We’re exhuming things that are
better left alone. We as a culture are digging up the bones of the excess and
debauchery of past generations, dressing them in find clothes, and calling them
freedom. Our culture is growingly more and more post-Christian. Our young
people have no grounding in the knowledge of the scriptures and yet we are
asking them to go out into a hostile world whether it be the military, secular
universities or Christian universities, it hardly seems to make a difference
where they go. More and more people are rejecting Church membership and weekly
church attendance has dropped. People identify as spiritual but not religious
or they call themselves Jesus followers instead of Christians.
The concept of church history is
completely irrelevant to most people in the church today, but so many of the
heresies of today were fought against by our forefathers in the faith. Instead
of looking at history and trying to learn from it we seem to be ignoring history
and emulating it. As I consume books about church history and theology my age
group seems to have adopted the position that if something doesn’t give them an
overwhelming experience than it isn’t Christian.
I remember as youth I was in a
class about “Practical Christianity” at my Christian school. I sat there, as
people would talk about how close they felt to God. They would talk about being
close to God when they were outside or singing songs, and I didn’t feel any
closer to God when I was doing those things. I felt just as close to God inside
a building as I did outside, and when I shared that with the class the look
they gave me was one I will never forget. I felt as if I was a terrible
Christian, why couldn’t I have those kinds of feelings?
Christians of long ago left their
fellow men and wandered out into the desert, deserting the call to evangelize
and cloistering themselves away from the world, this would grow into the
monastic movement that is still present in certain churches today. (Although
most Protestant denominations have abandoned these types of monastic
practices.) These Desert Mystics did not necessarilly seek the truth of the God
as revealed to them through the bible but instead spent time developing various
methodologies, called mysticism, that were allegedly suppose to grant someone a
special communion with God.
One of the methods that developed
out of these monastic traditions was the practice of Lectio Divina. Lectio
Divina is a method of reading the scriptures that historically did not seek to
understand what the text of scripture was truly saying, but rather using it as
a type of starting point by which God would speak directly to you. “This is a
spiritual reading that has as its chief characteristic an attitude of surrender
to the word of God rather than the restless attempt to “get something” out of
the text.”[1] This
alone would be problematic as the goal of reading scripture should not be a
quasi-mystical direct revelation to one’s mind, but rather an understanding
that God has revealed himself fully through His Son, who we learn about
primarily and most effectively through the bible. Lectio Divina does not utilize
the means that God has given of us to know him, but instead relies entirely on
man made traditions in order to commune with God. “In this encounter one is
enabled to transcend the text of scripture and achieve direct communion with
the divine.” The idea that we must get behind the text of scripture is one that
sounds more like the Gnostic heretics of old rather than the writers of Holy
Scripture.
We must remember that our faith is “built on the foundation of the
apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone.”(Ephesians
2:20 ESV) Also remembering that scripture is actually sufficient that we might
know God. “All Scripture is breathed out by God and
profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in
righteousness So that the man of God maybe thoroughly equipped for every good
work.” (2nd Timothy 3:16-17 ESV) If the scriptures themselves are
sufficient for all our training then there is no need for God to speak to us
through other means. Yet we develop methods like Lectio Divina in order to feel
God’s presence or to hear him speak.
The apostle Peter had one of the
most miraculous experiences that anyone had ever had. He saw the Lord Jesus
upon the mount of transfiguration and yet he spoke of the scriptures as “a more
sure word.” Why then do we seek experience rather than God’s word? Martin
Luther has a very unique perspective on mystical practices and their place in
Christianity. As a monk Luther utilized Lectio Divina, as well as other
mystical practices, yet he was plagued by a sense of his own sin and guilt. For
Luther the word of God was not a means to an end, but rather the means by which
we can know Christ. “In contrast to Lectio Divina which sees the word as
a means to an end, Luther’s list continually leads one back to the word.”[2] In
fact Luther himself said this:
“Therefore if you want to be
certain what God in heaven thinks of you, and whether He is gracious to you,
you must not seclude yourself, retire into some nook, and brood about it or
seek the answer in your works or in your contemplation—all this you must banish
from your heart, and you must give ear solely to the words of this Christ; for
everything is revealed in Him.”
(Luther, AE 24:257)
For Luther the things he had done
as a monk were not commendable practices that focused his attention on God, but
were things that took him away from actually knowing God properly. Why then
does the modern church not simply look back at church history and see the many
problems that these mystical practices wrought and reject them? Why then does
the Church reject the teachings of the protestant reformers who having experienced
what this type of cloistered Christianity had brought to the world? It’s a
question I ask myself as I think back to my time in those classes, as I
remember their words as they taught me to “experience God” and to perform
Lectio Divina. Why didn’t those Christian leaders care for my soul enough to as
least give me the facts concerning these topics? I don’t have all the answers,
but I think part of that is a symptom of not being satisfied with what God has
given us, and that is a sin.
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