Today's reading: Numbers 33; 1 John 4
John's words about testing the spirits stand out to me this morning as something the modern church desperately needs to take to heart. Modern Western Christianity seems to have become largely naturalistic. Obviously you can't be a Christian and fully deny the supernatural, but it seems like, for a lot of Christians, God, and maybe a handful of angels, is kind of the extent of the consideration we give to the supernatural world. We tend to live as though the physical world is all there is, or at least all that is important, and any spiritual realities take a back seat. But this was not the reality into which John wrote this letter. The people of John's day would have had a robust view of the supernatural world with a base assumption that beings within that supernatural realm, both good and evil, not only existed, but influenced life on a daily basis.
To his original audience, John was reminding them to be diligent in what they listened to and considered truth. Some of the teachings people would claim to have received would truly be received from a divine being, a member of the supernatural realm, but that does not mean that the teaching they received was from the Lord. However, we have to pay attention to the fact that this warning/reminder means these teachings John is referring to likely sounded deceptively good. The spiritual world is not full of a bunch of dolts with nothing but blatantly obvious lies up their sleeves. God's supernatural enemies are brilliant and clever beings. Just look at Satan's deception of Eve in the garden; he doesn't come out with some big obvious lie, he starts with the words of God, just twisted ever so slightly enough to lead Eve off toward his goal of sowing distrust and ultimate rebellion. So John warns his readers to test the spirits because the spirits need to be tested. He does not say that what is received or revealed spiritually needs to be rejected, but he does say that it needs to be scrutinized. And this is where I think the church today has stepped out of a very important conversation, leaving a great many well-meaning people incredibly vulnerable.
The supernatural world is just as real as the material and there is a lot of curiosity about that realm among Christians and non-Christians alike. Given what the bible tells us about the supernatural realm and the ways its inhabitants interact with the material world, this curiosity makes complete sense. But when the church treats this topic as though it were out-of-bounds, or an idea that we don't ask questions about, people are left to try to try to figure it out on their own. And you better believe that if you have a spiritually curious and open person sitting around, unattached to a church or attached to a church that doesn’t effectively engage this topic, God's enemies will not be hesitant to capitalize on that opportunity and introduce them to the spirituality they are looking for. And when that person has a dream, visitation, or experience, or when they pick up a book or find a person who will introduce them to real spiritual experiences, will they have the knowledge and experience to even know that they need to test the spirits, let alone have the maturity and understanding to do so in isolation? If the church stays silent on these issues then many people are left assuming that a real spiritual experience cannot be a bad thing, and therefore they are necessarily not being deceived, but are being led closer to the true heart of God.
This is precisely how New Age theology has become so popular in the Christian church today, such that many individuals, and some churches, don't even realize they are buying into New Age teachings and ideologies. When we don't have a solid theology and expectation of the very real spiritual world around us, we leave spiritually open and excited people in a position to be easily deceived and led astray to a spirituality that can never save them.
So we need to take John's words seriously today. He does not tell us to reject the spirits outright. He does not tells us not to engage with questions and curiosities about the spiritual world. He does not tell us that its all fake or unimportant. He tells us that the spiritual world is real, that we will, at times, interact with it, and that sometimes when we do we are interacting with spirits there on behalf of God, and other times opposed to God, and so we need to actively and thoughtfully discern the difference.
No comments:
Post a Comment