Paul's Passing Thoughts

There may be a problem with John Immel over at Spiritual Tyranny .com. Perhaps Immelism should come with the following instructions:

WARNING:

The content herein requires thinking, and includes simple solutions for some problems that others assume are complex. This may cause extreme fear in many who have an existing condition known as mindless-saintaphobia. Remove all household items that could be used to inflict self-harm before reading this material.

This condition, in the same way that pyromania has an irrational fearlessness of fire, has an irrational fear of thinking for oneself, and may cause panic among those challenged to do so.

The church has a long way to go in regard to recovering and rediscovering the lost gospel of thinking. “Gospel” means “good news,” and many Christians are clueless in regard to the fact that the Holy Spirit sees critical thinking as “honorable,” and in fact, is an activity that we can partake in without suffering the wrath of God. What were we thinking? We weren’t. Mindless-saintaphobia was not a problem in that day, so they had John the Baptist. We have John the Provoker.

In case you are wondering what brought this post to bear, let me share, for that is only fair for those who care. I have been cooped up in our tech room for two weeks (as the last sentence clearly indicates) producing the DVD set for the First Annual Conference on Gospel Discernment and Spiritual Tyranny. After necessarily listening to John’s first message roughly fifty times, two words he used as a primary theme for much of his first session hit me right between the eyes. The ten points under that theme aside, those two simple words beg an argument that ends the discussion concerning the validity of discernment/abuse blogs. After wading through the gargantuan internet wordage for pro and con, pray tell, what are those two words?

“Private virtue.”

Though John outlines ten elements of “private virtue” in his first session, the very two words immediately beg the question: can virtue be private?

The apostle Paul didn’t recommend it. He said to let our good works be “evident to all.” Try the private virtue thing with your wife sometime: “Oh baby, I love you sooooooo much, but I am just not good at showing it.” Next interpretive question: how comfortable is your living room couch.

I get letters all of the time that state something like the following: “We are trying to figure out what is going on in our church”; “We can’t figure it out, we are confused, why won’t the elders just explain it to us so we can decide for ourselves?” “Everyone is just walking around confused ‘like zombies’ [actual quote]. We just want to know what’s going on.”

If I know what’s going on, and I don’t tell them, is that virtuous? It’s a rhetorical question.

In Immel’s conclusion to his first session, he referred to “men of private virtue.” John the Provoker is much nicer than John the Baptist. John the Baptist called them cowards.

paul