He addressed a select group of people — mainly those of the household of Israel.

On the other hand, there is some practical good in teaching the unbelieving to look on one another’s best interests. It won’t make them righteous, but it does make the world a bit more liveable. It brings to mind where Paul talked about praying for those in authority:

1Ti 2:2 For kings, and [for] all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.

It wasn’t for the sake of society at large, but so the saints could function well. Society enjoys the positive fallout of the peace of the saints. Reidhead noted that the happiness of mankind is a byproduct and not a prime product of the kingdom of God. God’s purposes always come first and society-at-large reaps the benefit.

This knowledge that there are many seekers of the truth scattered in among those who love darkness shines a whole new light on what good we do as we engage in helping the world materially and socially. By this, I certainly don’t mean to imply that we involve ourselves in a sort of spiritual blackmail that the world must convert if we are to help it. But I do mean to say that our efforts are assuredly not in vain if we keep in mind George Mueller’s points of strategy. It is essentially the same strategy that applies to our helping ourselves.

Keeping these things in mind, it’s much easier to consider the Sermon on the Mount in its proper place, as secondary to loving God. I am convinced that the Sermon on the Mount is about the Lord of the work and not about the work of the Lord. Those who live out of its spirit, bring the kingdom of God near to the nations in the most mundane things.

Someone gave me a sick kitten to watch overnight once. They were trying to save the little creature which they had found. “You have to feed it from this dropper,” they told me. “It’s too sick to eat any other way.” That mental picture came back to me when I came across an article the other day decrying the evils of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA).

I want to say that there is good and bad in both AA and Al-Anon, its sister group. It would be tempting to try to control the content of them, but it’s impossible when you are dealing with a cross section of the whole world. The authors objected to the fact that Jesus Christ is not truly preached and that sexual contacts are too frequent there (this is especially rampant in the AA crowd). As to maintaining the purity of the gospel, I well understand the objections and have wrestled with them myself, but then I saw something else.

Jesus is the Author of all truth, no matter where that truth is found. He can work with any truth received, whether through false religious systems or secular systems. Truth is truth, no matter who says it. Some can’t receive any talk of Jesus at all, and I believe that there are people for whom any truth is a wedge that may open a path for Christ to reach in at some later point. I have run across alcoholics who don’t want their lives changed, they just want to control their drinking habit. Some of these struggle to maintain sobriety day after day and succeed even though their lives are otherwise wasted. But some people actually are sick of their lives and want a change. A percentage of these actually do go on to know Jesus Christ.

It is true, as the authors pointed out, that some people’s Higher Power is not Jesus Christ. Horrors, they said — why, some people’s Higher Power might be Satan! It sends shivers through me, too, but I just realized that for some people having Satan as a Higher Power might actually be a step forward even though for the bulk of us it would be backward. A lot of people wreck their lives under the delusion that they are their own Higher Power. Just the fact that they acknowledge that there is a Higher Power and it’s not themselves might be a step closer to God. I never would have looked at it that way before. And as for the “oh-my-god, there is rampant sexual contact” — these people create rampant sexual contact wherever they go. So what else is new? If they are living in the gutter anyway, why not a gutter where a few people have started to notice there is a light in the sky?

Would I prefer to just share the gospel to people and see them delivered? You bet! Does Jesus always operate this way? It doesn’t look like it. Not all will receive Him in full. He’s like milk that some people can only receive by droplets, just like that little kitten. It is sure foreign to me having to do it this way, but if that’s what it takes, then by God that’s what it takes. (Some people needs drops and some need a big milk bomb — why, oh God?) And when we are dealing with people like that, the fewer words, the better. What did St. Francis say, “Preach the gospel; use words if necessary.” It’s all about our walk when you get on this level — Jesus walking with us, in us, enduring all things. (1 Cor 13.)

Remembering that little kitten made me think of when babies nurse at the breast. They don’t even get milk at first. They get colostrum, which precedes the milk flow. It assists the immune system and acts as a laxative to clear out the digestive tract. It’s sort of a detoxifier. Some people are so messed up that it’s exactly an analogy of what they need before they can receive milk. Detox, droppers, milk — in that order.