"Counterfeit Spiritualities"

Idolatry is all manner of seeming holiness and worshipping, let these counterfeit spiritualities shine outwardly as glorious and fair as they may; in a word, all manner of devotion in those that we would serve God without Christ the Mediator, his Word and command.

In popedom it was held a work of the greatest sanctity for the monks to sit in their cells and meditate of God, [solitude] and of his wonderful works; to be kindled with zeal, kneeling on their knees, praying, and having their imaginary contemplations of celestial objects [meditation], with such supposed devotion, that they wept for joy.

In these their conceits, they banished all desires and thoughts of women, and what else is temporal and evanescent. They seemed to meditate only of God, and of his wonderful works.

Yet all these seeming holy actions of devotion, which the wit and wisdom of man holds to be angelical sanctity, are nothing else but works of the flesh. All manner of religion, where people serve God without his Word and command, is simply idolatry, and the more holy and spiritual such a religion seems, the more hurtful and venomous it is; for it leads people away from the faith of Christ, and makes them rely and depend upon their own strength, works, and righteousness.

Martin Luther from his Table Talk

The Pitfalls of "Pietistic Goofiness"

Keswick spirituality is very much like what came to be known earlier in the 20th century as "higher life." If you grew up in a broadly evangelical church in the 70's or 80's then chances are you were at least influenced by this approach to spiritual growth and holiness. I certainly was.

I heard a great many sermons on how to live "the victorious Christian life." It held out an ideal that, if the proper spiritual techniques were employed, one could live beyond sin and temptation. It leads to a form of perfectionism that, in the end, is always beyond the reach of those looking for a higher plane of existence. I remember living from Fall revival to Spring revival just hoping that this time I would finally "get it."

Andy Naselli's newest book explores the history and theology of Keswick spirituality. He has written a helpful guest post for Kevin DeYoung.

It is not much of a recommendation when all you can say is that this teaching may help you if you do not take its details too seriously. It is utterly damning to have to say, as in this case I think we must, that if you do take its details seriously, it will tend not to help you but to destroy you. [p. 159]

That’s what J. I. Packer wrote about Keswick theology, a teaching that has destroyed many people and continues to destroy more today.

It frustrated the tender-hearted J. I. Packer as a young, recent convert in his pursuit to be holy:

It didn’t work and that was a deeply frustrating and depressing thing. It made me feel like a pariah, an outsider, and at the age of eighteen that was pretty burdensome. In fact, it was driving me crazy. [p. 169]

The reality of its [i.e., Keswick theology’s] passivity program and its announced expectations, plus its insistence that any failure to find complete victory is entirely your fault, makes it very destructive. [p. 157]

Packer felt like a “poor drug addict” desperately, unsuccessfully, and painfully trying “to walk through a brick wall.” The explanation for his struggle, according to Keswick theology, was his “unwillingness to pay the entry fee,” that is, not fully consecrating himself. “So all he could do was repeatedly reconsecrate himself, scraping the inside of his psyche till it was bruised and sore in order to track down still unyielded things by which the blessing was perhaps being blocked.” His confusion, frustration, and pain grew as he kept “missing the bus.” The pursuit was as futile as chasing a “will-o’-the-wisp.” He felt like “a burned child” who “dreads the fire, and hatred of the cruel and tormenting unrealities of overheated holiness teaching remains in his heart to this day” (pp. 157–58).

Packer concludes that Keswick’s message is depressing because it fails to eradicate any of the believer’s sin and that it’s delusive because it offers a greater measure of deliverance from sin than Scripture anywhere promises or the apostles themselves ever attained. This cannot but lead either to self-deception, in the case of those who profess to have entered into this blessing, or to disillusionment and despair, in the case of those who seek it but fail to find it. [“Keswick and the Reformed Doctrine of Sanctification,” p. 166.]

The Puritans, says Packer, correct what he calls Keswick theology’s “pietistic goofiness” (p. 33).

No substitute for the Gospel

Spiritual experiences and the disciplines are no substitute for that which is the matter of first importance: the Gospel.

From D.A. Carson:

A litany of devices designed to make us more spiritual or mature or productive or emotionally whole threatens to relegate the gospel to irrelevance, or at least to the realm of the boring and the primitive. The gospel may introduce you to the church, as it were, but from that point on assorted counseling techniques and therapy sessions will change your life and make you happy and fruitful. The gospel may help you make some sort of decision for God, but ‘rebirthing’ techniques—in which in silent meditation you imagine Jesus catching you as you are born from your mother’s womb, imagine him hugging you and holding you—will generate a wonderful cathartic experience that will make you feel whole again, especially if you have been abused in the past. The gospel may enable you to be right with God, but if you really want to pursue spirituality you must find a spiritual director, or practice asceticism, or discipline yourself with journaling, or spend two weeks in silence in a Trappist monastery.

These are not all of a piece. What they have in common, however, is the diminishing of the gospel in order to magnify the current device that is guaranteed to bring you toward wholeness. By contrast, the New Testament passionately insists that everything we need for life and godliness and a walk in the Spirit is secured for us in the gospel. It follows that if someone chooses to adopt some ascetic practice in order the better to focus on the Jesus of the Bible, the attention is still on Jesus.

But if someone so ties asceticism to altered moods or to experiences of ‘spirituality’ that the gospel itself is virtually ignored or is implicitly dismissed as a sort of initial stage now to be improved by ascetic practice, the name of the game is idolatry.

Again, if someone has experienced cathartic relief and emotional integration after an imaginative ‘rebirthing’ session, I am glad that the emotional integration has taken place. But we must insist that a better emotional integration could have been achieved by meditating on, say, the passion narratives, or on Ephesians 3:14–21. For then the emotional catharsis would have been tied to what God himself insists is the clearest and most complete demonstration of his love for us in Christ Jesus. In other words, the emotional integration would have been tied to the gospel instead of to something as ephemeral and diverting as manipulated imagination.

This is a time for Christians to return to the basics, the comprehensive basics, and quietly affirm with Paul, ‘I am not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith”’ (Romans 1:16–17).

HT: P.J. Cockrell

"We really worshiped today!"

In this helpful edition of the Heidelcast Dr. Scott Clark addresses the problem with measuring our worship and spirituality by euphoric experience.

Carl Trueman on Puritan Spirituality

I have a deep appreciation for the Puritans. They have been misunderstood and maligned. In recent decades however the Puritans have experienced a resurgence. They were not nearly the killjoys that they have often been portrayed to be. Certainly they were people of their time and cared deeply about holiness. They were also a sober minded lot. After all, living in 17th century Europe tended to acquaint one at a young age with the reliaties of life and death. Nevertheless, the Puritans left behind a spiritual legacy that is both biblical and passionate.

Check out these three messages by Carl Trueman on the spirituality of the Puritans.

"I can see you are very religious"

Russ Douthat has written an excellent piece for the New York Tmes entitled "Dan Brown's America."

In the Brownian worldview, all religions — even Roman Catholicism — have the potential to be wonderful, so long as we can get over the idea that any one of them might be particularly true. It’s a message perfectly tailored for 21st-century America, where the most important religious trend is neither swelling unbelief nor rising fundamentalism, but the emergence of a generalized “religiousness” detached from the claims of any specific faith tradition.

The polls that show more Americans abandoning organized religion don’t suggest a dramatic uptick in atheism: They reveal the growth of do-it-yourself spirituality, with traditional religion’s dogmas and moral requirements shorn away. The same trend is at work within organized faiths as well, where both liberal and conservative believers often encounter a God who’s too busy validating their particular version of the American Dream to raise a peep about, say, how much money they’re making or how many times they’ve been married.

These are Dan Brown’s kind of readers. Piggybacking on the fascination with lost gospels and alternative Christianities, he serves up a Jesus who’s a thoroughly modern sort of messiah — sexy, worldly, and Goddess-worshiping, with a wife and kids, a house in the Galilean suburbs, and no delusions about his own divinity.

Read the entire article HERE.

Focus on Christ, not Spirituality

"From the New Testament's point of view, those who have almost forgotten about their own spirituality because their focus is so exclusively on their union with Jesus Christ and what He has accomplished are those who are growing and exhibiting fruitfulness. Historically speaking, whenever the piety of a particular group is focused on OUR spirituality that piety will eventually exhaust itself on its own resources. Only where our piety forgets about itself and focuses on Jesus Christ will our piety be nourished by the ongoing resources the Spirit brings to us from the source of all true piety, our Lord Jesus Christ."

- Sinclair Ferguson