Good News Quote #21

From Chapter Four, Why You Don't Have to "Find God's Will for Your Life": Or, How Faith Seeks Wisdom.

The way my students talk about it, God's will is out there waiting to be found, like the one person they're convinced God has for them to marry. But how do you know where to look? And how do you know when you've really found it? (Once again, the "how do you know?" questions, with their accompanying anxieties, are a sign that something's gone wrong). What happens if you mistake the will of God and don't marry "the one" that God has for you? (Do you wonder why evangelical Christians have as high a divorce rate as everyone else?) Or what happens if you only get God's "second best" will for your life? (Do you wonder why "disappointment with God" is such a trend among evangelicals?) A whole boatload of anxieties is tied up with this notion of "finding God's will."

Good News Quote #20

From Chapter Three, Why You Don't Have to "Let God Take Control": Or, How Obedience Is for Responsible Adults.

Sometimes the logical contradictions lead to contortions that really are very hard to ignore. Take for example another thing you're supposed to say when you're playing this game. Whenever you aim to do some good deed, you have to try not to do it "in your own strength." So it seems there is this special way of doing things -- not using your own strength -- and that's what Christians are supposed to do. So how do you do it? My students have tried to explain it by saying, "you have to do it... through God." That captures the weirdness of the game about as well as possible. You're actually doing it all, but you're doing it through God. Which seems to mean: you're doing it by making God do it -- that's how you have to do it -- and you do that not by doing it, but by "letting" God do it. Get it?


I don't.

Good News Quote #19

From Chapter Three, Why You Don't Have to "Let God Take Control": Or, How Obedience Is for Responsible Adults.

We're supposed to give control to God, which mean we're the ones who are in control to start with. That means it's ultimately up to us -- God has no control unless we give it to him. It's often put this way: God can't work in your life unless you let him. This is an astonishing piece of fantasy. Where in the Bible or anywhere else in God's creation did people get the idea that God was so helpless? If God can't do anything unless we let him, then God is not really God, and indeed he is less real than any person we know. After all, you don't have to "let" real people work in your life. They have an effect on you whether you like it or not, precisely because they're real. Of course, working with them (cooperating or obeying) is different from working against them (fighting or rebelling). But they have an effect on your life one way or another, because real people do stuff that affects you whether you let them or not.

Good News Quote #18

From Chapter Three, Why You Don't Have to "Let God Take Control": Or, How Obedience Is for Responsible Adults.

Because we are persons, we are not controlled but commanded. And of course the nature of the command is important too. The lord gives his stewards talents and some general instructions about doing business (see Luke 19:13) but he does not tell them what decisions to make. That's their responsibility. That's what their own heart, will, and intelligence are for: not to be yielded or surrendered, but to be used as best they can.


And that means they'll have to learn. For they are not God and they will make mistakes. Nothing in the lord's instructions suggests that his servants are supposed to be infallible. They will probably make some bad investments from time to time. But if they keep at it, practicing the art of investment (meaning, of course, how to invest their talents in the growth of the Lord's kingdom) and learning from their mistakes, then they will grow in understanding and wisdom, and they'll do well enough.

Good News Quote #17

From Chapter Three, Why You Don't Have to "Let God Take Control": Or, How Obedience Is for Responsible Adults.

To do the good works that God has commanded us to do is obedience, which is the heart of traditional Christian morality. To see the difference between this Christian obedience and the very untraditional notion of "letting God take control," we can look at our Lord's parable of the talents (Matt. 25:14-30). [...]


The first thing to notice here is who's giving control to whom. The servants do not give control to the master, but the other way round. He has put a certain number of talents in their control, and they're the ones who have to do something with what's now under their control. So they're in no position to just "let the lord take control." That would be getting things completely backward! Just imagine how the master would respond if any of his servants tried to give control of the talents back to him, saying, "I'll let you do it all, Lord. I give control to you. I surrender all -- I yield it all to you!" That's not a way to honor him: it's disobedience, an out-and-out refusal of the work he has given them to do. What will the lord do with such foolish servants?

Good News Quote #16

From Chapter Three, Why You Don't Have to "Let God Take Control": Or, How Obedience Is for Responsible Adults.

The misunderstanding on which much of the new evangelical theology is based is the idea that when God is working in you, then you're not working. It's as if his working replaces yours, so you're not doing anything -- you're just letting God do it. But that doesn't really work, because then you have to make sure that you're really letting God do it -- and so you get all anxious about whether you're really doing that -- and "letting God" becomes one more thing you have to do on top of everything else -- and it's the worst of all because it's so inward and psychological and hard to see -- and you have to wonder: how do you know if you're really letting God do it -- or are you still just trying to do it in your own strength? As usual, the obsession with "how do you know?" questions is a sign that something's wrong -- there's a false presupposition here. The truth is that you don't have to know whether you're really letting God do it, because in fact you're always the one who's doing it. The inner acts of your heart are always your own, even when they're a result of God working in you. That's the both/and. The false presupposition is that it's an either/or proposition: either you're doing it or God is, so if you're at work, God isn't.

Good News Quote #15

From Chapter Two, Why You Don't Have to Believe Your Intuitions Are the Holy Spirit: Or, How the Spirit Shapes Our Hearts.

But then -- we might want to ask -- how do we know the Spirit is working within us at all? Like many "how do you know?" questions, this turns out to be a very modern obsession, which often results in our searching our own hearts instead of searching the Scriptures. The biblical answer to questions about how we know God keeps coming back to God's word and especially his promise. There is a promise of the Holy Spirit in the Scriptures (Gal. 3:14; see also Acts 2:38). If we think that's not good enough, then we'll end up having to look to ourselves for an answer. So the more anxious we are, the less we trust God's word, and the more likely we are to try looking into our own hearts to find the Holy Spirit.


But honestly, God's word is good enough. It is hard for us sinners to trust it -- we would much rather see things for ourselves than trust what God has to say, even about himself -- but trusting God's word is what faith does, and faith is how we know who God really is.

Good News Quote #14

From Chapter Two, Why You Don't Have to Believe Your Intuitions Are the Holy Spirit: Or, How the Spirit Shapes Our Hearts.

So the fruit of the Holy Spirit is a sanctified heart. And the intuitions of a sanctified heart are well worth listening to. To listen to the sanctified heart -- which normally means hearing what other Christians have to say -- is to benefit from the fruit of the Spirit in them. It is not to hear the Spirit's voice directly -- for again, the voices belong to human beings, even when what they are saying, teaching, or preaching is the word of God. But it is to hear the fruit of the Spirit's work, growing from the freedom of a heart shaped by Christian virtues.


The connection between the intuitions and the sanctified heart is essential. Intuitions coming from a heart that has not been formed in Christian virtue are not spiritual -- not in the biblical sense, which is always tied to the Holy Spirit and therefore to the holiness of Christian virtues. And that leads us to one of the deepest errors of the new evangelical theology. It teaches people to identify their intuitions as the Spirit speaking, without teaching them the virtues that are the real fruit of the Spirit working within. It tries to find the voice of God in the intuitions of the unsanctified heart.

Good News Quote #13

From Chapter Two, Why You Don't Have to Believe Your Intuitions Are the Holy Spirit: Or, How the Spirit Shapes Our Hearts.

Take kindness, for example. A kind person looks at the world differently than a cruel or indifferent person. A kind person sees people differently -- she will notice when you are hurting, for instance, even when others don't. So kindness is a form of perception in addition to everything else: a form of feeling, a readiness to be moved to compassion, and a willingness to do what needs to be done. It's all part of the same package, the same shape of the heart. Like all virtues, kindness is a habit of perception, feeling, thinking and action, all rolled into one.


And with other intelligent habits, the perceptions of a kind heart may outrun our ability to explain them. A kind-hearted person may see that you're hurting, for example, without knowing why. She'll notice things about you without knowing exactly what it is she's noticing -- she "just knows" there's something wrong, something that's eating at you, even though she doesn't know how she knows it. That's why her kindness can be so surprising -- to both of you! She sees what's going on with you, maybe before you do, and suddenly you're having this heart-to-heart talk that you've needed for a long time, without even knowing you needed it.

Good News Quote #12

From Chapter Two, Why You Don't Have to Believe Your Intuitions Are the Holy Spirit: Or, How the Spirit Shapes Our Hearts.


Explaining things is its own kind of skill -- mainly a skill of putting things into words. [...] That's why the feeling that "I can't explain it" is not a sign that it's God working in our hearts. Most of the time what that feeling really means is: "I don't have the vocabulary I need to say this right" or "I'm not good at talking about this kind of thing." It's not mysterious. It's just the situation of someone who hasn't learned how to be very articulate about his perceptions. That's how it often goes with the habits of the heart. We learn the skills first, then we learn how to talk about them. And even when we do know how to explain them, having the intuition is very different from explaining it. The explanation comes second, if it's needed at all.

Good News Quote #11

From Chapter Two, Why You Don't Have to Believe Your Intuitions Are the Holy Spirit: Or, How the Spirit Shapes Our Hearts.

Everybody has intuitions: you don't have to be a Christian, you don't even have to be a good person. You can intuitively come up with a brilliant plan to cheat somebody -- on the spur of the moment, without thinking it all out, without knowing where the idea came from. And you can "just know" the right thing to say to really hurt someone's feelings. The words come out spontaneously: you don't have to think about it but there they are, tumbling out of your mouth before you know it and aimed straight at the other person's heart. Anyone who's had much experience quarreling with family members has had a few intuitions like that. And they're obviously not God's doing. I think that sort of experience tells us that intuitions, whether for good or for evil, are part of the ordinary equipment of the human heart.

Good News Quote #10

From Chapter One, Why You Don't Have to Hear God's Voice in Your Heart: Or, How God Really Speaks Today.

Imagine what it was like hearing God's word in Old Testament times. You didn't go listening to your own heart; you listened to the words of the prophets. For the Spirit of the Lord is the Spirit who speaks through the prophets. "Thus says the Lord!" the prophet would cry aloud, and what you heard next was God's word given to the people Israel. Things have not changed that much since then. The word of God still comes out of human mouths and resounds in the ears and hearts of his people. That's where you go to hear God -- you dwell in the community of his people, because that is where his word is. [...] God speaks to us like any real person, as someone outside our own hearts whom we love.

Good News Quote #9

From Chapter One, Why You Don't Have to Hear God's Voice in Your Heart: Or, How God Really Speaks Today.

This leads to the great irony of consumerist spirituality. The practice of inward listening is not an escape from external forces like mass media, social engineering, electronic technology, and statistics. On the contrary, it's promoted and supported by the marketing techniques of consumerist churches. There's an important lesson here. For good or ill, the heart is always shaped by outside forces -- by the gospel of Christ, by the influence of good friends, by bad company that corrupts good morals (1 Cor. 15:33), or by the forces of consumerism that train us to desire what others want us to desire. What really matters, of course, is which of the voices outside us we're listening to. And the problem is that listening to inner voices, without noticing how forces outside us are acting on us, means being subject to manipulation by those outside forces without knowing what's happening to us.

Good News Quote #8

From Chapter One, Why You Don't Have to Hear God's Voice in Your Heart: Or, How God Really Speaks Today.

One of the most important things to know about the voices of our hearts is that, like our hearts themselves, they are formed to a large degree by what comes from outside them. [...] And in the more consumerist side of American evangelicalism, there are all sorts of voices that also aim to manipulate you and tell you what God is saying in your heart. It's not all that different from the manipulative boyfriend. You maybe have heard more than one fundraising speech or stewardship sermon in which the speaker says something like this: "Just close your eyes and hear what God is saying your heart, and listen to what he's telling you to give. Maybe it's a little. But maybe it's a lot more than you thought. I'm not telling you how much to give. I'm just saying, listen to what God tells you. What is his Spirit saying in your heart today? What does he want you to give?"

Good News Quote #7

From Chapter One, Why You Don't Have to Hear God's Voice in Your Heart: Or, How God Really Speaks Today.

As a part of responsible thinking, it's also important for people to listen to their own feelings. Like thoughts, feelings are not always right, but they still often tell us something we need to hear. Labeling some of the feelings "God" or the voice of the Spirit gives young people an excuse to listen to them, which is something they really need sometimes. Unfortunately it also short-circuits the process of growing up. It reinforces their sense that their feelings are not really worth listening to -- as if they don't really have a right to pay attention to their feelings unless their feelings come directly from God. And this in turn makes it hard for a young woman to learn, for instance, that she has a right to stand up to her boyfriend when he's doing things that make her feel wrong, unsafe, or boxed in. And that's the sad thing. She doesn't believe that it's okay for her to be perceptive about her situation, that it's okay to realize that her boyfriend is bad for her and to do something about it -- for instance, to defend her integrity and well-being (and maybe her chastity) by telling him "No."

Good News Quote #6

From Chapter One, Why You Don't Have to Hear God's Voice in Your Heart: Or, How God Really Speaks Today.

The first time I realized how seriously anxious the new evangelical theology can make people, I was reading a student's paper [about revelation] [...] The problem with revelation, my student wrote, was that you can never really tell if it's the voice of God. For how do you know which voice you're hearing is really God's voice? And if you can't tell it's God's voice, then how can God reveal anything? I realized pretty soon that she wasn't talking about the word of God in holy Scripture. That's just not what the term "revelation" meant for her. It meant a voice she was supposed to listen for in her own heart. And her anguish was: how can you tell whether you're listening to the right voice? How can you be sure you're not mistaking your own voice for God's voice? How do you know?

Good News Quote #5

From the Introduction: Why Trying to Be Christian Makes Us Anxious.

We're all in this together, which means part of our job is to keep reminding each other about the Beloved, the Bridegroom who is ours, who is also the glorious one whose coming we await. Which is another way of saying: it's our job to keep preaching the gospel of Christ to one another. We don't stop needing to hear this good news just because we've become Christians. This good word, the gospel of Christ, is the bread of life that feeds our souls, because it is the way we keep receiving Jesus Christ every day. It is our daily bread, so we need to keep hearing it and feeding on it in our hearts by faith.

Good News Quote #4

From the Introduction: Why Trying to Be Christian Makes Us Anxious.

To everyone who reads this book, I say: don't believe any of this just because I'm saying it. Please do think critically -- and that includes thinking critically about what I say in this book. Above all, search the Scriptures to see if these things are so, like the Jews and Gentiles who first heard the gospel in Berea (Acts 17:11). Bad theology cannot stand up against the Scriptures, and does not fare well under the gaze of critical thinking either. But truth is different: if what you believe is true, it can stand up to critical thinking and Scripture will confirm it. So if you seriously believe your faith is true, you don't need to be afraid to think critically.

Good News Quote #3

From the Introduction: Why Trying to Be Christian Makes Us Anxious.

Pastors and other Christian leaders have been taught to use these techniques and get you to use them too. They do this with good intentions, thinking that this kind of "practical" and "relevant" teaching will transform you and change your life -- precisely the kind of thing that consumerist religion always promises to do. Just look at the books on the self-help shelf in any bookstore: they all say they'll change your life! And the same thing with the New Age spirituality shelf, and the Christian spirituality shelf too. They're all competing in the same market.

Good News Quote #2

From the Introduction: Why Trying to Be Christian Makes Us Anxious.


The New Evangelical Theology
Every era in the history of Christianity has its own dangers and failures, which include its own particular ways of distorting God's word. This book is about the distortions of our time, as found in a new theology that has more or less taken over American evangelicalism in recent years. [...]


They are the words of what you might call a "working theology," which is not an academic theory but a basis for preaching and discipleship, prayer and evangelism and outreach. It's a theology that tells people how to live. It gives people practical ideas and techniques they're supposed to use to be more spiritual.

Good News Quote #1

From the Introduction: Why Trying to Be Christian Makes Us Anxious

"Do not be anxious about anything," says Scripture (Phil. 4:6). The problem is: this makes us anxious! We have enough things to be anxious about already in life, and now we have to worry in addition about how to manage not to be anxious about any of it. And so the way we respond to this word from God, which is clearly meant to comfort us, actually adds a whole extra dimension to our burdens.

Introducing: Good News for Anxious Christians

Hello to everyone who still reads this blog!

First, I want to apologize for delaying the posting of the last few The Four Loves quotes. They are up according to the date they should have been posted on, but didn't actually make it up until my Spring Break.

For the next term, I'll be recounting the single book that has most changed my views during my college years, one that I've already recommended to many Christians, particularly those who have been Christians for a while. There are some misstatements that seep into our thinking from being in the church a while that just aren't true, and this book is both a counter to that and a reminder to all of us what the real gospel is. The book is Good News for Anxious Christians: 10 Practical Things You Don't Have to Do by Philip Cary (2010).

There are ten chapters, and I'll be sharing my favorite quotes from each chapter, one per week. Feel free to read along with the book this term, or just to enjoy these choice snippets. I'll start posting tomorrow.