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Ambassadors of salvation
This morning I was thanking God for the privilege of writing these little blog notes. I asked Him to let me take dictation from Him every day. I wanted my writing to be all of God and none of me. But immediately I realized that this is not God’s way. Even the prophets, who wrote and spoke as men “carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet.1:21), did not for the most part produce their utterances by a passive transmission from the Spirit.
God so accords his creatures dignity that He deigns to make us authentic coauthors with Him in His endeavors. He does not emasculate us to use us, but enlists the very personalities and experiences He gave to allow us genuine creativity. So Scripture is “God-breathed” (2 Tim.3:16) but it is man-breathed too, in a seamless operation.
I heard a preacher pray before his sermon, “Lord, get me out of the way of your Holy Spirit.” I appreciate that petition, but I hope he meant to request that God get his sin out of the way, and not his manhood. Likewise, God insists on using our agency to send out the gospel appeal, making flawed men ambassadors of salvation. Seems pretty risky to me, but somehow the job gets done.
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I asked Him to let me take dictation from Him every day. I wanted my writing to be all of God and none of me. But immediately I realized that this is not God’s way.
And yet – evangelicals routinely treat the bible as if it were a work of “divine dictation!”
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This is a great issue notwithstanding Spinoza’s comment. Word/concepts like coauthers, seamless, creativity, and even personality are very loaded in this context. It is difficult not to fall into the sin of presumption (in so many ways) and yet we have our calling and purpose to perform.
Luther put it this way as I undertand it.
“If you are a preacher of grace, then preach a true and not a fictitious grace; if grace is true, you must bear a true and not a fictitious sin. God does not save people who are only fictitious sinners. Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly, for he is victorious over sin, death, and the world.”
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Lynn, just my two cents, but if you want people to take WoW seriosly, you have got to stop letting people fill its pages with navel gazing banalities like this and the Spiritual Eyes post.
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You know, Night Train, that is the way I feel about so many evolution and pro-abortion tangents.
If you don’t like these spiritual articles, “Just say no.” Don’t read them. Keep your bloodpressure lower.
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Bob, my BP’s fine. And I agree with you about the monomaniacal posters on various topics. But those are comments, not the lead articles. I try to read everything on WoW, not just the articles I think I’m going to agree with. If WoW wants to grow, and be taken seriously, Spiritual’s fine (at least every now and then). Vapid banalities are not.
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“If WoW wants to grow, and be taken seriously”
Maybe they care more about promoting authentic Christianity than about growing. I don’t think it’s necessarily a good goal to grow for growth’s sake. Being popular doesn’t mean being right.
As for being taken seriously, this is a BLOG, not the New York Times.
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Night Train,
Why do you consider this an example of vapid banality?
I have been in many churches where it is common for people to think that they need to be “channels only” (as one hymn words it) for God, with their self removed as much as possible. Not, as Andree Seu hopes, only to have their sin out of the way, but their person-ness (I find the word “manhood” too linked to sexual references to use it as Andree does).
People think: Sure, the writers of Scripture were allowed to let their personality show through, but then, they were writing Scripture, and God was doing something supernatural in enabling them to express their personality without allowing their sin or misunderstandings to taint what they wrote.
But from what I have been taught (something I know far better conceptually than experientially), the work of grace God does in us and through us, by the Holy Spirit, to act and think and speak in ways that glorify Him, cannot be of our own ability/effort but is also in some sense a supernatural work. The product of that work is not new Scripture, but we should be able to have the confidence that as we let Him work in and through us, He can express his love not in place of our selves but through the selves He designed us to be.
You consider that a vapid banality?
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You consider that a vapid banality?
Yes. As William James wrote, there are a lot of varieties of religious experiences. And by now we’re familiar with most of them.
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And for crying out loud, Pakistan, a country which actually does have nukes, and whose population regards Osama Bin Laden as a hero, is about to split apart at the seams, and WoW refuses to even mention it.
That topic isn’t worthy of discussion but this is?
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One must remember that WorldOnTheWeb is an extension of the magazine’s Christianity. Also, one must remember that it has a Reformed worldview. That Reformed worldview gives them a mandate to bring their faith to bear on their work.
So, I’m not offended by Andrew Seu’s comments at all. In fact, I appreciate his honesty. I much prefer to know where a person is coming from, as it helps me to understand why they say the things they do.
I say this as a non-Christian.
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Very cool, Anlir.
Andree is a female person, BTW.
Night Train is free to change the channel, as it were.
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Much as I am quarreling with Night Thread on other threads, I think he is right on on this thread.
Is there something like the 5th Amendment, except for being inconsistent?
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#8 “As William James wrote, there are a lot of varieties of religious experiences. And by now we’re familiar with most of them.”
Night Train,
I’m not sure what to make of your last statement. What does it mean to you, to be familiar with most varieties of religious experiences?
Have you had a lot of religious experiences? Of many varieties? I think you are unusual if that is the case. Personally I have not, and I am interested in hearing about the experiences of others.
If you mean, on the other hand, only that you have heard about people having various religious experiences, and that it is old news to you, I wonder if you have had such experiences yourself. I find it odd that someone who has had genuine religious experiences would be uninterested in the experiences of others.
Even people who have had such experiences, and later decided that they had no deeper meaning than any other set of experiences, generally seem to have a stronger reaction to the experiences of others than to dismiss them as banal.
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Andree He does not emasculate us to use us, but enlists the very personalities and experiences…
Yes, Christianity is about flesh and blood fallen people trying to understand life and attempt to do His will.
Night Train’s folly characterizing Andree as involved in navel-gazing banalities, ironically exposes him as a banal moralist. He would do well to pay attention to her exquisite ability as a writer to relate every-day life to transcendent reality. She is among my my favorite Christian observers of the passing scene.
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Andree, this message is just for you…others need not reply.
I’m a World reader who always turns to your essay 1st thing each week. I was so excited to see you blogging here…it was like hearing from a friend. I am “thanking God for the priviledge of (seeing your) blog notes” this morning. I no more than scanned the conversation above, decided it was useless to “join” and to just say to you how much I love to hear you expound on how “He deigns to make us authentic coauthors with Him in His endeavors.” Good stuff – thank you!
Vapid banalities, indeed….sigh.
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What Genie said!
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