Where’s the Love in Sovereign Grace Ministries?

"By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

John 13:35 (ESV) 

"Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love."

1 John 4:8 (ESV)

http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/view-image.php?image=8089&picture=stained-glass-window-in-church  Stained Glass Window In Church  

Over the last four years Dee and I have been monitoring trends in Christendom.  It seems that with each passing year, we hear more and more horror stories about how our brothers and sisters in Christ are being treated in church.  We're not talking about congregations that are being poisoned by heretical teaching.  On the contrary, in some churches that claim to teach the true Gospel, there are major problems!  As we have witnessed a rise in hyper-authoritarianism in church leadership, we are discovering some serious repercussions.  What are they?  Some of the church faithful have…

– Left the faith

– Embraced a different faith

– Joined the ranks of the "NONES" (believers who have deserted the organized church)

– Jumped ship to another church or denomination

This is not an exhaustive list, but you get the idea…

Today we are sharing the testimony of someone who experienced a serious lack of love in a Sovereign Grace church (we know this person's identity and location but are posting the story anonymously).  How ironic that SGM featured the following post earlier this year:

How Are We Doing Loving God's Church?

Several years ago, Wade Burleson delivered a message to some Christian leaders challenging them about whether their theology trumps their love.  In that address he made the following remark:

"I now believe deep in my heart that Jesus is more concerned with how we … treat each other than He is with what we … teach each other. The people loved by Christ—particularly those who differ with me—are to be far more precious to me than any finer point of theology believed by me.  Jesus did not tell me that it would be by my 'truth' that all people would know that I am one of His followers, but by my 'love'."

As I Corinthians 13 declares, love is more important than anything.  May we all remember that…

1 Corinthians 13 (NASB)

"If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.  And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered,  does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away or we know in part and we prophesy in part; but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.  For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love."

 


Guest Post 

How the Sacred Heart Healed Me from Sovereign Grace Ministries

I remember countless nights spent lying on my back, staring at the ceiling in the darkness of my room. "Maybe God just doesn't really love me. Maybe He simply hasn't chosen me." I had sinned again, and each new sin brought with it doubt about whether I was really loved by God, and every doubt brought with it a reminder of the theology I had bought into: if I wasn't really saved, then there was truly nothing I could do about it.

My college years were spent heavily involved in a group of churches known as Sovereign Grace Ministries (SGM).  SGM teaches a brand of what's been called the "New Calvinism", central to which is a belief in predestination: before time began, God chose some people to be saved from eternal damnation and passed over others, for no reason other than it was His will to do so. Human free will plays absolutely no part in God's choice, so if you aren't part of the "elect" who were chosen to be saved, there's simply no way around it: you're on your way to Hell. Many SGM pastors, in keeping with the Puritans, believe that there is no way to know with absolute certainty in this life that a person is part of the elect, but one may gain some confidence and hope through sanctification. That is to say, if one sees a gradual increase in personal holiness and an increase in ability to resist temptation, one can be grateful for the "evidence" that he or she is really saved.

When I was a little boy, I believed with great confidence that God loved me. My parents and pastors taught me that Jesus loved me so much and came to Earth to make it so that I could spend eternity with Him. And as I became more involved in SGM and read more about Calvinist theology, I still believed that God loved me… at least, He probably did. But I slowly experienced a change in the way I thought of God and how I related to Him. He became, in my eyes, less loving and kind and more austere, distant, and – dare I say it? – arbitrary and just a little bit capricious. I realize now that I was afraid of God and certainly not in the "fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" sense.

These doctrines and the feelings they engendered were not without consequences, both in my life and the lives of my close friends in SGM. Despite the fact that we ostensibly believed in "grace", we had an obsessive and unhealthy fear over our sins: we used to sit in circles in "accountability groups" and confess to each other, in graphic detail, every sin we could recall. We also confronted each other with sins we perceived in that person's life,  and a guy unwilling to see how he was sinning (according to his brothers in the Lord) was quickly labeled as "prideful". The fact is, though, that despite the unhealthy vigilance, nothing seemed to work — we kept right on sinning just as badly as before.

And so I lay awake at night, wondering if I was really "elect". I was frightened half to death and ironically too scared to admit it, even to myself. I had never felt more distant from Jesus. I watched many of my friends walk away from the faith entirely, too bruised and beaten by the church and its teachings to believe that there was a God behind it all. And as I eventually rejected SGM and left the church I was attending, I had a newfound loneliness — the vast majority of my friends from SGM, including guys who had been groomsmen in my wedding and who I thought would be there for me forever — simply stopped talking to me.

How could I believe in God's love?

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Nothing is new under the sun, we're told. It turns out that there's nothing original in the errors that SGM teaches.  In the early seventeenth century, a heresy known as Jansenism raged across Western Europe, especially in France. Jansenism bears some striking similarities to the brand of Calvinism that SGM teaches, particularly with regards to predestination and total depravity. It was very quickly condemned as heresy by the Church, but retained a strong foothold until the the early eighteenth century. Its legacy was wounded Christians who viewed God as a capricious, harsh task master whose love is arbitrary and whose ministers don't know the meaning of the word "compassion".

Into the midst of all of this, Jesus reminded the Church of His Sacred Heart and the love that overflows from it.

The Sacred Heart devotion had been around for several centuries, but it was not terribly wide-spread. Towards the end of the 17th century, a woman named St. Margaret Mary received a vision of Jesus, in which He showed her His Sacred Heart, and instructed her to make it more widely known. The Sacred Heart is usually shown, as in the picture at the top of this post, as Christ's human heart, bleeding and wrapped in the crown of thorns, with fire pouring out of the top.

In this picture, the most wonderful truths we know are brought home to bear: Jesus loved us so much that He became a man, so the heart is therefore a human one. But His love did not stop there: thus we see the wounds he bore on the Cross for us, His beloved. Not everyone knows about this love yet, however, and so His heart is aflame with passion for the evangelism of the world: the message of His infinite love must go forward, even unto the ends of the Earth!

Thus the Sacred Heart is proof positive that, as the Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes makes clear, "Each one of us can say with the Apostle [in Gal. 2:20]: The Son of God loved me, and gave Himself for me."

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My friend Mary Alice gave me a book as a confirmation gift called "I Believe in Love", by Father Jean C. J. d'Elbee. I found this absolutely remarkable passage in it about the Sacred Heart in the context of early modern France:

"Thus, sixteen centuries after the Last Supper and Calvary, the most satanic of all heresies, Jansenism, was able to appear and spread — a heresy which turned a God of love, saying with open arms, 'Come to me, all of you, come because you are unworthy, come because you are sinful, come because you need to be saved,' into a God whose arms are raised to strike, a demanding God, a vengeful God. Under the pretext of recognizing our unworthiness, Jansenism diabolically led souls away from Jesus.

Thus, no longer willing to endure this heresy, Jesus appeared to St. Margaret Mary at Paray-le-Monial and through her gave His Heart to the world. 'Here is the Heart which loved men so much that it spared nothing, to the point of being emptied and consumed, to give them proof of that love.' Before Paray-le-Monial, Jesus could think, 'I have given them everything. I have given them my sweat and fatigue on the roads of Palestine; I have given them all my Blood on Calvary; I have given them the gift of my beloved Mother; I have given myself in the Eucharist. What more can I do that they may believe in my love? I know: I shall give them my Heart; I shall give them the source of all these follies of my love…"

This is beautiful and true: Jesus, the Lover of our souls, relentlessly pursues us. He will do anything to prove just how much He loves us, including giving us His very Heart. His Heart is shown to us as being literally on fire with His love for mankind.

How can we then say that there is anything arbitrary or capricious about His love? How can we doubt the famous words of John, that "God so love the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life"?

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Batoni_sacred_heart.jpgI don't remember when I first started to be attracted to the Sacred Heart, or even when I first read about it. By no later than the Summer of 2010 (still a ways away from becoming a Catholic myself), I would occasionally light a candle in front of a depiction of the Sacred Heart in Catholic Churches.

But slowly and ever so surely, I fell in love with the Sacred Heart. I began to stop and admire every picture I saw of it. I would smile to myself every time I heard a school or parish mentioned that was named "Sacred Heart".

I began to treasure prayers written to the Sacred Heart and incorporate them into my devotional life. I even went so far as to get a rather large tattoo of the Sacred Heart (and yes, my wife approved of it beforehand…).

Before I fully realized the depths of what it meant, the Sacred Heart had lovingly barged its way into the very center of my relationship with God. I began to realize, through being drawn to the Sacred Heart, that I wanted to believe, once again, what I had known with such confidence as a little boy — that I can know without a doubt that Jesus loves me.

Slowly but surely, Jesus' Heart changed my heart.

I can't say that I always believe in His love for me. I can't say that the old doubts and fears don't sometimes come creeping back in. But I can say this: His love for me is more real to me now than it has ever been. His presence is sweet to me now, where before it had grown bitter. Each time I come forward to receive the Eucharist now, I come forward to meet my truest Friend. Confident that my God loves me enough to give me His very heart, I once again believe that I can trust Him with mine.     

Pictured Above: Batoni Sacred Heart

**********************************

To all of my friends who still carry gaping holes in their hearts:

"To whom can I turn if not to You, Whose Heart is the source of all graces and merits? Where should I seek if not in the treasure which contains all the riches of Your kindness and mercy? Where should I knock if not at the door through which God gives Himself to us and through which we go to God? I have recourse to You, Heart of Jesus. In You I find consolation when afflicted, protection when persecuted, strength when burdened with trials, and light in doubt and darkness."

~ From a Novena to the Sacred Heart

Lydia's Corner:   Judges 7:1-8:17   Luke 23:13-43   Psalm 97:1-98:9   Proverbs 14:7-8

Comments

Where’s the Love in Sovereign Grace Ministries? — 283 Comments


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    Thanks Eagle!


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    Beautiful! God uses different means for each of us, because, in our uniqueness, we respond to different imagery and expressions, but I fully believe that the only healing from the spiritual abuse of the “sin-sniffers” comes from a soul-deep immersion in God’s infinite love.He isn’t standing over us, “infinitely angry with all sin” as a Calvinista in a former church told me, but He loves us beyond our capacity to understand, and His arms were nailed to the cross open to receive us and never closed against us, so He can carry us through into the glorious freedom of the resurrection life.

    Thank you for sharing your story, you encourage every one of us who has walked that path but still sometimes hears those terrible whispers that suggest we are delusional. You encouraged my heart today


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    This is a tad off topic but it reminds me of some of the stories this blog covers:

    Oklahoma State’s handling of sex offender earns it a ‘Black Hole’ from SPJ

    However, instead of calling police or notifying students about a possible sexual predator in their midst, the university quietly handled the issue in a closed-door administrative proceeding.

    …[The University cited (FERPA) for why they did not report the incidents]

    … The U.S. Department of Education has clearly stated that FERPA cannot be used as an excuse to not notify police about a crime on campus, or to warn students about potential danger.

    But emails obtained by the Associated Press revealed that administrators were more concerned about how the scandal would affect the school’s reputation than they were about student privacy.


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    Eagle wrote:

    Does anyone else find it odd that Sovereign Grace is fighting this lawsuit? I mean for an organization that teaches “theological determinism” where God is responsible for everything and there is no such thing as coincidences….if that’s serious the case…why are they fighting the lawsuit?

    I think Diane mentioned this on another thread. Brill. Exactly. They do not practice what they preach. God must have willed it so why are they fighting it? Perhaps they get to decide what God wills? (bingo!!!)

    They are frauds.


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    Ryan,

    God Bless you. Jesus Christ loves us with a passion. He wept over Jerusalem….yet did not "elect" them? There are so many things that don't make sense in the determinist paradigm and that is just one of many.

    I am glad so you were able to see His great love for you, finally! Thanks for sharing that with us here.

    Now if someone would just help me figure out how to feel love for Pharisees who are wolves in sheep's clothing……..


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    Thank you so much for sharing this lovely testimony of God’s great love for us in Jesus.


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    The original post:

    … we had an obsessive and unhealthy fear over our sins: we used to sit in circles in "accountability groups" and confess to each other, in graphic detail, every sin we could recall.

    I realize there is a verse in the NT that tells believers to confess their sins one to another, but I think the reasoning as to why that is so can be left to interpretation. I would guess the reason has to do with getting support and encouragement when you have fallen, not that one should confess one's sins to other believers to be judged and condemned over them. In my opinion, the wrong motive behind confessing sins / "accountability" teachings (or a heavy emphasis on them), also is contrary to other teachings in the New Testament. Paul said Christians are to think of good things (Philippians 4:8). How does teaching believers to sit around dwelling on their failings, sins, and shortcomings frequently mesh with teachings such as Phil 4:8, or Philippians 3:13 (look to the future, not the past)? Or with Hebrews 8:12, "For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more." From the original post:

    We also confronted each other with sins we perceived in that person's life, and a guy unwilling to see how he was sinning (according to his brothers in the Lord) was quickly labeled as "prideful".

    I don't think that Jesus (or the rest of the NT) completely forbade the practice of making any judgements at all, but when Christ talked about "remove the log in your own eye, before removing the speck from your brothers' eye," he was sort of telling Christians to not get so fixated on other people's lives, mistakes, and sins. You need to concentrate on your own race in life. Telling believers to sit around in groups and look for things to pick at or apart in other people's lives doesn't sound right or healthy. Original post:

    And so I lay awake at night, wondering if I was really "elect".

    Yep, that is a possible fall-out of Calvinism, and I don't understand how any of them can teach that with passages such as…

    But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. (John 20:31)

    Or,

    For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39)

    John 3:16, too. The God of Calvinism, as taught or presented by some Calvinists, at times either resembles the punitive, fickle gods of ancient Greece, or the cruel, distant god of Islam, Allah. I don't know about all branches of Islam, but in some of them, they teach that adherents do not have a guarantee of salvation, except to die in martyrdom, and that is by killing a Jew (or maybe any "infidel?"). That reminds me of Calvinism, the part about not being able to know if one is saved.


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    I don’t think I will be able to light Sacred Heart candles ever again without remembering this story. I believe that the Holy Spirit does work in ways which we’ll never be able to understand, and I’m okay with that. How encouraging to read this experience of being drawn to the heart of God even when the church fails to represent his heart well

    Thank you to the author of the guest post. Thank you to Deb for sharing this coming home story.

    Some of you here at TWW have already heard bits and pieces of my story. The timing of this guest post is so meaningful to me because a couple days ago I wrote about why my last name is Trust, and so these words are a kiss to my soul- a reminder of where I’ve come from and who God is.


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    I looked into some sites, radio shows, etc, by ex-12 step / Alcoholics Anonymous members over a year ago, and I think I remember some of them saying one reason they had to leave and quit is that those groups (12 step and A.A.) encourage some of what we see in these hyper Calvinism / SGM churches:

    Constant, intensive, self- searching for short comings, telling yourself you are a worm, other people in a group pointing out your mistakes or reminding you of them and your past.

    Some of the ex-AA members said that sort of negativity was keeping them from healing or growing.

    It’s interesting to see that teaching people to sit around dwelling on their mistakes or weaknesses and confessing them all the time to other people holds people back regardless of the setting (secular self help groups or churches).

    However, I am not an advocate of Christians never, ever being open about their sins and mistakes.

    I’ve read books that explain that one reason so many churches are terrible at helping Christians who have mental health problems is precisely because some churches teach the opposite extreme, which is, never admit your failings; act like you have it all together and never have problems; smile and act happy even if you are not, etc.

    There are dangers with going to either extreme side of the issue.


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    Josh McDowell (in this interview with Janet Mefferd) says it takes truth plus relationship, or truth conveyed in relationship, to reach people (which I think is similar to the ‘correct doctrine’ vs ‘love people’ division that was being discussed here):

    Janet Mefferd Show-1/26/2010, Hour 1- Josh McDowell stops by

    McDowell also says that pastors should stop assuming that the people in the pews believe every thing in the Bible is true, pastors need to become “more apologetical” even while giving sermons. (Some of you were discussing this in another thread yesterday.) He says Christians today are more skeptical.


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    Eagle wrote:

    Does anyone else find it odd that Sovereign Grace is fighting this lawsuit?

    One explanation as to why they are doing it, lies in the character of the leadership. In his ‘Discourses and Sayings of Our Lord, the Rev. John Brown characterizes the ‘unworthy minister’s thus:(from Luke 12). ” Instead of giving meat to those of his household under his care, he beats them. He assumes an authority to which he has no claim. Instead of administering the law of their common Lord, he insists on giving law himself; and if his fellow-servants will not submit to his dictates, he calumniates them as heretics and schismatics; applies to them the bitter scourge of the tongue, even sharp and bitter words’; prostitutes the ordinance of Christian discipline by excommunicating those who are of the household of faith; and, when circumstances permit, CALLS IN THE AID OF THE CIVIL POWER TO ATTACK THE PROPERTY AND INJURE THE PERSONS OF THOSE WHO WILL NOT SUBMIT TO HIS USURPED AUTHORITY….For self-denial there is self-indulgence, and instead of subjection to the powers of the world to come, there is entire subjugation of mind and heart to the present evil world. A minister not under the influence of the religion he professes, naturally seeks for associates among worldly men”.

    Sounds all too familiar and it is a pity that these men do not have the wit to realise that the game is up.


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    I love this story about the Sacred Heart of Jesus, & I'm pretty sure you posted at iMonk about this once. I'm hoping to believe all the nice stuff about Jesus again one day & to stop wondering finally whether I've been predestined to something a lot less than salvation…

    And I feel bad because I was pretty blunt with an article about Calvinism that popped up on my fb feed from a Francis Schaeffer page. The reformed Pastor that runs it proof- texted me & when I pointed out that just because I didn't agree with his conclusions didn't mean I hadn't read the Bible, then cemented by someone calling me venomous & asking if I 'd read the Bible all the way through to get the flow of it. Cue head banging. I wasn't very gracious & now I'm off to cry in the bath. How long O Lord?


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    Warm beauty for a cold Saturday in March. Thanks!


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    @ BeakerJ:
    When one feels raw inside, emotions run. And when one meets someone who is smug, those emotions can make one feel a fool. But being emotional doesn’t mean one is wrong or an idiot, but just that one is raw. And your rawness isn’t fabricated. It comes from a pernicious lie you were told was from God by the very people you emoted at.

    Keep pursuing Love. I hope you find it soon. It really is there, waiting for you.


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    That is an interesting and at times heart-warming testimony from our guest poster. Although I disagree (strongly) with some aspects of Catholic doctrine, I agree that the sentiment behind the Sacred Heart is a good one. Too often the neo-Cals turn God (as other people have said) into a capricious and vengeful deity. It’s not that God is not sovereign or hates sin, but rather that they have skewed the emphasis so that that appears to be the sum total of his characteristics. As an old friend and former missionary once told me an older Christian had told him, “Preach the *whole* counsel of truth”.

    I’m now going to put my amateur church historian hat on and say that I would take issue somewhat with the identification of Jansenism as full-blown heresy. Jansenism was really a Catholic belief similar in form to Calvinism, and saw itself as going back (if I understand correctly) to Augustine. It may also have been a reaction against some of the Jesuitical beliefs in France at the time. The mathematician and Christian thinker Blaise Pascal was among its supporters, so I would hesitate to write it off so bluntly.


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    PS re the confession of sins to one another, I think this is another area where a Biblical passage has been overemphasised. Sometimes it is actually refreshing and unburdening to confess something, but I think once it becomes an imperative then the road ahead is dangerous – too often it can smack of Maoist self-criticism or cultishness. Also I think confession of that sort should to be made to one or two older or more mature Christians, not to a whole group of people. I’m going to sound patronising now, but I think it is also dangerous among the young, whose zeal may not always be tempered by knowledge (or experience?).


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    @ Kolya:
    “I’m going to sound patronising now, but I think it is also dangerous among the young, whose zeal may not always be tempered by knowledge (or experience?).”

    It’s only patronizing if it is, yah? New adults (early 20’s) are emerging from the teens’ work of placing themselves in a social context (cliques, etc). Over-emphasis on personal confession to the group twists the healthy development of establishing personal boundaries in the context of the group. It stunts and primes them for an authoritarian system.

    I taught college for years and it was fascinating to help students discover who they were and what they believed in the context of knowledge, friends, culture. Part of my job as art prof was to teach people how to critique each other’s work. How to respect the person and the piece and yet be truthful and helpful. How to receive the critique when properly offered. Etc.


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    @ Eagle:
    Better yet, why are they letting their lawyers throw around all sorts of excuses not to deal with this? Only they know the truth yet they are proposing all sorts of things. Do they believe in being honest? I find this icky, really icky


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    @ Anon 1:
    For me, it was being thankful for learning the lessons of the problems within the faith. Nothing makes you change more quickly than being on the receiving end of nonsense. After a few years, i became grateful for the experience which, in turn, helped us blog in a more compassionate way.

    I am at the point that I now understand how God can turn awful circumstances in my life to help others.He did not cause them but he used them to help me to see. I have a purpose that I did not comprehend even 5 years ago. I have moved towards an ability to forgive and now feel neutral rather than anger. I assume that, one day, neutral may move to love. It takes time.


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    Thank you all for the kind words!

    Kolya, my thoughts about Jansenism (and, of course, it’s very strong similarity to the “new Calvinism”) would take up way too much space, and clog up Dee and Deb’s comments section. So in lieu of a full-fledged response, may I recommend a book? “Moral Choices: the Moral Theology of St. Alphonsus de Liguori” by Theodule Rey-Mermet gives a fantastic summary of Jansenist belief and practice, as well as the response of Liguori, whose brilliant theology really embodies the Catholic rejection of Jansenism. I think it’s a very relevant read for all who are concerned about new Calvinist spiritual abuse; Christians have dealt with this sort of thing before…


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    Patrice wrote:

    I taught college for years and it was fascinating to help students discover who they were and what they believed in the context of knowledge, friends, culture. Part of my job as art prof was to teach people how to critique each other’s work. How to respect the person and the piece and yet be truthful and helpful. How to receive the critique when properly offered. Etc.

    This is mostly missing today! Absolutely needed as part of preparing young people for the real world. (There is no real world in minstry but nevermind)

    Instead, these young men are listening to their gurus who convince them they have truth and are the elect. The ones going to seminary are indoctrinated and cannot think outside that box. Where I live this becomes pretty obvious fast. They cannot handle their “knowledge” or “power” well at all. And sadly many are given power they should not have.

    The irony is that supposed brilliant men like Mohler, Dever, Piper, etc, have done young men no favors. They have stunted their spiritual, mental and emotional growth in life and these young followers will have lots of catching up to do IF it ever happens. They are not well read at all. They have been indoctrinated and taught to think in a certain way as truth. Others are heretics. What is missing? LOVE. So what do they do? Redefine what is love.

    The most important thing we can do is help people steer clear of them as teachers/preachers so more lives won’t be wrecked.


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    Anon 1 said,

    “The irony is that supposed brilliant men like Mohler, Dever, Piper, etc, have done young men no favors. They have stunted their spiritual, mental and emotional growth in life and these young followers will have lots of catching up to do IF it ever happens. They are not well read at all. They have been indoctrinated and taught to think in a certain way as truth. Others are heretics. What is missing? LOVE. So what do they do? Redefine what is love.

    The most important thing we can do is help people steer clear of them as teachers/preachers so more lives won’t be wrecked.”

    This is so true! I am thankful for the internet which gives us equal footing with the Calvinistas.

    We’re doing our part here at TWW to sound the alarm!


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    Hi Ryan, thanks for your recommendation. To be fair my knowledge of Jansensim has been gained through an earlier interest in Blaise Pascal who was associated with Port Royal where the movement was based. I’ll check out the book you mentioned.

    The other caveat of course is that as a movement it didn’t last long so didn’t have time to develop as far as I understand it. We don’t know therefore whether it would have been modified or indeed become akin to the neo-Calvinism of today. (My take anyway – perhaps I’m wrong!). It’s interesting though that Pascal at any rate thought Luther (and I suppose by implication other Protestants, including Calvinists) very wide of the truth, although his remarks are in scribbled note form and therefore not conducive to a theological discussion 😉


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    @ Anon 1:
    “What is missing? LOVE.”

    Yes! And the kind of love that carries respect for others: their personalities, gifts, experiences, knowledge. The kind of love that recognizes and celebrates the legitimacy of “other”.

    It’s silly to exhort on the greatness of God and yet skip His/Her obvious complexity. The current pre-occupation with heresy makes God tight/narrow and yet they accuse others of demeaning his sovereignty!


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    @ Deb:
    “We’re doing our part here at TWW to sound the alarm!”

    And a bang-up good job you two do. The issues you raise on this site simmer across the nation, in/out of the church. Culturally, we are suffering a massive dysfunction of authoritarianism. There are people in the economics field, particularly, who have been raising their version of your issues, and many of them are not believers and most of them are “nones”. It has been lovely to find TWW because you are speaking truth to the nasty societal zeitgeist as it is revealed in this arena.


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    @ Anon 1~

    “Eagle wrote:

    Does anyone else find it odd that Sovereign Grace is fighting this lawsuit? I mean for an organization that teaches “theological determinism” where God is responsible for everything and there is no such thing as coincidences….if that’s serious the case…why are they fighting the lawsuit?

    I think Diane mentioned this on another thread. Brill. Exactly. They do not practice what they preach. God must have willed it so why are they fighting it? Perhaps they get to decide what God wills? (bingo!!!)

    They are frauds.”

    It was me!!!!… and I am still waiting for an answer that will make sense. I mentioned it on survivors too. Why is it ok for SGM to ask for God’s will (the civil suit) to be dismissed?

    Can one ask for God’s ordained will for one’s life to be dismissed? If so, why?

    (Since attorneys are present in this world, they are God’s will too, and, since SGM has them, is it now God’s will to fight the suit with their God ordained attorneys? Is God’s “will” always the next thing one comes up with…simply because it is available?)

    Jerry Bridges just preached that everything is God ordained for you…all that happens…all…no exceptions…is His will for your life. So my question is, since Jerry Bridges said that he was born with malformed heart valves and that is how God made him and ordained his life to be, why is it acceptable for Bridges to have heart valve surgery to repair what God had designed/ordained?

    From sglouisville’s fb–“No pain or difficulty occurs in our lives apart from the will of God.” – Jerry Bridges”

    Does SGM teach to fight against the will of God or accept it?


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    @ Diane:
    The Calvinist thinks that absolutely everything that happens is God-ordained. Under that umbrella, humans’ new knowledge about how to repair hearts is also God-ordained. So, according to the SGM people (I conjecture), God ordained that the state would try to undermine their privilege as “special God-bearers” and he also ordained that they, oh-so-special-male-muckety-mucks, would fight it. Everything, good and bad, is worked out before-hand by God.

    They separate God’s particular will from “what happens”. In the sense that God doesn’t condone evil, it is never his will that evil is done. Yet, since he planned it out before hand, he uses the evil so that good made be done. According to the Calvinist, that is the only reason for evil to be allowed to continue, that good may come of it. In the largest sense, therefore, God’s will is always done. Thus Bridges: “No pain or difficulty occurs in our lives apart from the will of God.”

    Calvinists who pray “Thy will be done” are saying it for three reasons: 1. As a gesture of submission since everything, in the end, is done for good. 2. As a request for less of the evil and more of the good to produce God’s final purposes. (That prayer is fore-ordained, too, as well as any positive answer that may result.) 3. A request for heaven (“on earth as it is in heaven”), where all God’s purposes are served via the good, and there is no longer a “need” for evil to accomplish his ends.

    It is the idea that evil is used to make good that is so unpalatable for those who have suffered at the hands of intimate others. It contaminates one’s view of God. In truth, evil never flows through the hand of God. He/She only works good out of the consequences of evil. It is the results of evil, not evil itself, that He/She heals so that good may reappear.

    I don’t know if that helps.


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    Patrice wrote:

    t’s only patronizing if it is, yah? New adults (early 20′s) are emerging from the teens’ work of placing themselves in a social context (cliques, etc). Over-emphasis on personal confession to the group twists the healthy development of establishing personal boundaries in the context of the group. It stunts and primes them for an authoritarian system.

    i.e. Enlightened Self-Criticism before Party Commissars.

    Who were the most dedicated muscle of Ayatollah Khomeini during the Iranian Revolution? Young students.

    Who were the most dedicated to the Cause in all the French-style Revolutions of the 20th Century? Young students.

    Oh, and Patrice? There is a difference between an authoritarian system and a totalitarian system. An authoritarian system is content to rule and break heads to stay there. A totalitarian system is not satisfied until it has remade every thought and emotion in its population units into its image, i.e. Converts them into its Fundamentalism.

    “It is not enough for you to obey Big Brother, 6079 Smith W. You must LOVE BIG BROTHER with all your being.”
    — Comrade O’Brian, Inner Party, Airstrip One, Oceania, 1984


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    @ Patrice: I hear you about critiques – they were VERY difficult for me, back in the day (undergrad studio art major), and by no means were all of my profs emotionally mature, so… they sometimes turned into really nasty scenes.


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    Patrice wrote:

    It is the idea that evil is used to make good that is so unpalatable for those who have suffered at the hands of intimate others. It contaminates one’s view of God. In truth, evil never flows through the hand of God. He/She only works good out of the consequences of evil. It is the results of evil, not evil itself, that He/She heals so that good may reappear.

    What about the teaching that evil was for your discipline or chastizement but that God did not send the same evil? From what I can tell the cognative dissonance comes for the Calvinist because of their definition of Sovereignty which in and of itself causes problems and produces a sort of Narcissistic god that works everything for his own Glorification. The answer I usually get is that I do not believe God is Sovereign so I cannot understand it. Calvinism seems to plead a “special knowledge” for the true elect that believe that doctrine.


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    Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:

    .e. Enlightened Self-Criticism before Party Commissars.
    Who were the most dedicated muscle of Ayatollah Khomeini during the Iranian Revolution? Young students.
    Who were the most dedicated to the Cause in all the French-style Revolutions of the 20th Century? Young students.
    Oh, and Patrice? There is a difference between an authoritarian system and a totalitarian system. An authoritarian system is content to rule and break heads to stay there. A totalitarian system is not satisfied until it has remade every thought and emotion in its population units into its image, i.e. Converts them into its Fundamentalism.

    This is so true.


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    Kolya, Pascal is an interesting character, isn’t he? A dear friend of mine from college is actually writing his PhD dissertation on Pascal, but he’s a philosopher, and Pascal’s Jansenism is more just a biographical interest to him. I know Pascal mostly through majoring in math in college… All that to say, his brilliance as a thinker stands, regardless of his association with the Jansenists.

    Eagle, my dear friend, absolutely nothing of what you said on IMonk the other day was misconstrued 🙂 coincidentally, I much prefer Pope Francis to Pope Piper as well…:D


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    Points to consider:

    It seems that with each passing year, we hear more and more horror stories about how our brothers and sisters in Christ are being treated in church. We’re not talking about congregations that are being poisoned by heretical teaching. On the contrary, in some churches that claim to teach the true Gospel, there are major problems!

    I experienced this dynamic in the Seventies. Christian Cult Watch(TM) groups of the time defined “Cult” entirely in terms of theology and doctrine, NOT by controlling/abusive behavior. They routinely gave destructive congregations and their pastor/dictators clean bills of health after parsing their theology not only word-for-word but letter-by-letter. (It helped that these Christian Cult Watch groups were coming from a Fundagelical Dispy background just like the aberrant churches and fellowships.) Not only did this gaslight those who were suffering under these pastor/dictators, but their clean bill of theological health gave the pastor/dictators another weapon to use against their people — PROOF that I Am Not A Cult.

    But I slowly experienced a change in the way I thought of God and how I related to Him. He became, in my eyes, less loving and kind and more austere, distant, and – dare I say it? – arbitrary and just a little bit capricious. I realize now that I was afraid of God and certainly not in the “fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” sense.

    Where God resembles the old gods of nature, who would bless you with a bumper crop one minute then kill you with a tornado or famine the next, like an unpredictable violent alcoholic parent. In the words of Christian Monist, “A God who is Omnipotent but NOT benevolent.”

    Despite the fact that we ostensibly believed in “grace”, we had an obsessive and unhealthy fear over our sins: we used to sit in circles in “accountability groups” and confess to each other, in graphic detail, every sin we could recall. We also confronted each other with sins we perceived in that person’s life, and a guy unwilling to see how he was sinning (according to his brothers in the Lord) was quickly labeled as “prideful”.

    Morbid Introspection, as has been documented in the 17th Century journals of Massachusetts Bay Puritans. According to those journals, such morbid introspection over “Am I Really Saved? Am I Really Elect?” was the most common subject, to the point of OCD.

    The Sacred Heart devotion had been around for several centuries, but it was not terribly wide-spread. Towards the end of the 17th century, a woman named St. Margaret Mary received a vision of Jesus, in which He showed her His Sacred Heart, and instructed her to make it more widely known. The Sacred Heart is usually shown, as in the picture at the top of this post, as Christ’s human heart, bleeding and wrapped in the crown of thorns, with fire pouring out of the top.

    Isn’t the Sacred Heart devotion ROMISH(TM)? Remember “NO POPERY!”?


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    @ numo:
    Ach, sorry you had to go through that. It happened at my school too–a few students came to me plain trashed. Occasionally, I’d give half a 6-hr studio class to developing an understanding of what critique means. Eventually I wrote a critique format that the department instituted so students would have a better chance of being protected and yet be useful. Not that it was always followed—nasty is nasty—but at least there was something to appeal to.

    This idea of individuals laying out every little sin to the group, row on row, is like a nasty critique. It is foolish and damaging.

    What was your studio art specialty?


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    @ Patrice: Painting.

    And *good for you* re. your work on how to handle critiques – that’s fantastic! All art departments should have policies in place, imo.


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    Daisy wrote:

    The God of Calvinism, as taught or presented by some Calvinists, at times either resembles the punitive, fickle gods of ancient Greece, or the cruel, distant god of Islam, Allah. I don’t know about all branches of Islam, but in some of them, they teach that adherents do not have a guarantee of salvation, except to die in martyrdom, and that is by killing a Jew (or maybe any “infidel?”). That reminds me of Calvinism, the part about not being able to know if one is saved.

    A writer contact of mine in Louisville spoke of encountering a church which was heavily into Predestination Uber Alles, where anything less than Utter Determinism was denounced as “Denying the Soverignity of God”. He described the same symptoms that has plagued Islam for much of its history — the fatalism, the passivity, the despair, lack of morals in the leadership (“I want it, It Must Be God’s Will!”) and total inablility to learn from mistakes (“Not My Fault! God Willed It! God’s Will!”).

    From this, I concluded that most of what you describe above, Daisy, is fallout and side effects from Extreme Predestination beliefs. (And a quip about “Christlam” — how when Christianity goes sour, it curdles into something resembling Islam.)

    Calvin solved the paradox of Evil existing along with an Omnipotent and all-Good God the same way as Mohammed — put God beyond Good and Evil, so Omnipotent He Can Will Anything and who are we creatures to call it Evil? And the Calvinistas are more Calvinist than Calvin ever was, just as the Talibani are more Islamic than Mohammed. My regular writing partner has related run-ins with Young Restless and Truly Reformed Hyper-Calvinists who have gone into “Socratic Atheism” — God is not God, Predestination is because God can only Will what He Hath Been Predestined to Will. (From his description, they always seem to be Young, fairly well-off, and Full of Zeal for The Cause — in other places and times, they’d be Hitler Youth, Young Communist League, Student Radicals on fire for The Cause du Jour, or Objectivists touting Atlas Shrugged chapter-and-verse.)

    There’s also a BIG cognitive dissonance in this sort of Hyper-Calvinism, mentioned above in the Obsessive Morbid Introspection about “Am I Truly Elect?” Maybe the Khmer Rouge-level of Dedication to Calvinism is trying to convince themselves that They Are Truly Elect? Like Saddam’s Courtiers desperately trying to out-flatter all the others?


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    Ryan M. wrote:

    Kolya, Pascal is an interesting character, isn’t he? A dear friend of mine from college is actually writing his PhD dissertation on Pascal, but he’s a philosopher, and Pascal’s Jansenism is more just a biographical interest to him. I know Pascal mostly through majoring in math in college…

    I’m a former kid genius. I can confirm that just because you’re BRILLIANT doesn’t mean you’re going to be wrapped all that tight. As we say in D&D, “Intelligence 18, Wisdom 3.”


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    Eagle wrote:

    Maybe the movie Office Space is right about work (though that scares me personally)

    One of my co-workers has a bright red Swingline Stapler in her cubicle. My supervisor has a company mug with the logo of the fictitious company from Office Space.

    Remember: Dilbert is a documentary!


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    Ryan M. wrote:

    Kolya, my thoughts about Jansenism (and, of course, it’s very strong similarity to the “new Calvinism”) would take up way too much space, and clog up Dee and Deb’s comments section.

    My quickie definition of Jansenism is “HyperCalvinism with Rosaries.”


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    Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:

    My quickie definition of Jansenism is “HyperCalvinism with Rosaries.”

    Ok. I spewed my starbucks! Too funny!


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    @ Headless Unicorn Guy:Yes. It makes me so angry!

    “There is a difference between an authoritarian system and a totalitarian system. An authoritarian system is content to rule and break heads to stay there. A totalitarian system is not satisfied until it has remade every thought and emotion in its population units into its image, i.e. Converts them into its Fundamentalism.”

    People are unruly and will eventually kick against injustice and unfairness, and so, in my opinion, an authoritarian system will be required, in the end, to become totalitarian, in order to maintain itself. The logical conclusion to “power over” authoritarianism is totalitarianism.

    You quote: “It is not enough for you to obey Big Brother, 6079 Smith W. You must LOVE BIG BROTHER with all your being.”
– Comrade O’Brian, Inner Party, Airstrip One, Oceania, 1984

    Dee quoted: “… in rare cases, you might find that you disagree so strongly with something your pastor teaches, or that you disagree on a matter of such consequence, that it would hinder you from contentedly submitting to his leadership. In a case like this it may be best to quietly, lovingly find another church after discussing your intent to leave with the pastor.” – 9 Marks, “What should I do if I disagree with something my pastor said?” http://www.9marks.org/answers

    The requirements are the same; the only difference is that 9 Marks and the other illustrious groups mentioned on this site remain yet relatively small fiefdoms.


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    @ Anon 1:
    “What about the teaching that evil was for your discipline or chastizement but that God did not send the same evil?”

    That is an extrapolation of Calvinist beliefs about evil, right? (Although they are not the only ones who say so.) They don’t believe that God sends evil but that he uses it to accomplish his intentions, whether it’s for discipline, chastisement, for somebody else’s conversion, to save a society, whatever.

    Underlying this belief about God’s approach to evil is the sovereignty issue, which they can’t get past because it is beyond human understanding and yet they want to understand it. So what they make up is inevitably more about themselves than God because all they have to draw from are a few vague bits in the Bible and their own selves.

    1. God knows everything, therefore he must ordain it all.
    2. God works in everything, therefore he must have absolute control.
    3. God is glorious, therefore he must want everything to be about/for him.
    4. God is perfect, therefore everything imperfect must be completely abhorrent and unbearable to him.
    5. God is all-powerful, therefore he must be about complete freedom.

    Etc.

    You can see the character/personality of someone who would extrapolate in this way. It is someone who wants who wants order and security and finds that which is immensely beyond them to be vaguely threatening and downright frightening. It is the kind of character who would say, “You just don’t understand it because you are, umm, well sorry, but a little stupid. Oh, and also barely Christian.” Lol

    It would be useful for anyone entertaining thoughts of God to remember this from Pascal: “…The ends of things and their beginnings are impregnably concealed from him [man] in an impenetrable secret. He is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness out of which he was drawn and the infinite in which he is engulfed.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées #72 (Wiki)


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    @ Patrice: Love the Pascal quote, Patrice!


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    Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:

    Isn’t the Sacred Heart devotion ROMISH(TM)? Remember “NO POPERY!”?

    🙂 Sorry, HUG, I forgot… I’ll try to tone down the mackerel snapping…


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    Dee and Deb said:

    “We’re not talking about congregations that are being poisoned by heretical teaching. On the contrary, in some churches that claim to teach the true Gospel, there are major problems!”

    This struck a cord with me because I have friends who greatly admire Acts 29 and other similar circles…they seem to be continually preoccupied with the idea that many churches aren’t getting the Gospel right, and that modern North American Christianity is letting heresies in, etc. It always seemed weird to me that they were so convinced that the modern church had abandoned the true Gospel, because I do not know any churches which actually teach what I would consider “heresy” (do I know churches where people preach one thing but live another? Sure. But that’s not heresy, that’s hypocrisy!)

    Anyway, I thought it was really ironic, because these friends of mine would definitely err on the side of authoritarianism. They were the ones acting in an unhealthy manner, and it was because of some *perceived* need to guard against heresy, heresies that I wasn’t actually seeing in the rest of church life!

    So weird.


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    @ numo:
    Yes, they should! But it is more revolutionary than might be expected because there is an idea among many young artists, “when you criticize it, you criticize me” and an idea by self-obsessed art profs: “the way I do art is the only way there is”, and an idea by politically-correct profs, “if you frame your piece with a web of acceptable intellectual words, it is good art”, and an idea in the general culture, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. Good critique clarifies these issues.

    Actually, this is what Deb and Dee are doing–offering healthy methods of critique to a community that has lost any idea of it. And how revolutionary it seems to the community!

    Do you still paint? My MFA was mixed media/painting from Maryland Institute. I’m slowly getting back to it after my collapse but right now trying photoshop.


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    HUG, you echoed my thoughts. I’d also add Pol Pot’s eager teenage gunmen to that list, and Mao’s Red Guards. The Red Guards are a particularly sad story as I believe many of them were left high and dry to live out hard lives in the countryside after the Cultural Revolution burnt out – certainly other organs of Chinese stability, mainly the Army, didn’t take too keenly to them after a while and I think in Tibet the Army even gunned some of them down after they started raising a ruckus.

    Similarly surviving young soldiers of the Waffen SS came back to find that their leader was now reviled worldwide as a monster and their own country ashamed of their associations.

    Sad observer, I hear what you say. I hear this stuff about “the true Gospel not being preached” at times myself, and I wonder where the neo-Calvinist crowd draw the line.


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    @ Headless Unicorn Guy:
    They really say that in D&D? How wise of them! The number of IQ geniuses who are absolute idiots continues to astonish me.


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    @ Headless Unicorn Guy:
    “(And a quip about “Christlam” — how when Christianity goes sour, it curdles into something resembling Islam.)…And the Calvinistas are more Calvinist than Calvin ever was, just as the Talibani are more Islamic than Mohammed.”

    And the irony drips blood when the radical Christian community hates on the radical Islam community with the US military-industrial complex behind them. Bah.


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    @ numo:
    Hey Numes – oh how I remember the ‘crits’ at Art School…toughened me up somewhat of I remember rightly.


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    @ Eagle:
    “But work is treated more as doctrine in this crowd and less than “this is how you learn to figure out what you want to do.”

    Would you be willing to explain that a bit more? I had ye olde Dutch work-ethic pounded into me but this seems different.


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    To Ryan M.: This “Sacred Heart” thing is just too creepy for me – A picture of Jesus holding a bloody heart surrounded by a crown of thorns – CREEPY! Ah, but I’m very anti-Romanist – Rome will not have any authority over me. Anyways, what you’re said about SGM and their leadership’s lack of love is bang on! The doctrine of Calvinism is determinism no matter how you cut it, and it eventually leads to fatalism.

    To Patrice, HUG, Eagle, and Anon 1 regarding your discussion: The young men who are in the YRR/New Calvinist movement will burn out. I predict they will wax worse and worse, there is more shocking stuff to come out – but will they go out with a bang or a whimper? (I’m no prophet, it is just the logical consequence of their doctrines and practices – their pride and arrogance will lead to a hard landing.) I think that God is plaguing us with them as a punishment, partly because of sin and partly because those of us who are Christians haven’t been studying our Bibles enough. We have collectively become biblically and doctrinally illiterate and lazy – this is not to lay a guilt trip, just stating the obvious. We are far to reliant on our leaders, and we must realize that in a relationship with God, we are DIRECTLY connected to God.

    The YRR crowd are digging their own graves. In the meantime, keep collecting evidence about their misdeeds. A book still has been written that is critical of this movement, but it is coming folks…


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    @ @ Patrice:

    “The Calvinist thinks that absolutely everything that happens is God-ordained. Under that umbrella, humans’ new knowledge about how to repair hearts is also God-ordained. So, according to the SGM people (I conjecture), God ordained that the state would try to undermine their privilege as “special God-bearers” and he also ordained that they, oh-so-special-male-muckety-mucks, would fight it. Everything, good and bad, is worked out before-hand by God.”

    So- with regard to Bridges and his malformed heart valves designed by God in the womb (his words), the God ordained surgery will of God supercedes the God ordained malformed heart valve will of God. Right?

    Because, it’s the latest/newest/next thing that comes into your life that is now the current God ordained will. However one acts…is God’s will. Convenient.


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    Patrice wrote:

    t would be useful for anyone entertaining thoughts of God to remember this from Pascal: “…The ends of things and their beginnings are impregnably concealed from him [man] in an impenetrable secret. He is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness out of which he was drawn and the infinite in which he is engulfed.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées #72 (Wiki)

    So does this mean that if I just pule and grovel low enough that all will be cool and I won’t find myself consigned to flames of woe?


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    @ Gavin:

    Excellent description of SGM, IMO.


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    @ Kolya & Ryan M.:

    Now you guys have piqued my interest. I’m going to have to look up this Jansenism thing. I know nothing about it at all.


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    From A W Tozer
    (quote) God will not hold us responsible to understand the mysteries of election. predestination and the divine soverignty. The best and safesty way to deal with these truths is to raise our eyes to God, and in deepest reverence say “Oh Lord, thous knowest.” Those things belong to the deep and mysterious Prfound of God’s Omnicience. Prying into them may make theologians, but it will never make saints


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    @ Diane:
    “So- with regard to Bridges and his malformed heart valves designed by God in the womb (his words), the God ordained surgery will of God supercedes the God ordained malformed heart valve will of God. Right?”

    Almost. There is no superceding because God ordained that Bridges would have a malformed heart at a time in history when humans’ could repair it and that it would be repaired. If Bridges had been born 150 yrs ago, the non-reparable malformed heart would have been ordained.

    “However one acts…is God’s will. Convenient.” Not really convenient because if you sin, you get consequences. God knowing/choosing what will happen never paints over the normal results of sin because he is a pure God.

    When believed to the nth degree, one might begin to scour one’s self continually–hence students confessing every little sin to the group, and others worrying about whether they are truly elected. Because it is all about God’s purity and power and less about his generosity and very little about the individual human, one can feel “not there” in every way except as a sinner. And then, if redeemed, it might also be only in the sense that one becomes an emptied vehicle through which the HS acts on the world.

    It is all very grand and sad, an operatic tragedy. And it’s goofy. Most traditional Calvinists don’t thoroughly believe it. The Calvinistas do, sort of.

    It is strange but not actually complicated, no matter how sophisticated they like to think it is. If I am unclear, it’s because I’m not doing an adequate job explaining, so ask away.


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    Where’s the love in SGM?

    It’s there every morning when CJ looks in the mirror and recites the creed: “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me”. Then as he goes throughout his household, his spousal unit, offspring, and sons-in-law recite: “He’s good enough, he’s smart enough, and doggone it, we like him”. He stops in to SGL where servants swoon and adoring troubadors sing “He’s good enough, he’s smart enough, and doggone it, we like him”. He skypes with seminary presidents, ministry leads, and conference planners. They too recite the creed and pronounce him fit; if they noticed that His Baldness was unclothed, they never let on. To them he is good enough, smart enough, they like him and he is dressed appropriately for the occasion.

    The love in and about SGM is in perpetuating the lie and bowing before the deception.

    Residing on the other side of the spell,
    Former SG Pastor


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    @ Muff Potter:
    I’ve practiced puling but didn’t like it and therefore can’t recommend it. 🙂

    We can’t know what we can’t know and therefore it’s foolish to insist we have knowledge about it. Such as what it’s like to be God.


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    Ryan –

    Thanks for sharing your story. Sorry that life was so lifeless for you in SGM. If they keep hearing the same message about the lack of love, maybe they (and all the authoritarian leaders) will eventually get it. But I’m not holding my breath.


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    Deb –

    Thanks for the clear definition of what love is. I’m not sure where some leaders get their definition of love, but it doesn’t seem to be from the same bible that I’ve read.


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    The similarities between this story and my own are crazy! I grew up in SGM, struggled with crippling doubt about the state of my predestination, attended a Christian college and a second SGM church, and ultimately ended up Catholic (my confirmation is a week from today.) Ironically, the name of my new church is “Sacred Heart.”

    Thanks to Dee and Deb for posting this at all but also for starting it with love. I hope to see a less fragmented Christianity in the years to come and the only way it’s going to happen is if we remember to love others more than ourselves. It’s a timely reminder for me that your denomination doesn’t determine your salvation.


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    Bridget,

    Yep, the definition of love is right there in the Bible. The Calvinistas should spend more time studying God’s Word and less time reading/promoting their colleagues’ books.


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    FSGP,

    Sadly, I believe you’re right. 🙁


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    I grew up in a church called Sacred Heart. And though I’m no longer Catholic, I do appreciate how God can use His multi-faceted ways to draw people.

    Talking about the sacred heart does bring up a sweet memory for me, though. At my Mom’s funeral (in Sacred Heart Church where I grew up), her casket sat at the front of the aisle throughout the service. At the very end, my four sisters and I surrounded the casket and sang, “Heart of Jesus”, which talks about the sacred heart. It’s a song they used to sing when they were doing the dishes at night. Sweet moment. The congregation even clapped, which never happens in a Catholic church.


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    @ Patrice:

    Thanks Patrice!

    “And it’s goofy.”

    I will leave it at that, lol.


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    I have become convinced in the last few years that by far the most powerful and widespread source of deception among those seeking God is not false doctrine. It is sound doctrine.

    As that Paul chap observed: we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffs up. But love builds up. Now, he didn’t have the benefit of Calvin’s teachings like we do, but let’s cut him some slack; Paul was a child of his time, and lived in the simple days of the early church when they thought (bless ’em) that “love” was all that mattered. At least, that’s what you’d think from reading some of their stuff. If I … can fathom all knowledge [er – that would include doctrinal knowledge, Paul] and have no love, I am nothing.

    What on earth was that fellow smoking? Thank God we’ve moved on from those days, and the true Gospel (that is, the gospel Gospel) has emerged from that fog of insipid liberalism.


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    The ‘C-h-r-i-s-t’ Core: “Three Simple Truths?”

    Eph. 6:24.—‘ Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity…’

    HowDee,

    hmmm…

    The above scripture text declares the three simple truths that lie at the ‘core’ of Christianity: 

    ready?

    The central ‘force’ of true Christianity is ‘love’.  ❤

    The central ‘person’ of true Christianity is of course ‘the Lord Jesus Christ’. ☺

    (not de illustrious JohnnyC…)

    The central ‘mark’ of true Christianity is ‘grace’. ☺

    Bonus: 

    “The central ‘theme’ of true Christianity” is:

    *Christ came to seek and save the lost. ☺

    n’

    *Christ came to bruise the serpents head, and lead a host of captives free! ☺

    Yahooooooo!

    Christ uses the simple message of the Gospel to lead a host of captives free. ☺

    (He’s done smack’d dat ole Beelzebub) 

    huh?

    Q: What is the ‘gospel’, anyway?

    —-> God so loved the world (YOU) that he gave his only begotten Son, that who-so-ever (meanin’ YOU) believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. –For God did not send His Son into the world to ‘condemn’ the world, but through Him, that it might be ‘saved’. -Simple as pie!-

    LetzUnpackit:

    The ‘true’ gospel is:

    A. God loves you! ☺

    B. He Gave His only Son to save your ‘soul’ from eternal death! ☺

    C. If you believe on Jesus, you will be saved, and have eternal life, spending it with Him! ☺

    🙂 Take-away:

    No FUBAR theo_cr@p, no rhetoric, just plain ole good news of what Jesus did for ‘all the world’. 

    …get your ‘soul’ fixed up today?

    hear! hear!

    “Joy to da world, da Lord has come…” ☺

    hum, hum, hum…

    …there is no way to know with absolute certainty in SGM logos sōtēria, that a person is part of God’s household?

    What?

    SGM, what?!? ‘god’ are you serving? n’ what?!? book R U readin’?

    Crunnnnnnnnch!

    * 1 Timothy 4:10 That is why we labor and strive, because we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all people, and especially of those who believe. ☺

    * Titus 2:11 For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. ☺

    Kirrrrrrrrrrrk!

    S_G_M,  …S_G_M, rearranging those proverbial H.O.S. SGM deck chairs can be quite hazardous to your spiritual health…da spiritual life you save may be your own?

    toooooooooooot!

    Sopy


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    Sopy – yes, now, that Jesus Christ bloke. Check out the end of Luke 7. A good, sound, biblically-educated theologian has been gracious enough to ask him to dinner, and a prostitute gatecrashes the evening and starts off with a sad display of unbridled emotionalism. The discerning theologian is, naturally, aware that this is not gospel appropriate; but not the carpenter from Nazareth. He actually pronounced this woman “saved”. Did she confess that she was a sinner? Did she understand that GodSentHisSonJesusToDieOnTheCrossForHerSins™? Did she believe in the virgin birth? Penal Substitutionary Atonement? How on all earth could Jesus know she was saved?

    Irresponsible. That’s what happens when you have “love” without proper theology.


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    Senator

    If you would like to tell your story, let us know.  Welcome to TWW.


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    FSGP

    Thnak you for being willing to share your thoughts. You are a very important part of the story that many of the Reformed Leaders are studiously ignoring. If Mohler had worked for CJ, he would have been “degifted” immediately. 


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    Ryan

    It is important to realize that Jesus’ heart was broken and stopped beating. I went to a talk by a GI surgeon who talked to a group of medical people on the physiological effects of crucifixion. That heart is closer to the truth then we might imagine.


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    Dee,

    I attended that talk about what happened to Jesus’ body during the crucifixion, too.  It was a chapel service at our kids’ Christian school. 


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    @ justabeliever:

    Thanks for Tozer quote. The beginning and the end: trust in an incomparably great God who is astonishingly kind and generous. A light burden of mystery and grace delightful to bear. And equally delightful to pass along.


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    SGM Proverbial BlowHards: “Sanity Substitutionary Method Perhaps?”

    @ Nick Bulbeck 

    Nick,

    Thanx for da laugh! 🙂

    *

    SGM…

    “Irresponsible” ?

    “without proper theology” ?

    “discerning theologian(s)” ?

    What?

    hmmm…

    (grin)

    hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha…

    (there goes ma coffee!) ☺

    <(_)'' ………

    -snort-

    ;~)


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    SenatorDancergurl,

    Thanks for your comment, and welcome to TWW. When I was a student at Duke, I had a roommate who was Catholic, and she was extremely serious about her faith. She often prayed the rosary in our room, and I think she attended mass every day. She invited me to come one time, and I gladly accepted. It was held in the Memorial Chapel in Duke Chapel (where the Dukes are entombed). I greatly admired her devotion to Jesus Christ.

    I have had Catholic friends through the years. Most recently, my co-leader in Girl Scouts was a devout Catholic. We worked together for about six years, and sometimes we discussed faith issues. I have no doubt that she is a committed Christian.

    My husband and I recently attended a Catholic funeral because the mother of my hubby’s co-worker passed away. We both thought it was beautiful!

    Although I am Southern Baptist and will in all likelihood remain in that denomination, I have tremendous respect for the Catholics I have known through the years.

    Finally, my hubby and I had dinner at the Catholic Church just up the street for the last two Fridays. During Lent, they serve a delicious shrimp/fish dinner (as a fundraiser), and we look forward to it every year. 🙂


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    Thanks Dee, I recognize the traumatic physiological aspects of the crucifixion of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ – he bled and died a horrible death for the sins of all mankind (yes, Calvinists, His death is sufficient for all, and the offer of salvation is made to all, but only those who believe on Jesus Christ have their sins paid for).

    However, I reject both Romanist doctrine and mysticism of any kind. In any case, people are free to believe what they want to believe and as libertarian I respect that.


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    @ SenatorDancergurl:
    Senator, welcome to the Catholic Church. May you be blessed.

    May all Christians be blessed as we remember the death and Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus

    OT about Blaise Pascal. It was his writings that helped lead Takashi Nagai, a Japanese radiologist to Christianity which helped him lead in the aftermath of the atomic bomb at Nagasaki.


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    @ Patrice: I don’t currently, but I’ve been sketching a bit… nothing I would call finished drawings.

    I got my degree during the 70s, when few people who taught painting were teaching actual technique (y’know, how to work in oils vs. acrylics and all that), and my work – and that of others – suffered for it. It was as if you were supposed to already know what to do.

    My favorite thing used to be working in w/c with Japanese and Chinese brushes – I wish I could do either Chinese or Japanese calligraphy, but I don’t know either language, and finding a teacher where I live would be very difficult. I also liked working with inks underneath the w/c (or acrylic washes), and then a bit of pastel for highlights after I was finished. In many ways, i feel like I need to start from scratch, because I really *need* to unlearn a lot of things – both attitudes (I had some very destructive profs) and actual technique. Would *really* appreciate prayers, in fact, because I would like to feel free of the old garbage… and, most of all, to do what I would like to do, rather than feel like I’m still having to conform to someone else’s standards.

    MD Institute, eh? I lived in the D.C. area for 21 years, so I do know it, though not well…

    And I agree completely re. what people do with crits, though the whole PC aspect wasn’t there in my time.


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    @ Ryan:
    When you say mysticism, to what are you referring? This is not an area in which I have a lot of knowledge.

    My father came from the Russian Orthodox faith. I had many friends who were Catholic. I am a garden variety evangelical. I enjoy exploring our commonalities and differences. When I was a new Christian, I attended the prayer meetings of Fr. John Bertolucci in upstate New York. It was pretty cool. The nuns could really sing. I also have had some friends who are part of the evangelical Catholic movement.

    I may have some differences in doctrine but I do not doubt their faith for one minute.


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    @ Nick Bulbeck:
    🙂


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    @ Patrice: I should add that I meant few people were teaching technique because so many of them hadn’t learned much of it themselves, having grown up during the time when Abstract Expressionism was The Big Thing.

    It was hard to find people who worked in other styles, still, at that time, though that started to change by the time I graduated.


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    @ dee: iirc, the 1st person to publish a study of this was a French physician (maybe he was a surgeon? can’t recall now), way back in the 50s or early 60s. I’ve read his analysis, and it’s excellent.

    but I am totally blanking on his name, the title of the book, etc. etc. etc.


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    SenatorDancergurl wrote:

    The similarities between this story and my own are crazy! I grew up in SGM, struggled with crippling doubt about the state of my predestination, attended a Christian college and a second SGM church, and ultimately ended up Catholic (my confirmation is a week from today.) Ironically, the name of my new church is “Sacred Heart.”

    Congratulations and welcome! We were confirmed at the East Vigil last year… it is one of the most wonderful experiences you can have. Savor every moment!


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    @ Anna A: Hey, thanks for the info. on Takashi Nagai – i did not know that!

    Pascal could be extreme in his private devotional life, but he is quite an inspiration to me, in many ways. Come to think of it, I can’t recall him being harsh and judgmental, but emphasizing the love of God…


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    Yes, I enjoyed Nick Bulbeck’s little skit as well :-). And also the Pascal/A W Tozer quotes, which are timely reminders. Maybe the whole sovereignty/predestination thing is a bit like quantum mechanics or some other paradoxical aspect of modern physics?

    And oh yes, the crits… a friend of mine is doing an art course, but the bit she doesn’t like is having to talk about artists, artistic movements and social factors, etc…. she’d rather just paint. What Numo and BeakerJ have said re “crits” reminds me of a rather dry interview given by Mike Barson, the keyboard player of Madness. He said that in his time at art college the lecturers seemed less interested in technical ability than being “original”. I got the impression that he found this irritating in both visual art and music.


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    @ Kolya: It is irritating, in both instances. (I’m a percussionist, btw.)

    Agreed on Nick’s comments as well!

    I think that we all must allow ourselves to see that there are paradoxes – in this life, in belief – that we will never, ever be able to figure out. One thin I like about the high church-type churches is that none of them try to minimize that.


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    Numo, Pascal could be a bit unbalanced in his own life, I agree. He is also one of those men who died early so that, like Bonhoeffer, we can’t really tell which way he would have developed his ideas.


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    @ Kolya: Agreed… he’s one of those folks I’ve wondered about from time to time, in terms of what he’d have done if he’d have lived longer.

    I really wish my French was good enough for reading the Pensées in the original, since I think they’re very hard to translate properly, but… maybe someday?


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    @ Ryan: Ever read John of the Cross’s “Dark Night of the Soul”?

    Might surprise you, Ryan!


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    Patrice wrote:

    And the irony drips blood when the radical Christian community hates on the radical Islam community with the US military-industrial complex behind them. Bah.

    Remember how viciously the Nazis (Extreme Radical Fascists) and Stalinists (Extreme Radical Communists) hated each other? To where they became funhouse mirror reflections of each other in attitude and deed?


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    Patrice wrote:

    They really say that in D&D? How wise of them! The number of IQ geniuses who are absolute idiots continues to astonish me.

    Not in any of the official rulebooks; “Intelligence 18, Wisdom 3” was a gamers’ expression.


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    Deb wrote:

    Although I am Southern Baptist and will in all likelihood remain in that denomination, I have tremendous respect for the Catholics I have known through the years.

    I like C.S. Lewis’s image of Christianity as a hall with doors leading off to many rooms. We live in the rooms, not the hall. But the hall is shared by everyone because it is common to the whole house.


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    Love doesn’t hurt, and if it does, it’s not love.


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    lilyrosemarie,

    Great word picture! Thanks for sharing Lewis’ description of Christianity.


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    justabeliever wrote:

    From A W Tozer
    (quote) God will not hold us responsible to understand the mysteries of election. predestination and the divine soverignty. The best and safesty way to deal with these truths is to raise our eyes to God, and in deepest reverence say “Oh Lord, thous knowest.” Those things belong to the deep and mysterious Prfound of God’s Omnicience. Prying into them may make theologians, but it will never make saints


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    Jocile

    Welcome. Great comment.


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    Thank you so much for today’s blog. When I returned to my hometown, I found my whole family was involved in this extremist theology. Though I was the first one to come to faith about 35 years ago, now they are all concerned about my salvation. It is horrible. My husband and I are in a centering prayer group at a Catholic Church in Apex. They allow for the mystery in God’s love for his creation. I can rest in this while my family debates predestination and losing one’s salvation. I don’t hear God’s voice in any of that. Ann


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    Ann,

    It is ironic that your family members are concerned about your salvation.  I worry about those who are convinced that they belong to the ‘true church’. 

    You may not know that before we started blogging, Dee and I attended the SGM church in Apex. Incredibly, I still remember the date – January 25, 2009 – and it is the one and only time we heard C.J. Mahaney in person.


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    @ numo:
    Yes, I was undergrad during the same pathetic era. Eight years later, MICA added very little technical knowledge, so I learned on my own and it was not thorough. When I began to teach, I was scrambling one day ahead of my students because I didn’t want them to get the same education I had. Oy! Thankfully, my teaching improved over time.

    I will pray for you, numo. I’ll pray that you find your heart’s desire, that creativity runs freely, and that your hands become just skillful enough to give adequate shape to both. Washes and inks and pastels are gentle, quick and exact media. And I’ll pray that you understand how beautifully God made you, so you can discover delight, which will cause the crappy old voices to fade and allow you to stand next to anyone without apology.


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    @ Headless Unicorn Guy:
    “Remember how viciously the Nazis (Extreme Radical Fascists) and Stalinists (Extreme Radical Communists) hated each other? To where they became funhouse mirror reflections of each other in attitude and deed?”

    Isn’t it bizarre? I sometimes over-simplify and then scold myself, but I keep returning to the idea that there are only a few evil things that humans do, and they simply repeat them, as if evil (in its broadest meaning) is only a trite one-trick pony in various costumes.


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    Today is my birthday. I am grateful to be alive and to have a savior that loved me enough to die (and not stay dead) for me. My faith is in him and not in a creed nor any pastor or preacher.

    I am reminded, from the post and some of the comments, of an experience. I was at my first Emmaus Walk (not really a walk), which is a three-day religious experience organized primarily by groups from Methodist churches, but some others as well. Our group was very interdenominational. We were housed on a Catholic retreat center and worshiped several times a day in the chapel, where hung a life size or a bit larger crucifix. What I noticed was that the knees and elbows were bloody and bruised, and scraped up a bit. It had never occurred to me that the knees and elbows would be so damaged due to the falls and the other treatment. We did some of the communion by walking up, almost under the crucifix, to partake of the elements, right close to the image of the broken body and the blood flowing from Jesus. It was a very powerful experience.

    I recommend the Emmaus Walk program to every one. It is a Thursday evening through Sunday afternoon experience. Contact a local Methodist church to see if there is an Emmaus organization in your area. It is worth the time and cost to go. It will deepen your faith commitment.


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    HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ARCE!! 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

    Many blessings as you enjoy the coming year.


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    @ Patrice: Thank you, Patrice – I am much more oriented toward what I might call a kind of “gestural” way of movement and brushwork (etc.) than anyone with whom I either studied or who was on the faculty at my school. And – like an online friend from another country – I didn’t necessarily want to create “Art,” but something else. My French friend does animal portraiture, illustrations and even comic strips – and her work is very funny and charming.

    It might be that I’m headed in a similar direction…


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    @ Patrice: My other love was sculpture – even sheet-metal fabrication. If I’d known earlier, I think I’d probably have switched majors. there’s something about the hands-on-ness of sculpture that I really love. (Not coincidentally, I’m a hand percussionist. While I can do some work with sticks and brushes, the tactile aspects of hands-only just grabs me in a way that other kinds of playing likely never will.)


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    BeakerJ:

    And I feel bad because I was pretty blunt with an article about Calvinism that popped up on my fb feed from a Francis Schaeffer page. The reformed Pastor that runs it proof- texted me & when I pointed out that just because I didn’t agree with his conclusions didn’t mean I hadn’t read the Bible, then cemented by someone calling me venomous & asking if I ‘d read the Bible all the way through to get the flow of it. Cue head banging. I wasn’t very gracious & now I’m off to cry in the bath. How long O Lord?

    You sound like me. I am never gracious when it comes to Calvinism, even though I try to be. I am unable to hold back. And when someone tells me with a straight face and a cold heart that a “loving” God ordains horrific child rape, why should I hold back?


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    I’m in the process of reading Bear Grylls’ autobiography (Grylls is an English chappie who’s into this kind of stuff), and I’m at the part where he’s describing his time at Eton, a prominent fee-paying school in the posh part of England. He and his pals got up to all kinds of rule-breaking exploits (such as climbing the outside of the buildings) but he observed about the school regimen in general:

    Eton’s great strength is that it does encourage interests – however wacky. From stamp-collecting to a cheese and wine club, mountaineering to juggling, if the will is there then the school will help you. Eton was only ever intolerant of two things: laziness and a lack of enthusiasm.

    Pondering the biography the Bible Scriptures give us of Jesus, it seems to me that he (and, therefore, the Father) is similarly intolerant of, more or less, two things: pick your own terminology, of course, but I’d describe them as unbelief and “religion”. To expand slightly, unbelief is the attitude that believes either than God cannot do something (cf the population of Nazareth), or that God isn’t good (cf the wicked lazy servant who buried his master’s money in the ground because he thought his master was cruel and hard and looking for an opportunity to take from him and punish him). And “religion” is the insistence that God agrees with me, and not with you: or the attempt to make God my personal property to whom I alone control access.

    I think you all get where I’m coming from here.


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    But feel free to chuck some water-bombs if not…


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    Arce,

    Happy Belated Birthday! May you have many more…


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    @ Nick Bulbeck:
    Nick the arrogance that some have about “their” religion certainly has to turn off unbelievers and believers alike. Where is their humility?


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    mot – I think it wouldn’t hurt if we (the Church at large, I mean) improved the story we tell about the “good news”. At the moment, it goes something like this:

    1) You’re a sinner, and always have been
    2) “Sinner” means that God hates you just for being born
    3) So if you died now, God would send you to hell and you’d deserve it
    3.1) If you think that’s unfair, it’s because you’re a sinner
    4) But the good news is that he SentHisSonJesus™ to die on the cross for your sin
    5) So God’s dealt with his issues against you, provided you convert to our religion

    Not only is this not, in the scheme of things, particularly good news. It sits uneasily alongside the totality of what Jesus announced.


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    @ mot:
    Yeah, this may have been the comment that got me labelled ‘venomous’, I was actually very frustrated by the instant assumption that they had read the bible & I obviously hadn’t :
    ‘You are assuming I haven’t read, reread & read these passages again because I haven’t come to the same conclusions as you. I’m embarrassed for you as I read that as it assumes (in a yawningly familiar way, despite what you say about what you once professed) that non-Calvinists just haven’t read the Bible & patting them on the the head with some proof texts will set them right. There’s another straw man that some Cavinists seem addicted to :’ only we bother to read the Bible’. It’s intellectually very dishonest & very unloving to do this. Sorry to be a bit blunt, but it becomes wearisome to be treated as an intellectual dwarf by the Biblically Privileged.’


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    HAPPY BIRTHDAY ARCE

    Arce is one of our longest and most devoted readers.


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    @ Beaker:

    “There’s another straw man that some Cavinists seem addicted to: ‘only we bother to read the Bible.'”

    You mean like Reconstructionists claim to be the only ones who “apply God’s Word to every area of life!”? (Decoded: all you non-Reconstructionists who don’t believe in ditching the Constitution and replacing it with Deuteronomy aren’t applying the Bible to government, because we all know there can be no other opinion about godly government except ours.)


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    BTW, have a nice Palm Sunday, everybody… : )


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    Ryan and Dee,
    I also think that the depiction of the Sacred Heart is creepy. But maybe that’s because I’ve been watching Once Upon a Time. And it appears some fraternal orders have had some influence in stained glass art work of it. However I do not reject all mysticism. I believe that many visions that people have today are as true as they are in the Bible. 1John 4 says do not believe every spirit. I believe that John in context was specifically referring to not believing every spirit that comes to you in the name of love. I do not question the true faith and salvation of many mystics, but I do question some of their visions. Even if their visions are true, the mystic themselves and us the hearers still have to be careful not to make an idol out of it. The vision Peter was given for including the Gentiles also showed the heart of God. Since I am hungry right now, the ‘pig in a blanket’ is talking to me:-/


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    My whole life involved in church. We lived a church centered life. At some point I realized I could not invite people to come there anymore. It no longer stood for what I believed. My beliefs had not changed, the church had changed. People I knew and believed to be my brothers and sisters in Christ accepted the change and moved on. I could not. When I saw people walk the aisle to accept Christ I rejoiced but I felt extreme sorrow for them because I knew the would be judged, classified, and given a number if they did not talk like, look like etc. I really felt ill thinking about that. I stood back and tried to looked at the church the way someone outside the church looked at it. I could not find any reason anyone would just decide to go there. If they came seeking God what would they find? I left – it has been 8 years. There is much I miss about church but what I miss is not there anymore.

    P.S. I must have missed the point with the bud light utube. I only found it very offensive.


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    Pat,
    I hear you about church, I am getting mor disillusioned all the time, especially with what I see as the group think mentality on unimportant issues made too important. I just watched my husband go out the door to church again without me, I tried to go but was running late…again! Just realized that I’m start ing to feel like I SHOULD go rather than WANT to go and that’s why I’m getting so tardy.
    As far as Eagle posting the Bud Light youtube, if he wasn’t referring to Mars Hill Driscoll, it would be just plain offensive to me as well. But the point IS that Mars Hill Driscoll IS offensive. Correct me if I’m wrong, Eagle.


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    I meant to say that Mars Hill Driscoll is THAT offensive to me.


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    Constricted Faith: ” Let The Little Children Come To Jesus?

    HowDee,

    The New Testament Gospels Books give us a story about the donkey who carried a ‘King’.

    ok.

    Are we now hearing a story about a King who must needs ‘judge’ a proverbial ‘SGM donkey’?

    huh?

    Maybe this proverbial ‘church donkey’ is not alone?

    What?

    Dr. R.C. Sproul has recently written about a ‘gospel’ donkey who carried a King,  in an attempt to bring the Bible Gospel story about Jesus alive for our children.

    hmmm…

    For four years, Wartburg Watch has been writing about a certain ‘King’ Jesus, and a proverbial ‘gospel donkey’ Charles Joseph Mahaney, who has apparently darkened the Gospel story and allowed the damage of the little children Christ came to save.  

    huh?

    This behavior has apparently occurred under the ‘watchful’ cover of certain Neo-Calvinist big wigs? 

    “Captain, O’ my Captain?”

    “Reflections??”

    “Defender?”

    “Gospel elephant?”

    “Legal beagles dine with the Neo-Calvinist crowd? “

    “SGM church plant in Louisville, Lost?”

    Silence is golden?

    Excuse me?

    Didn’t Jesus say to let the little children come to Him, and prevent them not?

    (What has happened to these little ones?)

    Are these Neo-Calvinist men welding a type of supremeacy, rendering a certain portion of Jesus’ Church , submissive, helplessness, weakness; impotent, and powerlessness?

    Are we now beginning to hear the rest of the C.J. Mahaney ‘gospel’ story of blackmail, ministry theft, spiritual abuse, and apparent criminal cover-up of the conduct of perpetrators who would practice pedophilia upon the very children under the watchful umbrella ‘care’ of the ‘Sovereign Grace’ church ministry under C.J. Mahaney’s direct charge?  

    (sadface)

    I seriously doubt that the ‘King’ who rode the donkey into Jerusalem on that fateful day, is very amused. 

    Neither will the Maryland civil justice system C. J. Mahaney has apparently fled from to ‘avoid’ mounting witness pressure and a certain sticky legal prosecution that was soon to follow…

    These certain Neo-Calvinists apparently  have their skirts above their faces, and their nakedness clearly demonstrated for all the world to see?

    Are these men faithfully representing and presenting the Gospel to a needy world, and a suffering church? Or just presenting and delivering gall?  Something bitter, spiritually defeating, outrageously insolent, and a blatant Christ effrontery?

    The Lord has a plea against the ‘pastors’ of His flock?

    What?

    Are these men kneeling before a faux crucifix, perhaps?

    Q: What more could Jesus have done for you? Jesus offers you daily the Bread of Life and His Word, but you yielded the Church wickedness?

    Q: He gave you living water from His side, but you have given His Church gall to drink?

    Q: He has led you from slavery to freedom, but you have led His people to a barren cross by your mounting sins?

    Q: He gave you a royal crown, but yet you have crowned His people under your care with great burdens and thorns?

    Q: When you do these things, shall He, the Lord, be deaf to it? Or do you think that He is like yourself?

    Christ Jesus came to seek and save the lost, not to treat them like depraved worms to abuse and discard at will.

    Q: Jesus would gather His ‘chicks’ only to have them scattered by proverbial white washed tombs, and fanged flea-ridden ‘church’ banded marauders?  

    You can make a mockery of God Almighty only for so long…

    (He is merciful, long suffering, and under His wings the little ones will find care for their eternal souls.) 

    Yet, at some point He, The Almighty, is most likely gonna say:

    This Is Too Much?

    hmmm…

    Sopy


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    Pat, you are echoing many people. Most folks won’t say a word but will go along because they do not want to cause trouble. That is why we are seeing what we are seeing in the evangelical world. It has become about the pastors not Jesus Christ.

    I come from a faith tradition that respected dissent and everyone was heard and was a part of making decisions for the Body. Now it is very rare to see that. Now, like children, we must have a small group of men that make all decisions even spiritual ones. The evangelical pew sitters are feasting on milk and seem to be somewhat content. Those who aren’t are leaving.

    I have seen this sort of attitude in many aspects of life over the last few years. Too many are checking their brains at the doors of life and saying to the government: Take care of me physically. To the church: Take care of me spiritually. Tell me what to think, believe and do.

    And those of us who do not want to go along are trouble makers and “selfish”. Go figure.


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    Patti

    I know exactly what you are referring to! I watch Once Upon a Time as well. Too funny. I always get a stab in my heart when they crush one on the show.


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    @ Nick Bulbeck:

    How do they know they are saved and we are lost?


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    Sopwith wrote:

    For four years, Wartburg Watch has been writing about a certain ‘King’ Jesus, and a proverbial ‘gospel donkey’ Charles Joseph Mahaney, who has apparently darkened the Gospel story and allowed the damage of the little children Christ came to save.

    Dang Sopy, you’re right on the money again. I knew Mahaney was talkin’ out of his ass.


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    @ mot:

    They know it is they, not we, who are saved because the Bible so clearly agrees with them. This is because they have special ability to determine which bits of the Bible are to be followed to the letter, which are to be interpreted (and in what way) and which are no longer applicable today. They get this special ability from studying the Bible.

    We don’t get it from studying the Bible because we’re deceived when we read the Bible because we read it with impure motives. So, when you and I read the Bible, we’re wantonly trying to make it agree with us so that it justifies the sinful behaviour we’ve already decided we want to indulge in.


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    @ Nick Bulbeck:
    How will I ever know if I am saved or lost?


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    @ Nick Bulbeck:

    The questons is what makes them think their motives are more pure than mine or yours? I propose two possibilities:

    1. They believe they have a better understanding because they have seminary degrees and are more intellectually capable of understanding the bible.

    2. They have been given (often simply assumed) the responsibility of leading and are therefore anointed to tell others what to believe.

    People believe that these are the two options and submit themselves to these options. If believers stopped submitting to these leaders, religious institutions would be empty.

    The Reformation was the biggest upset along the lines of releasing people from these types of leaders. When we look back at history, we see that the people soon submitted to leaders again — it was just a different form of the same religious institution.

    I think there have been a few good leaders in the institutions, just not near enough to go around. Could it be that the two options above are not the qualifications for Christian leaders at all and this is not the way the Church should be functioning? There is always fear in letting “traditions” go and starting at a different place than what we have been told is appropriate.


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    Per the Sacred Heart: I only recently learned what the phrase “sacred heart” meant and at first I found it completely bizarro. The post here helped me understand it a little more though. The symbolism (crown of thorns, fire, etc.) seems to be orthodox, and of course the idea that Jesus loves you is great, though I am leery of mysticism. I’m not sure I would automatically discount every vision but Patti is right, there needs to be some way to check them. I’ve never read any mystics (I’m a pretty down-to-earth person myself so that kind of thing isn’t what I would naturally tend toward anyway) but some of them got pretty weird, from what I understand.

    How are we defining “mysticism,” anyway? Because some “discernment ministry” types I’ve read online seem to think just about everything that isn’t IFB is “mysticism”…


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    What I’ve gotten before is the, “Well if you understood the Greek/Hebrew…” I was debating some point with a know-it-all pastor once when he patronizingly said, “Well, I really can’t debate that point with you because you don’t understand the Greek here.”
    I informed him that God spoke fluent English, and I could explain the English to him if necessary.

    We didn’t remain at that church very long after that…

    I never was very good at that meek and quiet thing.

    @ Beakerj:


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    Hester wrote:

    How are we defining “mysticism,” anyway? Because some “discernment ministry” types I’ve read online seem to think just about everything that isn’t IFB is “mysticism”…

    Real hoot since “discernment ministry” types See Things(TM) like MD, except they see “God Revealing” DEMONS and WITCHES under every bed instead of hawt action atop the bed. Like they ODed on the Malleus Malefecarium or something.

    As I understand it, “discernment” originally meant being able to see beneath the surface to “discern” reality, NOT getting shiver-in-the-liver/burning-in-the-bosom omens of DEMONS everywhere. Did Screwtape do some of his “redefinitions” here, too?


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    mot wrote:

    How will I ever know if I am saved or lost?

    Join Jonathan Edwards and all those New England Puritan personal journals in obsessive morbid introspection.


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    mot wrote:

    @ Nick Bulbeck:
    How will I ever know if I am saved or lost?

    “For I know Whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day. Hold fast the form of sound words which thou hast heard of me, in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus. That good thing which was committed unto thee keep by the Holy Ghost Which dwelleth in us.”

    Assurance is anchored in the finished work of Christ, fed by sound doctrine and nurtured by the Indwelling Spirit of God.


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    @ mot:

    On the reasonable assumption that you’re looking for a sensible answer this time, I’ll do my best to describe my own perspective here…

    To unpack the all-too-easily-vacuous phrase “salvation is found in Jesus”, for those he encountered face-to-face in 1st-century Judea, it meant they spoke to him and he spoke back. (Your faith has made you well; go in peace; your sins are forgiven; go and show yourself to the priests; etc – you know the sorts of things he said) And they trusted what he told them. It was their relationship with him, in other words, and unless I’ve got this all completely wrong (I’m happy as I am, though) this issue of relationship is the beginning, middle and end of it all. I don’t believe there is any off-the-shelf formula to this; it’s a life-long walk of learning to get used to the way in which he speaks to you.

    Best-selling christian books tend to focus on the experiences of those who have dramatic, sudden, unsought, bolt-from-the-blue encounters with God when they are at rock-bottom, with chaotic lives and multiple issues. The reality is that for the majority of us, our encounters with God are ordinary rather than dramatic, and our awareness of God’s dealing in our lives comes gradually over a long period of seeking, praying and researching. And most of what God wants to say to us is not about a sudden and powerful healing from deep and agonising trauma in which we’ll be thrown to the floor, howling, weeping, sobbing and panting with visceral pleasure and violent emotional arousal, then be pitched into an exotically adventurous lifestyle the like of which we would never have wished for nor dared to imagine. Quite the opposite – God often just wants to talk to us about what we’re doing today. Just like having… er… a relationship.

    I’m not saying God can’t so flood a person’s braincells that their senses are overwhelmed and they fall to the floor barking like a fish. Oddly enough, the fact that nothing of the kind has ever happened to me used to bother me. But nowadays, the simple fact that I find God wants to talk to me about how to get paid employment, how best to manage ADHD without stifling the creativity that comes with it, and so on, is exactly what assures me that I’m “saved” (exactly what that means I’ll let God worry about for himself).


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    @ Bridget:

    Agreed. I might suggest that the “Reformation” soon became more of a coup d’etat than an attempt to reform anything – a new clergy class overthrowing the established order and creating their own empires. A sacramental priesthood was replaced by an academic one – that’s a crude oversimplification, I know, but you get the idea.


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    BTW – in my last answer to mot, I wasn’t trying to imply that everyone else’s answers weren’t sensible, but acknowledging that mine had been joking up to that point. (Several of you posted comments while I was composing it!)


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    @ Nick Bulbeck:
    I love this post. It puts my angst, from my childhood, until now into 5 sentences.


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    @ Hester:

    “Then, with a glad expression, our Lord looked into His wounded side and gazed with joy, and with His sweet gazing He directed the understanding of His creature through the same wound into His side within.”

    “Then He showed a fair, desirable place, and large enough for all mankind that shall be saved to rest in peace and love. And with that He brought to mind His dear worthy blood and precious water which He allowed to pour all out for love”
    “And with the sweet sight, He showed His blessed Heart cloven in two. And with this sweet rejoicing, He showed to my understanding, in part, the blessed Godhead, strengthening the pure soul to understand (insofar as it can be expressed) that this Heart is to signify the endless love that was without beginning, and is, and shall be always.”
    Revelations of Divine Love, Reading 52:Julian of Norwich 1342-1416.


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    Here’s how I define mysticism; Experience that cannot be explained by our five basic senses of smell, taste, hear, touch and sight, nor can it be explained as emotionally driven. It leaves us only to discern whether the experience is hallucination, mental or neurological, God or Satan. I believe that I have experienced them all. I have explanations for most, yet I know that I could be interpreting those incorrectly and I may never know for sure until heaven. For example, I believe I ‘experienced’ an angel the night I lost a baby. My interpretation? It could have been his angel sent to ‘carry’ him to heaven. I do not just make up that interpretation, it comes from the context surrounding my story plus interpretation of some scripture. Could I have simply been hallucinating due to physical pain and emotion? Maybe, but I don’t think so. Do I then tell everyone else that there is an angel there to carry your lost baby home? And make art and statues about my experience for others to worship my experience? No, but I DID have a mystical experience that was very very real. The whole concept of God is mystical to me. Some of my very real demonic experience increased my faith in God. If they could exist, that meant God could exist.


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    @ Patti:

    I find your comment interesting. May I ask a question out of curiosity? (Ignore if you do not wish to answer.) Had you already put your faith in God when you had demonic experiences, or did the experiences lead you to trust God?


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    @ Bridget:
    Bridget, I do not mind at all explaining. Although I was raised in a Christian home, church and school, and I had made profession of faith at my Calvinist church and had made many trips to the altar at my non Calvinist Baptist school, the only supernatural experience I ever had was demonic. I never felt saved or had a relationship with Jesus or did I believe God loved me. I knew that I did not love him. I never dared tell anyone about the experiences for fear that I would be labeled unregenerate, unsaved, not chosen,etc. I saw a ghost once at my childhood home. I had ‘sleep paralysis’ many times. There was a ‘poltergeist’ like episode that happened one night in my brother’s room. My first recollection of life was a ‘vision’ of little leprechaun like figures dancing around my head in my crib talking to me, I had a horrible unexplainable feeling and I couldn’t cry out.
    I do not believe that I was born again until I was 30. I experienced deliverance from demons after that. It does not bother me if people think I wasn’t saved until after deliverance. I just know, and my husband and family know, what Jesus did for me. The difference in me was/is of ‘biblical’ proportions.
    Here is just one example of a change. I used to have what manifested as severe psychotic ‘pms.’. One thing that would happen to me at that time of the month was a fantasy about killing someone with a knife, I couldn’t seem to shake this awful daydream, I would almost wish that a perpetrator would try to break in and just try to hurt me or my family so that I could kill in self defense. After surrendering to the Lord, this daydream would still come to my mind, but I would fight it so hard, and pray, but then sometimes I would give in a bit and add to my daydream that I would lead him to the Lord first, and then I’d stab him. I had had this daydream since I was a teenager. A long story short, I believe that I had an evil spirit of murder, along with quite a few others. My body reacted violently to deliverance. Murder named itself. I did not even consider this daydream ever during my counselling or deliverance, nor had I ever told anyone about it. I don’t know if you read my comment on another post about having stuff in my mind that made me believe that I may be one that was predestined to hell. Anyway, it was about a year after this deliverance that I realized I never had that daydream again, and I still have never 21 years later. It baffled me how I could have entertained this spirit, maybe because I wasn’t able to talk a room mate out of her abortion? Maybe it was the ex con that I babysat his kids when I was 12. He had served 20 years for murder. It was one of those things that made me question my whole story, until, a little while before my dad died, he finally told me the crime that another ex con boarder that we took in had committed. He would never tell me before, I don’t know why, maybe because he was a juvenile at the time the serious crimes were committed. Anyway, his ‘crimes’ were recorded as three separate episodes during his juvenile years as justifiable homicide. When he and his wife lived with us I was 13-14 years old. One day they just left and didn’t return. Flies started coming out from under their door. My mother finally went into their locked room of our house. They had pretended to be changed people, living for the Lord. But my mom found severe child porn and drug needles in the room. My mom tells me that one day ‘Tommy’ had said to her, kind of in a creepy way, that she had better keep a close eye on me. She had no idea what that meant. My mom and dad always thought that we were all safe because we were all saved. I wasn’t. Also my parents had no personal experiences with the demonic. It was that same room a while later that my two brothers moved to and had a strange experience. Their was a whole lot of noise coming from the room in the night. When my parents got to it they found my older brother and younger brother clutching each other in horrified fear in a corner of the room in complete shambles including the mattresses off the beds.
    Ok, that was scary sharing all that, I would much rather just sound all theological and doctrinal and gospelly, rather than a nut case. But with as much experience as I have had, I have learned instead to dissect and discern information rather than to disregard it.


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    @ Nick Bulbeck:
    My real point is that only God knows whether I am saved or not–not other human beings. They may guess about my salvation experience but that is really as far as they can go.


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    Here is my take on mysticism.

    It is a submerging of yourself in God, so that you are closer than every before, yet you are still you and God is still God. (Unlike some Eastern religions, where you becomes nothingness.)

    Two personal experiences. I live alone, but on occasion, I have been aware of a presence behind me loving me. You married folk probably have something similar when your beloved spouse walks up behind you while you are cooking. You are aware that they are there, perhaps waiting for a good time for a hug or a kiss, but you didn’t hear them etc.

    When I was still a Baptist. I had had a private discussion with my Sunday School teacher, which did not get our conflict straightened out. I went to bed frustrated and not knowing what to do. I woke up the next morning, first with an understanding of the word, “paradigm” which I never had before. I recognized that I could understand his view of Christianity, but he could never understand mine. Then, while I drove to the library to find places to send my resume (being unemployed at the time), every person that I saw along the way, I could sense God’s love for them.

    It was after that I tried to see if Baptists and/or Protestants had mystics. Only to find out that there were none, and at least one person that I asked had a very strong negative view of them.

    Do I think that care should be taken in exploring and explaining? Most definitely.
    I also like the Catholic view, that even the approved mystics are considered private revelation, which means that we can chose to believe or to disbelieve.

    Do I wish that everyone was a mystic. No,partly because it might not be comfortable for everyone. Not to mention, that some experiences are very hard and only those whom God has prepared for them, should have them.


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    I’m sorry this is off topic, but I didn’t know what thread would be best. I am a little disappointed in a long time internet friend of mine.

    She’s about 11 or 12 years younger than I am and still has both parents living, and she has some extended family that she is close to and talks to.

    My situation is a little different from hers. What family I have left, I’ve never been able to talk to them, which she knows. I have never been married but wanted to be. Neither has my friend, but she would like to be married also.

    This internet friend was having problems with the Christian faith starting a couple of years ago. She began having doubts.

    I thought she’d be more understanding with my struggles in this area as well, but she has switched back recently and says she’s deciding to stay with the faith.

    That is fine, but she doesn’t seem to understand some of my issues, which are making it hard for me to hold on.

    My friend is still very supportive of social conservative views, the Republican Party (at one time I was too, and I’m not anti- Republican now, merely less vested in them), and she gets angry and upset over things like the possibility of the legalization of homosexual marriage.

    I can’t get her to understand that many churches today (in the United States) are a little too wrapped up in those issues and in activism, and in the process, they are unnecessarily hurting, neglecting, or rebuffing a lot of people who don’t fit their married with children ideal, or any one who needs help.

    I’m not in opposition to Christians publicly speaking in support of (or against) social issues, or being active in politics, if that is their thing. However, I no longer understand the unrelenting obsession and the enormous amount of emphasis some have in these areas.

    My online friend has said a few times, since I have brought these issues up with her, that since liberals are trying to ruin marriage and the family, she thinks it’s important for Christians and Republicans to keep defending marriage and family.

    She thinks they should be fighting this stuff even more than they are and is disappointed they’re not doing even more – which I find odd, because they are already totally consumed with these topics.

    I can’t figure out why she keeps insisting on this, when I’ve told her how alienating much of Christianity is to people who have not married or had kids, and churches are so busy fighting social causes and political foes, that many are neglecting, or ignoring, the needs and pain of people.

    Maybe she is this way because she’s in her early 30s.

    When you are at that age, you still feel like you have ten years ahead (plenty of time) to get a spouse and have kids (which is what she wants), so you aren’t as yet sensitive to the avalanche of attention paid to family and marriage by churches and American Christianity.

    Maybe people in their early 30s, and ones with living family members to turn to, aren’t as aware of how much unmarried people (and other groups) are overlooked in Christianity?

    I was disappointed that someone I thought I could go to (this online friend) turned out not be very understanding about my position. She was not rude or hateful, though. She was nice about it but does not appreciate the impact or consequences of how the church is handling things.

    Maybe in another ten years, if she is still single, she will finally understand what I’ve been trying to tell her? I guess she will have to learn through first hand experience what I’ve been telling her the past year.


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    @ mot:

    And a fair point too.


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    @ Patti:

    I’ve had direct contact with one person and a secondhand story about another who had (alleged) supernatural experiences.

    The direct-contact person had a troubled childhood. I can’t say too much, except that she said one night she felt something sitting on her chest. The closest parallel I can think of to what she described is an incubus, sans sexual component. The secondhand story was that my flute teacher’s friend said she could hear God…until she got new meds. She was so disappointed that the meds stopped her from hearing “God” anymore.

    I’ve had absolutely no experiences in any way like this so this whole discussion is very foreign to me and feels way over my head. But I feel inclined to believe the first woman and not the second. I would think that God would be more than capable of overcoming medication so I suspect she was actually schizophrenic.

    There is also a story about the Lutheran church in my town (not my congregation). Back in the 80s, one of the pastors killed himself in the parking lot and ever since people claimed there was a dark, oppressive presence in the sanctuary. The Episcopalian priest down the road allegedly performed an exorcism there at some point. They eventually demolished that building and rebuilt it in the lot across the road and, to my knowledge, the “dark presence” is now gone. The church struggled to stay afloat for years and is still very small.

    Would you mind if I asked you a question? I once heard a Catholic priest say that there are stages leading up to outright possession. I believe the first was oppression, which he described in a way that sounded much like your story about your brothers’ bedroom – weird things happening in a house, foreboding presences, etc. He also said that this oppression had to be invited in some way. Is this accurate at all? If you can’t or don’t want to answer please just tell me I’m being inappropriate…I’ll completely understand. I feel weird even posing this question. : /


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    Mysticism has a very well-developed tradition within Christianity, going back to the very early days of Church history, and I don’t know that anyone ever really questioned its orthodoxy/validity until the last few hundred years (some Finnish theologians have even recently pointed out many, many commonalities between Martin Luther’s spirituality and Eastern Orthodox mysticism…)

    The Church Fathers emphasized that there were two kinds of knowledge about God: the cataphatic (positive) and the apophatic (negative). Cataphatic theology emphasizes what CAN be known of God–for instance, we know that God is love, we know that He is a Trinity, etc. Apophatic theology emphasizes what CANNOT be known of God, and that ultimately He is a mystery to the finite human mind… Both are necessary and good, and Christian mysticism has made us of both as means to have a direct experience of God, BUT, I believe that when you use the phrase Christian mysticism, most people will associate it more with the apophatic.

    In that sense, the Sacred Heart is not really a devotion that belongs to mysticism proper, though it is if you allow for the more cataphatic side of things…

    Christian Mysticism, like I said, has a very well-developed tradition, and includes such great Christians as John of the Cross, Theresa of Avila, Bonaventure, and Hildegard of Bingen (Western), as well as Gregory of Nyssa, Anthony of Egypt, Gregory Palamas (Eastern), and too many others to count…


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    @ Hester</

    Yes, I too believe that there are different types of oppression and possession, but a better word is demonization. I'm not sure if degrees of manifestation is actually degrees of how much of a foothold a demon may have in a person's life or if it's how many demons or what type of demons. It is recorded how the man with a legion of demons behaved but it isn't recorded how Mary Magdeline with only seven demons behaved. It appears that some with a deaf spirit just couldn't hear. The child that was thrown into the fire, the original word says that the father claimed he had a spirit that had been seizing him since he was an infant. Growing up I had always had a fear of all things blatantly satanic so I stayed away from things the other kids did. I didn't know that the Bible said rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft. Oh lol, except I really did try sometimes to wiggle my nose like Samantha in Bewitched so I could clean my room faster.
    I'm not sure what I think about the drug and not hearing from God anymore. I have stories with drugs as well. I think the important part is what or what is not 'God' saying that can be tested. The Bible records an epileptic that needed healing and an epileptic that needed deliverance. I know from experience that demons can hide in real physical or mental illness, in fact I believe they prey on the weak. So a schizophrenic may have both conditions. I just know that for many years I was manic depressive (that was the old time name for bi-polar) that fit my cycle, and after a couple days of fasting, prayer and deliverance from what appeared to be demonic 'personalities' I am not manic depressive. I have been even tempered for 21 years. It's not that I do or do not see a demon under every bush, it's that I don't fear them anymore. If they are there , they are there. If I feel like Satan is trying to get another foothold I bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. If you ever need to battle them in a more personal way than prayer, God will prepare you. No need to feel weird about talking about it, deliverance was as much a part of Jesus ministry as healing and preaching was. Why someone is never affected by the demonic is as a mystery to me as why some people are never affected by certain diseases, even when the same people are exposed to the same 'virus.' I do not believe that a Christain or anyone for that matter can blame their sinful behavior on demonization of any sort. I believe we all have the capacity to believe on Jesus. When we choose not to, that is like agreeing with the devil and we fight against sin with our own strength. I believe God had compassion on me because I was no longer agreeing with the devil on anything. I was no longer giving in to the tormenting drive to do sin, I was increasing being filled daily with the Holy Spirit but I was also increasingly being tormented. One day, a wonderful woman of God recognized what was happening and spoke words of deliverance. and I'm telling you it was like a Gospel story from there. The demons had to go. At the time I did not believe that Christians could be demonized, in fact at the initial time she took charge (fasting and prayer about it was later) I heard screaming in my head saying to her, How Dare You, Christians Don't Have Demons! I was unable to speak though. So, once again, experience does help form opinions.


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    @ Patrice:
    I agree with you, Patrice. I’m going to risk being a bore again but it does remind me of a famous passage in Dostoyevsky’s “Brothers Karamazov” where the atheist brother Ivan is starting to lose his grip and expects to see evil in the form of a devil with flaming wings, etc. Instead in his delirium he is surprised to find the devil as a seedy old man wearing outdated and shabby clothing.


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    @ Daisy:
    Hi Daisy, I totally relate to what you are saying. Interestingly we have a similar problem over here in that bishops often seem to jump up and criticise Government policy (and often rightly), but when they start appearing as little more than politicans or pundits in clerical garb, then I think the church loses a lot. Social issues are important, but I think as you say some people push them too much and alienate others in the process.


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    Hi Ryan. I agree that mysticism does go back a long way in Christianity, and that some of its greatest thinkers have often been so inclined (including the Cappodocian Fathers you mention). My reservation is fear of going beyond the Scriptures, or in particular allegorising biblical passages to the point where really they seem to take on a meaning that the original authors probably never intended. Origen was guilty of this at times, in his desire to make the Old Testament appear more spiritual.

    Having said that I agree that there is a place for apophatic theology if held in balance. I also think that people do have a sense of the mystical at times in their lives. Os Guinness discussed this in “The Dust of Death” which was interesting as he always has been quite Protestant (in the classical sense) in his views.


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    Kolya wrote:

    it does remind me of a famous passage in Dostoyevsky’s “Brothers Karamazov”

    Best. Novel. Ever. 🙂


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    Hester,
    I just want to clarify when I said something about if you would need to ever be involved in a more personal way. I wasn’t implying that you yourself would ever have a demonic problem. The woman who helped me had never had experience personally, she was raised in a stable home, albeit nominal Chrtistian. She had not been in rebellion, had a vital relationship with the Lord for many years. She says though that how she became aware of deliverance and for people that she believed and trusted as already Christians was placed upon her in one night/day. She had had a dream that did not make much sense to her, a very vivid distinct dream the night before a women’s Bible study day.
    She has told me the details. The morning of the Bible Study, one woman, who was a leader suddenly had a demonic manifestation. It scared my friend so bad that she got up to walk out. When she got to the door one of the other ladies said something to her that made her go back to the meeting, and then the dream made sense, and the Holy Spirit empowered her to command the spirit to be gone. She said the leader lady suddenly said, It’s gone! And said she wasn’t aware of any ‘demon’ but the thing she was struggling with was gone. My friend is not weird or sick or anything. Maybe a mystic? I don’t think that we can hold deliverance meetings at will or healing meetings at will, that’s where things get weird and crazy and the demonic has a party. If all this seems farfetched. A book I would recommnend, one that you can find free online, is called War On The Saints. unabridged edition is the one I believe is more accurate, there is an abridged edition for those who believe Christians can’t be so influenced by demons as to have them in their flesh or mind (I believe they cannot get in our born again spirit). But read especially the dual workings in a preacher of the word and read the appendage that has a listing of the true workings of the Holy Spirit in revival vs. a list of the counterfeit workings of the Holy Spirit. This book helped me trememdously in discerning weird from not weird.


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    Appendix not appendage.


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    Can someone please explain to me hoe I accidentally made my comment all in bold letters? I don’t what it to happen again. Thanks.


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    @ Patti:

    You may have forgotten to close the “strong” tag? Shrug…


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    Warning: the first paragraph will be science so skip if you don’t want to read it.

    Hester, we *do* understand, at least in some cases, why some people are exposed to viruses and don’t get sick while others do. Generally, the way our bodies defeat or resist a virus is differnt from the way it deals with bacteria and parasites, etc. because viruses are too small for the macrophages etc. (your innate system) to detect and dispach. Your body needs to use the adaptive immune system (B cells and T cells) to overcome a viral infection then some special T cells are set aside (for the rest of your life) these are called T memory cells and they quickly recognize a virus that is the same as what the body overcame and kills the virus before it can make you sick. Now, to the point (sorry) Some people can be exposed to the virus and not get sick because their immune response was such that they never felt sick, they could have had that virus years ago and didn’t realize what they had, they could have had the immunity in their mother’s milk (not said with 100% confidence.) Also, viruses need the proper receptor to complex with the membrane proteins on the host cell. If that is mutated on the host (person) cell’s membrane, it protects against viruses. Isn’t that cool.

    Now, to the point; Love is the first mentioned fruit of the spirit the Bible says against which there is no law.

    Without love, the rest of who we are, what we say, what we believe, and our legacies are a pile of dog feces.

    I am almost finished editing my book and it is about the journey a young woman takes that helps her learn to not let fear govern her, but what she does should be done in love. Love is the currency of heaven.

    I have had a lot of serendipity around the writing of the book. These weird happenings are impossible to explain and it is going to sound like I’m a tin foil hatter but I have had dreams, visions, other people have had dreams for me, coincidences and stuff I’m forgetting but I could tell some stories if you want to hear them and, God is my witness, the’re true. The general effect is for me to feel God’s love for me.


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    @ Patti:

    I think I’m naturally leery on this point because all the Christians I’ve met in person who talked about demons a lot seemed to be attributing things to them that had reasonable, non-supernatural explanations. For instance, one lady implied that our friend’s middle school age daughter might be under demonic influence because she wasn’t dressing “modestly” enough (for her). I also have to clamp down on the reflex to be defensive about my lack of supernatural experiences because I know a lot of people use those things as a test of salvation and/or “real” or “adequate” Christianity. (I don’t mean to imply that you said anything like that, you didn’t.)

    Per what is said being the real test, yes, that sounds reasonable. In that lady’s particular case I don’t know what “God” was telling her. But my flute teacher came up with some real doozies in her time, attended some really odd churches, and kept really weird company so that doesn’t fill me with hope. (Her son now thinks that Jesus didn’t have any of God’s power while on earth…don’t know where he picked that one up.)

    Movies about exorcisms, etc. really creep me out so in general I tend to avoid this whole topic. Like I said, in way over my head…

    And don’t worry, I took that “you” in your first comment as a generalized abstract “you.” : )


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    @ Hester: Two of the best-known roman Catholic mystics are St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila. St. Francis of Assisi is yet another.

    There’s a great deal of mysticism in the Orthodox churches (Greek and Russian).

    But this is a *big* topic, and not one that (imo) can be adequately dealt with in this format…


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    @ Ryan M.: Sorry – I posted before reading yours! You cover the topic very well, especially in such a brief form!


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    Hester,

    I am so glad you’re doing these posts. I also have some of Doug Phillips’ talks from the 1998 North Carolina Homeschoolers’ Conference. I heard him speak that year and had no idea what his true agenda was. I look forward to going back and listening to them now that I know ‘so much more’ about Vision Forum. 😉


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    @ Ryan M.: Julian of Norwich is a favorite of mine; ditto Hildegard, though I’ve gotta agree with neurologist Oliver Sacks that her “castle” visions were most likely fortification illusions, which are entirely neurological. (I’ve had them, and daggone if they didn’t look just like pen-and-ink drawings of castle walls… (Mine didn’t precede a migraine, but still… same deal. they were annoying, too!)

    At any rate, I also agree that devotion to the Sacred Heart is *not* mysticism; moreover, that genuine Christian mysticism is all about seeking God and knowing him, not about strange visions, etc.


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    @ numo: P.S.: Phantoms in the Brain, by neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran, is one of *the* books on understanding why we often see things that aren’t there, feel things that aren’t there (like phantom pain in phantom limbs, as experienced by many amputees),e tc. It’s very readable.

    Oliver Sacks’ books – like The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat – are also fascinating and very readable, though he usually discusses specific cases. Ramachandran writes more generally.


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    @ numo: Ramachandran talks about cases, too… but he’s different from Sacks.

    Sacks’ book on migraine was *hugely* helpful to me when I 1st started experiencing them many years ago.


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    @ Numo:

    I’ve gotten scotomas too (only ever before wicked migraines) and you’re right about the resemblance to fort drawings. When I described them to my mom she got really freaked out. It’s funny that you linked to that article, because I actually found out what I’d been having accidentally while looking up Hildegard. Does this mean I can “see” things too since great minds think alike? ; )


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    “The difference between the self-denial, love, beholding of God, Etc, of the mystics and of the truly godly consists in this: The mystics comprehend, say, and do everything according to their natural intellect, fantasy, and imagination, doing so without the Spirit. They do not make use of the Lord Jesus (that is, as a ransom, and righteousness unto justification and peace), as being the only way of approach unto God, and unto true and genuine sanctification. Such exercises and this way are hidden from them. Those, however,who are truly godly, regenerate, and who truly believe, live by faith and not by sight. In all things they make use of the Lord Jesus. They come to the Father by Him, accustom themselves to behold God in the face of Jesus Christ, Do everything as in the presence of God, and walk before God’s countenance in humility, fear, love, and obedience. These are the old paths. From this you can observe that the difference between the mystics and the truly godly is as the difference between imagination and truth; between natural and without the Spirit and being led by the Spirit; between worldly and heavenly; between seeking an unknown God and serving the true God; and between being engaged without, And contrary to, The Holy Scriptures (dabbling with invisible things), and living according to the written Word of God.”
    Wilhelmus a Brakel, De Redelijke Godsdienst( The Christian’s Reasonable Service) Volume 2 – A Warning Against a Natural and Spiritless Religion.


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    Breaking SGM news: Yesterday a commenter at SGM Survivors was at a members meeting at Covenant Fellowship (Glen Mills, PA) where it was announced that Dave Harvey has resigned as a pastor and is leaving the church. If you recall, Dave Harvey was the #2 leader of SGM Corporate until this past December when he resigned from that position to focus his attention on family and local church matters. http://www.brentdetwiler.com/brentdetwilercom/2012/12/22/dave-harvey-the-number-2-leader-in-sovereign-grace-ministrie.html This is significant news and I expect we’ll be hearing more details in the days ahead.


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    Marge,

    I saw those comments at Survivors, too.  This is a very interesting development.


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    @ numo:

    That is really fascinating about the fortification illusions. I will have to check out your suggested reading. Thanks!


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    Gavin

    It does depend on how one lives and defines mystic. Jesus Himself was known to go off by Himself and pray.


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    @ dee:
    Indeed and Jonathan Edwards puts it this way:-
    “The soul of a true Christian, as I then wrote my meditations, Appeared like such a little white flower as we see in the spring of the year; low and humble on the ground, opening its bosom to receive the pleasant beams of the sun’s glory; rejoicing as it were in a calm rapture; diffusing around a sweet fragrancy; standing peacefully and lovingly,in the midst of other flowers round about; all in like manner opening their bosoms to drink in the light of the sun. There was no part of creature holiness, that I had so great a sense of its loveliness, As humility, brokenness of heart and poverty of spirit; and there was nothing that I so earnestly longed for. My heart panted after this – to lie low before God, As in the dust; that I might be nothing, And that God might be ALL, That I might become as a little child.”
    (1.xiii-xiv).


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    @ Muff Potter

    Muff, that certainly hasn’t been his ‘ring’ they’ve all been kissing, huh?

    (grin)

    ;~)


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    @ Gavin White:
    Gavin – that’s a strange quote. I don’t know whom Mr a Brakel had in mind when he described the “mystics” and their carnally motivated activity; whether, for instance, they were famous figures that we’d have heard of, or whether they were just local folk of whom he was suspicious. But his apparent contrasting of “dabbling with invisible things” and “living according to the written word of God” does flash an amber light with me. The thing is, the Spirit to whom Brakel refers is invisible. Moreover, the intellect with which Brakel studied and pondered the bible was (I think it is safe to say) a human one (his own, I mean).

    I can’t help but wonder what he thought, for instance, of Peter’s vision on the rooftop; did Peter make use of the Lord Jesus Christ when he had this vision, or was he merely up there praying according to his natural intellect, fantasy and imagination? Especially when you consider that what “God” said to Peter in said vision clearly contradicted scripture.


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    @ Nick Bulbeck:
    Nick
    As Calvin, no doubt. 🙂 who said
    “Paul therefore contends that there is nothing more notable or glorious in the church than the ministry of the Gospel, since I is the administration of the Spirit and of righteousness and of eternal life(2 Cor. 4.6;3;9). How great the necessity of the ministry is, he declared not only in words but also by examples. When God willed that the light of his truth should shine more fully upon Cornelius, he sent an angel from heaven to direct him to Peter.”


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    At the risk of self promotion, this is a song that is going on my new album- I wrote this years ago but have never had a chance to get it recorded until now. I think it is relevant to this topic of how many evangelical churches (not just Calvinist ones, IMO) are failing the love test.

    Nothing Less

    So many excuses
    Got them all lined up and we use them all the time
    So many abuses
    Of the light of truth in a world that’s going blind
    We like to bolster our pride
    And measure the things we believe
    Content just to let this world die
    As we hold the life it needs

    Tell me when did we become
    So confident that we are strong
    Upholding every law but that of love?
    When did we accept the lie
    That compassion can be pushed aside
    When the truth demands we give both light and love?
    Nothing less could ever be enough

    We have the language
    None can doubt exactly where we stand
    We have the passion
    To fight in strength and repel all their demands
    But as we bring light to this world
    What is it people see?
    Is it truth in our lives
    Does our love show our belief?

    Tell me when did we become
    So confident that we are strong
    Upholding every law but that of love?
    When did we accept the lie
    That compassion can be pushed aside
    When the truth demands we give both light and love?
    Nothing less could ever be enough

    And when we meet the ones so vulnerable and weak-
    Do we meet them with our swords
    Or the love that sets them free?

    Tell me when did we become
    So confident that we are strong
    Upholding every law but that of love?
    When did we accept the lie
    That compassion can be pushed aside
    When the truth demands we give both light and love?
    Nothing less could ever be enough


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    Nick Bulbeck wrote:

    But his apparent contrasting of “dabbling with invisible things” and “living according to the written word of God” does flash an amber light with me.

    In combination, it brings two books to mind with me:
    1) The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan.
    2) Malleus Malefacarium by Heinrich Kramer.


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    Hester wrote:

    I think I’m naturally leery on this point because all the Christians I’ve met in person who talked about demons a lot seemed to be attributing things to them that had reasonable, non-supernatural explanations.

    This is why I don’t go for a supernatural explanation until natural explanations have been exhausted. Because too many go for the Supernatural Explanation first, and at that point you don’t have faith but superstition and not discernment/spiritual warfare but magick (Crowley spelling).


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    @ Patti:

    Patti –

    Thanks for expounding. Those experiences must have been quite tramatic! I’m glad you have been set free and no longer have to deal with such things — no matter what they were. I hope your brothers are experiencing the grace of God as well. I have never delt with demonic activities so I have little knowledge of the issues.


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    I think that it is very difficult sometimes to separate the natural from the supernatural. The NT even implies that only the Word of God (which in context could apply to the physical spoken or written Word as well as the supernatural Word of the Trinity) is ‘sharp’ enough to divide the soul and spirit. Jesus spoke deliverance over the woman bent over by an evil spirit, but He touched her physically to heal the damage that remained. I speculate that she had seen doctors for her back condition but they probably couldn’t figure it out.
    Doctors could not figure out my manic/pms. Drugs did not help. Although I had not tried lithium yet. My uncontrollable behavior was so cyclical that the drugs made me a zombie until ‘that time’ when my behavior would break through the drug barrier, all blamed on hormones. I believe that God used my natural hormone imbalance to prove to me that my condition was also demonically explained. After several years of being emotionally sound from deliverance I had a hysterectomy due to severe endometriosis, of which I had suffered from most of my life. I could not take hormones for 9 months in order for the endometriosis to disappear. I was only 36 and went into major surgical menopause. During that nine months I never needed any mood altering drugs. My doctor was amazed that I never would take the pills he gave me. Physically I was in torment before and after surgery, having hot flashes every fifteen minutes for all nine months. But I was spiritually and emotionally sound and I still am. Of course if you question my story you probably also question that. I have read that the majority of the women in prison committed their crimes during the most ‘vulnerable times’ of their cycles. The supernatural hides in naturally explained causes. They don’t want to be detected and forced into the ‘dry’ places, whatever that means. I still believe every person male or female has natural physical hormonal cycles that make us more ‘edgy’ just like children coming down with a cold, but I’m talking about the stuff that most of us who have suffered like this do not tell each other, like my example about thoughts of murder. If anyone is having stealing, killing and destroying on their minds during hormonal upsets, that is reason enough to look for a supernatural oppression/possession and I don’t believe that it means you have lost your salvation if you find a ‘squatter’ in your ‘house.’


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    Thanks Bridget, I just posted that before I saw your post.
    In my opinion both of my brothers are disturbed. My other brother who never experienced anything like me or my other two brothers is very sound. None of them believe in the things that I am saying. It took many years of me staying changed and seeing my brothers not changed before my mother started believing the way I do.
    Let me tell you something interesting though and I hope that this is encouragement and not condemnation to anyone. I have a sister who has never had some of the problems me and my two brothers have had. She was the only one of us five kids who one of my parents personally led to the Lord. She was five years old and scared about something and that led my mom to pray with her about receiving Jesus. My mom had recently been changing from predestination/ covenant regarding offspring to more Arminian since my parents had left the reformed church for an Assembly of God. My sister is 9 years younger than me. My sister was always ‘perfect.’ I was a ‘black sheep’ compared to her. Her and her husband pastor an Assembly of God church. After talking to her husband one day about how my sister seemed to escape the weird things in our home, he just matter of factly declared that that was a no brainer because he remembers growing up always hearing his parents pray for his future spouse. Writing this reminds me I’ve been neglecting that for my daughter, I better get to it.


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    @ Eagle:
    I don’t know any specifics, Eagle. It’s been discussed on Survivors a number of times, and there’s currently talk about it in the most recent comments. I think the main concern that a lot of people have is that so many SGM pastors were “degifted” because of issues with their children, but Harvey was given a pass when it happened in his own family. It’s not about the kids (who are all grown up now anyway), but the usual lack of transparency and hypocrisy.


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    Hi y’all. I just got home from the hospital. The surgery went smoothly and for perhaps the first time ever (for me) there are no post-op complications. Yet. Thank you all so much for praying. This recovery should be fairly short and it looks like I’ll be able to avoid the wheelchair for awhile longer. I’ll always walk with my pink cane but that is just fine with me. Once again, thank you. The support that our Wartburg community gives each other is beautiful.


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    @ Anon 1:

    Yes, I’ve read People of the LIe”. It gave a context for understanding the idea of the demonic…helped me make sense of some weird stuff that happened in my life in a matter-of-fact way.

    Did you find it helpful?


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    @ Nick:

    Per the mysticism thing – most of what I’ve read (which was, admittedly, stridently anti-mysticism so I don’t know how accurate any of it is) seemed to imply that mysticism was trying to meet God in an altered state of consciousness. Like I said above, I’ve never read any “mystics” (however we’re defining that) so I can’t comment on how Biblical or unbiblical they are (and I have a feeling they’re not a homogenous group either). Even if I did end up not agreeing with them, I don’t think I’d necessarily go so far as that a Brakel quote above (which implied that they were all unregenerate and not following the Bible) without some definite evidence.


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    Bridget wrote:

    I have never delt with demonic activities so I have little knowledge of the issues.

    I have had one “weird s**t” incident (in 1980) that does fit the description of such, but whatever happened left no physical evidence of its passing.

    I have had two other minor “weird s**t” incidents along those lines that were very ambiguous and from the context were more probably hypnogogic hallucinations/waking dreams.


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    Mandy wrote:

    Hi y’all. I just got home from the hospital. The surgery went smoothly and for perhaps the first time ever (for me) there are no post-op complications. Yet. Thank you all so much for praying. This recovery should be fairly short and it looks like I’ll be able to avoid the wheelchair for awhile longer. I’ll always walk with my pink cane but that is just fine with me. Once again, thank you. The support that our Wartburg community gives each other is beautiful.

    Thank you Mandy for letting us know. God Bless you!~


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    Patrice wrote:

    @ Anon 1:

    Yes, I’ve read People of the LIe”. It gave a context for understanding the idea of the demonic…helped me make sense of some weird stuff that happened in my life in a matter-of-fact way.

    Did you find it helpful?

    Patrice, I never know how to take Peck. I have read all his books but long ago. People of the Lie was pretty provocative for it’s time. But it explained some things that were not really on the average person’s radar back then as they are now concerning congenital lying, narcissism, sociopathy, etc.


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    @ Hester:
    Hester
    You would need to read the whole treatise together a full picture but essentially à Brake is criticising it because it is man made, or man induced and not of faith.

    Bearing that in mind, a more modern reformed Dutch theologian, Herman Bavinck, explains
    “Practical, Empirical mysticism Seeks to obtain this knowledge and communion by means of various exercises; theoretical and speculative mysticism, which is often coupled to the former, yet distinct from it, Examines these exercises and attempts to systematize the experiences and insights obtained by them. In the footsteps of Plato, Philo, and Plotinus, and following Pseudo-Dionysius, mainly three stages are distinguished in the mystical life – asceticism, meditation and ecstasy. At the stage of purgation, By prayer, penitence, the use of the sacraments, deprivation, Self-chastisement and so on, the soul cleanses itself from sin and withdraws from all that is earthly. In the second stage,the soul with all of its powers of thought And will concentrates on one specific thing, for example, the suffering of Christ, his wounds, heavenly beatitude, the love or the holiness of God. In the third stage, the soul is most intimately united and, As it were, identified with the object to which it fully surrendered by meditation. It then falls into a state that, according to all mystics, is practically indescribable and is therefore denoted by various terms: seraphic contemplation,the mystical union, a betrothal, the mystical kiss, a passive transformation,a mystical sleep, death or annihilation, the tomb of the soul and others.”

    If I could also offer a word of caution here. It is not generally beneficial and is often dangerous to talk, recall, recite occult and psychic events that may have occurred in one’s personal experience. There is always the danger of a door being left open through which untold evil can come.


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    @ Eagle:
    Juts notice it for now. We have a doozy of a post coming on Wednesday. It appears some blogs are not considered Christian.


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    I’m wondering if anyone has copies on their computors of Mark Driscoll’s Peasent Princess Series theme videos. He has changed all of them to be audio only. Even youtube does not have the video anymore. I went to show someone the dancing naked gay man tree but none of the videos run anymore. You can still go to Marsh Hill Church website and see the tree and definitely make out the physique on the Sweet to My Taste sermon picture.


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    Mandy,

    Praying for a quick recovery. Thanks for the update!


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    Eagle wrote:

    Can you really discuss Monica Lewenski without talking about cigars and a semen stained blue dress?

    Makes me wonder, were they Cuban? (The cigars I mean). And did Bubba (Bill) inhale?


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    @ Patti:

    “I went to show someone the dancing naked gay man tree…”

    Okay, stop. Stop right there.

    Dancing naked gay man tree?

    I missed this.

    …Dancing naked gay man tree?!?!?!?!

    (Peasant Princess is the SOS series, right?)


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    Mandy~

    So happy for you!! Take good care of yourself.


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    Mandy,

    Thanks for the update and am so happy the surgery went well! Blessing to you!


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    @ Hester: I’m not sure what you mean by the “altered state” thing? Are you talking about people who seek to be in altered states in order to experience God? Or people who are in altered states already, or…?

    Also, I think “altered state” means a wide array of things. When people experience what used to be called “highway hypnosis,” they’re in a light trance state, which is different than, say, seeking to be in some kind of trance state via music, movement, ingestion of alcohol or drugs, prayer, etc. etc.

    Fact is, we’re in an “altered state” when we daydream (again, a light trance state), are sleeping (whether dreaming or not), experiencing intense pain, hyperalert (for any reason), experiencing intense sexual pleasure (sorry if that offends, but it’s true), reading (recent neurological/psychiatric studies show certain types of reading – mostly the “I can’t put it down!” variety – to be a kind of light trance), doing repetitive work, ingestion of lots of caffeine, and many, many other common things that any of you can add to the list.

    Myself, I’ve experienced altered states via the so-called “runner’s high” (from playing percussion, which can be very physical), acupuncture (my reaction – euphoria followed by a crash – is atypical) and various legal and illegal substances (mostly back in the day).


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    @ numo: I should add tai chi and qigong to my personal “altered states” list, though that has everything to do with the breathing and exercise bringing about physical relaxation and a calmer state of mind and absolutely nothing to do with occult weirdness of any kind. (I used to be afraid to even try these things for fear of being tainted spiritually… that was during my time in the “finding demons in every shadow”-type churches.)


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    @ Mandy: Glad to hear it! Will continue to pray.

    Your pink cane sounds pretty snazzy, y’know!


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    @ Hester:
    Well, to be honest Hester, I throw the ‘gay’ word in there because I think that sort of dance attracts way more gay men then straight women. Here is the link to the audio sermon with cover picture tree that used to dance very provocativiely and well with the sermon title when you know what Mark meant by Sweet to My Taste.


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    @ Hester: also… fasting (which was/is a big deal in the churches I was involved in) can also do a real number on one’s perceptions, if undertaken too intensively. Ditto for all-night prayer sessions

    My hunch is that more than a few “words from the Lord” that I heard were brought about by one or both and had nothing whatsoever to do with God.

    I am *not* writing off all supernatural things by any means, but – like HUG – I’ve been around too much weirdness and superstition (in supposedly xtian churches) to want to assume that X or Y is an obvious supernatural event without first exhausting all other possibilities.

    The “fortification illusions” that I described a few posts upthread were viewed as supernatural – or, at very least, unexplainable – until very recent times. If I hadn’t known what they were, I might have been spooked when I experienced them! (Or thought I was having a stroke, maybe.)


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    @ Patti: Are you talking about oriental dance (commonly called “belly dance” in the US)?

    if so, please know that lots of popular and folk dances from the Middle East employ a lot of hip movement… and men (straight men) move their hips, too. Same for Africa, much of Latin America and the Caribbean.


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    Patti wrote:

    I’m wondering if anyone has copies on their computors of Mark Driscoll’s Peasent Princess Series theme videos. He has changed all of them to be audio only. Even youtube does not have the video anymore.

    doubleplusungood refs doubleplusunevents.
    memhole.
    L! L! M! D!
    L! L! M! D!


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    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs5Rvi8mKXY

    Just found a promo video on youtube that they ‘missed’, some of the tree is more blurry than I remember but my ‘gaydar’ comes from watching how the man tree appears to be sexually attracted to Mark.


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    @ Patti:

    Okay, I just looked at that tree and all I could think of was those cranky apple trees from the Wizard of Oz…


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    @ Hester: Same here, pretty much.

    Patti, I think there’s intentional humor in that video sequence (like the pink fawns bouncing around) and the tree is part of that. Hardly “gay” to my mind! (Unless you account for the camp/parody factor of the whole segment, which is pretty intense. ;))


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    @ Hester:

    So glad that’s all you see. I do not want to warp you.


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    @ Patti: P.S.: I know straight guys who do Middle Eastern folk and popular dances who are *very* often perceived as being “gay” (by their dance moves) by US men. No matter how they try to explain that they’re not gay, nor are the dance moves “gay” – the kinds of men who have those prejudices never end up listening.

    People from other cultures don’t necessarily view them that way at all.

    We all bring a set of preconceptions to the stuff we experience in life – me no less than anyone else.


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    @ numo:
    Mark’s humor is not lost on me, it just makes me gag…..


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    @ Patti: “Warp”?!

    I’m not sure why you think it’s so innately sexual?


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    @ Patti: But he didn’t create the animation. (I cannot stand MD, but this is one thing I’m *not* going to blame on him.)


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    Numo,
    You are right about preconceived notions being shaped by our pasts. A warped past is what is triggered by much of what Mark Driscoll teaches and approves of. The first place I ever heard that kind of music in the Peasent Princess series was in a triple x movie theatre when I was a teen.


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    @ Patti: Oh gosh – I really *do* get it now, Patti.

    My apologies – and I am really sorry you’ve gone through so many painful/difficult experiences.


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    @ Patti: I’m sure the MH choice of music was intentional, which literally sickens me. (You see, I’ve never seen an XXX movie, though I know that the music *is* what was used, back in the 70s and 80s.)


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    @ numo:
    As far as the kind of dance you are talking about, I get that. The guy who does the m&m commercials Dancing with the Stars guy? I don’t see gay… but if he went naked as that tree? My perception would change.
    Mark is the one who made the tree sexual in his sermon, so maybe if he hadn’t I wouldn’t have pwerceived the dance so sexual??? IDK


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    @ numo:
    The wounded have a lot to teach the church.


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    Hester wrote:

    I went to show someone the dancing naked gay man tree…”
    Okay, stop. Stop right there.
    Dancing naked gay man tree?
    I missed this.
    …Dancing naked gay man tree?!?!?!?!
    (Peasant Princess is the SOS series, right?)

    I know, strange. Being Driscoll one would expect a Dancing Naked gal.


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    @ Patti: It’s such a brief part of the animation (maybe 3 seconds tops?) that I wonder if you are perhaps reacting to what you’ve been through rather than to the actual moving image?

    btw, when I talked about dance, I was referring to serious hip/pelvic movement, and you really don’t see that in ballroom dance. I won’t link to any vids because I don’t want to trouble you in any way.

    and yes, the wounded *do* have a lot to teach the church. The thing is, there are many different kinds of wounds (as I’m sure you know; just saying) and they come from many different kinds of experiences, medical/psychiatric problems, emotional/verbal abuse as well as physical and/or sexual abuse/assault… the list is awfully long. Mine includes persistent bullying by others (at school) when I was young. I’m no longer fearful, but it took me many years to get over it all. (Most important was learning to believe that I have worth… that’s been hard, and I’m still in process… as are we all, really.)


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    @ Patti: I don’t believe the tree is naked – it’s a tree, after all, albeit drawn with *some* human features.

    But it’s still – to my eyes – very much a tree.


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    @ Patti: I think the imagery is intended to be slightly seductive, but not lewd, let alone “gay.”


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    Not knowing the context of the sermons, I just basically find the animation very childish. Just watching it made me think it was geared to 4-9 year olds. Never been to the XXX movies either, so the music didn’t bother me. This series was for adults?


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    Vid was creepy and silly, Patti. I did not think the music matched the animation. I only heard the sermon on audio a while back before he pulled it. the guy is a major creep that tons of young men idolized. His DNA will be a part of Christendom for a long while yet.


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    @ Bridget: The animation is meant to introduce MD’s “pornified” discussion of the Song of Songs (dealt with elsewhere on this blog).

    I do think there’s a strong sarcastic element to the imagery in the short film, and it *does* include a very childlike looking woman… which creeps me out. (I’ve seen pics from the vid before, so that’s not news to me, and seems very much in keeping with the whole Mars Hill “We’re so cool we know pop culture references that aren’t even there!” attitude, along with basically infantilizing women… which in this context, is bad, bad news.)


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    @ Bridget: The instrumental disco in the movie is typical of 70s-80s porn soundtracks, I’m afraid. That’s why Patti’s comment about XXX movies makes sense to me.

    It’s also just – imo – bad music, but that’s a whole ‘nother story.


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    @ Anon 1:

    Exactly. This reminds me a lot of the subliminal messages in the artwork of Jehovah’s Witnesses’ literature.

    My interpretation is that “the joke is on us”. These New Calvinists are so arrogant that they seem to be flaunting their heresies at us in subtle ways, taunting us. It is really “Alice in Wonderland” combined with “Animal Farm”.


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    @ Patti: I’m surprised that it wasn’t a dancing semi-nude woman of some kind, given MD’s thing about stripping. Be that as it may, I do get why you’re relating the vid to what MD said, but I’m still not sure that the tree is much more than a tongue-in-cheek “sexy” tree.

    If there was obvious phallic imagery, that would be another thing entirely!


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    @ Numo:

    I’m inclined to agree with Patti that the video has suggestive elements. Let’s break it down.

    Here’s the actual tree verse MD uses to justify his sexual…requirements:

    Like an apple tree among the trees of the woods,
    So is my beloved among the sons.
    I sat down in his shade with great delight,
    And his fruit was sweet to my taste.
    SOS 2:3

    The smiling tree is almost a literal recreation of the verse. There’s also a lot of references to gazelles in ch. 2 and one to does, which explains the deer bouncing around and the antelope standing in the background. In the book they refer to the man, but MD might be mixing his metaphors as when he appears standing at the end of the video, there are deer sitting around his feet (“in his shade”). In fact, I’m almost certain he’s mixing his metaphors because of 2:9:

    Behold, he stands behind our wall; he is looking through the windows, gazing through the lattice.

    The video shows a woman doing these things but in context this is supposed to be the man. There’s also 4:5 later in the book, which could explain the two fawns touching noses in a patch of flowers:

    Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle, which feed among the lilies.


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    @ Hester: I think it’s meant to be suggestive, but not quite *that* suggestive.

    I get what you’re saying, but I think I’ve kind of run out of things to say about this – maybe because I hate MD’s “interpretation” of the SoS SO much that I don’t want to waste my time thinking any more than I have to about it?

    Anyway…


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    @ Hester: If some men (and women) wish to see a direct correlation between the tree imagery and MD’s comments – for the purpose of sniggering at “dirty” content like 3d graders – then, let them.

    Yeah, whoever called it all “childish” (Bridget, maybe?) is right.

    There’s a *lot* of talent in the MH membership. I just wish they wouldn’t bother doing promo vids like this one.


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    @ Hester: I just wish MD would leave poetry alone. yes, the SoS is very sensual, but it’s NOT what he thinks it is.

    And I said I was quitting – gah!

    Must go.


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    Addendum @ Numo:

    I don’t think the imagery was intended to be gay, however.


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    @ numo:

    I should have ended my comment with the whole clip is just weird (in a freakish kinda way) to me. I can understand how it triggers you, Patti. I’m sad that you were exposed to such things at s young age, or any age for that matter.


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    Patti – my apologies if I’ve said anything that’s upset you.

    enough from me for now.


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    @ Numo:

    I agree MD has butchered SOS and it is painful to watch – though I didn’t go through the above exercise just to “snigger” at anything or be juvenile. I went to the book in question and looked to see if there were any correlations. I honestly wasn’t expecting to find that many.


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    @ Numo:

    Per your earlier comment about altered states of consciousness, I’m not sure any of the sites I read ever gave a real definition of them. They referenced meditation a lot, trances, visions, “union with the divine” and sometimes peyote/hallucinations came up too.


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    I am not upset at all. I’m actually happy to know that people who do not have background in perversion are not picking up on the intended and not intended perversion that is in this video and sermon series. I did point out too much because I thought the correlations were obvious to everyone. Now that I have gone back over the video again, I see even more that I had only thought was childish but is more sexual. Hester bringing up the fawns made that weirdness make complete sense. The fawn heads are obvious boobs. Gospelly perky. There are even more things to point out. And no, I do not either believe that the gay was intentional. Mark would not have allowed that.


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    Oh, and Numo? 3 seconds, did you watch the whole video?


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    Eagle, Thanks for the link. The article affirms for me what I have thought for a while: This Calvin resurgance is a backlash to shallow seeker stuff of the 80’s and 90’s. It is another fad that will pass because folks will get burned out. In one sentence all is predestined. In another, we are responsible. Wish they would make up their minds but that thinking is exactly how they end up as perpetual worms who cannot obey Jesus Christ and “love others”.


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    Gavin

    I have some difficulties with this statement. 

    “There is always the danger of a door being left open through which untold evil can come.”

    Please give a Biblical basis for this “untold evil” coming into a Christian’s life.

     


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    @ dee:

    Note to self — keep all the doors closed at all times . . . . it just gets so stuffy and stale that way though (couldn’t resist the snark.) 🙂


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    Bridget

    And never, ever forget the garlic.


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    @ Gavin White:
    Within the arms of Love, fear is cast aside and we are free.


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    @ dee:

    Mmmm . . . I do love my garlic — in my food though!


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    @ Hester: I wasn’t talking about you – or anyone here – I was referring to MD and whoever else obviously gets a kick out of this being “dirty.”

    so much is in the eye of the beholder. (fwiw, I was a studio arts major in undergrad, worked from many nude models – male and female; studied much art with nudity or semi-nudity, etc. None of it was what I’d call porn – not by a long chalk – but some of it was erotic. Which is different. The SoS is erotic, no question, but it works by allusive language and imagery. It’s not what MD thinks it is.)

    [/rant over]


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    @ Hester: I had to unlearn all the ideas I had about meditation – and didn’t do so until pretty recently.

    some people *do* use meditation as a way of reaching – at least, attempting to reach – altered states of consciousness. Most don’t, unless physical and mental calm is an “altered state.” And it might be, given the stresses most of us face in this life!

    I think there’s been confusion about the term “altered states” since it 1st started being used, back during the heyday of experimentation with psychedelic drugs. I have yet to come across a good working definition. Most of the time it seems to mean whatever the writer or speaker wants it to mean.


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    @ Patti: No, I didn’t; I was mainly concerned with the tree part. I’ve seen all of the screen caps from the vid on the MH site – really, I just don’t want to watch something that’s going to (potentially) make me upset.

    I don’t watch vids of MD, Piper, CJ Mahaney and others for pretty much the same reasons. No sense making my blood pressure spike!


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    @ Patrice: Yes.

    I realize some will disagree with the following, but I think people have God-given consciences and (mostly) know enough to choose between good and evil, no matter what their beliefs (or lack thereof).

    We *all* have dark sides, because we’re all human. We’re all in need of redemption. And we can also see what is good, too. (imo, at least.)


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    @ Hester: I think MD and his homies believe they’re quite clever.

    Well, not so much.

    I’ve had to build mental walls around the SoS and its beautiful imagery ever since I 1st came across MD’s horrible hatchet job on it. Because I love poetry, and the poems in the book are very beautiful and powerful. (Wish I could read them in Hebrew! Poetry’s one of the hardest things to translate.)

    For a while, I felt as if knowing MD’s version of it had destroyed what I see there… and I still have to work to keep some of his crassest images out of my head.

    Just for fun, look through the book and see how many references there are to trees. Nowhere – that I can see – does any of those images mean what he thinks it means. (I always understood “tree” in the verse in question to be a reference to the man’s torso. fwiw!)


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    Hi Gavin,

    Do you believe there is anything experiential about the Christian life? As in experiencing guidance from God that doesn’t come directly from reading scripture or Hearing preaching. Or just experiencing the presence of God. Do you believe that can happen, or are we only to know God through the study of Scripture?


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    @ Numo:

    “fwiw, I was a studio arts major in undergrad, worked from many nude models – male and female; studied much art with nudity or semi-nudity, etc. None of it was what I’d call porn – not by a long chalk – but some of it was erotic. Which is different. The SoS is erotic, no question, but it works by allusive language and imagery. It’s not what MD thinks it is.”

    Funny story about nudity in art – my grandma is into art and when she first married my grandpa, she had a miniature of Michelangelo’s David that sat on her coffee table. My grandpa came from a staunchly conservative LCMS family and their first argument was about whether the naked statue was going to stay on their coffee table, in public view. I understand she tried to explain the difference between nude and naked to him as part of the argument so your comment made me smile.


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    @ numo:
    I agree. I have found much integrity and ethical soundness outside the Christian community. Being a Christian doesn’t make one superior, but under mercy and within love.

    Common grace, I suppose. The law of God written on every human’s heart. God made the universe and it still functions, even inside the human heart, although flawed. Come to think of it, that continuing functionality is another good reason to call malarkey on total depravity.

    Gavin is anxious about evil spirits and I think it is good reality testing because evil is greater than us. But it is much much smaller than God, so we can talk about it without fear, without needing to carefully close all doors behind us.

    If we’ve had horrible experiences with that way of seeing/experiencing the world, we need to stay away from it, just as Patti (and I) need to stay away from any object sexualization, especially when combined with abuse or mocking. But that’s because of our particular brokenness, not because any of it, on its own, can ruin us from inside the arms of Love.

    My opinion.


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    \@ numo:
    Numo,
    Yes, MD ruined SOS for me. Have you ever considered the idea that some have that the play or poem is actually a love triangle rather than a marriage? I have to lean a lot more towards that notion since Driscoll grossed me out. Anyway, if you haven’t thought about it, try reading again with the possiblility that Solomon is pursuing this young maiden. He already has 60 wives and/or concubines. Her love peering through the lattice may actually be someone else, the shepherd boy, and he may be the one that she marries in the last chapter. The young lady is torn between the king and having all the worldly goods or marrying for love instead.


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    @ Anon 1:
    I was impressed with Scott Peck because he was a Buddhist-Unitarian-type who was also a psychologist who took the idea of evil by the horns. That is so rare! And I think because he came from that background, the examination of it was fresh, unloaded by a couple thousand years of Christianese.

    Another good book is “Evil. Inside Cruelty and Violence” by Roy Baumeister. Have you read it? He doesn’t deal with spirits and such but makes a thorough study of heart-evil.


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    @ Patti: Hey – I’m not convinced that there’s a narrative about Solomon, or about anyone except for the man and the woman.

    My favorite translation (so far) is this one, by poet Marcia Falk (who is Jewish and has a good background in Biblical Hebrew). Actually, I have her more “academic” edition of the book, too, since she goes into the reasons that she translated it as she did, and gives more detail about literary aspects of the poems. You can read more at her website. I think you’d enjoy her version; she is careful with the text, and reverent without being overly pious. If anything, reading a fresh translation might put some of the beauty back into it for you!

    Also, here’s some of Falk’s commentary on the SoS, which I had to grab via the Internet Archive (the page on her site is down right now) – you can see the translated portions of the SoS on her site, then click the following link for more info.:

    http://web.archive.org/web/20120101004023/http://www.marciafalk.com/songscom.html


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    Patti – I have a reply to you in moderation because I embedded more than one link… it’s about another translation of the SoS that I think you might like, by Jewish poet and Hebrew scholar Marcia Falk.

    You can check the book on Amazon.com via “look inside.” (I linked to her website in the post that’s being held, so you might want to check back.)


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    @ Patrice: I really appreciate what you’re saying.

    Also, while I do believe there is evil that is not of human origin, I think that the vast majority of actual evil in this world (where people harm others, animals, nature, etc.) comes from within us and not from anything outside of us. I also think that mental and physical illnesses (very much including things which are organic in nature but affect emotional and psychological functioning) are part of the equation for some people who commit very real wrongs, but I do not believe those things are excuses (except in cases where a person truly has lost their sanity).

    I completely reject the whole concept of “total depravity.” Those words trigger a gut reaction in me, and it’s not a pleasant one! I haven’t been hammered at about this (in so many words), but I might as well have been.


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    @ Patrice: Doesn’t C.S. Lewis write – in Screwtape’s voice – that humans who believe too much in the devil are as susceptible to temptation as those who believe there’s no such thing?

    or something like that…. at any rate, I found it to be true, via my many years in charismatic/evangelical-land.


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    @ Hester: Wa your grandfather from the Midwest, by any chance?

    Cute story!


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    HUG, careful with the 1984/Orwell allusions getting too truncated. 🙂

    I’d say that Roy Baumeister’s book Evil: INside Human Violence and Cruelty and Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow are almost must-reads on human aggression and the brain as “a machine for jumping to conclusions”. When people have asked how MH and MD can be so popular the explanation is as simple as the halo effect and sunk-cost investment. If we’re immune to those mental shortcuts in one area we may simply be more susceptible in another.


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    @ Numo:

    Northern Iowa/southern Minnesota.


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    @ dee:

    I’m not at home at present but the following website offers a good summary of my views.

    http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-occult.html

    Having seen some of the dangers first hand I always caution against unthinking or naive involvement in this area. I agree with Patrice that God in us is greater than any power outside of us. Nevertheless it’s better not to dabble.


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    @ Dana:
    Dana
    I think all of a Christian’s life is experiential but that there has to be a validation either through the word or in the fellowship of the church. Otherwise we might just believe anything at all.
    Regards
    Gavin


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    @ Hester: LCMS heartland for sure.


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    numo wrote:

    or something like that…. at any rate, I found it to be true, via my many years in charismatic/evangelical-land.

    Those types of experiences tend to make some overcorrect.


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    numo wrote:

    Doesn’t C.S. Lewis write – in Screwtape’s voice – that humans who believe too much in the devil are as susceptible to temptation as those who believe there’s no such thing?

    From memory:

    “There are two errors mankind can fall into regarding the race of Devils — to disbelieve entirely in their existence, or believe and take an unhealthy interest in them. The Devils hail a Materialist or a Magician with equal delight.”

    And a lot of these Discernment & Deliverance types take as much of an interest in them as Anton La Vey or Aliester Crowley ever did.


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    WenatcheeTheHatchet wrote:

    When people have asked how MH and MD can be so popular the explanation is as simple as the halo effect and sunk-cost investment. If we’re immune to those mental shortcuts in one area we may simply be more susceptible in another.

    I know of “sunk cost investment” primarily in the context of con jobs and swindles. It’s getting the mark so involved both financially and emotionally that they can’t back out even when they know they’re being taken.

    This holds in high finance, too, where it’s called “too big to fail”:
    “Owe a thousand dollars and they go after you as a deadbeat; owe a hundred million dollars and they take you on as a partner.”


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    Thanks for the other SoS translations links Numo, there certainly are a lot, way too many for any one person to to claim that they have THE correct interpretation let alone command legalistic sensuality from it.


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    numo wrote:

    I think MD and his homies believe they’re quite clever.

    Would that me “MD and his horny homies”?

    Well, not so much.
    I’ve had to build mental walls around the SoS and its beautiful imagery ever since I 1st came across MD’s horrible hatchet job on it. Because I love poetry, and the poems in the book are very beautiful and powerful. (Wish I could read them in Hebrew! Poetry’s one of the hardest things to translate.)

    For my own sanity, I have had to build similar mental walls around the Book of Revelation. You see, I first heard of eschatology from Hal Lindsay’s homies.


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    @ Marge Sweigart:
    I think the timing of this is odd. I believe it may have something to do with the lawsuit.


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    @ Gavin White:
    I do not believe in dabbling. However, I do not believe that demons can possess a Christian. You mentioned a serious evil. The article to which you referred was not helpful in that regard. I prefer The Covering by Hank Hannegraaff.


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    @ Dee:

    Neither do I but they can seriously disturb and distract.


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    sunk-cost is also why some people stay married when they shouldn’t have married to begin with, HUG. 🙂 It’s also why some of us watched any X-Files episodes after season 5. 🙁


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    @ Dee:

    I thought Hank had been discredited because of his lack of qualifications, association with Chuck Smith, financial irregularities, tax avoidance, litigation and love of living in big houses at his followers expense? I’ve not read the book you mentioned but I have read other ones which were pretty poor.


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    @ Gavin White:
    I have dealt with all of that in a post that continues to get a fair amount of hits. You will see that I took him to task for those things. Look it up.

    I happen to like how he deals with theological issues very much. It was listening to him that got me through my period of questioning.

    All of us should be able to answer questions as quickly as he does. It was a goal of mine to be able to do the same thing. Some of what we do here is an outgrowth of my interest in how he handles theological issues.


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    Yes. I read it yesterday. I thought it was not impartial.


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    @ dee:
    Interestingky enough, his program was very important for me in learning how to articulate my faith. I was very dismayed to learn of his apparent deceit, though I stopped listening to his program years ago.


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    @ Jeff S:I still have it sent to my I Phone and listen to it on occasion. I would love to be able to answer questions as quickly as he does. He was the one who got me to question my premillenial view. I received emails from Martin’s family members who disagree with one another. I finally gave up and said that his information is great but I am confused about a number of issues surrounding his personal life. I spelled those out in the post.