My Home, Caronport Saskatchewan
11:48 AM Contemplating Theology
Weather = Sunny and very cold
Every person has areas in their life where they refuse to trust in God. We put up barriers and say "I will believe you and acknowledge your works in all these areas, but not this area and not in this way." It seems to me that denominations within the Church are also this way. All of us (individuals and denominations) have points of doctrine that attempts restrict God in how he works.
Now God is God and he can do whatever he wants and it is absolutely foolish to try and restrict him. Even well meaning and the very most devout Christians will have areas in their lives where they don't realize that they are squelching the Spirit. When such an area is revealed to the Christian he can either bow in obedience or become angry and hardened. I think the same is true of denominations. When the radical truth of God's utter and complete sovereignty threatens a point of doctrine some bow in obedience, others become angry and hardened, and the denomination undergoes some doctrinal tension.
Some situations are more visible than others. I'm going to poke at Dispensationalism right now, because it has created some very tangible examples of what I am talking about. Dispensationalism, for those unfamiliar with it, is a system of belief that arranges all of time from beginning to end into various ways of how God works. It creates these divisions in time through exegetical study of the Bible and has played a large role in shaping theological understanding in North America. (for more information check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispensationalism)
There are some denominations under this tradition that believe that miracles no longer exist, especially the gifts of healing and of tongues. During a worship service where sick people are called up to the front to receive prayer for healing some people may stand up and leave the building in utter disgust so that they can brag that there have never been any healings in their church for as long as they have been there. There are of course other reasons besides Dispensationalism for this type of odd reaction to God's divine working but this sort of thing still happens in some churches today. God's divine freedom to do as he wants interrupts the nice little theological package that we create for ourselves. These interruptions spread down to the core of how we believe everything. It interrupts our way of reading and understanding Scripture (especially if it must be read literally from the KJV) it destroys the system of dispensations which throws into question our understanding of all of time and the very nature of God and the purposes of Israel. It might mean that the other 'less Christian' groups have had it right all along.
My thought here is that dispensations can be helpful, but they are still only abstract human constructs, not divine rules derived from distilled Scripture.
Speaking now to every person and denomination. God's freedom destroys the human understanding of God (any form of religion) which has acted as a safety net for us and a leash that we try to keep God on.
Another example from my own denomination, Baptists. Within some spheres of this denomination there is the clear understanding that Spiritual Warfare doesn't exist anymore, or if it does exist, that the rules for it are really weird. I had a friend who was clearly going through demonic oppression. It was a textbook case there was no doubt about it, it wasn't just depression or some form of mental sickness. She was working for a Christian family who refused to acknowledge the situation for what it was because 'demons can't affect Christians!' At least that's what they had always believed. Then the rules got really weird because maybe a demon could 'oppress' a Christian (float around them and make them feel terrible about themselves and give horrific nightmares) but they couldn't 'possess' a Christian (enter into them and influence / control their thoughts, actions, and speech). And one thing that demons were absolutely not allowed to do anymore was to 'manifest' (speak directly to you through the person being possessed). Yet all of these things were witnessed by us. Well then this person must not have been a Christian right? Unfortunately for this family this person fell under their definition of Christian and 'was eternally sealed by the Holy Spirit upon confession.' Needless to say, there was a lot of theological tension in that home.
My thought is that God uses even demons as tools to teach us lessons. A demon is like a nasty dog who barks and bites at you, but God is holding the leash. If a Christian is foolish / stubborn enough to ignore God's direction and warnings against things that are destructive and not good, then they do so at their own risk. God has always given humanity the ability to choose. If a Christian continually ignores God and openly tries to embrace demonic activity then God will eventually stop holding her back and allow her to embrace exactly what she wanted, complete with all the consequences and without the God that she wants to be rid of. Does this effect eternal salvation? I don't know.
We create far too much tension for ourselves by trying to dictate our understanding of how God must work to the God who is free to do what he wants, as he wants, when he wants. We try to find axioms of truth that will never change (which is a normal and healthy thing for a sane mind to do) and then mistake our own interpretations for the rules by which God must follow. Even denominations who accept all things as God's truth (Hinduism?) can't accept that God is also free to permanently reject certain things and that only God's voice is truly God's voice.
My thought is that even seemingly arbitrary doctrinal idiosyncrasies exist for a reason. Some are born out of an authentic attempt to understand Scripture, but somewhere along the road Scripture dictated God instead of the other way around. Some are born out of an authentic attempt to preserve the faith from corruption of another group who believed and did things very differently but somewhere along the road a line was drawn to keep the heretics (and God) from ever tampering with how that specific area of contention 'ought to be handled.' Some where born out of an authentic attempt to clarify theology in light of new ideas that were foreign to the original text (naturalism, evolution, individualism, democratic rights) but somewhere along the road the clarification overshadowed the original understanding. Some were born out of ignorance, fear, stubbornness, or a combination of a whole host of things.
So in light of all this, God is free to do as he wants and trying to restrict him will result in frustration to the restricter. When you realize that you have been attempting to restrict God for one reason or another then you should repent and embrace what God is doing. Don't ever give up on trying to know God but cultivate a spirit of quietness and worship.
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