Is it God or we who choose (not) to act?

After several years of having my beliefs challenged by my very intelligent and theologically-inclined friends, I’ve become more interested in re-examining the theology I’ve been taught throughout my life, including official doctrines as well as unofficial assumptions and expectations within the evangelical tradition. I realize that I’ve taken certain ‘truths’ as a given, only to realize that other learned Christians don’t at all see things the way I do. So I’ve begun to examine my beliefs in earnest. (It is my hope to take theological courses from a Bible college someday, probably after I’ve graduated and have a job.)

An Unofficial Doctrine of Helping

Before Dad lost his job, my assumptions about Christian charity were the same as those demonstrated within the larger church community. My use of personal resources such as time, money, my car, etc. were managed with a well-intentioned belief that all earnings and resources given to us by God are “on loan” from Him in order to be used for His purposes. I thought I believed this, I really did; but underneath lay an insidious and subconscious sense of entitlement–a state of heart, you might say–that my money and my resources were there for my own enjoyment above all, or at least to be used for others as long as I wasn’t put out too much in the process. This was most evident in the fact that the majority of my leisure spending revolved around me and that I did not go out of my way to find opportunities to help others, especially if it was going to require significant sacrifice on my part. The conversations at church, at youth group, at Bible college, and so on took on the same slant – we saved up for our own enjoyment, we engaged in activities for our own enjoyment, we dreamed and planned about doing things we would enjoy. Acts of selflessness and service were not seen as a way of life, but as something you do occasionally, token gestures to show God’s love to the world. But we did not seek out these opportunities intentionally or regularly, nor were we taught to respond to situations of need within our own church community unless the situation was significantly dire. And even though we heard and talked about being ’sold out for God’, this nevertheless translated practically into spending a minority of our time, thoughts, energy and resources on others. In this way we fit right in with the rest of our culture and society.

I’ve seen this same response among Christians to my parents’ situation over the years. Mom and Dad have been carrying a tremendously heavy burden, financially, emotionally, spiritually, and physically. Even with practical and emotional support generously shown by a few, my parents have not felt embraced by their church family as a whole. It’s a lonely feeling, one that’s sinking in for Mom, and is leading us to find practical and emotional support from Christians at other churches.

It’s a widely accepted way of life for Christians to be charitable with our time and resources when it suits us, when we feel an overwhelming sense of responsibility to do so, or when we’re in the spotlight and our personal reputation risks considerable damage if we don’t help in a specific situation. But above all else we focus the majority of our leisure time and resources on ourselves. We think we’re entitled to it - we work hard, so we deserve it. Besides, everybody else is doing it - going on vacations and shopping trips, planning fun and relaxing retirements, spending hundreds if not thousands of dollars on drinks and entertainment, not to mention killing thousands of hours watching movies and television as the years go by. We know that the first Christian communities described in Acts had quite different priorities, and Paul as well as the other epistle writers had strong words for those who became distracted from God’s priorities by the enticements of culture and its philosophies.

As a result of my parents’ experience I’ve been challenged to examine and change my own life, and I’m realizing that the unspoken beliefs instilled in me from my church culture include the teaching that it is okay (unofficially) to think of my own enjoyment before the needs of others, that I can spend thousands of dollars on a vacation, on multiple residences, a large home, or a hot tub and fellow believers may congratulate me - even envy me for it. The amount of time and money spent on less conspicuous pursuits such as restaurants, concerts, junk food, movies, technology, and other personal ‘rewards’ during the course of my lifetime will not be called into question – unless my excess greatly surpasses that of my fellow church members at which point someone might consider bringing it up in conversation. Re-examining all this, I realized for the first time that if all of us only had the heart of a particular great-aunt of mine who has dedicated the entirety of her life to selfless service of others we’d be closer to the Christian life as God outlined for us in Scripture.

In Search of a Theology of Community and of Helping

Throughout my family’s journey I’ve been researching and discussing these issues, deconstructing the norms I learned by osmosis within our church culture, trying to un-learn what is anti-Biblical, and to the best of my abilities re-envisioning the Christian lifestyle from the ground up based solely on what these studies and dialogues have revealed from Scripture. I was recently asked, “Are we OK with the fact that God may choose to use the community around us or perhaps not?” To that I would say, sure - if that’s consistent with Scripture. I’ve been greatly assisted in the task of answering this question by two pastor friends. Others have worked through this with me as well, so the thoughts I’ve written below have gone through a process of review, discussion, editing, re-review, et cetera, and I welcome your feedback on it.

Mystical Piety

What I’ve been hearing from people is the idea that God works differently in different situations, based on His will for His children in that time and place, so that we need to be open to His leading us into (in)action with regard to helping our Christian neighbours in need. We expect the ‘go ahead’ from God, that is to feel personally convicted by God, before we are led to action. So, in my parents’ situation, I may ask Mom and Dad’s spiritual family for practical or emotional help, but unless God specifically places it on an individual’s heart to respond to my parents’ need, he/she has no obligation to respond. If he/she doesn’t feel this conviction directly from God, it is assumed that God’s will is not for us to help, but perhaps for someone else to help, or even for my parents to remain in their current situation for some divine purpose.

One of my pastor friends wrote about my parents’ situation:

I think that what you are dealing with here is a tension between Mennonite sense of community and Brethren (German Pietist) spiritual individualism. In this instance, the latter has come through.

Regarding the idea of a mystical piety, he wrote:

Mystical has in it the idea of un-mediated communion with God. Your spreading of information is a mediated form of communication because God would use the message to prompt action. The un-mediated model would be that God would impress the need of another upon the heart of an individual without the use of an external prompt. It would seem that the latter is the expression of piety among some of your folks’ friends/family. (…)So, you are dealing with a mystical piety.

Mysticism, generally speaking, has at its roots the desire for an immediate experience/knowledge/relationship with the divine. It looks for something beyond what is available through means. Christian mysticism looks beyond the Holy Spirit’s use of Bible, prayer, preaching, praise, and sacraments to something else. So, rather than listen to the Christ speak to his people through the Scriptures, this mysticism wants to hear directly from Him. It is not enough to hear the command, the mystically inclined must at least feel lead or at most claim that they have been told by God to do a specific thing.

If there are tendencies toward mysticism in a Christian community, there is an expectation of a mystical expression of the relationship of the members of that community to God and to each other. There is an expectation that action must be preceded by instruction from within, not without.

(I do not deny that there is a spiritual relationship of members of the body to Christ and to each other. My issue is with the implicit, or even explicit, denigrating of God appointed means and the work of the Spirit in believers as described in the Scriptures.)

He continued in a following email…

I think that there is also a spiritual pacifism involved here. Just as one would not respond aggressively to a physical oppressor, one should not respond pro-actively to other oppressions. The principles of the former, being so core to the community’s identity, are applied to all circumstances. What happens is that something which is a primary distinctive of the community becomes a lens through which everything is viewed. In this passivity, God will bring deliverance, and the way that it will come is through Him moving His people to help.

Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all have their mystics. For the peoples of the book, sometimes the book isn’t enough. In Christianity, mysticism has been around since the early church. I do not know enough of the subject in the early church to draw lines and say this is where it comes from. But by the middle ages, it was well rooted in the church. In those days, however, it was usually associated with asceticism. But, when we actually look at the asceticism, it is an abdication of responsibility.

In evangelical circles, mysticism is a reaction to the cerebral nature of the gospel as truth. All of us have a strain of the mystic in us. It usually comes out in seeking ‘guidance’. In some circles it is given more place than in others. Does it harm the gospel? I don’t think so unless mystical experiences are made a mark of being saved at all or of being an upper class, spiritual, Christian.

Does it cause harm in the Church? Yes, because its subjective nature isolates, and isolation causes deformity.

I do not think that any evangelical person given to mysticism would actually want to explain away the Scripture. What they would say is that the Scripture is true, but not for me in the circumstance because the Holy Spirit has not used His highlighter on it for me today.

There is material on mysticism. Lots of evangelicals are reading the medieval Catholic mystics. It is an in thing. There is mystically orientated evangelical material which comes in at a lot of levels. And there is evangelical polemic against it. But there is no overarching treatment. As we have more or less accepted in our discussion, there is as much sociology to this as there is theology.

Although there are much more extreme examples of mysticism throughout the history of Christianity, its modern expression among evangelical communities is widespread; it is unassuming, although it has artfully succeeded in getting us to interpret Scripture through the lens of our personal subjective communication with God instead of challenging us to interpret our personal communication with God through the ultimate authority of Scripture.

It’s also a sign that the Church has bought into a pluralistic/relativistic faith - what God tells you may be different than what He tells me. This has implications for how Christian community is lived on a daily basis.

Another pastor friend of mine wrote,

if anyone believes that he/she is being ‘led’ in any way not obviously in keeping with Scripture, he/she had better quickly find a mature Christian with whom to consult. Further, one must, in integrity, consider any such “leading” as highly suspect unless and until it can be found actually be supported by Scripture. ['If in doubt, don't....']

I believe this is part of why we are told that ‘But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation….’ [2 Peter 1: 20] Two verses later it speaks of ‘false prophets.’

We are also warned: ‘Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world.’ [1 John. 4: 1]

Scripture’s Treatment of Need Within the Church

My current perspective comes from passages of Scripture I’ve read over the years as well as those pointed out to me by others, which have recently crystallized my understanding of the giving/love/”brotherhood”/community-minded/self-denial aspect of my Christian faith. For instance:

Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer; and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoever has the world’s goods, and beholds his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him? Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth. (1 John 3: 15-18 )

As my friend wrote about 1 John 3: 15-18,

That is asked very simply, and the answer is implied: ‘If you claim to have God’s love within you, you will help your brother in his need with your material resources.’ In context, this appears to say that failing to help materially one’s ‘brother’ in his time of need is equivalent to hating — or murdering — him (!), and the one thus failing has demonstrated that he is not in intimate relationship with God [i.e., not a Christian]! [See John 17:3 for the NT's only definition of 'eternal life.']

Further, IF we do ‘know God’ ['have eternal life'], we will demonstrate it not only by assisting our needy brother materially, but also by ‘laying down’ our life for him. God’s love is not a matter of words, but of ‘deed and truth.’ It appears to me that this is a rather uncompromising passage. I see no ‘wiggle room’ in it.

The second passage is ‘like unto it’ [see Matt. 22:39; Mk. 12:31; Lk. 10:27]: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

In the Luke 10 passage, we then have the wonderful follow-on story of ‘the Good Samaritan,’ in which Jesus absolutely leaves no self-righteous ‘wiggle room’ by making it quite plain that one’s neighbor is whomever one has at hand who is in need of one’s mercy! It seems to me that to anyone who really cares about God’s opinion in the matter, those passages express it quite clearly.

The following list of Scriptures was given to me by these and a few other friends, as it provides the evidence we have from Scripture exhibiting God’s instructions to His children in this matter:

Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers. (Gal. 6: 9-10; emphasis mine)

If there is a poor man among your brothers in any of the towns of the land that the LORD your God is giving you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward your poor brother. Rather be openhanded and freely lend him whatever he needs. (Deuteronomy 15: 7-8; emphasis mine)

If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,” and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that? (James 2:15-16)

Be careful not to harbor this wicked thought: “The seventh year, the year for canceling debts, is near,” so that you do not show ill will toward your needy brother and give him nothing. He may then appeal to the LORD against you, and you will be found guilty of sin. Give generously to him and do so without a grudging heart; then because of this the LORD your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to. There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land. (Deuteronomy 15:9-11; emphasis mine)

A generous man will himself be blessed, for he shares his food with the poor. (Proverbs 22:9)

Give to him who asks of you, and do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you. (Matthew 5:42)

Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?

Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe him,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? (Isaiah 58: 6-7)

All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. (Acts 2: 44-47)

Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. (Ezekiel 16:49)

But if a widow has children or grandchildren, these should learn first of all to put their religion into practice by caring for their own family and so repaying their parents and grandparents, for this is pleasing to God. (1 Timothy 5:4; emphasis mine)

Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ (Matthew 25: 34-36)

If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. (1 Timothy 5:8; emphasis mine)

Also, see Luke 10: 25-37 for the Parable of the Good Samaritan.

Back to the question I was originally asked, “Are we OK with the fact that God may choose to use the community around us or perhaps not?” I would say look at Scripture, including the quotes above and answer this question: “Is God OK with it when the community around us may or may not choose to help one another?” According to Scripture, Christians who do not help in times of need have not “put their religion into practice”, they have “denied the faith and [are] worse than an unbeliever” and have ignored direct commands from Scripture. The reason these words sound so radical and inflammatory is because we’re not used to hearing them in an urgent and imperative sense. Rather, helping our neighbour has become optional or conditional. In this way mysticism has swooped in and given us the tools we need to gloss over these Scriptures by saying, “That doesn’t apply to me because God hasn’t told me directly to help so-and-so.”

Modern mystical piety nurtures a sanctified, deeply entrenched, and inaccurate notion of God’s intervention in Christians’ lives - the kind that somewhat minimizes the Body’s role as the physical link between Jehovah Jireh (”God our Provider”) and the faithful needy. Ultimately, as this discourse demands, when a suffering Christian’s practical needs remain unmet it is a sign that God is indeed answering his prayers with a “No,” or a “Not yet,” and that he must remain faithful to God in the midst of these trials, because the prospect of repeated requests to fellow Christians for assistance is an unbiblical, intrusive, and even offensive option.

However, God’s heart on the matter, as expressed through the written Word, is in the Church’s unwavering compassionate response when a need within the Body is made known. From these Scriptures it’s plain that it was never intended for God’s children to continue in their suffering wherever Christian family members and other believers are nearby and aware of the problem. Nowhere does Scripture allow room for fellow Christians to refuse help to biological or spiritual brothers and sisters. But the disconnect between Scripture and reality makes it clear that our Church culture has done away with the value of obedience in its rawest and most uncompromising form, elevating ‘mystical’ and extra-Biblical revelations of God’s so-called will over foundational Scriptural principles.

Now, I’m not downplaying the role of God’s supernatural activity in our lives, nor the fact that ultimately our trust must be in God rather than in people, nor the reality of difficult times in the Christian’s life, nor the importance of our personal relationship with God during times of need and all other times as well. What I’m attempting to capture is the particular discourse within the Church that invalidates unpalatable Biblical truths, de-emphasizes practical interdependence within the Church family, promotes the idea that true trust in God is exhibited through minimal help-seeking from fellow believers, and that spiritual maturity is best lived through private suffering and endurance.

I have come to believe that we have a pretty compelling idea of God’s heart on the issue. I’m not aware of anything in Scripture stating or even hinting that God might be okay with Christians knowingly withholding material, financial, emotional, spiritual or practical help from those who are truly in need.

Effects of Mystical Piety

I need to clarify that I do not believe mysticism categorically leads Christians to neglect the need of less fortunate family or community members. Rather, my argument is that Western Christians, already being predisposed to buy into our self-absorbed culture, are unwittingly prone to utilizing notions of mysticism and mystical piety for the sake of justifying our own greed and selfishness - i.e. “budgeting” for entertainment, vacations, new toys and clothes, et cetera while our neighbour’s need is entirely overlooked.

“Liberated” by this mystical belief, if a Christian does not “feel” the Holy Spirit leading him/her to help fellow biological or spiritual family members in need, then they can safely assume it is God’s will for someone else to help instead, or that God does not wish their needy brother to be helped at all at this time. This theology opens the door to and sanctions an increased self-indulgence, a reassignment of responsibility for the suffering, and a re-prioritization of resource use within the Church: “I’ll spend my time, money, and energy on myself (or on my friends and family who aren’t in need) unless I ‘feel led’ to spend them on those who are in need…”

I mention the natural consequences of mystical piety because of the strong seduction of the society in which we live, and because of the potential for it to turn the Church into a lethargic, gluttonous, self-centred and unproductive organism. This mystical piety, in practice, isn’t officially preached from the pulpit but emanates from the lifestyles, off-handed remarks, informal conversations, and commonly accepted values and goals among Western Christians. Our devotions are laced with both well-intentioned as well as overtly egocentric assumptions about Christian obedience and communication between ourselves and God. So, whether well-intentioned or not, the Church has largely opted into secular society’s individualistic culture of entitlement. All of us, myself included, are probably unaware of just how tightly we cling to our sense of entitlement to a certain degree of comfort and amusement.

This discourse, then, becomes the absolvent for Christians not wishing to relieve each others’ material and financial burdens unless absolutely, unarguably necessary (that is, unless God hits us over the head with a two-by-four, as an old friend of mine used to say). It lets us dismiss or explain away Scripture if it doesn’t ‘jive’ with what the Holy Spirit is ‘telling’ us so that when a need becomes apparent within the Church family, our tendency is to pass the buck directly to God, casting off our calling to be the ‘hands and feet of Jesus’ and re-delegating the task of the Good Samaritan back to Jesus Himself. Sealing this process, we offer Biblical platitudes, a pat on the back, and promises of prayer to our suffering brother or sister, and then we move on.

Mystical piety enables Western Christians’ sense of entitlement to a certain amount of self-indulgent living. It is an enticing and worldly philosophy that secures, furnishes, and consecrates hedonistic space within modern Western Christian culture, creating a consumeristic appetite that is dislocated from our faith, an appetite for all the consumption of amusements and material goods that fit into our budget, and as many pleasurable pursuits as do not cross established religious taboos. However, upon searching through even more Scriptures (especially in the Jewish Scriptures) for verses indicating God’s perspective on the poor, the sick, and the downtrodden, it becomes clear that the sharpest lesson to be learned when the pleas of the genuinely suffering go unheard is that human hearts become too easily calloused and hardened when we’re not intimately tied to the heart of God as expressed through Scripture.

I want to reinforce that I’m not at all saying that everyone who leans toward mystical piety is wasteful and self-indulgent; only that this theology tends to pave the way to that lifestyle too easily.

In a nutshell…

On a theological note, there seems to be an assumption embedded in the original question I was asked that there are times when God intentionally decides not to use Christians to help/serve/practically support fellow Christians in times of need. Besides having no Biblical foundation that I can find, this assumption is influenced by what my friend called mystical piety, an approach to Scripture that emphasizes passages which are personally impressed upon our hearts by God and de-emphasizes passages that the Holy Spirit doesn’t impress upon us personally. For the reasons given I disagree about this being an accurate mode of Biblical interpretation. Because of this I also disagree with the idea that helping fellow Christians is optional or conditional upon receiving a personal conviction to act, rather than being a foundational commitment in the believer’s life, as described throughout Scripture.

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