How to Discern What God Wants You to Do

 (Out for coffee in Monroe, at Agua Dulce.)

What does God want you to do? Henri Nouwen writes: 

"God has a very special role for you to fulfill. God wants you to stay close to his heart and let him guide you. You will know what you are called to do when you have to know it." (Nouwen, Discernment: Reading the Signs of Daily Life, p. 97)

Discernment is a function of closeness, of intimacy, of familiarity. Discernment increases where there is enduring connection. 

"Staying close to God's heart" includes presenting our selves as living sacrifices to Him. Then, we are told, we will be able to test (discern) the good and perfect will of God. (Romans 12:1-2)

I know this from experience. Yet, it is radical in church life, since many focus on figuring out what to do without emphasizing, in the first place, staying close to God's heart.

1. Stay close to God. (Abide in Christ.)
2. Listen and discern.
3. Follow.

All this is "the Lord is my shepherd" stuff. God desires to guide you in this life and will guide you as you stay close to his heart.

***
You can read about discerning the voice of God in my book Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God.

Deconstructing Progressive Christianity: Point #4

 

ABOUT ME

I am a husband (to Linda, since 1973). A father. A father-in-law. A grandfather! A pastor (since 1970). A professor (taught at several seminaries around the world; taught philosophy at Monroe County Community College for 18 years). A philosopher, and a theologian. (PhD, Northwestern University, in Philosophical Theology, 1986).

I have studied people, and biblical and theological issues, and culture, for over fifty years. I am a constant reader and observer. 

I present to you a series of posts I am calling "Deconstructing 'Progressive Christianity.'" Here are reasons why I could not be a "progressive Christian." The first two posts are especially about this, using semantics and some deconstruction thrown in. (See here.) Post #1 was: "'Progressive' is not a word that fits into a Christian eschatological worldview." Post #2 was "The term "progressive Christianity" is too vague to be useful." Post #3 was  - "Progressive Christianity Wrongly Diminishes Confidence in the Bible." Post #4 is: "Progressive  Christians wrongly downplay the importance of beliefs."

A final note before I begin this fourth post. I have read, as a theologian myself, several of the theologians who are usually associated with progressive Christianity. (Postmodernism, deconstruction, critical theory, linguistic semantics and philosophy of language (my dissertation was in this area), and, yes, political progressivism.) Some of them have written books and articles that I have benefitted from. But then, along the way, some of them turned away from some core beliefs that I see as important to our faith. Some of them were "deconverted" from evangelical Christianity. That has saddened me. 

I want you to know that there are many theologians and biblical scholars, such as myself, who have not departed from what we see as essential. This is not out of ignorance. We are quite familiar with, and have wrestled with, all the questions progressivists raise. And wow! We see things differently. Which means: we disagree with each other. Which means: we think each other is wrong about some things. (For example, see Brian McLaren's vicious disagreement with The Nashville Statement, where he even brings in the KKK, implicating the 24,000+ theologians and biblical scholars, and even Francis Chan, J. I. Packer, and people like me, who agree with the Statement.)

I hope you gain from these posts. I will do my best to revolve around one main point per post. I'll do my best to make it accessible. 

Blessings!

John Piippo

Redeemer Fellowship Church, Monroe, MI

johnpiippo@msn.com

Today someone sent me this quote. The author of the quote is a spiritual director named Roger Wolsey.

Note the widely shared belief, adhered to by progressive Christians, in this statement: Progressive Christianity focuses more upon orthopraxy (right behavior, actions, and relationship) and less upon orthodoxy (right doctrines and beliefs). This is one of progressive Christianity's beliefs; viz., that we should focus less on beliefs and more on right behaviors and actions.

I agree that right behaviors and actions are important. Faith without actions is dead. But there are countless examples of the power of beliefs to effect actions. In numerous cases, a belief rightly ought to precede any action. And, the religion "of" Jesus is heavily, I'd say massively, invested in Jesus's  identity. It is crucial to identify just who is ding on that cross.

Beliefs cause behaviors. Consider the belief Racism is wrong. Someone who believes this statement is true will have moral grounds to act upon it. 

Consider the belief If I get the coronavirus vaccine, I will be more protected from coronavirus. Someone who believed that statement to be true would, presumably, act so as to get the vaccine.

A million examples could be given. Here are a few more that, if believed to be true, will likely lead to actions and behaviors.

Smoking cigarettes causes lung cancer.

The steel beams in this building have been structurally compromised.

It's raining outside.

If I fail this exam, then I will not graduate.

A sure path to wealth is to get a degree in philosophy.

The world is going to end one hour after I finish reading this sentence.

Often, we act without reasoning. Daniel Kahneman has called this "fast thinking." This is not always good. But sometimes, before we act, we engage in "slow thinking." We reason. We formulate and evaluate. Whenever we do this, we are dealing with beliefs. (See Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow)

I think what Wolsey said about Emphasize actions more than beliefs is wrong-headed. That belief is right out of postmodernism, which claims we cannot know beliefs (objective truths and falsehoods). This is so core to progressive Christianity that my refusal to believe it entails a rejection of progressive Christianity itself.

I agree that how a person acts in relation to a belief can be an indicator of whether or not the person really believes. But this does not mean that a person just acts, devoid of any belief that is good or true. We don't launch the manned spacecraft without months of checking hundreds of belief-boxes.

One progressive Christian example of the belief that Actions are to be emphasized more than beliefs is Colby Martin's interpretation of Jesus's questeion to Peter, "Who do you say that I am?" (In Martin, The Shift: Surviving and Thriving after Moving from Conservative to Progressive Christianity.) Here's the text. Brace yourself. Martin is going to take his postmodern metanarrative and force it onto the text.

13 When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”

14 They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”

15 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”

16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

17 Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. 18 And I tell you that you are Peter,[b] and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades[c] will not overcome it. 19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be[d] bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be[e] loosed in heaven.” 20 Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.

Here is Martin's unbelievable explanation of what he thinks is really going on here (note: he has the answer, which is a progressivist no-no).

"Notice that Jesus didn’t exactly affirm that Peter got the answer right. That wasn’t the point. What Jesus did do, though, should slash most church’s evangelism budgets in half." (I'm calling our church's financial team right now!) 

Upon hearing Peter’s belief that Jesus was the Christ, Jesus said, “Happy are you . . . because no human has shown this to you.” For Jesus, the best part of Peter’s response had little to do with accuracy and everything to do with the fact that he arrived at his conclusion on his own."  Martin, Colby. The Shift (pp. 66-67). Fortress Press. Kindle Edition. 

No human has shown this to Peter. Correct.

 Peter said, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God?" But, according to Martin, that's not the point. Jesus doesn't care if Peter is correct or not.

All that Jesus cares about is this: "Peter! You arrived at this conclusion on your own! The conviction in your heart - that came from inside you! Yay! You be you!"

But what about the line in the text that says "my Father in heaven" has revealed this to Peter? Martin writes:

"When Jesus says, “my Father who is in heaven has shown you,” he’s naming that the conviction in Peter’s heart and mind—that Jesus was the Christ—came from within him.""

Martin is saying that this conviction of Peter's...  didn't really come from the Father, who is in heaven? Wow. Now I am thinking of New Age theologies. Jesus becomes an ever-evolving Rohrshach test. One wonders if even God got it right at Jesus's baptism.

Martin concludes his chapter on "Who Is Jesus?" with this.

"In seeing the full humanity in Jesus, we wake up to the full humanity in us. Fully loved by God, just like Jesus. 

“Who do you say that I am?” Jesus asks. 

We reply, “You are the human one, the loved child of God.” 

Jesus smiles and says, “And so are you. How great is that?”

There are so many Christological things going on here that are questionable that I don't know where to begin. But I do know I could never identify with progressive Christianity if Martin is representative of it. And, I cannot help thinking of a dialogue that goes like this.

"Who do you say that I am? Remember, you don't have to get this right. All that counts is that it comes from you," says Jesus.

I reply, "You are a waffle chicken sandwich."

Jesus smiles and says, "And so are you. How great is that?"

***

I am now writing my book on deconstructing progressive Christianity.

The Root Cause of Division in America (sermon - 7/4/21)

Jesus' "As Usual" Prayer Life (Prayer Summer)

                                      (Green Lake Christian Conference Center, Wisconsin)


My hope is that praying, for you, will become an "as usual" thing, a "customary" thing. Like it was for Jesus. 

Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives, 

and his disciples followed him. 

On reaching the place, he said to them, 

“Pray that you will not fall into temptation.” 

He withdrew about a stone’s throw beyond them, 

knelt down and prayed...

Luke 22:39-41

"As usual" means "habitual." Often. A lot. 

Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.

Luke 15:16

Jesus was a habitual pray-er.

1. Jesus found apart-places where he engaged in solitary praying.
2. Jesus prayed to find out what the Father wanted him to do.

Jesus was a habitual pray-er.

Jesus went to lonely places, places of least distraction, to pray.

His followers will do the same.

***

My understand of a praying life can be found in my book Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God.

Preaching Sunday, June 27, 7:45 - Watch on Live Stream

 I will speak at our HSRM conference

Sunday evening, June 27

7:45 PM

HIS IDENITY ~ OUR AUTHORITY CONFERENCE LIVE STREAM LINK

Addressing Progressive Christianity

 

                                                               (Gatlinburg aquarium)

Linda and I strongly recommend Another Gospel? A Lifelong Christian Seeks Truth in Response to Progressive Christianity.

I am doing two workshops on Deconstructing Progressive Christianity. 

The first is Wednesday, June 30, Green Lake (Wisconsin), at our HSRM conference.

The second is at Redeemer, Wed., July 7, 6:30 PM. (If you are coming please let me know.) 

And, I am submitting a manuscript of my book on Progressive Christianity, Aug. 15, to a publisher who has shown interest. (This does not mean they will accept it. But, they are encouraging me to submit it.)

Studying Atonement in Romans

 

                                                             (Ladybug, in my house.)

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures...

1 Corinthians 15:3

I'm enjoying doing Romans for my Summer Bible Study. 51 have joined me! I've taught this book many times. And, as a result, studied and re-studied it over the decades. And, several years ago, I preached verse-by-verse through Romans, over a period of almost two years!

In Romans a number of big biblical themes come forth. Such as the cross, and atonement. And, of course, salvation.

These are particularly important themes for such a time as this, because "progressive" Christians are denying historical, orthodox views of atonement. Many are universalists, and say postmodern things like "Jesus died on a cross, not to pay for our sins, but to 'speak truth to power'." (E.g., progressivists like Rob Bell and William Paul Young, et. al.) 

If you are interested in digging deep, check these out.

The Nature of the Atonement: Four Views (essays and responses by Greg Boyd, Joel Green, Bruce Reichenbach, and Thomas Schreiner). I learn much from reading the "Views" books!

What Did the Cross Accomplish: A Conversation About the Atonement, by N. T. Wright and Simon Gathercole (who both hold a variant of penal substitution)

Atonement and the Death of Christ: An Exegetical, Historical, and Philosophical Explanation, by William Lane Craig. (Penal substitution theory [the bane of progressives!])

My Calling to Be a Pastor

                                         (Pine tree and moon, our backyard)

Moses' calling by God changed his life forever. Ruth Haley Barton writes:

"When God spoke to him out of the burning bush, he was asking Moses to take the difficult journey of “rising to personality”—rising to the full purpose of his being here on earth—in order to realize the meaning of his life. He was asking him to become more fully the person he had always been and at the same time to transcend it." (Ruth Haley Barton, Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership: Seeking God in the Crucible of Ministry, p. 83) 

My transcending moment came through a church bulletin announcement. It altered the course of my life forever. I was 21, and a brand new Jesus-follower. My heart was untainted by church politics (or any politics), and my knowledge of the Bible and Jesus was slim. I just knew I had been rescued by Jesus, and loved him for this. 

The line in the bulletin read: "Please pray that our church would find a new youth leader." This was Tabor Lutheran Church, in Rockford, Illinois. I grew up in Tabor. I liked my church family. My father served as a deacon. He was a quiet man, so it still creates wonder in me to think that he taught Sunday School, and I was in one of his classes.

I was never involved in Tabor's youth group, being consumed with playing sports and practicing guitar. I never led anything like a Sunday School class or a Bible study, nor would have wanted to. I'd never prayed out loud. I rarely prayed at all. I didn't turn to God for anything, ever, until the day when, in my desperation, I said "God, if you are real, help me." He did.

For two Sundays in a row the line in the bulletin read: "Please pray that our church would find a new youth leader." You mean we haven't found one yet? The kids in this church need a leader! Having been spiritually leaderless myself I knew this to be fact. Every kid needs a mentor. I had been mentored by my peers, did a lot of self-mentoring, and the results were disastrous. I was lost. But now, at last, was "found." I wanted Tabor's teens to experience The Rescue, as I had.

On week three of the announcement I came to Sunday morning worship service looking forward to, of all things, reading the bulletin. There it was: "Please pray that our church would find a new youth leader." I felt an urgency about this. I began praying. Throughout the following week this was on my prayer list: "O God, please, please bring someone to help our church's youth." And then it happened. I told God, sounding like Sarah, "Surely you are joking?"

I called Pastor Harvey Johnson, and made an appointment to get together. I had never done anything like this before. (The words "I've never done something like this before" were to become thematic in my life.) I wonder what he thought I wanted to talk about?

I admired and respected Pastor Johnson. I was nervous on the day I met with him. Part of me felt foolish, a rookie with zero job experience, applying for a position that begged for credentials.

"I have seen the announcement in the bulletin. Has any progress been made on finding a youth leader?"

No.

I can't remember the words I used next. Somehow I expressed my idea, my sense, that God was appealing to me to work as Tabor's Youth Leader. I remember feeling how unwise this sounded to me. I told Pastor Johnson about my new life in Christ, and confessed that I had not even heard the words "seminary training" before. After much listening and sharing he affirmed my calling. "I think God wants you to do this, so let's do it." He seemed genuinely grateful that God had finally answered his prayers.

Sometimes I have wondered what my life would look like had that announcement not been in the bulletin, or if Tabor found another youth leader, or if Pastor Johnson had told me, "John, you don't have the training and experience for this." That would have been understandable. I am still amazed that he supported me in this! T

Barton quotes Greg Levoy:

"Calls are essentially questions. They aren’t questions you necessarily need to answer outright; they are questions to which you need to respond, expose yourself, and kneel before. You don’t want an answer you can put in a box and set on a shelf. You want a question that will become a chariot to carry you across the breadth of your life." (Ib., 84)

This was my calling to be a pastor. I began to shepherd Tabor's teens. In a few months Linda would join me. Now, I see God's hand in it all, and I have never wanted to rewind my life so that things would have turned out differently.

***
See my book Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God.

The Empirical Verifiability of Sin (More on Systemic Sin)

(Maumee Bay State Park, Ohio)

I was recently asked, "What, if anything, is the common thread running through the world's religions?" The answer to that is: the world's religions agree that ours is a troubled world. The world's religions attempt to help people live in our messed-up world. (See Prothero, God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Run the World.)

We, the people, are messed up. Including you and me. This is beyond-easy to verify. Alvin Plantinga, in Knowledge and Christian Belief, writes: "G. K. Chesterton once remarked that of all the doctrines of Christianity, the doctrine of original sin has the strongest claim to "empirical verifiability."" (K1179) Crudely, this means: open your senses and behold how screwed up humanity is. 

"Empirical verifiability" means this: a statement is true (= a certain state of affairs obtains) if that statement is verifiable in principle via the five senses. (Analytic statements, such as A is A, are true analytically; i.e., the predicated state of affairs is contained in the subject.) Plantinga writes:

"It [evil; sin] has been abundantly verified in the wars, cruelty, and general hatefulness that have characterized human history from its very inception to the present. Indeed, no century has seen more organized hatred, contempt, and cruelty than the late and unlamented twentieth; and none has seen it on as grand a scale." (Ib., K1188)

People who live self-reflective lives have, upon introspection, discovered "seeds of destruction" and "violence within." (See Thomas Merton and Paul Tournier.] I have. You would see the same in you, if you routinely subjected yourself to self-examination.

One more thing: the cause of most human suffering due to sin has been perpetrated, at least in the 20th century, by atheists. Plantinga writes elsewhere:

"Of course the world’s religions do indeed have much to repent; still (as has often been pointed out) the suffering, death, and havoc attributable to religious belief and practice pales into utter insignificance beside that due to the atheistic and secular ideologies of the twentieth century alone." (Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism . Oxford University Press. Kindle Location 104. See also this.) 

Thus, we can be done with the sophomoric, unstudied idea that sin is the special province of religious people. We can relegate, to the garbage heap of utopianism,  ideas like those in John Lennon's "Imagine." 

Social Justice Theory Is Especially Rooted in Postmodernism

 

                                                (Antique Chrysler, in Monroe, Michigan)

I recommend, once again, for those who believe that, as much as possible, all sides ought to be studied before making evaluations, Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identity - And Why This Harms Everybody. Written by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, who are, BTW, atheists (I mention this because of the vast proliferation of all who worship the genetic fallacy).

Postmodernism, they argue, especially dominates certain ideologies, in its intentionality, to the relative exclusion of other ideologies. "Theory" is one of them. (Not all metanarratives are embraced equally.) 

Pluckrose and Lindsay write:

"That is what we set out to provide in this book: a guide to the language and customs that are presently widely promoted under the pleasant-sounding moniker “Social Justice.” We are fluent in both the language and culture of Social Justice scholarship and activism, and we plan to guide our readers through this alien world, charting the evolution of these ideas from their origins fifty years ago right up to the present day. 

"We begin in the late 1960s, when the group of theoretical concepts clustered around the nature of knowledge, power, and language that came to be known as postmodernism emerged from within several humanities disciplines at once. At its core, postmodernism rejected what it calls metanarratives—broad, cohesive explanations of the world and society. It rejected Christianity and Marxism. It also rejected science, reason, and the pillars of post-Enlightenment Western Democracy. Postmodern ideas have shaped what has since mostly been called Theory—the entity which is, in some sense, the protagonist of this book. In our view, it is crucial to understand the development of Theory from the 1960s until the present day if we are to come to terms with and correct for the rapid shifts we have been experiencing in society ever since its inception, and especially since 2010. Of note, throughout this book, Theory (and related words, such as Theorist and Theoretical) with a capital T will refer to the approach to social philosophy that stems from postmodernism."

Which means, postmodernism is itself a metanarrative, as is Theory. Pluckrose and Lindsay brilliantly bring this out.

***

See here - click on "Testimonials."

And here - https://philosophynow.org/issues/143/Cynical_Theories_by_James_Lindsay_and_Helen_Pluckrose

Or...   https://quillette.com/2020/07/20/the-truth-according-to-social-justice-a-review-of-cynical-theories/  ("What Cynical Theories expresses is not a paranoid state of mind. It is a genuine concern about the threat that social justice activism, identity politics, and the legacy of postmodernism poses to Enlightenment liberalism and the belief that “disagreement and debate [are] means to getting at the truth.” The book explains how we have arrived at a state in which social justice scholarship treats the principles and themes of postmodernism as The Truth, where no dissent is tolerated, and anyone who disagrees must be cancelled.")