Perceiving the Hand of God in Our Lives

"God wants to be wanted, to be wanted enough that we are ready, predisposed, to find him present with us. And if, by contrast, we are ready and set to find ways of explaining away his gentle overtures, he will rarely respond with fire from heaven. More likely, he will simply leave us alone; and we shall have the satisfaction of thinking ourselves not to be gullible.

The test of character posed by the gentleness of God's approach to us is especially dangerous for those formed by the ideas that dominate our modern world. For centuries now our culture has cultivated the idea that the skeptical person is always smarter than one who believes. You can be almost as stupid as a cabbage, as long as you doubt. The fashion of the age has identified mental sharpness with a posture, not with genuine intellectual method and character. Therefore only a very hardy individualist or social rebel--or one desperate for another life--stands a chance of discovering the substantiality of the spiritual life today. Today it is the skeptics who are the social conformists, though because of powerful intellectual propaganda they continue to enjoy thinking of themselves as wildly individualistic and unbearably bright. This social force toward skepticism remains very powerful even among Christian congregations and colleges for ministers.

Partly as a result of such skepticism, very few people develop competence in their prayer life. Their respectable uncertainty prepares them to explain away as coincidences the answers that come to the prayers that they do make. Often they see this as a sign of how intelligent they are ("Ha! I am not so easily fooled as that!"). And in their pride they close off a possible entrance into a life of increasingly confident and powerful prayer. They grow no further, for they have proven to their own satisfaction that prayer is not answered." -- Dallas Willard, Hearing God

I am reminded of two passages from C.S. Lewis: the dwarfs in the stable at the end of The Last Battle, who refuse to be taken in again by any nonsense about Aslan, and therefore only see darkness where there is light, taste straw where there is a feast and dirty trough water where there is wine, and remain trapped in a tiny stable where there is a heaven. And also of the three children who don't see Aslan in Prince Caspian, and won't believe Lucy when she says she has seen him and they must follow him.

What Willard says here about Christian skeptics is tragically true. There are entire churches, denominations, and schools of theology devoted to the denial that God not only does not work supernaturally in our lives any longer, but does not even speak to us and guide us. They interpret Jesus's promise to be with us always, even unto the ends of the Earth, as meaning that we will have the Bible, and say that we are to use our own logic and common sense to learn and apply its principles to our lives, and that is the sum total of the Christian life. And thus they fall into the exact same error as the Pharisees. And there are also large segments of the Church, especially in the West, who place their modern "intellectual" cultural assumptions first, interpreting scripture and the historical beliefs and practices of the Church through the filters of skepticism, rationalism, and humanism. Thus they end in, if not a dogmatic, then at least a practical denial of any real working of God in our lives, scoffing at reports by more naive and credulous believers that they have indeed heard from God, had their prayers answered, or witnessed a miracle. These are also the ones who tend to be proud and dismissive about things like scriptural literalism, creationism, and those who take eschatology seriously, trying to distance themselves from them in embarrassment and instead lining themselves up with the world and with "respectable" beliefs on those subjects: a kind of baptized Scientism. And thus fall into the spirit of the Sadducees.

I have absolutely no problem with people holding various views and interpretations of theological beliefs, even ones which disagree with mine. Really, I don't. I do have a problem with arrogance, and the assumption that anyone holding a belief which does not agree with their own, or with the "mainstream" view does so out of naivete or ignorance or insanity. And with the categorical, unconsidered, unexplored rejection of anything that does not fit into one's preconceived, narrow little worldview. Thus, for example, you will find, even among Christians who actually believe in the authority of scripture, those who will vehemently dismiss even the possibility that the evidences for Creationism should be considered and explored using the scientific method, because...well, because it just can't be true: it's silly. Such people are not thinking rationally and scientifically: they are thinking rationalistically and dogmatically (their dogmas being those of  Scientism).

But the worst sin of all is the one in which the Christian passes judgment on the work of God in other Christians' lives. This is the sin of the Scribes, who accused Jesus of casting out demons by Beelzebub, and whom Jesus subsequently warned about blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. We certainly must exercise discernment and judgment (in the right sense) about things we see and hear reported. But to pass judgment dismissively or scornfully (or, as the Bible puts it, to sit in the seat of mockers and scoffers) is to tread on very, very dangerous ground. Even when it seems goofy, we have to be careful: goofy is neither a sin nor a heresy. God meets people where they are, and never feels embarrassed.

"There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." -- Shakespeare