Trinitarian recovery and the battle to believe.

What started me on writing my book “Biblical self help and the healing power of God's love” was a prophetic Word I received on visiting the International house of prayer (IHOP) in Kansas city three years ago now. “You have a book in your bowels”, I was told. You know its God when it reverberates with your soul, when you somehow know that it is Him, because you have learned to hear His voice (though that is not usually audible, and has never been audible with me).

In the blog title, I say “It is like giving birth to an elephant”. Its much longer than the mere nine months of human gestation, and its a lot harder coming out!  I think that my biggest problem is that I listen. I am told that I am a good listener. Perhaps I listen too well. In any case my biggest difficulty has been that whenever I write anything at all,  I can "hear" a whole bunch of objections, that I know need to be addressed  before the person speaking them can hear what is being said. The problem when I wrote in response to what I was hearing (in my head),  is that it had so many rabbit trails it was unreadable.

Suppose I quote the Bible saying “The soul that sins it shall die”. I immediately "hear" from my friend who,  for the longest time,  did not believe that we even have a soul (just chemicals). Another voice I would hear is “The 'S' word sin, who says its wrong anyway?” or “You Christians, always laying guilt trips on people” (see July 12th). Or “Who do you think you are to tell me I am a sinner” (I never said that). Or “The Bible, can't you make it say anything you want?” (well yes, but using the same rules of interpretation, I can make the dictionary say the same thing - so I stopped using the dictionary).  Or “I don't accept the Bible” (I myself did not always believe what I now believe about the Bible). Or “How can anything that old be relevant for today? (well nobody uses the wheel any more right?).  Or “You only believe in that stuff because your parents believed (actually my mother became a Christian after I did). Or “Christianity is a crutch” (for me it has been more like a brand new pair of legs).

I could go on, for example as soon as you start to talk about death it raises issues of heaven and hell, of Judgement, of how a God of love can “send” anyone to hell, etc.,  etc., etc.   But...,  well you get the point.  For every statement, there are a hundred red flags that distract from what you are actually wanting to say. And you answer those objections and another one pops up. Its rather like the arcade game “wack a mole”, you hit one, and another one immediately pops up,  the bull charges and you never get to finish. Its like an infinite maze (see July 18th).  You would think we were in a war or something, a war to the death with the enemy of our souls!   Well we are, and that is why it is such a battle to believe, why there are so many voices that we all hear which shout "No, don't believe".  "Methinks the World doth protest too much".

I did not become a Christian until I was 28, and I have to say, it was something of a shock to discover it's all true. Well when I say 'It's all true', I do not mean that everything every Christian says is true. It can't be, we contradict each other all the time. And this is an issue in and of itself. Back when I was enthusiastic for apologetics (defence of the faith), I found it encouraging to note that the objections to Christianity that seem to make sense, were all of aspects of existing  Christianity that are distortions of Biblical truth.  I remember one battle over Church governance (how to run the church) where my defense to certain accusations  was “I was naive enough to believe that you would prefer Biblical truth to tradition”. 'But we've always done it this way' - right? Perhaps the biggest problem is that we all come to the Bible with our cultural glasses, and with our generational and cultural baggage.  “Is it Biblical Phil, or is it British?”.  We all make many mistakes.

So here is another issue. If it is all so complicated how can anyone know the truth?   Well we learn to listen to one another for a start (this is not done well either inside or outside the church).  In the process we learn to distinguish between the non-negotiable essentials and the Denominational distinctives. I will not separate myself from my brothers and sisters in Christ over what are not non-negotiable essentials. The question “Did Adam have a navel?” admittedly has deep theological implications, but its answer is one example of a negotiable,  non-essential.

The question of interpretation is a life long study, but we can start by realizing that the Bible has a central message, and it concerns how one gets right with God. Its called salvation.  Part of my answer to the question “Do you take the Bible literally?” is 'I take the Bible seriously'. And I do take it literally when it talks about murder and  adultery and heaven and hell, and the gift of salvation to all who believe.  However, if we Christians took the Bible literally when it says “If your eye offend you pluck it out”, half of the Christian men would be walking round with just one eye, and the rest of us with none!

There is widespread agreement about how to get saved among those who also 'take the Bible seriously', and this should give us confidence about this and similar issues. It is wise however, the further we get from the central themes of the Bible, to be more tentative about imposing our views of what the Scripture means on others. I think it might have something to do with the Biblical virtue of humility, and it might have something to do with learning to discern where to apply the verse that talks about ever learning and never arriving at a knowledge of the truth (as for example in salvation),  and when to apply the verse which tell us “let he who thinks he knows something acknowledge that he knows nothing yet as he aught to know”.

Obviously I cannot address every issue that arrises (nor do I have all the answers - I am still leaning).  I do however, feel that I need to address some of the more common issues that clutter and mess up our minds and hearts,  when we seek to come to the source of all healing (Psalm 103:3),  and to the lover of our souls.  So in the coming days (as He leads) there will be a mixture of apologetics (defence of the faith) and insights into  trinitarian inner healing, into self help,  Bible help and God's help.