Mysticism and the Will of God in Decision-Making: The Wonder Is from The Word
This Viewpoint blog post is a companion to the March 10 episode of the Theologically Speaking podcast featuring BJU Seminary professors Billy Gotcher and Stuart Scott.
Takeaways:
- Mysticism – an attempting to discern the Lord’s will based on a personal “experience” of God – has grown into a tsunami in today’s church.
- Mysticism surfaced strongly in the Pietism movement of the 1600s but was popularized in the modern church – even fundamentalist ones – in Henry Blackaby’s Experiencing God series.
- Mysticism denies the authority of God’s finished revelation, leads to unbiblical and just plain wrong conclusions and actions, and can hold other Christians (and churches) hostage.
- The correct response to mysticism is to test a statement against Scriptural wisdom and principles.
***
As Stuart pursued a doctorate, a professor asked pastor-classmates to share their “calls” to ministry. One had been a farmer who fought a “burden” to go into ministry by running around a barn until he was exhausted – at which point he lay down on the grass and said, “Okay, Lord.” (An account shared without a word from the professor.)
And what about the seasoned saint, seeking a volunteer for an open women’s ministry position, who informed a young mother that “God put your name on my heart last night” to fill the vacancy?
When we hear from fellow Christians in even fundamentalist churches and seminaries that God has “called me” to a ministry or “laid a word on my heart,” we are being confronted with a form of mysticism – attempting to discern the Lord’s will based on a personal “experience” of God.
Mysticism, which seems to have grown into a tsunami in today’s church, originated with Roman Catholic theologians but surfaced strongly in the German Pietist movement of the 1600s. Spearheaded in large part by Philipp Spener and later Nikolaus, Count von Zinzendorf, Pietism responded to a perceived sterility of orthodox belief.
According to the Musée Protestant, “Spener thought that personal religious experience was more important than adherence to a confession of faith. He insisted (that) … the believer had to go through a crisis of despair followed by the experience (of) the gift of God’s grace.” (emphasis added)
Sound familiar? You may have heard the same sentiment in the late Henry Blackaby’s Experiencing God series and ministries – which in its heyday penetrated many an otherwise fundamentalist congregation. Blackaby’s “Seven Realities” included the assertions that “God pursues a continuing relationship with you that is real and personal,” that “God invites you to become involved with Him in His work.” This invitation “always leads you to a crisis of belief that requires faith and action,” and “(y)ou come to know God by experience as you obey Him.” (emphasis added)
While Blackaby’s “Realities” included some objective criteria in how “God speaks,” his specifics were far more subjective:
“As you walk in an intimate love relationship with God, you will come to recognize His voice. You will know when God is speaking to you.”
“If the Christian does not know when God is speaking, he is in trouble at the heart of his Christian life!”
“God reveals Himself to each one of us in special and exceptional ways” that are “unique” to each individual.
Such an approach presents multiple difficulties. First, it undermines the authority of God’s Word. As theologian R.B. Kuiper stated, “It is of the essence of mysticism to separate the operation of the Holy Spirit from God’s objective Word, to hold that the Spirit often reveals God’s will without reference to the Bible, and thus by plain implication to deny that the Bible is God’s once-for-all, finished revelation of his will.”
The late professor Roland McCune of Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary would drill into his students the warning to beware of any communication that bypasses the mind to appeal to emotions: God has given us a book with propositional truth that speaks to the mind. An assertion that God has spoken directly to an individual, whether through feelings, impressions or a sense of an audible voice, is by definition extra-biblical revelation.
As such, impressions can lead to unbiblical conclusions and actions. A person may subjectively believe, for example, that he or she married “outside of God’s will” and want out of the marriage. But the Word gives specific instructions for living with even unbelieving spouses in 1 Corinthians 7 and 1 Peter 3.
Some alleged “words from the Lord” – that someone is going to be miraculously healed, that a child is going to grow up to be in ministry or another vocation – prove just plain wrong and lead to bad judgments or dashed faith. It’s impossible, absent the Bible, to judge whether a “word from God” is just an individual’s own thoughts.
A subjective assertion can, in essence, hold other Christians hostage: churches are often confronted with a statement that a person is “called” who is objectively unqualified for or disqualified from ministry, and in the case of the young mother asked to lead in a women’s ministry, unduly pressured by the insistence that it was “of God.”
How Should Pastors Equip Members to Deal with Mysticism?
The appropriate approach when a Christian is confronted by subjective, mystical claims of receiving a direct word – or in Blackaby’s formulation, “assignment” – from the Lord
is always to seek wisdom and confirmation from the Word.
Stuart, who followed the barn-circling former farmer, gave his own testimony that followed Christian “life coach” Jim George’s 1 Timothy 3-based acronym C-A-L-L: Confirmation of outsiders, the Abilities necessary to serve in leadership capacities, a deep Longing to serve in the ministry (the only subjective criterion) and a Lifestyle characterized by moral integrity.
The young woman approached for the ministry position responded appropriately based on Scriptural principles as well: she had to speak with her husband (in submission and in seeking a multitude of counselors) and to consider her time constraints and responsibilities as a home-schooling mother (demonstrating biblical priorities).
It’s good to remember what drove the Pietists: a dissatisfaction with stale orthodoxy, the same kind that’s setting off the mysticism tsunami today. Christians are trying to recapture the “wonder” of religion, an “experience” that will inform their faith and actions.
But the real wonder to share with our flocks is that the God of Heaven has given us His word, and that the Spirit of God takes that revelation to truly ministers to our mind as well as our emotion to rise up to genuine worship.
Resources:
- Stuart Scott, Knowing God’s Will: Biblical Decision-Making, Biblical Counseling Workshop
- R. B. Kuiper, “Pitfalls in Finding God’s Will for Your Life”
- James M. George, “The Call to Pastoral Ministry”
- Heath Lambert and Keith Palmer, “Is God Speaking to Me?”, Association of Certified Biblical Counselors Podcast (with transcript)
