Discerning the Spirits

In our minds and in our hearts, all of us experience movements. Most of our emotions result in some way from these movements, bubbling over into our attitudes, and into what we believe about ourselves and our relation to the world. Purely based on the drama playing out in our head, we could either walk out of the house ready to conquer the day, or we might scramble for an excuse to stay home and hide. The battle begins in our minds. As people of faith, we believe there are always competing forces at work within us; some for our betterment and others for our detriment. Of all the thoughts bouncing around in our heads, how do we know which ones to accept and trust? 

"Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God." - I John 4:1

I have drawn wisdom from Ignatius of Loyola on this subject, who spoke of the competing movements of our hearts as two different spirits at work within us. He describes the spirit of Consolation--the Spirit of God, and the spirit of Desolation, the influence of our accuser. To discern which of these your inner thoughts is coming from, you would consider the direction a given thought was moving your heart.

If we are influenced by the Spirit of Christ, our hearts should move closer to God. The more our life is in tune with the Spirit, the more we can expect the fruit of the Spirit to become characteristic of us, the first of which is love (Galatians 5:22). Our heart should become more like God's heart. Influence that comes from God will move us to think more about the good of others, and less about getting our own way. Likewise, because the Spirit of God is the Spirit of Truth, we can be confident that when a thought invites us to greater honesty and sincerity, this is from God (John 14:17). Along with these, the Spirit of God invites us to be at peace (John 14:27). This is a peace that gives us a sense of solidarity in our salvation, confident that God is working all things together--ultimately--for our good. The Spirit of Christ draws our hearts away from our smallness and doubts, and moves them towards the unfathomable, incomprehensible love of God which embraces us and holds us securely, producing confidence within us (Romans 8:38-39).  

Our Accuser--the spirit of Desolation, as Ignatius calls him--tries to move our hearts in the opposite direction. When you feel yourself sinking into fear and powerlessness, this is not something that comes from God (2 Timothy 1:7). When you believe you are the worst sinner, and that everyone's sins can be forgiven except for yours, this is a thought from your adversary. When you feel a need to wear layers and layers of masks because you don't believe your authentic self is lovable, this is a lie, told to you by the Father of Lies (John 8:44). In every way, the spirit which does not come from God will move your heart toward yourself, to the unbearable weight of your problems, your unworthiness to receive the help that God provides, and great doubt about whether you have any hope at all. 

Even more deceptively, the spirit of Desolation might get you to settle for a temporary good feeling, mistaking a temporary emotional move for the ongoing peace that would come from knowing God. The critical difference has to do with the direction of your heart. Even if this is making me feel a little better, am I preoccupied with feeling good, chasing an escape from anxiety, thinking mostly about myself, or does my good feeling come from understanding the promises of God, accepting them as my own, and thinking more about God, and what God cares about? Will I soon be chasing another way to feel better, or is this a deeper kind of satisfaction? 

I continue to find great significance in what Paul prays for the Christians in Ephesus, that they would come to a deeper knowledge of the love of God, which leads to a significant strengthening of their inner person, and I believe, a greater ability to know the voice of the Good Shepherd when we hear it, as opposed to the voice of an imposter.

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. - Ephesians 3:14-19

Two Kinds of Pharisees

Jesus regularly dealt with Pharisees of two different schools of thought: Shammai and Hillel. These two opposing schools would argue about all sorts of matters, which is apparent from the kinds of questions they brought to Jesus. The school of Shammai was rigidly legalistic. They would bicker incessantly about the meanings of words, and would apply things so comprehensively that they would even tithe from their food condiments (Mt. 23:23). They read scripture as a rule book, and all righteousness hinged around being better rule-keepers than everyone else. The school of Hillel was generally loose in their approach to Scripture. They would allow a man to divorce his wife over something as small as burnt toast, and allowed a high degree of subjectivity in applying the law of Moses. One of the only things Hillelites were rigid about was that they wanted no association with the Shammaites.

Which side did Jesus pick? Neither. Jesus felt that whether someone was a conservative Pharisee or a liberal Pharisee, all Pharisees were fundamentally missing the point. Knowing God is not primarily about rule keeping or rule abolishing. Knowing God is primarily about trying to love what God loves. Loving God means caring about personal holiness, and keeping God's commandments (John 15:10). Loving God means desiring as much mercy and grace for others as we desire for ourselves (Colossians 3:13). Jesus said that none of the law is unimportant, but the weightier matters--the parts that concern God most--are justice, mercy, and faithfulness (Mt. 23:23). If our righteousness does not hinge around our passion for these three things, it might not be righteousness at all.

Hitler, Dante, and the Insufficiency of Tolerance

Lately I've been a bit consumed with eschatology (the study of last things). This has been in part because I've been teaching Revelation to the teens class on Wednesday nights for the last quarter, and have had to seriously examine a lot of passages that describe the return of Christ. A relevant issue to all of this is the issue of Hell. 

Hell's pretty unpopular these days. Nobody wants to believe anybody will go to Hell, except for a few choice people like Hitler or Hussein. Those guys could sizzle like bacon for a pretty good while before it would start to bother us.

So I've been thinking about Hitler, and in the spirit of Dante, I've been pondering what his punishment might be like. Dante's Inferno is a fascinating read, and a quite imaginative work. Dante holds strongly to the idea that punishments will somehow correspond to crimes. For example, in the second ring of Hell, Dante describes people being punished who are guilty of lust. Their punishment is to have strong unceasing winds that blow them violently about, taking away their ability to ever get rest or relief. This corresponds to their unwillingness in life to control the desires that they chased in a number of ungodly directions. 

I was wondering what sort of punishment would be fitting of a man like Hitler. He was hungry for notoriety and power. He dehumanized his enemies and treated them as trash. I thought about someone as infamous as Hitler, and wondered what sort of fitting spectacle would be his punishment. And then it occurred to me that perhaps nothing would be more fitting than to see him quietly enclosed in a lonely place and punished secretly, with no pomp or circumstance; to abandon him with no sign at all that suggested this man was in any way worth remembering or acknowledging. 

Up until around the end of chapter 20, I understand Revelation to be a book that is similar to the scene in the Wizard of Oz where the curtain is pulled back so that Dorothy can see what is going on that no one else can see. John is in exile, when suddenly the heavens open up, and he is invited to see what God and his allies are up to while Christians are dealing with oppressive and bestial world powers. We hear Angels shouting victory and singing new songs. We see martyrs and leaders reigning with Christ, and we smell the incense of their prayers. But one group is strikingly absent. 

The lost are kept outside of the New Jerusalem. They are sent to a "second death" in the Lake of Fire. But in all the discussion that goes on for pages and pages of the action and excitement that happens in the presence of God, the lost are completely absent. They aren't protesting, banding together, or knocking on the gates. They simply aren't part of the future that God is bringing into existence. If their souls continue to exist, it is only in that they are tolerated to exist, but no value is attached to them once they've been cast aside to be discarded.

All of this led me to think about the great clamor we all hear these days about the importance of tolerance. In every setting, people are pushing for the perceived virtue of tolerance. (Tolerance isn't always virtuous.) But when you listen to what people are really wanting, tolerance isn't it. Tolerance means I let something exist, despite finding it a total bother. Many of the people I hear shouting for "tolerance" are themselves quite tolerated. They are allowed to exist, so why keep asking for it? The deeper thing I believe people are begging for is to receive respect. Respect goes beyond tolerance. Respect dignifies and acknowledges where it can. 

I read an excellent book a few weeks ago called Leadership and Self-Deception. The book is all about one important principle in dealing with people: no matter what people do or how they have disappointed you, always continue to treat them as human beings. The place we so often fall short is that we allow people to become nuisances, obstacles, or burdens, and in doing so, we cease to acknowledge the value of their humanity. This is why we will chew out a co-worker, we will humiliate a clerk behind a counter, or we will have no patience or second chances for someone who has disappointed us in any way. We mentally categorize them as less than human so that we can treat them as such. They become something we tolerate instead of someone in whom we see value. This is a Hellish way to live.

I believe God will have painful judgments for many people who have lived far beneath what they were created to be. But he will wait until the end of their days to deliver his verdict. A challenge for me is not to be a merely tolerant person, but to be a loving person. It is ok to acknowledge when someone has annoyed or frustrated me, but I can express this in a way that simultaneously acknowledges that I believe they have intrinsic value, having been made in God's image. I can express disappointment for people or condemnation of their behavior in that they were created to do things much better than what they've chosen to do, and with God's help, I know this is possible for them.

I don't know what God will do with Hitler. I don't fully grasp how all things will unfold as the Kingdom of God continues to break through into the corrupted world we're living in. But I do know that for my part, it is my job to proclaim good news to the poor, liberty to the oppressed, freedom to those who are captive, and the year of the Lord's favor to all who are willing to accept the good news. To love people in the way that God loves them goes beyond tolerance, because in every person it sees their value and seeks their redemption. 

May you live today in a way that God would deem worth remembering,

Mark