catapult magazine

One of the biggest problems I have with the Bible’s purpose in Christianity is that it seems that there’s always a slippery slope on which it’s interpretted. For example, a couple hundred years ago Sunday/Sabbath observance had a completely different meaning than it does today. In some societies, you just didn’t work on Sunday. Period. But even within my lifetime, Christians I’ve known have changed their own views on Sunday observance. It’s as if the Ten Commandments are being slowly phased out because of contemporary culture. Now I’ve heard the arguments that it’s more of a lifestyle of Sabbath observance and all that, but the bottom line is, the Bible says don’t work on Sunday and we’re coming up with more and more reasons to override that. I’d even say that many of the reasons seem valid to me. But why? Why did we wait until now to decide to override something chiselled in stone?

Women’s role in the church used to be more clearly defined. Now, in comes the tide of feminism, and we’re looking at the places that say “No women speaking in church” and saying that hey, that’s not for us, that’s a cultural norm rather than a moral one. And quite possibly that’s true. We’re a different society, where women don’t have the same roles as men anymore, and so it’s not so necesary to maintain such a male-dominated order to things. BUT my question is this: when you look down the road, at the pace we’re going, what other Biblical things are we going to be throwing out? Think of your grandparents and how stick-in-the-mud you thought they were about ditching hymns during worship. Well, imagine if some of the things you hold as ABSOLUTES were re-interpretted by your kids to fit the norm of society. How can the Bible really be relevant if we’re always reinterpretting it? Are we moving towards a Bible that only has meaning as an allegorical narrative?

Christianity is a religion that says there are absolutes. But with the path we are taking on interpreting the Bible, will that be true in a thousand years (should there be another thousand to come)? Will we be down to “love God and the rest of the Bible is outdated”? Maybe I’m making a mountain out of a molehill . . .

I think that in the not-too-distant future, most of the organized church will condone gay marriages. And I think that most of the honest, thinking, heart-commitment Christians will be right there with it. Whether that’s a good thing, a bad thing, or otherwise, I honestly can’t say. But what I can say is that the church of yesterday told us it was WRONG. And they didn’t say, “It’s wrong, but it may become right if society changes.” And both that church and the church of the future looked or will look at the Bible before coming to their conclusions on the matter. SOMETHING’S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE. What is it? What am I not seeing here?

Are there really absolutes?

As you know, Grant, I’m very interested in this subject and I’m sure others can benefit from it as well. Can you tell me how you let God do the work? What work is this that God does that you no longer do? What would be a practical example of “letting go and letting God?”

I see you as a very self-confident person. But in your case the proper term would be God-confident, no? How is it that self-confidence and God-confidence manifest themselves in such similar ways? I suppose humility could be a part of God-confidence, but why should God-confident people be humble? After all, it’s not them doing the work—it’s God. This is the kind of thing that St. Paul would happily boast about. So what’s the difference?

Letting God do the work refers to my salvation. I don’t need to follow a bunch of rules to be saved; I just have to accept and receive what God has already done for me.

Letting God do the work also refers to the comfort that I don’t have to save the whole world by myself. Since this is God’s world, God is working to redeem it and doesn’t need me to do it.

In response to your question about self-confidence or god-confidence, I would say that some distinctions have to be made. The self-confidence that Paul has is that he’s a natural sinner who fails, who screws things up on his own. But Paul is not left to his own devices. God helps Paul to overcome his limitations; therefore, Paul boasts not in himself but in the Lord. This kind of self-knowledge is confessional, and the confidence we have in God grows as we realize our own failings.

If you have confidence in yourself and think you’re a pretty good person who would do the right thing in most situations by yourself, you’re creating an illusion for yourself and may be setting yourself up for self-disappointment. Though this kind of illusory self-confidence is meant to support one’s faith in one’s self, you will discover that you are unfaithful even to your own self.

The self-confidence of Paul, on the other hand, is not founded on self-illusion. It starts with the confession of sin. Paul’s self-confidence comes out of a belief that only God is faithful and that all goodness comes from God.

There is more to say about this…

There is indeed more on this: I’ve read books on the topic. :)

Grant (or others), do you have any personal examples of “letting go and letting God do the work”?

The phase “let go and let God” makes it sound very easy. For me, at least, I don’t think that it is. I have spent my whole life trying to learn how to do that. I think I am much better at it now than i was ten years ago, certainly batter at it than i was twenty year ago, and yet I have an awfully long way to go.

I think prayer helps. I think having things happen in your life where you get knocked in the head for trying to do it yourself helps. But an example? that’s hard. I am not sure it is the sort of thing you can turn on or off, nor does it work with one particular thing and not with another. I guess i can say this if you are looking for something concrete. My faith lets me worry less about everything. It keeps me focused on what i have to do.

But I still doubt.

I didn’t mean to suggest that letting go is easy. The fact that we are so intent on finding certainty for ourselves proves that we prefer to have everything within our control, within our grasp. Giving it up to God is very difficult for human nature. I think Kierkegaard says something along these lines, that the gospel message is not that complicated, really. Acting out what it says is the hard part.

But I don’t know if we should single out specific instances when we’ve let go and let God take over. I think we let go all the time to something or other. All human beings, when facing their own limitations, realize that they are not in control and therefore make a decision who or what to trust.

If you’re a scientist, you might trust objective facts, historical evidence, statistics, the scientific method of investigation. Others might trust the status quo or popular opinion. Christians put their trust in God (but what does that really mean)?

I think the idea of trust is very important in this discussion about certainty. Jesus reprimands his disciples for trying to know, for trying to achieve certainty about God’s kingdom (Acts 1 and elsewhere). He tells them they should wait for God to reveal such things. The message seems to be that we ought not to trust God in order to find certainty for ourselves. Rather, we trust God because God, as the Creator of all that IS, is the only trustworthy one.

I certainly do not trust the status quo, the scientific method, or my own self to explain the complex universe. Only the Creator of that universe knows such things. And who has known the mind of the Creator except the Spirit of that Creator? But now we have been given that Spirit.

I just watched Tarkovsky’s Stalker for the first time and Andrei Rublev again on the big screen this week and was reminded of this topic.

Stalker has a great example of what dan was asking about when he wondered what it means to give up control to God. At the end of Stalker two characters, are allowed into the heart of “the Zone”, but after such a long journey, they make a decision which reveals humankind’s will to maintain control. The feeling conveyed in the film is that human beings refuse to have faith, because it means they have to accept a gift that they did not earn, that is beyond their own control (rent it on DVD, if you can find it).

And Andrei Rublev (the greatest film I may ever see), shows the relationship between the work you do and the god you follow. Those who have faith lovingly sacrifice and produce beautiful works of art in praise of the Creator. Those who are faithless or who put their faith elsewhere, produce destruction. The goodness of the work of the iconographers and the bell-maker at the end of the film contrasts with the destructive activity of the barbarians and the evil Russian rulers who are experts in their own craft: pillaging villages, torturing people, causing violent behavior in hungry dogs and destruction against animals, forcing horses to perform cruel acts etc.

Andrei Rublev seems consistent with the biblical stress on the idea that if you love Christ, you’ll do his work. So, letting go to God is actually a simultaneous commitment to doing His work rather than the work of some other god, which yields different fruit.

The strands of this have wandered all over but I think I understand a bit what Adam is questioning in the Christianity he was given. Many of us were brought up with rules and regulations and a pretty rigid view of what you had to do or believe to be a Christian. But that isn’t really being a christian – that is being a member of a demonination or a social order. Christianity is loving and following Christ because he saved me. But how can we be sure? The source of revelation is the Word. Inspired scripture. But that’s the rub here because what is in Scripture seems so complicated and unable to answer the questions easily. But we can’t turn to scripture to be and answer book, its NOT a text. We turn to scripture to find God. Theological discussions are interesting and we need to do that but the first step we should take every day is to the Scriptures to find God for ourselves. I have never felt really comfortable with this whole personal relationship with Jesus, he’s my friend and told me things. God is revealed in the Bible.
Over the last year I have spent a lot of time in the Word and have been using a method suggested by Bonnhoffer, pick a short piece of scripture – a Psalm or a paragraph and read/meditate/pray over it for a half an hour a day for a whole week. Unbelievable things open up when you do this. It may not answer the questions or solve the problem of relativism but I’ve found it leads to a deep and more satisfying understanding of God in my life. AND that leads to a more fruitful and focused life.

CVK, do you do this thinking about the Bible in the context of some sort of community of Christians, or all by yourself?

psst CVK, I think the right answer is “in the context of some sort of community of Christians.”