The Difficulty in Johannine Theology

When I was at Capernwray (Evangelical Bible School in England) our Principal taught us the epistle of 1 John. I will admit first off that it is a very difficult scripture with tons of confusing passages like this:

"Those who have been born of God do not sin, because God’s seed abides in them; they cannot sin, because they have been born of God. The children of God and the children of the devil are revealed in this way: all who do not do what is right are not from God, nor are those who do not love their brothers and sisters." - 1 John 3:9-10

Roman Catholics tend to like Johannine theology and the Gospels best, whereas my background is heavily Pauline. It's important to know where your prooftexts are. Protestants use Romans, we (Catholics) use Corinthians alot (mostly the gospels though). Anyway, 1 John is a mine of Catholic prooftexts like 2:2, 2:29, 3:22-24, 4:8, 12, 5:16 , etc. I'm using the word "prooftext" loosely and maybe equivocally. Basically every religion uses different verses to bolster their points.

But in an attempt at honesty, I have to say I just don't know. St. John the Divine should be called St. John the Confusing. At times he sounds like an American Evangelical Perfectionist / Openly Pelagian to the point that even us Catholics are think: "ok ya works boo faith alone...but remember grace"

I enjoy 1 John because I think ultimately the message is: Christ is the sacrifice for the sins of the world, he did this because he loved us, if we love one another we know we are acting in the Spirit of Christ. But there is ALOT more to it than that, and I enjoy the mysterious nature of this epistle.

Depression, Love, and Depravity.

I remember listening to a lecture at Capernwray Hall on 1 John that addressed Depression. Rob Whittaker was talking about how when God teaches you things, they are usually in a positive manner; in that when He tries to change you it will not be blatant condemnation, but more like a divine compliment sandwich. (good comment, criticism, good comment).

I am incredibly depressed today, I am alot of the time. When Rob described the symptoms of what was Not God but was self-condemnation/depression I almost put my hand up to show that I felt almost all of them (except for the not eating one.... of course the only good part of depression I end up missing out on).

Today I was reading Donald Miller's "Searching For God Knows What" and he discussed the effects of the fall, and how it can be interpreted relationally. How every one of our relationships is screwed up now because of it, and how we are like deformed children from Chernobyl. He says that ever since Genesis 3 we have continually sought after the affirmation of other people. I think he's right in that I know I've written probably 5 messages or emails to people expressing my great love or appreciation of them, and sometimes very personal thoughts or struggles but then have no reply. It hurts probably more than most things I've experienced, because I - like everyone else - seek the affirmation of others.

I wish God would teach me something more uplifting, this last week or so I've only been taught the fallenness of humanity, our hopelessness to help ourselves or to do good, and the effects of Adam & Eve's sin. It's quite depressing, and so I wonder if it is God, and if Rob might have been wrong about God and Depression.

I was starting to think about how love is intrinsically tied to pain, and how if you don't love people, you may feel empty, but you don't quite feel the amount of pain. Some of the people I love more than anything were at my house last week, and since they left I've felt immense pain.

I started thinking about God and that maybe He too felt terrible after creating humanity which rebelled against him.

"The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, ‘I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created—people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.’" - Genesis 6:5-7 (NRSV)

It's strange that even God is greived by Love, and stranger still why he would go through it all if he knew how it would end in the first place. But for some reason I guess he thought it was better to create than not to, and better to love than not to. I read those words and feel in my own heart the condemnation that everything is 'only evil'. I feel like Ezekiel is a liar, for he said:

"A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances." - Ezekiel 36:26-27 (NRSV)

I certainly don't feel like I have a new heart on days like today. I guess here is a promise of intrinsic justification, the actual change of the person, the new birth. What a beautiful hope. I think I've felt that way before though, I've changed, I've had a new heart, I've loved God, and been inclined to do good. I think the main problem for me now is that I'm by myself, and as Donald Miller keeps reminding me, I'm created to be relational. As the heroic saint John Wesley once wrote "the bible knows nothing of solitary religion", I quite agree. But it seems I must congrate the devil for seperating me from all Christian fellowship, for that is as it seems. Now if only God would switch things around. It is sadly not so, at least today. And so he teaches me the principles of the fall, of the wickedness of my own heart, and the consequences of the divine seperation, so that maybe one day in contrast the beauty of the divine union might be that much brighter.

Our lives are not our own. an illustration

"In his heart a man plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps." - Proverbs 16:9

I was thinking about this on a walk in the woods yesterday. I think we usually lie to ourselves in a few ways when it comes to life. We either tell ourselves that everything that happens to us is our fault because we are the masters of our fate - as a poet once said, we make our own destiny. I think the other thing people believe is blind fatalism, in that we can fight all we want but in the end we can't change anything, the universe has conspired against us and onward we float toward the eventual waterfall.

I have felt both ways before, and I'm sure I will again. But I've been thinking, maybe Jared/Calvin is right and we are able to choose our own way, but strangely every path we choose was really the only path we could choose anyway. Maybe it's like Rob Whittaker used to tell us, and the will of God is like a 6 lane highway. We can switch lanes, but we're still headed in the same direction.

I have a feeling that our lives are not our own. I feel like I have been given an incredible gift - life. It can feel like a burden sometimes, and maybe it can be so painful because it is so valuable. I don't know if you can have one and not the other. The whole good without evil argument that apologists use.

I used to think we had alot more control over how we lived. I used to think life turned out well for Christians and problems were like mini-fires that pop up every once in a while, and we simply put them out and move on. That's how I used to imagine struggles and trials which was easy, we overcome and move on.

My image now is alot different. I feel like life - maybe I should specify, the Christian life - is like walking through a forest fire. It's not a perfect world with small fires, it's a world of smoke and flames and black burnt out forest that we wander through, and every once in a while a wind blows by and we catch a glimpse of the blue sky, we get a breath of clean air, and we know that one day we will reach the end of this slow walk through the ruins, to a good place once more. It's not that life is like a checklist to go through, or accomplishments to be made, but more like a long long movie, with boring parts, sad parts, and amazing parts. Every beautiful thing we see is an image - a small part of the glory ahead.

So that's what I think life is like. I also think that everyone else in our world is taking a completely different approach. I feel like everyone else is saying for us to just sit down and enjoy the wasteland, and that it's actually the greatest good there is. That we are delusional for thinking there's an end to the forest fire, and that our best chances lay in enjoying life in this fallen place, and that if we go off walking for our whole lives we waste what little hope we have left.

That is my Forest fire illustration. My next post will be a 28 days later/ Zombie illustration.

Rob Whittaker on Systematic Theology

"Many of us have a system, we may not have put a label on it, we may not even realize it is a system, it's the system of our denomination, it's the system of our parents, it's the system of our culture, it's the system of our education, etc. What we tend to do, is make all truth submissive to our system. Look at theology... when we find a bible verse that does not fit our system, what we tend to do is force the verse into our system, so for instance, if you believe God (describes calvinism) and you find a verse that says God wills all men to be saved, what do you do? You look into the greek and the word want, and you'll do some pretty fantastic expositional gymnastics, to make that verse fit your system...we all do that.... can I suggest to you a better method... could I encourage you, when you find some truth that doesn't fit your system, to be prepared to change your system... we make truths fit our system, rather than making our system submissive to the truth.... for example studying the stars is biblical theology, systematic theology is studying theology, where we join up the dots and put them into systems that we understand and can predict God...Some of you have a Calvinist system, some of you have a Charismatic/Pentecostal system, Lord bless you all, I'm not knocking systems I'm just saying: systems are helpful provided that you do not get tyrannized by them." - Rob Whittaker Principal of Capernwray Hall Bible School, England.