It's Always Personal

And we have something more sure, the prophetic word, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation.   For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. – 2 Peter 1:19-21

I was raised in a good old Southern Baptist country church.  The Bible was considered the Word of God, and as having what is technically called “full verbal plenary inspiration”.  If the King James Version was good enough for the Apostle Paul, it was good enough for us.  I learned the Scripture as a kid the same way that I learned history, the state and federal constitutions in school.  I don’t ever recall being an atheist or even agnostic with regard to the existence of some kind of spiritual reality.  Materialism made no sense to me, and the first time I read about the Big Bang, I immediately reconciled it to the Bible and equated it to God speaking creation into existence. 

What I wasn’t sure of for a long time was Christianity, especially Christianity as it had been preached, taught, understood, and practiced by my good, church-going hillbilly family, friends, and neighbors.  My friends and I would sit around drinking beer and smoking dope talking about Jesus as someone worthy of respect and emulation while rejecting the pale, frowning, foreboding image presented by our elders.  I changed one day as I was sitting at the little, round kitchen table we had in our trailer where I was reading “A Chapter Not Strictly Necessary” in Miracles.  I started going to church. 

Within a few months, I was not only attending church three times a week, I was teaching.  Generally, I was teaching from a Sunday School quarterly, and, other than adding my own rhetoric flourishes, metaphors, and illustrative stories, I stuck to the doctrinal points in the lesson.  Where I would get into trouble was in talking to people off the cuff over lunch.  I have heard many times the King James Version of verse 20 above:  Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.  Often it was said this way, “Yes, but remember, there are no private interpretations.”    

 What the speaker meant is that a) you have to be careful about applying a verse to a specific situation in the world – something with which I agree, or b) trying to understand Scripture in a way not perfectly consistent with the generally accepted understanding and application is a bad idea – something with which I disagree.  Even if I am wrong, this particular verse does not endorse that view.  What Peter is saying is that Scripture is not something made up by a person to serve that person’s ends, like the Book of Mormon or the Koran.  With apologies to any Mormons or Muslims that might happen to read this, that’s what I believe else I would be a Mormon or Muslim.  Right? 

As far as I can tell, revelation is always personal and individual.  By that, I do not mean to imply that I disagree with any basic doctrine of Christianity or that I think there is any way of salvation apart from the Cross.  If God doesn’t speak to us personally, we do not know God.  If God speaks only to the congregation and the revelation is only corporate then I do not see how an individual experiences salvation apart from being initiated as a member of the corporate body.  Indeed, this seems to be what is taught by some churches.  I don’t know that any denomination puts it exactly like that, but such a statement would be consistent with their practices.      

To me Scripture is a carrier of revelation.  I’ve told the story before of how I had that experience of connecting to Christ and asked my wife to pick up a new Bible for me.  The one she bought was a KJV like my old one, but more compact, about 4” by 6”, and no red letters or references.  When I started reading it, I was astounded that someone had the audacity to change the Bible.  I was so convinced that it was different that I dug out my old one to compare it.  The difference in the revelation was like night and day.  But the words were the same. 

I can read the same verse that I read ten years ago, even a passage that I studied in depth or taught on, and, today, I will find a whole new level of meaning and understanding it.  And I will sit here and say, Now I see what it really means.  Ten years from now, if I should still be living for some strange reason, I will likely read it, see something new, and say the same thing.  It is like what Jeremiah says in Lamentations 3:21-23 -- But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:  The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

God’s revealing of Himself is a continual – we might even want to say an evolving process.  In any long-term relationship with real friends or with a spouse, with children and parents, there is always this kind of newness and discovery.  If that isn’t there, the relationship can falter and breakdown.  It doesn’t mean that a person needs to get a divorce or abandon a friend or never call home, but it does mean there is less joy and meaning in the relationship.  We may remain loyal and faithful out of decency or a memory of what once existed. 

With us as imperfect people the loss of interest in a bond of love can usually be blamed on both parties to a greater or lesser extent.  When the bond is between us and our Father, I’m pretty sure the fault lies all on my side.  It is important for us to continue to pursue God and never accept the rigid view that knowing all the doctrines of the church means knowing all there is to know about Christ. 

Following Jesus for Fun and Profit

When you eat and are full, and build beautiful houses to live in, and your herds and flocks grow large, and your silver and gold multiply, and everything else you have increases, be careful that your heart doesn't become proud and you forget the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the place of slavery. -- Deuteronomy 8:12-14

When I was a kid, we sang hymns in church and little choruses in Sunday School and Vacation Bible School. Even hour or so on KWTO, someone would sing a "sacred song" in between the ordinary run of hillbilly music. When KWTO was still broadcasting live music radio shows, the performers would often close with a gospel song. On television, the "Ozark Jubilee" always included the performance of a gospel number, usually by Red Foley. Tennessee Ernie Ford typically sang a sacred song on his show. Porter Wagoner always did one.

As far as preaching and teaching in mass media, there was, of course, the broadcast of Billy Graham crusades. Many local pastors had brief spots on the secular radio station. Philip Wannemaker, the long-time pastor of Central Assembly — the "mother church" of the Assemblies of God, did a five-minute devotional every weekday morning during a local break in the "Today Show". I had the privilege of talking to Brother Wannemaker on the phone once when I lived in Texas about an entirely different matter, and I mentioned that I well-remembered those carefully crafted sermon miniatures. They were just enough to nudge one into thinking a little about God to start the day.

Now things are very different. There are Christian television and radio networks that blanket many regions of the country, especially in the Bible Belt. On the FM band of my Sangean ATS 818, I can pick up, I think, eight all-Christian stations between 88 and 92. I can pick up two or three daytime AM stations, probably some more at night. I don't prowl shortwave as much as I did before the internet, but there used to several Christian/patriot broadcasts out there as well. Now that I'm off satellite, I can only pick up the Daystar network on television, but that still gives me access to Christian programming 24 hours a day. Satellite and cable customers can be swamped by the Gospel.

With so much teaching, preaching, and singing being pumped through the airwaves, not to mention the webs, why aren't Christians stronger and more resistant to corruption by the culture? The divorce rate among Christians is as higher or higher than among non-Christians. Pastors and Christian leaders continue to fall to scandals. We lack power, and we lack peace.

I would suggest that perhaps it is the very glut of teaching that causes part of our problem. See, Christian broadcasting, like everything else, has to be funded. Most Christian radio stations run programs from various ministries. Those ministries pay for the stations' airtime. The ministries are, in turn, funded by donations, love-offerings, or the sale of ministry products such as books and CD's. Now these ministries are not like me. I try not to pay attention to the number of hits I get for a particular topic. I generate the same revenue for 1 hit as for 20 or 30. When I check things it is just for curiosity's sake. My post ranting against all things Janis Ian, and a post on a Hayek quote called "Why the Worst Get on Top" probably generate the most new traffic. I could, possibly, get more attention on the internet if I did more talking about popular culture figures I don't like and posted more quotes from The Road to Serfdom. But I can afford not to do that. Ministries that depend on donations cannot be so cavalier. They have to pay attention to topics that generate offerings and orders. They may not hit those topics all the time, but they will certainly keep them in the rotation. And there is nothing wrong with that, except — except that all too often those are not the kinds of things that really move the listeners closer to God.

My guess is that practical topics — how to raise better kids, have a better marriage, have more money, more peace, more answered prayers, etc. — are more popular than deep theological discussions. That's a fairly educated guess because we usually have a Christian radio program on while we're eating, and we often watch whatever is on Daystar in the evenings before going to sleep. Even when the teacher is dealing with weighter topics like atonement or Christ's indwelling, we are usually told how this makes our lives better. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

At least, not at first. After a while, though, if all we hear is how God is interested in making our lives better and better, we might start thinking that Christianity is really all about us. So we look for a church that has lots to offer us and the kids. We complain if we don't get anything out of the "praise and worship".

Somehow, somewhere, we have missed the point that the worship service isn't for us. This is less, much less, of a problem in Catholic and Orthodox churches, I'm sure, although I have heard some of my Catholic friends express sentiments that sound as if they might not get it all the time either. Still, evangelical Christians are the worst offenders in this regard. We give, often very generously, because we are told that we will be repaid. We are much more rarely told that giving is not to enrich us or even to build a shiny new multipurpose family activity ministry center, but primarily to acknowledge our dependent relationship with our Father.

Paradoxically, I think evangelicals probably start out better than any other tradition. The reason for that is that we preach salvation by grace, and, mostly, the helpless sinfulness of man apart from Christ and the Cross. Because we cannot save ourselves, our deliverance depends entirely upon a relationship with Christ. It is this relational understanding of salvation that underpins the initial joy many experience in forgiveness and reconciliation with God. Unfortunately, shortly after that, all this "teaching" kicks in, and we start looking to God, not in a relational way, but in a manipulative way. We begin to hear how thanksgiving pleases God, so we give thanks. We hear how God inhabits the praises of His people, so we praise. What begins as seeking after God too frequently leads us to seek for something through God, and it is our popular, practical teaching that contributes to this.

I can't tell you the number of "Seven Steps to Answered Prayer"-type formulas I've heard — more than seven, for sure. New Christians, in particular, eat this stuff up, but it's like trying to live on Oreos. Sure, people like it, and it will draw a crowd, and everyone will be excited afterward. But when a couple of hours have passed, and you have to push the truck out of the ditch, the sugar buzz has left you flat. Cornbread and beans may not be as exciting part of the time, but you're still going at the end of the row.

Of course, there are individuals in all traditions, including evangelicals who grasp that Christianity is supposed to be relational. Prayer is meant to be a vehicle whereby we get God, not get from God. God welcomes our petitions and intercession, but only when we have our relationship with Him at the core of our lives.

Perhaps our Father intends for us to work through things this way. It's not altogether unlike the normal pattern between a child and parent. At first, we are thrilled just to have Daddy around. He romps and plays and makes us smile. We are filled with joy when he walks in the door and rush into his arms to tell him all about whatever has happened. As we grow older, sometimes we lose a little of that joy in just being around him. He becomes the one who disciplines us. He is the one we go to for ice cream money or new shoes or car keys. Now we may still appreciate him, but we appreciate him for what he does for us.

But still later many of us come back, and we are happy to just be in the same room with him. We are content to hear his voice, to listen as he talks — not because he tells us something new and exciting, but because it's his voice. And so it is with some of us whom God has blessed.

We've been out there enjoying life and doing whatever it is that we should or shouldn't be doing. We're getting by OK, but there's a nagging feeling that something might be missing. We find a quiet spot and just start talking. Then we pause and listen. Just because it's His voice.