We are living in a very interesting time in
the history of the Christian Church. While the teaching and preaching of
biblical doctrinal truth should be, according to Scripture, our primary
emphasis, human feelings and spiritual experience has assumed center stage.
Many modern Christians seek a church that provides a positive experience rather
than one that stands for doctrinal truth. Preachers today in order to appeal to
these "modern" Christians, offer principles for experiencing the
Christian life rather than the doctrinal presentation of sin and grace. Worship
has become an expression of how we feel about God rather than a response to
what God has done for us. Jesus Christ is no longer primarily the suffering
sacrifice for sin, but rather an example for living. He is the one who gives
meaning to life. It is not strange that movements that ignore doctrinal distinctives and promote unity on the basis of "we all love Jesus"
have widely captured the imagination of modern evangelicals.
Some years ago, a gathering called The
Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, made up of leaders and theologians from
a wide range of Protestantism met in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The purpose of
the gathering was to assess these present conditions within Evangelicalism and
to call the church back to the truths of the Reformation. This is a
positive development. Let us pray that it produces positive results. The
present conditions within evangelical Christianity have not only created
doctrinal chaos but have also put into jeopardy the eternal salvation of many.
The question is: How do we
confront an experience-driven, feeling-based Christianity?
The
Theological Pendulum
Some years ago, I heard a Charismatic Bible
teacher give a reason for promoting and teaching an over-emphasis upon
spiritual authority and submission in the church by stating, "If the
theological pendulum is way over on the left, you must push it way over to the
right to eventually get it into the middle."
As you assess the history of Protestant
Christianity since the Reformation, this seems to have been the guiding
principle. There have been numerous movements and counter-movements. If the
church is leaning too heavily in one direction, the solution has been to
emphasize the opposite extreme. The answer, for example, to what was perceived
as post-Reformation dead dogmatism was German pietism and mysticism. Nineteenth
century liberal theology, which elevated human reason, was countered by
Fundamentalist theology. As Fundamentalist theology alienated the church from
modern society, culture-embracing neo-Evangelicalism arose in the 1940’s.
Often, this pendulum principle has not led
to balance but rather to alienation. Those on one side of the issue are usually
not willing to embrace the alternative emphasis to produce balance. Their
position often hardens in response to the alternative, creating a deeper division.
The present emphasis within the church upon
feelings and experience is also a pendulum-pushing reaction against what some
have perceived to be a doctrinally-correct, spiritually-dead Christianity. As a
former active participant in the Charismatic Movement, I have heard much from
those who assess mainline Protestantism as "spiritually dead."
Perhaps by outward appearance they are right, but what they embraced as an
alternative was "dead" wrong. Experience is not an alternative to
doctrine. You dare not say, "I do not need doctrine. I have the Holy
Ghost." The question is: Without doctrine, how do you know you have the
Holy Ghost? Attempting to create unity among believers around the notion that
"we all love Jesus" is to expose the church to all sorts of
distortions and deceptions.
How should those of us concerned with
preserving the vital emphasis upon objective, doctrinal theology confronts the
feeling and experience emphasis within evangelical Christianity? Should we now
promote sound doctrine and theology as an alternative to
experience and feelings? Should we push the pendulum to the other
side and create a situation in which one group of Christians claims to have
sound theology while another group of Christians claims life-changing
experience? Would this be beneficial? Must it be an either/or situation?
Dr. Mike Horton of Christians
United For Reformation accurately assessed the dilemma by stating:
“The divorce between doctrine and piety, the mind and the heart, characteristic
of both orthodox Reformation folk today on one side and pietists and
charismatics on the other, is a course for disaster, not for either reformation
or revival.” (Michael S. Horton, "Wanted: Apathetic Lutherans and
Calvinists," Reformation and Revival, Spring 1994, p. 26.)
Dealing
with Feelings
I believe that we must recognize the
legitimate role of feelings and experience in the Christian life. Those who
attend churches which offer a feel-good brand of Christianity are not wrong in
doing so. Can we blame people who come to the church seeking the experience of
love, joy, peace, hope, and contentment in the midst of a world of confusion?
Are we willing to acknowledge that perhaps in our zeal to be doctrinally
correct we have ignored or even put down feelings and emotions? If visitors who
are seeking a life-affecting experience with God come to our churches and
observe that the people sitting in the pews express no different attitudes and
emotions than the people in the world and that their worship of God is devoid
of any feelings or emotions, can we blame them for going elsewhere?
There is nothing wrong with Christians
desiring feelings, emotions, and experience. In fact, the lack of any
experience is in itself an experience. The lack of feeling is a feeling. The
lack of emotion is an emotion. Any cursory reading of the New Testament
demonstrates that love, joy, peace, hope, and contentment are to be the
Christian’s experience, feeling, and emotion.
Yet, that same reading of the New Testament
will also demonstrate that feelings and emotions are an effect and
not a cause. All the imperatives or commands of Scripture are
based upon the indicatives, or the doctrinal statements of what God has done
for us. In other words, the subjective feelings and emotions commanded in the
Word of God must be the result of embracing in faith the
objective doctrinal facts of what God has done in Christ Jesus. Feelings and
emotions that arise because of a group dynamic involving lively music and
expressive demonstrations are no different than the feelings and emotions that
arise at a rock concert. They are not the fruit of the Spirit.
For example:
I know that my sins are forgiven because
the Bible says that Jesus Christ took upon himself my sins and suffered the
just penalty for those sins. My sins are forgiven because the blood of Christ
has been shed. My faith rests upon the objective truth taught in the Word of
God. As a result of believing and confessing that my sins are forgiven, the
Holy Spirit removes my guilt and cleanses my conscience. Paul writes in Romans
5: 5 that God has poured his love into my heart through the gift of the Holy
Spirit. Therefore, my feelings and emotions are the result of a faith that
clings to the objective facts of the Word of God.
If, for example, I should say, "I know
that my sins are forgiven because my formerly guilt-ridden conscience is now
clear, I am basing my assurance of forgiveness upon my experience. If perchance
the devil should succeed in stirring up the old feelings of guilt and
condemnation, my assurance of the forgiveness of my sins is gone.
Martin Luther put it this way: “We must not
judge by what we feel or by what we see before us. The Word must be followed,
and we must firmly hold that these truths are to be believed, not experienced;
for to believe is not to experience. Not indeed that what we believe is never
to be experienced but that faith is to precede experience. And the Word must be
believed even when we feel and experience what differs entirely from the Word.”
(Ewald Plass, What Luther Says, [St. Louis: Concordia Publishing
House, 1959], Vol. 1, p. 513.)
Luther further writes, "Feeling must
follow, but faith, apart from all feeling, must be there first.” (Plass, p.
514)
Rather than coming against a feel-good
faith, we should clearly teach that true Christian feelings, emotions, and Holy
Spirit experience are the product of sound theology.
Rather than confronting imbalance in the
church by promoting the alternative and pushing the pendulum to the other side,
we should begin with a balanced perspective which means recognizing that
feelings will follow a faith that clings to the objective promises of God in
Scripture. The person who believes and confesses that his sins are forgiven
because Jesus died on the cross should feel guilt-free and experience the joy
of having a cleansed conscience. Feelings and emotions. while not the cause of
our faith, are the expression of our faith. Martin Luther writes, "We can
mark our lack of faith by our lack of joy; for our joy must necessarily be as
great as our faith." Again, he writes, "You have as much laughter as
you have faith." (Plass, Vol.
2, p. 692)
"Applying
the Truth..."
Martin Luther, because of his frequent
bouts with depression, recognized the importance of using the Word of God as
the means for adjusting feelings and emotions. For example, he wrote: “I still
constantly find that when I am without the Word, Christ is gone, yes, and so
are joy and the Spirit. But as soon as I look at a psalm or a passage of
Scripture, it so shines and burns into my heart that I gain a different spirit
and mind. Moreover, I know that everybody may daily experience this in his own
life.” He said, "Hear God’s Word often; do not go to bed, do not get
up, without having spoken a beautiful passage two, three, or four of them to
your heart." (Plass, Vol. 3, p. 1485.)
It is one thing to teach people the
objective, doctrinal truths of God’s Word. It is something quite different to
teach them how to use that Word, speak and confess that Word, and apply that
Word to their daily living. Truth must have application. The application of the
truth of what God has done for us in Christ Jesus will have an effect upon our
lives. Our feelings, and emotions will be adjusted. Our daily experience will
no longer be directed by the world and our sinful nature but rather by the Holy
Spirit producing in us love, joy, and peace through the powerful Word of God.
Peter encourages us to give an answer to anyone who asks us to explain the hope
that is within us (I Peter 3: 15). If we have no experience of hope, no one
will ever ask. Jesus said, "You will know the truth, and the truth will
set you free (John 8: 32)."
Hopefully the present conflict between
sound doctrine and feel-good experience will lead to a balanced perspective on
both sides. Those who minimize sound doctrine and promote feelings and
experience must recognize that they are plotting a course for deception and
disaster. Those who focus on sound doctrine must begin teaching people to apply
those great truths of Scripture to their daily living so that the experience of
God’s people matches what the Word of God commands.
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