I received many responses on my previous contribution entitled "Christianity: It's Personal". I want to personally thank every person who commented on this article, I appreciate each comment and have read every one. Tonight, I want to specifically discuss a comment from Dennis concerning the approach of witnessing from a Christian to one who has gone through a substantial amount of loss and pain in their walk of life as Christian. Dennis' comments will be in block quote, and in italics.
SHT said: " I can tell you right now that I am absolutely certain – fully convinced – of the personal intervention of spiritual beings in my life – interventions in my path, interventions that have saved me from harm, interventions in daily life, warnings that have stopped me from certain catastrophe – even direct angelic experiences. There is no other explanation to me. This is personal."First of all, I completely understand the reality of events that could have ended our lives , didn't for some reason and it is completely normal to attribute them to divine intervention and protection when in a church environment. It is natural and something expressed by people of all faiths when something almost happened to them that didn't or did and they recovered etc.
That is true. I am well aware of the fact that if you are Muslim, you thank Allah. If you are Christian, you thank Jesus - and the same goes for even atheists, who thank "their lucky stars" or even "good fortune". There is an inherent gratefulness in the hearts of everyone who for whatever reason experiences a good nudge from certain doom to their favor. So you and I both are in complete agreement about the human response of thanksgiving. We simply differ on to whom, or what, receives the gratitude.
I just want to relate the downside of being overly public and enthusiastic about our perceived divine interventions and yet be unaware or careless around those that also have their faith and suffered a loss without intervention or protection within the same community.
You raise an interesting point that I believe all Christians should take a good and hard look at. Is their witness - or testimony - perceived as haughty, callous, self-righteous, or even smug? Can a witness approached in the wrong way actually turn someone off from the Lord when it was intended to help? Can a person be working not out of love, but out of self-serving pious conviction and not even see the hypocrisy of their actions? Yes, that can happen. It has happened. I've witnessed people - even close people - who are completely insensitive to the emotional fragility of the person they are speaking to or praying for, ignoring the substance of love in favor of the normalcy of "Christian etiquette". There was a person that I witnessed who was praying for a person with cancer who only had days to live. The Christian praying a prayer was praying commands to the cancer for it to be gone and etc... and the end result is that the cancer did not leave, and the individual died not many days after this happened. I've seen interventions fail to happen, and I've seen protections fail to happen. I - and I believe every other Christian (and non-Christian, and other faithful people of different belief) have experienced the "lack of response" of prayer or protection and yes, it can be a very faith-trying experience to have something not happen that is, to us, "supposed" to happen. I believe that the main differences have to do with a general public testimony versus a specific personal testimony, and when you talk to a person as if they were a general audience, then that is where the problems come in. TOO many people lack personal sensitivity and compassion and common sense love when personally counseling a person who has suffered a loss or are in general, suffering. It is difficult to be unaware or careless in a "general" testimony or witness, because the general testimony and witness is geared to many, not a personal conversation with a genuinely suffering person.
You relate this story:
At a Festival back in the day my church area and others close by had suffered horrible losses of children through drowning, farm accidents leading to rather difficult deaths from which I will spare us the details and auto accidents etc. One minister during his sermon went on and on about a miraculous intervention by God that saved one of his congregants children etc. It was a long story and while I understood his enthusiasm to impress God's intervention, he was not aware of was not thinking that any number of families in such a large crowd had not received such a blessing. They got a funeral and all in the same context of the church. While he is going on and on about God's intervention they are reliving the horror and dying inside refeeling guilt and asking why they were not so blessed. It was very unwise of the minister to do this I am sure he was simply oblivious to the fact that the audience may have had dozens of such families regrieving their loss and perhaps losing faith or the ground they had gained since the death and no protection.At lunch I approached him and had this chat with him about being careful and being aware of such brethren in the audience who were being forced by his good tale to relive their bad one. He looked at me like I was stupid and moved on. Oh well, I tried.
It is a difficult thing, balance. Especially when talking to a group of people (whether it's 10 or hundreds, or thousands) to fully address every circumstance in a public sermon or discussion, where people of many different experiences gather together. I think the right thing to do in these situations is to devote an entire message to exactly what some congregants experience. To address the question "Is it Me, Lord?" and "Should I feel Guilty?" and at the least, interject that those questions would be spoken to in a different sermon soon to come. I, too, can tell you certainly that I have also experienced those times when I have felt "not blessed" when others have been, "ignored" when God was certainly helping others when I also felt he should have been helping me in the same manner, and all those feelings. In fact, I think that the majority of the congregation (not just the few families of the congregation) probably had those thoughts. A good preacher would have acknowledged that the congregation would have been thinking such and at least addressed a teaser in that message, and not doing so was a mistake that many (myself included) make in talking about interventions, miracles, and divine interventions. Perhaps, it's due to excitement and that desire to share without thinking about those who are going through discouragement and hard times and doubting, questioning, and thinking about quitting the faith in pure hurt, depression, discouragement, and despair - and sometimes anger at God himself for the way things have gone and life has turned out. The thing is: Everyone who claims to be a Christian has had those moments at one time or another, and if they haven't, they will. You make a good point that compassion and understanding towards all who read or listen to a testimony or a witness should be top priority, and such a witness should be carefully and prayerfully thought on and how it will be perceived by anyone and everyone in their congregation or audience. Sadly, in the COG's, this was very rarely the case by most pastors, who instead were more concerned about other things than that.
Just a note here to be careful in such matters in public and aware of the feelings and challenges in the loss of their children in the same Church environment and all the chaos and doubt that brings with it.
Agreed. I do need to add that there should not be an apology for enthusiasm and witness. One wouldn't be a Christian if they were ashamed or embarrassed or hesitated to witness the interventions and miracles of God - it's part of the deal, you could say - but it must always be accompanied and carefully embraced with love and compassion toward the situations of your audience. Could I have done better with my last article? Absolutely yes. No one is harder on myself than myself when I fail to consider certain elements when I am sharing my story and my faith, because it's what is important to me. So, I will gladly take your counsel, acknowledging the fact that you are a compassionate and caring person who genuinely has the interests, feelings, and compassion of those who read or hear in mind. You truly do have the heart and soul of a caring and considerate teacher and pastor.
Personally to me, time and chance happens to all of us. I have escaped weird and near fatal things as a pastor (near plane crash, near falling out of one (don't laugh), missing a flight hit by a fighter jet over LA, inexplicable headon crash that ...I don't know what didn't happen there as I thought "It's finally happened to me", but I learned my last words would be "oh shit...' :)
It is true. Time and chance - and random events do happen to all of us. Yet there are just as many times when there is absolutely no denying what happened was not just "time and chance", but the absolute masterminding of an extraordinarily powerful intelligence that had to take over where my human stupidity nearly completely took me off whatever path I was supposed to be on at the time. What's random? What's not? What's just happenstance - and what's a divine intervention? In my opinion, some things we just don't know, and it's okay not to know. My thought is in everything, be grateful and for happenstance or divine intervention, for the good and for the bad, for the times of plenty and the times of poverty, for the times of gain and the times of loss, the lesson is trust and reliance on that great Intelligence and thinking beyond ourselves. A Scripture in the Bible says, "The Lord will fight for you, you need only to be still". It's a scripture I hold to when I find myself spinning paddles against the water.
I am writing this not to convince you of my side of the coin here, but to acknowledge your validity of your statement, and to share a response that I believe the entire audience here might benefit from. Many might condemn you for your lack of belief and current positions on all things spiritual. I do not. Instead, I thank you for your compassionate nature and heart of understanding that many in the COG's have never had and never will have.
11 comments:
Testimony is a fascinating subject amongst Christians. I’ve been around long enough and have witnessed enough to realize that Christian testimony does not only come from amongst those who believe they are part of what we all once thought was “God’s true church”, but also from the larger community of Christian believers. And, that Christian testimony includes what those who were not favored with what seemed in their perspectives to be absolutely essential miracles have to say.
A couple years ago, Johnny Van Zant of the Lynyrd Skynyrd Band lost one of his daughters to cancer. In interviews since that sad event, he has identified himself as a Christian, a believer in God, and has stated that as a Christian, although we don’t always understand what God is working out, he knows that he will see his daughter once again. His testimony is important in that it is an example of belief which was not extinguished even though things did not go the way in which he wanted (and perhaps needed) them to go.
I was also quite moved by something which happened this past week, a heart-rending event. Christian churches are one user profile for our paper handling equipment, just as Ambassador College was back in the day. Ink on paper is the way many industries convey their various messages. As often happens, some of my work this past week was for for a church community. Earlier in the week, their long-term arborist had fallen to his death while doing the annual trimming of the palm trees on their campus. The man left behind a wife and some young children. The ladies with whom I was working explained to me that this was a difficult thing for them to deal with, but it was obvious that their faith in God remained intact. If you are going to have something bad happen in your life, I can’t imagine a better place for you to be than surrounded by unwavering believers. I could compare that community with our own here, and the relative spectrum of opinions in both places, and how encouraging or discouraging some of the attitudes and comments can be, but surely everyone gets the point.
I believe that Armstrongism fostered a very fragile and tenuous faith, because that faith was tied to our own performance, and therefore was always in jeopardy. It was based not on God’s character and our trust in that, but on our own weakness. A house of sand. In Armstrongism, God’s love for His children was not taught as being unconditional and in spite of our weakness. God was taught as being a harsh judge who swooped down upon us at random whim to punish for infractions against the legalism, actually relishing the opportunity to punish. When people leave a system such as that, how could they possibly not be skeptical regarding God, even angry with Him? We were part of a bogus system, a system which could not possibly promote strong love and trust for God, or for His Son, Jesus.
I’d really like to meet Gamaliel some day. Our experiences in Armstrongism underscore the wisdom of what he had to say about things being of God, or of man.
BB
People in their 60s, 70s and older do not have the same mental energy of a younger person. This should be respected by having shorter articles. I'm not going to jump through loops reading such a lengthy article.
BB. - have you ever published your story - how you went from HWA to atheism to faith in God?
I believe it would be helpful to others like myself who are more newly departed from Armstrongism.
Several years ago, TLA, James over at the Painful Truth website allowed some of us perrennial participants to guest as moderator for a month. James is a pretty open-minded guy who wanted to tap into a wide variety of opinions and experiences so that it didn’t appear that the only opinions at the site were from non-believers. I got to be one of the lucky ones, and the articles I wrote during that month include my story. Last time I checked, they were still there.
Also, if you just Google “Byker Bob”, a tremendous amount of material comes up, including comments at now-archived sites.
What I’ve come to realize over the years is that Armstrongism was such a horrible system, a mental holocaust which convinced so many of us that we were suffering what we did as members at the hands of God, when it was in fact a totally man-made system which attempted to invoke and apply the power of God in order to exploit and manipulate us so thoroughly. So, it seems perfectly natural and normal to a large percentage of those who leave the Armstrong system to blame God, reject Him, and accumulate a plethora of “information” (I call it a wall) to support that position. I believe that there is a better way, something better awaiting all of us if we resist the urge to repress the spiritual component of our consciousness that seems to be hard-wired into all of us. You have to ask yourself why the atheists and agnostics would expend so much effort evangelizing, extolling, and attempting to prove non-belief as an all purpose solution to life. Yet, on every major Armstrong-related blog or forum which allows freedom to comment without censorship, the atheist voice seems to dominate. Fortunately, that is not the only solution. It just seems that way when you hang out on most Armstrong recovery sites.
BB
TLA: When you Google “Byker Bob”, one of the items which will come up says Byker Bob - page 3 - the Painful Truth Blog. It’s dated April 10, 2010. Click on it. The article “Why did God Come Crashing Back into my Life?” will come up. It’s not going to pass muster with our atheist and agnostic friends, but you might find it to be of interest.
BB
Thanks BB.
In my new group, I hear some of the leading people being told to do things or being led by God's Spirit, and I have been wondering what this really means.
I had the "benefit" of many AC Bible classes that have turned out to be very shallow.
I am hoping things become clearer to me over the next year.
Right now it is just hard to get excited about God and religion, but at least the services are now enjoyable and uplifting, and the church cooperates and holds joint events with other churches.
I almost hate to suggest Christian teachers or writers, TLA, because I’ve found that some people here will immediately then attack that person. But I will say that I’ve found the writings of Dr. Charles Stanley to be very helpful, and also Bob George’s “Classic Chistianity”. I refuse to have any “gurus” , and rather than single-source, I draw inspiration from a wide variety of resources. There is a lot of depth in understanding to be had, but as you suggested, it’s best to take it at your own pace.
BB
In my experience, most Christians writers are partial towards evil and evil people, and are neo Marxist. They hide it from the reader, and instead project and weave it into the bible. The wolf in sheep's clothing thingy.
I've found secular writers are far more truthful when it comes to morality and describing the way the world really works.
SHT wrote: "...It is true. Time and chance - and random events do happen to all of us. Yet there are just as many times when there is absolutely no denying what happened was not just "time and chance", but the absolute masterminding of an extraordinarily powerful intelligence that had to take over...What's random? What's not? What's just happenstance - and what's a divine intervention?...My thought is in everything, be grateful and for happenstance or divine intervention, for the good and for the bad...the lesson is trust and reliance on that great Intelligence and thinking beyond ourselves. A Scripture in the Bible says, "The Lord will fight for you, you need only to be still". It's a scripture I hold to when I find myself spinning paddles against the water..."
Eccl 9:11 "I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all."
FWIIW, that was Solomon's viewpoint, and it appeared that way to him that "..time and chance happeneth to them all." And perhaps it did happen "to them;" however, it may not be to everybody.
For example, many OT scriptures point to the coming of a Messiah, and among other things Jesus Christ said some amazing things such as:
John 8:28 "Then said Jesus unto them, When ye have lifted up the Son of man, then shall ye know that I am he, and that I DO NOTHING OF MYSELF; but as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things."
John 14:10 "Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, HE DOETH THE WORKS."
Matthew 26:52 Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.
:53 Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?
:54 But how then shall the SCRIPTURES BE FULFILLED, that thus it must be?
The Father did the works in Christ's life and numerous OT scriptures shall be fulfilled.
Would there also be "time and chance" involved, and if yes, then how?
Satan was the adversary of Jesus Christ and Satan could very easily upset God's Plan of Salvation to save all humanity, and subsequently destroy Satan and his angels, if he could make God or Jesus Christ out to be liars if allowed to do something and make a scripture not work out as God said.
If angels were needed in Christ's life, and they were, then God made sure those angels did what what was needed when it was needed. E.g., God inspired the move of Joseph and Mary to Egypt, or Jesus probably would have been murdered by Herod.
Somehow, my personal opinion, I don't think "time and chance" was allowed to happen in the life of Jesus Christ. Similarly, I don't think that time and chance would be allowed in the lives of Firstfruits (FFs) (Rev 14) to be sealed by God, or there would end up being some incomplete "Bride" for Jesus Christ. If Satan knew the identity of these FFs and he could look up their names in the Lamb's Book of Life, then why wouldn't Satan just "snuff out" their lives as soon as they are born, or shortly after birth, before God was able to do His works in each of them? In other words, I believe that God does not allow time and chance to interfere in the lives of any potential FF unless/until God has completed each of them as the workmanship He desired in them. It has been appointed for all to die once, so eventually each FF must die. Maybe you could squeak in some "time and chance" there.
Time will tell...
John
P.S. I do appreciate the "iron sharpens iron" of both you and Dennis! I believe we are all striving to do the best we can with whatever we have been given.
BB, Classic Christianity and a book by Bill Gillham, called WHAT GOD WISHES CHRISTIANS KNEW ABOUT CHRISTIANITY helped me to understand the nature of God and the spirituality of being a Christian more than any other book I’ve read. Understanding Jesus in us and us in Jesus made all the difference to me.
I met you once, way back in 2004, and I sure would like to meet you again. We both have done massive amounts of change since then.
BB,
Charles Stanley was the Christian teacher that had the most impact on me. His teaching was scripturely strong and had a strong desire to help others through common sense direct teaching.
It was seeing his obviously superior teaching compared to that of the COGs and the fruits of that that fully rebutted the Holy Spirit residing only in the COGs.
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