Listening to “emergent” Christians talk about their ideas on the internet is not very easy.

For me, that has proven especially true in the past couple of weeks, for at least three reasons.

The first is that they keep saying things about God that are not too Biblical, or imbalanced, even if they aren’t strictly heretical (i.e., something that keeps you from being a real Christian).

The second is that they keep assuming other Christians, such as myself, mainly believe as they do for certain reasons — they want to preserve power, they want to shoot homosexuals in the streets for sport, they’re all legalists, fundies, etc. They don’t give much leeway to those who believe “traditional” Christianity, and live their faith in love, because they really believe the Bible teaches this and God wants it.

The third reason is because these are not just philosophical issues that can be talked about over (insert trendy drink of your choice) while tapping out notes on your (insert i-Something of your choice).¹ I keep getting that impression from a lot of “emergent” advocates — and to be fair, from some “traditional” Christians too — that all this is just a bookish discussion.

Instead, this stuff is vital. It affects people’s lives. Believing wrongly about spiritual realities ruins marriages, families, churches. False doctrine (no matter which doctrines you believe are false) corrupts how one views God, morality, salvation, how to interact with the world.

And what if it’s true that Christians who still hold to the Biblical framework of man’s personal sin against God²), and eternal consequences for failure to repent and believe Christ? If so, those who claim or act otherwise are in a lot of trouble. Why? Because in their efforts to help the world, heal its hurts, etc., they’re stepping right over dead bodies — ignoring man’s true problem, deadness in trespasses and sins (Ephesians 1-2), in order to treat flesh wounds.

One month ago I addressed this issue in Part 1. It started with a fantasy-world analogy³ and actually dared to finish with a surface evaluation of the civil rights era. Now I’ll finally finish up, with some thoughts on Christians and others who could seem to prefer moral zeal but without Biblical knowledge, following a certain earthquake.

Do your paperwork

More than a month has passed since the earthquake that tore through the half-island nation of Haiti. Already afflicted with disease, death and poverty, the island is still suffering the aftermath of that near-apocalypse. The blighted country’s existing population of orphans undoubtedly swelled, and charity workers, Christian or not, are trying to figure out what to do.

They want to help the suffering people, they really do. They have great hearts, those charity workers. But what they also need to make sure they have is, um, the right paperwork.

This also goes for a certain group of Baptists.⁴ In early February, ten members of an Idaho church were trying to get into the Dominican Republic, crossing the border with multiple Haitian orphans in tow. Instead they were arrested and charged with child kidnapping.

More recently, eight of the Baptists were freed and returned to the U.S. in time for some to get on the Oprah show.⁵ But two of their leaders, Laura Silsby and Charisa Coulter, are still jailed in Port-au-Prince. They hadn’t had the right documents, Haiti authorities said, and oh, by the way: some of the children weren’t really orphans. A World magazine story (on Feb. 4) further describes:

[Silsby] told reporters last week: “Our hearts were in the right place.”

[. . .]

The Americans, members of a group called New Life Children’s Refuge, said they planned to establish an orphanage for children in the Dominican Republic. CNN reported that the group has no experience running an orphanage, and that the group’s headquarters are listed as Silsby’s now-foreclosed home.

What I hope is that the missionaries (or missionary wannabes?) are not now thinking this is simple anti-Christian persecution. I hope they aren’t claiming “this was God’s will” for something that just wasn’t very good sense. I hope good intentions aren’t being held up over God-glorifying wisdom.

I also hope other Christians won’t pick on them too much. Rather, we should seek to encourage good-hearted Christians who could use some, well, wisdom too.

In Romans 10:2, Paul refers to non-Christian Jews who have “zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.” They don’t “submit to God’s righteousness,” the apostle says. In their case, having a “heart in the right place” was not enough.

The same is true of not only the Baptists in Haiti, or the social-gospel “emergent” folks, but any Christian. We should also be Biblical. We need to do the right paperwork. Otherwise, we risk making Jesus look bad, or else, have all these great intentions to help people but instead miss the real problems. ⁶

Rejecting society-prosperity “gospels”

Not having an actual orphanage to take the “orphans” to is a bad enough problem. Far worse is the issue described in Part 1: if you had a God-given “power” to give resurrection from death to some victims (though you don’t know who), why would you ignore it in favor of only treating not-quite-dead-yet people for surface wounds?

Yet many Christians, “emergent” or not, do this all the time.⁷

We get wrapped up in things like Natural Disaster Recovery, and Man’s Inhumanity to Man, and Addressing Injustice, and tend to neglect the far worse problems in man: the natural disaster of the Fall, man’s inhumanity to God, and the worse injustice of not constantly giving Him glory.

Many know the health-wealth-and-prosperity “gospel” teachers are an easy and rightful target for Christians who point out their heresies and/or greed.

But how is a society-prosperity “gospel” much different? It turns the Christian religion, or missionary work, primarily into trying to heal a society’s wounds, without the “secret power” of the Gospel that God uses to raise someone from spiritual death!

Though it sounds cliché, John 3 remains clear: Jesus told Nicodemus that unless anyone is personally, supernaturally, “born again,” he cannot even “see” the Kingdom of God. The Gospel, personal and life-transforming, powered by Christ’s divinity, sacrificial death and resurrection, is what raises people to life. It’s the secret power. It’s the only ultimate hope for humanity.

No one is saying all Christians should end their Haiti relief work, or any civil-rights work, so we can all only yell John 3:16 all over the place. Rather, Scripture is clear that helping the poor, feeding the hungry, addressing injustice, defending life, etc., are part of Christians’ Gospel-powered presence in the world. However, in combating civil-rights evils, or caring for the poor or orphans after the Haiti earthquake, shouldn’t Christians at least also spread the Gospel that Christ died to save sinners from their own spiritual deadness?

The choice is not “either we preach the Gospel, or we help the poor or fight injustice.” Christians throughout history haven’t seen this as a dichotomy (though a lot of people nowadays seem to force it into a black-and-white issue). Neither does the Bible.

By rooting everything we do not in our own society-prosperity work, but in that secret power of God to replace hearts of stone with living hearts of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26), we stay truly humble. We work out of gratitude to God, not confidence in our own morality or intentions. We still have zeal, but with Biblical knowledge. We do our paperwork — and hopefully have a little more common sense and hearts in the right place. Best of all, God, and not us, will get the glory.

(Find the whole “God’s will hunting” series thus far, including last week’s Part 4: Asking for wisdom, here. The series will continue soon.)

Hey back, Isaac,

Last time, your closing paragraph, about claiming God “gave us a word” and thus risking taking His name in vain, is one of those salient points that should make any reader go … “ooooohh.”

Greg Koukl pointed out that Christians often get offended when people exclaim “Oh God!”. We say “How dare you take his name in vain!” And then we get a “Word from the Lord” and tell someone whom they should or should not marry. Who’s committing the most serious sin in taking the Lord’s name in vain? Ours does much more damage.

Further on that truth: from what I understand, the Fourth Commandment wasn’t just a ban on saying God’s Name aloud when one isn’t actually addressing Him. That is included, but I’m very sure the wider meaning was that the Hebrews, by their actions, should not profane the Name of God to others by what they do.

Two recent (at the time of this writing, Jan. 14) news stories add even more to this point.

The first is the life-shattering earthquake in Haiti. Christians need to clarify that God is not weak; the earthquake didn’t stun Him. But should we say “the earthquake was God’s will” as some might? It is like we should, in one sense, only among ourselves as Christians. But even then we must be careful, because many Christians (likely because they haven’t been taught) are not careful to distinguish God’s on-the-surface will from His deeper will.

Revealed will: God hates sin and suffering. Deeper will: He allows it anyway, for reasons only He knows but that even now we can begin to see, for greater good and His glory.

The second related issue is Pat Robertson’s statement that God’s will is judging Haiti for some sin in the past (such as a “pact with the Devil”). As you said, this seems to take the Lord’s Name in vain as much as anyone who utters His Name aloud as part of a vile cussphrase.

Disclaimer: I think an equal problem to Pat Robertson’s self-righteous announcements is making equally self-righteous pronouncements against him — playing the “I’m the good cop” Christian game, trying to elevate ourselves in the world’s eyes. But instead of falling into the same sin of spiritual arrogance, we ought to plead: Mr. Robertson, you ought to first, get off the TV and come back and renounce false “prophecies”; second, understand that in the deepest sense, anything that happens is according to God’s will! Make it clear God does hate sin and suffering, but that He allows it — like the tower disaster in Luke 13: 1-4 — to remind people to repent!

What I find most often, is people do not use the principles in the Bible to make sound decisions themselves. Often, we wish to get a clear answer about God instead of making a decision for ourselves, taking the responsibility.

Like many Christians do when they claim “God told me” something, I can illustrate this truth with a Personal Anecdote. Recently I visited extended relatives over the holiday break. Someone, in a personal story of her own, told me “God told her” to give a Bible to someone.

Did she take God’s Name in vain? I’m not sure what to say about that. Isn’t it always good to share the Word with someone? Wouldn’t that obviously be in God’s revealed will? So why not just say you followed those clear written words from Him, rather than claiming some special Spirit whisper inside? In this instance, I just smiled and nodded. That action was likely more honoring to God, and to her, than picking a fight with her wording would have been.

But what if she said God wanted her to donate her entire life savings to Joyce Meyer Ministries or something? — and I, knowing her better years later, had already let her “get away” with claiming God’s direct word about her more-minor actions, and not said anything?

Really I think it comes back to being careful about our language. Someone may say God told me directly to do this and mean it very sincerely. As you said, that can still happen! But in so many cases it’s hard not to say that, or use that, as a way of setting ourselves up as so very Spiritual: God speaks to me directly. Thus the implication: Hmm, does He speak to you directly?

This seems much too close to a Gnosticism-type Christianity, in which the Holy Spirit constantly speaks mainly and “loudest” to people on a very deep Spiritual level that only very Spiritual people can hear.¹ But rather than forcing us to cringe and listen closely to whatever God might be saying in between the lines of life, the Bible gives us all the same Word. And yes, it takes physical work with actual language, to understand it. I don’t mean to imply it is easy. But it’s less difficult than how some say it is!

Here’s another point I heard somewhere If God only gave us nudges and whispers, rather than primarily speaking with His direct Word (as He has!), He would be cruel and unloving.

Last time, you mentioned looking for precedents in Scripture about finding God’s will. I think many people actually do look there for precedents, but only selectively. For example, some homeschooling-oriented Christians look to Middle-eastern culture of Old Testament days and their courtship practices² as precedent for matching up in modern times. But they never have their daughters sneak into the handsome field worker’s property when he’s in high spirits from too much drinking, and lay at the foot of his bed until he wakes up and then you say he’s your choice of a mate — a la the book of Ruth!

You also mentioned the many examples of people in Scripture asking for God’s wisdom, but making choices on extra-Biblical matters without waiting for a supposed “direct word from the Lord.” Do you think Christians blithely see past those? For example, the many times Paul in his missionary travels just went to Antioch or Crete or Attalia in Asia Minor and did not wait for a direct leading from the Lord. Instead, readers subconsciously pay more attention to the Spirit not allowing Paul and his fellow missionaries to enter one place and sending them elsewhere, or the way Moses heard from God in the burning bush, and perceive those as the way God normally works. Again, it’s selective. I wonder how much of that ties into the “life verse” fallacy, where someone bases his lifestyle or ministry on favorite parts of the Bible, ignoring the rest.

That probably means that if we were to question someone’s “word from the Lord” about even where to buy a new car, he/she would be upset and assume we believe God never speaks or acts miraculously. Of course we believe He does! Yet like you said, that’s not the Biblical rule for living. We should not expect Him to give us extra revelation when He’s already closed the canon of written Scripture, and gives us wisdom and the abilities to grow in it, with His Spirit’s help.

So here are my closing questions for next time: how do we react when someone says “God told me” such-and-such? Do we nitpick? Lovingly ask deep questions? Ignore it? And especially if someone is using that as a reason/excuse not to make a decision and take the consequences if it turns out to be “wrong” — that is, if God uses it to help us the hard way — what can we do?

Again, Godspeed! And in Him,

Stephen