By Hazel Holland
Having grown up in the Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) church, I was taught that everything I believed could fit tidily into an assortment of various little SDA “boxes” of truth. This belief system claimed it had an answer for every teaching in Adventism and a Scripture, or a quote from Ellen White to prove it.
Although it’s been a number of years now since I left the SDA church, I recognize that growing up on the “proof text” method of understanding the Bible has left many of us unable to read the Bible as it is, and be comfortable with paradoxes that we don’t understand. Our comfort level is upset, and we feel compelled to try and harmonize paradoxes that threaten our belief system. To a certain extent I would venture to say that this is true of most belief systems.
However, the Bible is full of paradoxes. Some can be explained by rational thought, but others cannot. Sometimes my view of God is far too small, and sometimes my view of man is far too big. I believe the Scriptures reveal truths regarding God and man that, as hard as I try, I cannot logically reconcile.
For instance, I believe that God predestines, and that everything is fore-ordained, but at the same time I believe that man is responsible for all his actions and choices. These two biblical truths seem to logically contradict each other. In our human endeavor to try and figure out the mind of God revealed in Scripture, do we sometimes forget that we lack wisdom and understanding, and that God’s thoughts are higher than our thoughts?
Could it be that these two biblical truths, along with other apparently contradictory biblical truths, are like two parallel lines? For centuries man has been diligently trying to discover where they converge. My answer right now is that they converge somewhere in eternity in the heart of God. Someday in eternity we will understand. Until then we must live with the paradox, trust that God knows all things, and has chosen to reveal to us what is necessary for our salvation, and not try to twist and distort the Scriptures in order to make sense of what we don’t understand.
The Scriptures tell us that “God desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” and “Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all” (1 Timothy 2:3-6). So I need to believe what the Bible says before I believe what a certain orthodoxy (for example: Calvinism or Arminianism) says about that Scripture. When the Holy Spirit tells us “all men” He means all men, not “some men.” However, although He desires that all men be saved, we know that some men will be lost, because they do not choose God back. They choose to reject His offer of grace.
We human beings have been struggling for years to somehow posses a self-consistent creed that will logically explain every truth in the Bible. However, in doing this, we are in great danger of throwing out much of divine revelation because we can’t reconcile it. We minimize one teaching in God’s Word, because we can’t understand how it fits together with another teaching. So we choose one teaching over another instead of choosing to believe both.
Another danger we need to face is that in our desire for logical consistency in interpreting God’s Word, we end up ignoring, rejecting or twisting Scripture that doesn’t fit our chosen theology or belief system. This happens, not only in Adventism, but in every belief system. Unfortunately, in doing this we become our own ultimate authority, our own god.
I believe that theology is a good thing as long as it’s a reflection of what the Scriptures teach, and helps us understand it better. However, when theology replaces Scripture’s authority, and causes us to reinterpret Scripture rather than accept it by faith, then it gets in the way of shedding light on God’s Word. Wherever Scripture seems to teach apparently contradictory ideas, shouldn’t our theology embrace those ideas, rather than reject part of God's revealed Word? I believe so.
My prayer is that as we read Scripture, we will ask the Holy Spirit to help us embrace the full breadth of God's revealed truth even when it disturbs out comfort zones. After all is said and done, our faith must not rest in our correct theology. Correct theology will not save us or give us the rest that our souls desire. Our faith must rest in the finished work of Jesus Christ, the One to whom all Scripture points.
I believe that God is calling us as His beloved children, no matter what theological camp we are in, to lay down our burden of “correct theology” at the foot of the cross. He wants to deliver us from our burden of “striving to be right”. All our correct theology and striving to be right will not save us, or bring us the rest that our souls desire.
In exchange for our “correct theology” and “striving to be right”, the Holy Spirit wants to reveal to us the Good News of what God has already done for us in Jesus Christ. After we release our “good” works at the foot of the cross we will be free to enter into the joy of His “good” work. We will be free to enter into His rest, and compelled to share Jesus Christ’s work of victory for us with the rest of God’s children.
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After receiving an email from a reader of this post who has struggled with “correct theology” since leaving Adventism, I need to say that I didn’t mean to suggest that we don’t need a measure of “correct theology”. We do, especially in order to understand the true biblical gospel.
ReplyDeleteI think that it is helpful to keep in mind that theology is nothing more than digging into God’s Word for ourselves to discover what He has revealed about Himself. It is something each one of us can do.
However, in doing this we need to remember that as we depend on the Holy Spirit to lead us in our study, we will never fully be able to perfectly explain God and His ways, because He is infinitely greater and eternally higher than we are.
Therefore, since our attempts to describe God will always fall short (Romans 11:33-36), we need to rest in Him, knowing that our salvation does not depend on our getting all our theology perfectly correct, and it does not depend on our “good works” of Bible study.
The point that I felt led to make in this post was that God wanted to deliver us from our “striving to be right” and our tendency to trust in our “correct theology” instead of the Person of Jesus Christ. I believe such “striving” has self at the center, instead of Jesus Christ. Our “striving to be right” causes us to focus on our behavior, and we forget about everyone and everything else except the object of our striving. Ultimately striving like this is spiritual bondage. It is the opposite of resting in the Lord, and His “good work” for us.
Deep down every one of us has a natural fear that we aren't pleasing to God and that we won't be pleasing to Him unless...
ReplyDelete1) Unless we do the right things
2) Unless we know the right things
There is such a thing as correct theology and incorrect theology, however "growing in Christ" does not necessarily mean "growing more correct in theology". Salvation is not about knowledge! (See Hazel's older article here: The Wideness of God's Mercy) And even after being saved, the gaining and acquiring of knowledge is not the measure of growth in Jesus Christ, but rather true growth is in intimacy with Him, in walking by the Spirit and letting Him put to death your flesh ("carrying the cross").
One of our largest problems is that we really want to have an answer for every theological challenge that could possible be presented to us. When someone comes to us cocksure and confident in their challenge, it naturally intimidates us and we want to be able to "shut it down" with the right response. If we don't have an immediate answer, we are liable to think that our theology is inferior and that therefore our relationship to God is somehow less valid.
In other words, "It's not Who you know, but what you know" that tends to hold power over our feelings of legitimately knowing God. What this shows is that deep down inside part of us is not quite sure. We still need to be convinced, and part of the reason we want to be convincing to others is simply to convince ourselves (to avoid facing that fear inside that we really don't know God, despite all our knowledge).
What this means is that despite having a lot of "correct theology", deep inside many of us have not actually met God. We have met beliefs instead, and we are resting on those. We are resting on our own faith instead of on God.
In this way, this article Hazel wrote (about correct theology) is directly connected to the previous one about Pelagianism. Pelagianism was an ancient system of belief that rested anchor on mankind's choices, mankind's beliefs, and ultimately that re-constructed "God" in order to do so. In the same way, many Christians (even "anti-Pelagian" ones) are resting their anchors on their own systematic theology for security, functionally believing that it is their correct knowledge which will give them true rest from their burdens.
What it leads to, however, is firstly a continual striving and pursuit of more and more 'correct theology' in order to quiet that deep, inner fear. Secondly, as Hazel pointed out, it leads to having to ignore certain parts of Scripture that do not fit the "systematic theology", and thus in order to make the system stronger and more secure, it actually re-constructs God instead of letting Him be Himself. Thirdly, the attempt to quiet one's inner fears and achieve inner rest through correct theology leads to an effort to make other Christians acknowledge the same theology as being "correct". Having not felt secure inside, in order to convince itself further the soul begins to make great efforts to convince others that the system is correct.
(One result or symptom of this is that even when others accept the system, the convincer and the convinced together can do little but go over the system, say how perfect it is, and exchange knowledge and indignation about how the other people outside of the system are misrepresenting God... there is a real inability to move on in God, and an inability to be at peace even if someone does not accept the system.)
(Continued...)
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ReplyDelete(Continued from above)
ReplyDeleteThe antidote for this is simply knowing God, not things about God, but knowing God the Holy Spirit -- God Himself living inside of us. In John 14 and in the book of 1st John, Scripture says that the Spirit will witness to us that we belong to God, that He is in us, that He has loved us. The touch, witness, and reality of the Holy Spirit is meant to be our true seal. The Holy Spirit is meant to seal the reality of the words of Scripture in our hearts. Of course He uses His words in Scripture to filter and purify our spiritual discernment, but the reality of the Spirit is not merely the intellectual understanding of knowledge, nor an assent to certain beliefs or a system of beliefs. Those things are good, of course, but we simply need to meet God. For too long we have simply been mistaking intelletual assent for the presence of the Holy Spirit.
To know Him truly, we need to come face to face with that fear inside and ask Him to reach down in there and heal us of our fear. We begin by resting on the mustard seed of understanding that we have, but trust that ultimately He will grow us to resting on Him Himself instead of on our understanding or correct theology.