I was watching some sermons yesterday. The first one was by Joel
Osteen. The second was by Kenneth Copeland. And the third was by
Charles Stanley.
I liked the first two sermons. The third, however, troubled me
immensely. Charles Stanley’s sermon was about solving problems through
prayer, and Stanley said at least three times that prayer will not work
for those who have not accepted Jesus Christ. Yes, God is
unconditionally loving, Stanley was saying, but God will not overlook
sin, pride, and rebellion. The promises of God are for the children of
God, Stanley affirmed. How can one call God “Father,” while rejecting
God’s very own son?
I am not sure what to say about this. It has a ring of truth to it.
Yeah, I have a hard time envisioning God overlooking my sins. And, if
Jesus is God’s son, God would love and value him and presumably would
not honor the prayers of those who reject him. Or would he? I can also
picture God meeting people where they are, even if they have not quite
crossed the threshold into Christianity. But is God in the business of
maintaining long-standing relationships with non-Christians? If so, why
believe in Jesus Christ, if one can have a relationship with God apart
from him?
But there is a part of me that does not think that what Charles
Stanley is saying is true. For one, how do I know that Jesus is God’s
son? He could have been an apocalyptic prophet who was wrong about the
imminence of the apocalypse! Even if Christian apologetic arguments
that Jesus rose from the dead hold water, I don’t think that solves
everything, for there is still so much subjectivity in how people
portray, conceptualize, and see Jesus. “Jesus is authoritative because
he rose from the dead,” a Christian apologist might say. Okay, but
which Jesus are we talking about? In my experience, even conservative
Christians downplay or ignore the parts of Scripture that do not agree
with their image of Jesus.
Second, it seems to me that people can experience the supernatural
outside of a Christian context. Non-Christians in AA say that they do.
A professor once told me of God’s answers to the prayers of a devout
Jewish person. There are Muslims who have a similar testimony about
themselves. People seek guidance from tarot cards and get messages that
sound as wise and reasonable as the answers that Christians claim to
receive from God through prayer. A conservative Christian may attribute
that to Satan. But do we really want to go down that route? If Satan
can do positive spiritual things for people, then how can Christians
argue for Christianity by appealing to their positive spiritual
experiences? Could not a Jewish person attribute Christianity to God
sending a deceptive false prophet to test his people’s faithfulness, as
some Jews argue (Deuteronomy 13:1-3)?
I’ve made these sorts of points before on this blog, and they have
been in my mind over the past seven years, or so. Still, I am not
satisfied. Granted, I can say that God works in the lives of
non-Christians. But that is me looking at others. What I wonder is if
God listens to my prayers. To be honest, I do not know. I
have long felt that God does not know my address. Conservative
Christians can easily prey on that. They may say that God does not hear
my prayers because I do not fit their definition of a Christian. They
may tell me that I should accept Christ as my Savior and/or Lord
(depending on if they believe in Lordship salvation), then I will feel
God. Then I will see results.
For one, will I necessarily? Charles Stanley was encouraging and
advising Christians who believe that God was not listening to them.
Granted, he said that we want to know Jesus beyond Jesus being our Lord
and Savior—-that we want to experience God in our day-to-day lives. But
my impression is that there are a number of Christians who do not think
that they are doing so, and that is one reason that Charles Stanley
preached that sermon. A number of Christians do, but a number don’t.
Second, I said the sinner’s prayer years ago. I was baptized.
People who act as if the sinner’s prayer is the end-all-be-all should
address how people can say it, yet see no spiritual results. Did these
people say the sinner’s prayer and not truly mean it? How can one get
to the point where he or she means it? I’ve been watching Christian
movies, and Christian characters say that all people have to do to have
God in their lives is to ask God. Really? Is that all? Why, then, are
there people who push the Jesus button, and nothing happens? Why are
there people who say the sinner’s prayer and later drift away from the
faith, or even deliberately walk away from it? Some Christians say
those people did not experience God. If that is the case, why didn’t
they experience God?
I felt alienated from God when I was a conservative Christian, and
also today. I drank a lot when I was a conservative Christian, some of
it for spiritual and religious reasons, and some of it for other
reasons. In any case, I was self-medicating to feel at peace, for I was
not feeling that peace through Christianity. I cannot say that I feel
completely at peace today, but at least today I do not feel that I am
ignoring or contorting facts to fit a preconceived theology. I wish
that I could say that I am more tolerant today than I was as a
conservative Christian, but that is not exactly the case: now I demonize
conservative Christians rather than liberals!
I can look back at my time as a conservative Christian and say that
there were times when I felt emotional ecstasy as I prayed and read my
Bible. I felt that the Holy Spirit was illuminating the Bible for me.
Nowadays, I look back at the interpretations of Scripture that I
believed were Spirit-led, and I am very reluctant to say that they were
God’s authoritative interpretation of the biblical text. They look to
me in retrospect like my own biased readings. I can say the same about
some of the “Spirit-led” interpretations of Scripture by other
Christians. Some of them base their interpretations on an English
translation, and their interpretations disagree with the Greek. Are
their interpretations from God? Well, I cannot thoroughly dismiss
that—-the Christian God, after all, supposedly used the Septuagint,
which disagrees with the Hebrew text in places. But I also would not
bet money on it.
Anyway, those are my ramblings for the day. Trollish comments will
not be published. I will define what is trollish. I also probably will
not get to the comments until tomorrow morning. On my blogger blog,
that means that they will not be published until then. On my WordPress
blog, that means that they will appear on my blog if you have commented
here before, but, if this is your first time commenting, you will have
to wait to see your comment appear.