iMonk Classic: Subcultural Spirituality or “I know he’s a Christian because I saw it on his bumper sticker.”

Classic iMonk Post
by Michael Spencer
From August, 2004

One of the axioms of my critique of evangelicalism is this: methodology creates theology. By this I mean that when evangelicals have adopted particular methods, such as the evangelistic sales pitch or the powerpoint designed sermon, they will soon develop an accompanying theology, generally morphed in the direction of justifying and spiritualizing what they are doing. Therefore, the most pragmatic of churches are usually the most defensive and the least self-critical about their innovative methods. Churches who do this for decades have all the characteristics of the vault at Fort Knox.

Of course, one might expand this critique in a number of ways. We might say that methodology has created theology, which has, in turn, created more methodology. It’s a circle, a cycle that goes on and on. Which brings me to the question of “what is the result?” And the answer: the corruption of individual Christian spirituality itself, something abundantly evident among evangelicals today.

Let me illustrate. Which of the following is going to attract evangelicals? Which expresses the personal spirituality of the typical evangelical? Which best describes what appeals to you and me?

1) Our church decides to have a prayer emphasis. We have a 24 hour prayer clock and sign up for 15 minutes to pray in the worship center. We have a seminar on prayer featuring a well-known teacher. We sell books on prayer. We have themed t-shirts about prayer with cool mottos and witty art. We have special prayer meetings at designated homes. The youth have a prayer walk. Prayer testimonies are featured in worship all week. A praise and worship band is coming to lead a musical concert of prayer. Here- have a free pen and a balloon. Prayer and pizza for the youth happens on Saturday. The Children’s Choir is doing “Billy, The Praying Bicycle” in the evening service.

Or…

2) The pastor preaches on prayer, and encourages members to pray every day for the church, missions and themselves. He recommends you read J.C. Ryle’s “Call to Prayer.” Accountability groups for personal prayer are encouraged as well. Then, it’s up to you.

Of course, I hope you will agree that while we understand the second option, we also know that our evangelical spirituality is drawn toward the festival of events in the first option, an option that actually promotes not so much prayer, but events and actvities somehow related to prayer. Kind of.

Our spirituality has become corrupted by methodology that emphasizes evangelical Christian subculture, a subculture that looks to activities, conferences, concerts, products and many other outward events to measure spiritual reality.

Continue reading “iMonk Classic: Subcultural Spirituality or “I know he’s a Christian because I saw it on his bumper sticker.””

Cheerfulness that Mocks the Devil

Martin Luther regularly gave personal and pastoral counsel to his friends to seek cheerfulness. He himself was subject to discouragement and depression, which he usually attributed to the attacks of the devil. His letters and table-talk have much to say about ways of overcoming dark moods. Luther’s advice is characteristically earthy and bold, while at the same time he clearly points his companions to Christ. This combination of utter humanity and spiritual insight is one of the features that makes Luther so attractive as a mentor.

One of the best known examples is a letter to Jerome Weller at Wittenberg while Luther was away from home during the summer of 1530.

Though Luther preached strongly against drunkenness and debauchery, words like the following testify that Luther thought Christians were perfectly free in Christ to make use of God’s gifts to gladden their hearts in full enjoyment of life.

Whenever this temptation comes to you beware not to dispute with the devil nor allow yourself to dwell on these lethal thoughts, for so doing is nothing less than giving place to the devil and so falling. Try as hard as you can to despise these thoughts sent by Satan. In this sort of temptation and battle contempt is the easiest road to victory; laugh your enemy to scorn and ask to whom you are talking. By all means flee solitude, for he lies in wait most for those alone. This devil is conquered by despising him and mocking him, not by resisting and arguing. Therefore, Jerome, joke and play games with my wife and others, in which way you will drive out your diabolic thoughts and take courage.

Be strong and cheerful and cast out those monstrous thoughts. Whenever the devil harasses you thus, seek the company of men or drink more, or joke and talk nonsense, or do some other merry thing. Sometimes we must drink more, sport, recreate ourselves, aye, and even sin a little to spite the devil, so that we leave him no place for troubling our consciences with trifles. We are conquered if we try to conscientiously not to sin at all. So when the devil says to you, “Do not drink,” answer him: “I will drink, and right freely, just because you tell me not to.” One must always do what Satan forbids. What other cause do you think that I have for drinking so much strong drink, talking so freely and making merry so often, except that I wish to mock and harass the devil who is wont to mock and harass me. Would that I could contrive some great sin to spite the devil, that he might understand that I would not even then acknowledge it and that I was conscious of no sin whatever. We must put the whole law entirely out of our eyes and hearts, — we, I say, whom the devil thus assails and torments. Whenever the devil charges us with our sins and pronounces us guilty of death and hell, we ought to say to him: I admit that I deserve death and hell; what, then, will happen to me? Why, you will be eternally damned! By no means; for I know One who has suffered and made satisfaction for me. His name is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Where He abides, there will I also abide.”

Despite the pietistic protestations of Christian teachers such as John MacArthur, who recently wrote a prohibitionist diatribe against his young, restless, and reformed brethren called, “Beer, Bohemianism, and True Christian Liberty,” Luther had no such scruples about whether such enjoyments as drinking alcohol offend God. Nonsense! He saw tee-totalism as the devil’s work! What else could it be, since it involves despising what God calls good, what he has given to gladden the human heart (Psalm104:15)?

One of my favorite passages from the First Testament, which I imagine has rarely been preached in most Baptist or old-time Methodist churches, is Deuteronomy 14:22-26 —

Set apart a tithe of all the yield of your seed that is brought in yearly from the field. In the presence of the Lord your God, in the place that he will choose as a dwelling for his name, you shall eat the tithe of your grain, your wine, and your oil, as well as the firstlings of your herd and flock, so that you may learn to fear the Lord your God always. But if, when the Lord your God has blessed you, the distance is so great that you are unable to transport it, because the place where the Lord your God will choose to set his name is too far away from you, then you may turn it into money. With the money secure in hand, go to the place that the Lord your God will choose; spend the money for whatever you wish—oxen, sheep, wine, strong drink, or whatever you desire. And you shall eat there in the presence of the Lord your God, you and your household rejoicing together.

So here, we have God commanding his people to spend their tithe money on anything they want in order to throw a great feast for themselves and their households! Including wine and strong drink, if they so desire.

[If you tend to be overly scrupulous before God and strict with yourself out of fear of offending him, commit that text to memory and recite it to yourself over and over and over again.]

Once we truly grasp God’s grace toward us in Christ, we will not live timidly or refuse to relish our Creator’s good gifts. For heaven’s sake, life is hard enough, sad enough, stressful enough. The world, the flesh, and the devil exert their pressures on our spirits every day. The remedies that bring us relief are not always “spiritual.” How could that possibly be? Our Savior, who had a reputation among the righteous as a glutton and winebibber, a friend of “sinners” who loved to party and enjoy gaiety and laughter around the table, won’t stand for it.

So, my brothers and sisters — play, and sing, and dance, and laugh, and raise a glass.

Tell the devil to go to dreary hell.

How the Lutheran Tradition Answers Many Post-Evangelical Concerns (2)

I continue this overview of how emphases in the historic tradition of Lutheranism have helped me with many concerns I’ve expressed about American evangelicalism.

Thus far, I have introduced the following elements…

  • How I came to peace with finding a tradition,
  • How I appreciate the priority of Word and Table liturgical worship in the Lutheran tradition,
  • How I affirm their emphasis on pastoral ministry,
  • How I love their healthy view of Christian vocation in the world.

Today, let me begin to say a few words about some other theological distinctives upon which Lutherans focus.

First, the centrality of Christ. In some ways, Lutherans share this in common with all historic traditions. Now I’ll admit that this was a hard fact for me to get through my head, but what I have found is that church groups that I would have formerly labeled as “liberal” or “non-Bible-believing” are often more Christ-centered in practice than their evangelical or fundamentalist counterparts. This includes the Lutherans.

Continue reading “How the Lutheran Tradition Answers Many Post-Evangelical Concerns (2)”

The Splendor of a Higher Nature

Monday Merton Musings, Nov 14, 2011
The Splendor of a Higher Nature

All quotes are from The Seven Storey Mountain, by Thomas Merton

Today, we meditate on some theological thinking from Thomas Merton. These musings are found at the beginning of part two of his autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, and provide an introduction to a period in his life when he began to gain respect for Catholic philosophy and faith.

• • •

There is a paradox that lies in the very heart of human existence. It must be apprehended before any lasting happiness is possible in the soul of a man. The paradox is that man’s nature, by itself, can do little or nothing to settle his most important problems. If we follow nothing but our natures, our own philosophies, our own level of ethics, we will end up in hell.

This would be a depressing thought, if it were not purely abstract. Because in the concrete order of things God gave man a nature that was ordered to a supernatural life. He created man with a soul that was made not to bring itself to perfection in its own order, but to be perfected by Him in an order infinitely beyond the reach of human powers. We were never destined in God’s plan for a purely natural beatitude. Our nature, which is a free gift of God, was given to us to be perfected and enhanced by another free gift that is not due it.

This free gift is “sanctifying grace.” It perfects our nature with the gifts of a life, an intellection, a love, a mode of existence infinitely above its own level. If a man were to arrive even at the abstract pinnacle of natural perfection, God’s work would not even be half done: it would be only about to begin, for the real work is the work of grace and the infused virtues and the gifts of the Holy Ghost.

What is “grace”? It is God’s own life, shared by us. God’s life is Love. Deus caritas est. By grace we are able to share in the infinitely selfless love of Him Who is such pure actuality that He needs nothing and therefore cannot conceivably exploit anything for selfish ends….

When a ray of light strikes a crystal, it gives a new quality to the crystal. And when God’s infinitely disinterested love plays upon a human soul, the same kind of thing takes place. And that is the life called sanctifying grace.

The soul of man, left to its own natural level, is a potentially lucid crystal left in darkness. It is perfect in its own nature, but it lacks something that it can only receive from outside and above itself. But when the light shines in it, it becomes in a manner transformed into light and seems to lose its nature in the splendor of a higher nature, the nature of the light that is in it….

Christ established His Church, among other reasons, in order that men might lead one another to Him and in the process sanctify themselves and one another. For in this work it is Christ Who draws us to Himself through the action of our fellow men.

The book goes on to describe an important turning point in Merton’s journey of faith. In New York at age 22, he picked up a book on medieval philosophy which was marked by the imprimatur of the Catholic church, a practice that had mortified him. However, he read the book and found it made a deep impression on him.

“…I had never had an adequate notion of what Christians meant by God,” he wrote, but this book opened his eyes. Coming to terms with a true concept of God awakened in him a thirst to know and see Him.

He started looking for a church to attend in New York City that might satisfy this thirst and draw him closer to the life of grace.

Sermon: Serving a Generous Master (Matt. 25:14-30)

Dixon, IL United Methodist Church

Today’s Gospel text speaks of a man going on a long journey. The journey that has brought me to this place where I stand today has likewise been long.

Picture in your mind a young boy growing up in the Midwest. His family took him to the Methodist church. He loved being in the sanctuary, in the worship service with his parents. He was fascinated by the brilliant light shining through the stained glass windows. He watched intently as the acolytes carried their flames down the aisle and lit the candles on the altar. There was vivid color and glorious sound as choirs of all ages sang in their different colored robes. When the pastor entered in his black robe, carrying his Bible, he felt solemn. When the minister kneeled at his chair he knew something important was taking place. The wooden pews and furnishings of the church gave off an air of something firm and established. When the pastor spoke, his deep voice was impressive. When the boy went through confirmation and knelt at the altar to receive communion, it was a deep and meaningful experience.

Now, fast forward to a boy in his teens, about to graduate from high school. He had gotten away from the church, had lost the sense of wonder. Unsure of himself and his place in the world, he wandered away from the childlike faith that had caught his imagination. A group of friendly fellow students invited them to their church — a Baptist church. It was known for having altar calls at the end of each Sunday morning service. After a long process of questioning and fighting, he went forward on a bright April morning. The God who had been with him through childhood was still there, and the prodigal came home.

Continue reading “Sermon: Serving a Generous Master (Matt. 25:14-30)”

iMonk Classic: Mainlines — We’re Having a Moment Here

Classic iMonk Post
by Michael Spencer
Original post: July, 2007

I wrote this piece in July of ’07. It garnered 70 comments and some grousy updates on my part. (You can read the original here.)

I’m reprinting the post with a clear comment thread because I feel the sentiment I expressed in this piece is even more true now than ever: there are thousands of evangelicals who would give a serious look at mainline churches, traditional worship and the riches of Protestant heritage IF some good brothers and sisters could recognize our journey and meet us somewhere halfway along the path.

It seems that at the moment there is the most interest in the broader, deeper more serious heritage of Protestantism and a growing discontent with worshiptainment, there is a strong prejudice against evangelicals within those communities that could reach out to them. Evangelicalism needs what Protestantism has always done right…..at least in those places where they still remember what was right all along.

Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans, Anglicans….

Mainline churches….we’re having a moment here.

Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans, Disciples of Christ…do you know what I mean? We’re having a moment, and it’s slipping right by.

What moment?

Continue reading “iMonk Classic: Mainlines — We’re Having a Moment Here”

Saturday Ramblings 11.12.11

Well, as they say, the frost is on the pumpkin. Ok, I don’t know who “they” are, or where they keep their pumpkins. Any pumpkins not smashed in the middle of my street by costumed tricksters are rotten anyway. Why would frost settle on a rotten gourd? Now that we have that out of the way, let’s move on to more exciting things, such as why the world did not end on 11.11.11. Any clues? No? Me either. What say we take a stroll down the ramblin’ road.

If you are planning to “occupy,” you might want to make it in Chicago. Seems some churches there are opening their doors to protestors, providing them a safe place to sleep and an “alternative to police custody.” I’m still not sure how I feel about the whole occupy thingy. What are your thoughts?

Things are bad all over (according to the six o’clock news), and especially in cities like Detroit. So what better to share and show the Gospel of God’s amazing grace than to hold a prayer meeting to address problems in America, including the rising Islamic movement. Lou Engle is at Ford Field, home of the Detroit Lions, this weekend with TheCall praying against the demonic spirit he says has taken over Detroit. Well, ok, the Tigers did lose in the ALCS to the Texas Rangers, but I’m not sure if that is the work of Satan or a shaky bullpen.

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Music in Sepia

The Harrow & The Harvest
Gillian Welch

You know some girls are bright as the morning
And some girls are blessed with a dark turn of mind

• • •

Though it was released in June, I’ve been listening lately to Gillian Welch’s first new album in eight years and have found it to be quintessentially autumnal in tone. Here in the falling of the year, I find this music bracing. It portrays the dogged spirit and weathered faces of those who dance at the threshing floor, having survived another hard path to harvest, while anticipating the darkness to come.

Along with collaborator David Rawlings, Welch has given us another spare yet rich offering of Americana roots, front porch, pass the hard cider music — intimate, wry, soulful, and lilting. This music comes straight from the Dust Bowl or some holler deep in the Appalachian hills. The songs paint sepia portraits of life that’s hard and the spirit that survives it.

The mood of the record is not all melancholy or dark, but the edges are worn, even when hands start clapping on “Six White Horses.” It can be a blessing to have a “Dark Turn of Mind,” but such girls still feel the shadows a’calling.

My favorite song here is “Hard Times,” which portrays a farmer stubbornly persevering, singing to his mule as he struggles behind the plow:

There was a camp town man, used to plow and sing
And he loved that mule and the mule loved him
When the day got long as it does about now
I’d hear him singing to his muley-cow
Calling, “Come on my sweet old girl, and I’d bet the whole damn world
That we’re gonna make it yet to the end of the row”

Singing “hard times ain’t gonna rule my mind
Hard times ain’t gonna rule my mind, Bessie
Hard times ain’t gonna rule my mind no more”

It’s that kind of grit and tenacious determination that brings a smile to my face and warms my heart for the winter to come.

We rejoice when it’s good. We do what it takes to get through the pain. We hunger for glory.

It’s beefsteak when I’m working’
Whiskey when I’m dry
And sweet heaven when I die…

How the Lutheran Tradition Answers Many Post-Evangelical Concerns (1)

Last week I wrote about how I have come to peace with my place in the tradition of the Church. My new personal statement of identity is:

“I am a Christian, and I practice my faith in the Lutheran tradition.”

I am the first to admit that I have a long way to go in understanding all that this means, but in a few posts over the next couple of days I want to highlight distinctive Lutheran teachings that, in my view, answer many concerns about the revivalistic evangelicalism I have left behind.

Before I do, let me first reiterate in this first post what I mean when I say I’m a “post-evangelical,” and that I no longer see myself as being within the church system known broadly as “American evangelicalism.” We speak a lot around here about being in the “post-evangelical wilderness,” but perhaps some of you are new and are wondering what we mean by that.

Continue reading “How the Lutheran Tradition Answers Many Post-Evangelical Concerns (1)”

iMonk Classic: Standing on My Own Trap Door? or “I’ll Take My Christocentric Theology To Go, Thank You.”

Classic iMonk Post
by Michael Spencer
From Nov. 29, 2007

Let it be presupposed that every good Christian is to be more ready to save his neighbor’s proposition than to condemn it. If he cannot save it, let him inquire how he means it; and if he means it badly, let him correct him with charity. If that is not enough, let him seek all the suitable means to bring him to mean it well, and save himself.

• Ignatius of Loyola

  • God is love. God loves his own glory most of all. God is holy. God pursues his own holiness most of all. God loves human beings. God manifests his glory by saving persons who find their joy in his glory.
  • God is merciful and compassionate, to the praise of his glory and grace. God is righteous. He is a covenant-making, law-giving God. God manifests his glory in the perfect justice that upholds his law. His mercy and holiness are not at odds, but are perfectly joined together.
  • God saves by forgiving sin and imputing righteousness. The imputation of his righteousness is the core of justification by faith alone. The imputation of Adam’s sin and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness are the double-sides of the Gospel message.
  • The Bible is inerrant, giving us God’s sufficient word in human language. The Bible is without error, and the evident erroneousness and limitation of human language and communication does not hamper the inspiration or effectual spiritual use of scripture.
  • By studying the text of scripture, we may have the mind of Christ and the will of God for all things that pertain to life and faith. We may apply scripture in any area of life with confidence in its truthfulness, including science, politics and law.

• • •

And on and on I could go. I wonder how many readers are already up for a fight? These are the theological arguments, assertions, debates and declarations that make up the evangelical world today. Any one of the above sentences could branch out into a dozen or a hundred other related assertions.

I can’t recall the author (someone in the Wilsonite compound, I think) but I once read someone who portrayed evangelical Christians as people using all their abilities to get other people to agree to evangelistic sentences. The sentences mattered very much; more than almost anything else. Correctly worded sentences, turned into prayers, lectures, books and so on.

Continue reading “iMonk Classic: Standing on My Own Trap Door? or “I’ll Take My Christocentric Theology To Go, Thank You.””