Tag Archives: Spirituality

If We Confess Our Sins

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View of Thunderheads from my back yard

Pastor Farley took a very slow and deliberate approach to laying out his case that the Bible really doesn’t “tell Church Age Believers who are indwelt by the Holy Spirit that confessing their sins results in the filling of the Holy Spirit.”

I am not going to go as in-depth as he did, but should you wish to investigate his development of this subject, you can start here. (Often just the notes that accompany the video message give a lot of insight, though of course his actual verbal presentation will provide a great deal more)

In considering where to start, I have to admit that I John is perhaps not the best section to use, since it’s quirky and its meaning is not inherently obvious. It is, however, where the verse is that everyone bases this “confess your sins” doctrine on, and since I think there are at least a few things that can be gleaned from a surface examination I’m going to go ahead and begin there.

Right off, there’s the simple fact that no obvious connection is made between confession of sins and the filling of the Spirit in this book.

That is, 1 John 1:9 only says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

It doesn’t say, “…and then we will be filled with the Spirit.” In fact, it doesn’t say anything about “the filling of the Spirit” anywhere in the book.

Questions arise, then, as to

1. What exactly is meant by “confess our sins”?

2. Who is John addressing when he uses this phrase?

3. Why does he change pronouns from a generic and inclusive “we” in chapter 1 to the more specific “my little children” and “I” in Chapter 2?

4. Who was the letter generally addressed to, and for what purpose?

I’ll start with question #4, since that’s the easiest: The letter was addressed to the church at Ephesus, where the Apostle John had served as pastor for a time, and which was dealing with an influx of false teachers who were claiming to be Christians but were not. John states his purpose in chapter 5 vs 13:

“These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, in order that you may know that you have eternal life.”

That is, he’s writing so the Christians can know that they are indeed saved and be able to distinguish those who are only pretending to be Christian in their attempt to peddle their false teaching.

This sheds some light on why John shifted from the generic “we” he opened his letter with to directly addressing the believers in his congregation with “My little children” in Chapter 2. He used the generic “we”  to address everyone in the congregation, not all of whom were “my little children.”

Instead of pointing these unbelievers out specifically in Chapter 1, John uses the generic/inclusive/authorial “we” for that portion, leaving it to the individual hearer to determine which category he or she belongs in. So in answer to question #2 (who is John addressing when he uses the word “confess”?)  it’s both believers and unbelievers.

In addition, 1 John 1:9 is part of a series of  If/then propositions, leaving it to the hearers to determine which camp they are in: saved or unsaved.

Thus we can consider the verses immediately preceding vs 9 in chapter 1 with an eye to whether they are referring to believers or unbelievers:

Vs 7 “If we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.” (clearly believers, since being in the light in John’s writings always refers to salvation — more on this later)

vs 8 if we say we have no sin, (ie, if we say we aren’t sinners/don’t sin) we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us (not believers)

vs 9 if we confess our sins (admit that we’re sinners and believe in the Savior) He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness (another way of saying cleanses us from all sin — ie, believers)

Thus the issue in 1 John 1:9 is salvation itself, not what do we do about post-salvation sinning.

And that brings me finally to Question #1 — What exactly is meant by “confess” in vs 9? Many of us have been taught that the Greek word here is homologeo, which means “to speak the same thing, to name, to cite…” from which the rebound notion of privately naming or citing your sins to God arose

But I’ve learned it has some other meanings as well, which I’ll address in my next post…

Prelude: Tilling the Soil

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As I’ve mentioned previously, last spring our church and a number of others have gone through an upheaval of sorts in re-examining and ultimately discarding a “doctrine” that had been a mainstay of doctrinal (and many other) ministries for years. That doctrine, of course, is the doctrine of Rebound, or the confession of sins as supposedly commanded in 1 Jn 1:9, as well as in a number of Old Testament passages.

Rebound, we were taught, was key to living the spiritual life, for it was the only way to regain the filling of the Holy Spirit once the latter had been lost as a result of personal sinning. If you were not filled with the Spirit, you would not be able to understand Bible teaching, and nothing you did would be done in the power of the Spirit but rather in the power of the flesh. Thus all such  fleshly and “Spiritless” deeds would be considered wood, hay and straw at the Judgment Seat of Christ. Even worse, none of your prayers would go “any higher than the ceiling,” since God would neither hear them nor answer them.

For those of my seven regular readers who are not familiar with this doctrine, you can see that it was crucial to everything we did. Challenging it was not something one would take on lightly.

For our congregation this wild and bumpy ride began back in March with Pastor Farley’s unexpected announcement at the beginning of a Sunday morning message: “I have a confession to make.”

That confession was that he “could not find in the Bible where it tells Church Age believers, who are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, that confessing our sins results in the filling of the Holy Spirit.”

Nor could he “see how the Bible makes our confessing our sins in 1 John 1:9 the determining factor in our being filled with the Spirit  in Eph 5:18.”

If he couldn’t find it, how could he teach it?

As far as I was concerned, as soon as he began to suggest  that rebound might not be what we’d always been taught, something resonated in me. In a “Yes!  That makes total sense!” way. As he taught in more depth in ensuing lessons, the resonance solidified. I kept recalling a phrase from former teaching, that had been added to justify the concept:

“‘If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness…’  and the cleansed vessel is then filled with the Holy Spirit.”

Except that last bit about the cleansed vessel isn’t part of 1 Jn1:9 or 10; it is just an … extrapolation? Unwarranted connection?   I don’t know. I just remember thinking for years that it was shaky and that I’d have a hard time justifying this interpretation to someone who didn’t agree.

In addition, over the last few years I’d been experiencing moments of dismay when I would realize, after a day spent alone working on the book, that I’d forgotten to rebound before I started and would any of the day be worth anything now?

At the same time, I was finding more and more that when I’d set about the formal “rebound” prayer, asking the Holy Spirit to bring to mind any sins for me to confess, nothing would happen. I wondered if there was something wrong with me; if I was doing it wrong.  Why weren’t all these sins coming to mind? Surely I’d committed some sin — if only mental attitude — in the previous eight hours! When I could think of nothing, I would just confess “arrogance” since that’s a pretty good catch-all when it comes to sinning…

The truth is, my besetting mental attitude sins are usually so intrusive that I have to deal with them before I can ever get to work on the book — not through an official rebound prayer, but in writing out my tumultuous thoughts in a journal or nonstop. Then, as I see what I’m thinking on the page, I realize how wrong and stupid those thoughts are, how NOT the mind of Christ they are, and am then reminded of exactly what the mind of Christ would be in this situation. Once I’ve done that I’m pretty much at peace and ready to work.   Which isn’t exactly “rebound” as I’ve known it.

Now, with this new teaching, I’ve come to understand that it is more in line with what the Bible actually teaches in the New Testament (eg, Ephesians 4 where we’re told to lay aside the old man and put on the new — exactly what I was doing in the exercise described above.)

I lay all this down as as a part of the journey I’ve been on with regard to this subject and how God had already begun to till the soil of my soul in preparation for the change. Of course, feelings and experiences can not be the standard by which we ultimately evaluate the truth of a doctrine or not. The standard has to be “What does the word of God say?” Is it true that the Bible really doesn’t support the doctrine of Rebound?”

I believe it is, and I shall try to explain why I’ve come to this conclusion in subsequent posts.

For those of you familiar with this doctrine and even those who are not, please feel free to question, object, read me the riot act, support/affirm (!), and/or bring up relevant scriptures that perhaps I’m ignoring. I might not be able to answer, rebut or explain my position to your satisfaction right now, but I would welcome the opportunity to see if my conclusions can stand up to the challenge — at least in my own mind, if not in others’.

Is Creativity “Spiritual”?

Last week when I read the Introduction in The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, (the 12-week course on “discovering and recovering your creative self”  I blogged about last time) I quickly came upon one of the issues that has long befuddled me in reading these sorts of books.  Quoting Ms. Cameron:

“For a decade now, I have taught a spiritual workshop aimed at freeing people’s creativity. I have taught artists and non artists, painters and filmmakers and homemakers and lawyers — anyone interested in living more creatively through practicing an art; even more broadly, anyone interested in practicing the art of creative living. While using, teaching and sharing tools I have found, devised, divined and been handed, I have seen blocks dissolved and lives transformed by the simple process of engaging the Great Creator in discovering and recovering our creative powers.

‘The Creat Creator? That sounds like some Native American god. That sounds too Christian, too New Age, too…’ Stupid? Simple-minded? Threatening? … I know. Think of it as an exercise in open-mindedness…Allow yourself to experiment with the idea there might be a Great Creator and you might get some kind of use from it in freeing your own creativity.”

When I first read this some twelve years ago, it bothered me. Because while God can and does use people who are not saved to communicate His truth, He doesn’t do it the way she’s describing. People are born depraved. He can’t creatively empower someone who has never believed in His Son, because they aren’t spiritually alive. They are darkened in their understanding, living in bondage to sin… So while you might be able to apply Ms. Cameron’s thinking as expressed above to someone who is saved, who has a new nature which cannot sin, who has received God’s very own righteousness imputed to them at the point of belief in what His son did for them on the cross and because of that work, the ability thru confession of sin to be filled and empowered by His Spirit, you just can’t with people who have not been regenerated.

Her whole premise is a lie, unworkable, deceptive… even evil. Years ago,   I tried to set that aside and read on, but this particular concept kept tripping me up. And as I mentioned in my previous post, eventually I quit reading the book and abandoned the “course.”

I come back to it now with the realization that Satan knows doctrine. He’ll use it, distorted, of course, with people who are unregenerate. He’ll move them to make applications of true doctrines in situations where they don’t apply. I learned this from my study of Job, where Job’s three friends were bringing up correct doctrines about the law of volitional responsibility and divine discipline for believers who had gone astray from the Plan, they just didn’t apply to Job.

So, armed with this new knowledge — ie, that some of the things said in The Artist’s Way might actually be truth, just applied to the wrong situation or person — I am finding myself able to read it as I had not been able to before. And almost the first thing that hit me in reading this introduction was the realization that creativity is not a spiritual function per se, but a soulish one.  As I said above, the ability to be creative is part of the soul of all men, part of being created in image of God.

And it’s this creative part that she’s trying to describe and discuss. Which is admittedly difficult because it’s invisible. Nor is it a faculty we can control. The left brain, which is said to be verbal, linear and logical is the area where we do our conscious thinking. The right brain is not verbal, but more spatial, intuitive, spontaneous and holistic. It’s the part that combines disparate elements into something new. With left brain thinking we work through a problem step by step. With the right brain, the ideas come out of the blue. You have no idea how they were formulated, they just appear.

Because of this, people have over the ages attributed them to various elements outside themselves, from the Greek muses to God Himself, via the Holy Spirit. Many writers of the books on creativity and making art that I’ve read are part of Western culture and not surprisingly interpret the situation in accordance with the Christian traditions of our culture, that is, they attribute their creative flow or urge to God in them. People who don’t believe in Jesus Christ and are embracing all manner of other occultic, fallacious things — yoga, trances, shamanism, meditation, out-of-body experiences, conversations with their spirit guides — nevertheless claim that God is moving them to create. Because God is a creator they are creators. Creativity is really the norm in life, and most people have just shut it down. Creativity is our link to God Himself. (and never mind about Jesus Christ).

I might be tempted to say, well, they’re unbelievers, so of course they’re wrong about that. It’s not God that’s moving them, simply the creative function itself. And how else are they going to talk about it?

As I said earlier, it’s not something we can see or feel while it’s working, nor is it something we can control at will. Yes, some people claim they can, and maybe they can to a degree, but I tend to doubt that. If one is just going to write the same story again with different minor components or paint the same picture again with different colors, I don’t call that true creativity. That’s more like cabinet making. Once you’ve made a model it’s easy to churn out others or variations on the theme. But to do something different, to start out not knowing where you’re going, how the story will turn out, to write with the notion that it has to be something that keenly interests you, to reach down inside yourself and pull out the things that really matter to you, that are true or painful or significant… that’s different. I know I can’t do that. It just happens. Things emerge and I run with them. Many times it’s only after I’ve completed a draft that I have any clear idea what a story is really to be about.

I was reflecting today about playing tennis and how when you start out you have to be willing to play really, really badly. I hated it at the beginning because all I ever seemed to do was chase balls that I’d hit over the fence or down the long stretch of courts that had no barriers between them. I used to practice hitting balls against the backboard, and at first many of them went over the backboard, thunked off my racket, were missed altogether, hurt my arm I hit them so badly, etc.

You can’t really control your movement. Not in the fine tuning. You don’t stand there and consciously direct each nerve to fire, each muscle to move at such and such speed at such and such time. You can’t. It’s hard enough to remember not to bend your wrist and to turn yourself sideways to the ball and to follow through after you’ve hit it. And when you get into an actual game, most of that flies out the window because you just can’t keep it all in your head. You don’t improve at tennis by concentrating harder. You don’t improve because you will to improve.

The only way to improve is to practice — hitting at the backboard and on the court with a partner, and playing actual games. Usually it’s playing against people better than you that helps the most, which means you’re going to lose.   Probably a lot.

And all that is for something physical — actual movements that we can “control” in at least a broad sense. I haven’t read any books about playing  tennis as a spiritual discipline (though I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re out there; I know there’s one about golf), though I have read about “getting in the zone”. That’s where you become one with the game and your play suddenly elevates to another level. I’ve experienced it the zone, myself. My point here, though, is that we can talk about playing tennis in a way that doesn’t bring God into the picture, so why can’t we do that with creativity?

Granted, this business of the idea suddenly blooming in your head, full-petal in the midst of taking a shower, does make it seem like something not of yourself. When you sit down blank-headed and start writing and suddenly it’s like you’re recording something you’re observing or even participating in, when you see it all in one fell swoop, when it starts flowing without any effort on your part, and suddenly this new character appears, or your old ones refuse to do what you’d planned for them and start doing something completely unexpected — that all seems pretty magical and even “godlike.” I’m connected to “spiritual electricity,” is how Julia Cameron describes it.

But that’s not what “spiritual” actually means, at least so far as the word is used in the Bible. There “spiritual” is used in contrast to “fleshly”. In 1 Co 2:14 the naturally minded man — the psuchikos or soulish man — is contrasted with the pneumatikos or spiritually minded man — the latter filled with the Holy Spirit, his thinking having been transformed to align with the mind of Christ through the study of His word. 

True spirituality can certainly produce “brilliant” ideas, but I believe it does so within the context of the way man has been made. Everyone, spiritual and soulish, Christian and non-Christian, gets brilliant ideas out of the blue — marketing folk, engineers, cooks, artists. It’s not some special connection to God regardless of one’s status with respect to Jesus Christ and His commands for the spiritual life. It’s an aspect of how we’ve been made, one that is mysterious because it cannot be clearly explained, traced out, or controlled. But an aspect all of us have.

In researching the ancient Romans, I learned that they had gods for everything. A god for every river, every stream, even a god of the cupboards. You had to appease all of these gods or bad things would happen to you. We think that’s silly today. People don’t worship a god of the cupboard or appease the god of the stream anymore, because we’re so much more sophisticated. People don’t drown because the irate stream god pulled them in and drowned them. We understand that accidents happen. There are the risks associated with streams and rivers. So we build fences, put up warning signs, redesign bridges or boats, heed weather forecasts,  wear life jackets, and follow safety rules, thinking in some way we control our destiny. We understand the situation now.

But this faculty of creativity, this sudden filling of one’s mind with an entire symphony, with a scene, with an image compelling us to paint it… where did that come from? We don’t know. We can’t see it, we can’t trace it, we can’t break it down into components of cause and effect… and so… oddly, we — or at least many in the fields of creativity — ascribe it to a god, or a spirit, or some universal power, or spiritual electricity — even to the God of the Bible, if that happens to be their thing. 

I suppose that believing you are connected to the God of the Universe through your art will give you a confidence you’d not have otherwise, so perhaps that’s the draw. Confidence and relaxation are important elements in the free functioning of the creative faculty, so believing in a higher power would no doubt produce the desired results, even if the object of that faith was bogus.

What’s important to me here, though, is my understanding that the creative element of man’s soul works in a mysterious way, in a way that we can’t see, logic or control, and it works that way in all of us, believer and unbeliever. It is a gift we cannot control or summon at will. And while the simple fact of its arrival may feel strange, mysterious and outside ourselves, that doesn’t make it a spiritual function. Even with Christians, creativity in and of itself isn’t a spiritual function, any more than speaking is. Spirituality depends on the filling of the Holy Spirit. And the content of what is created or spoken, though it may feel as if it did not come from us, I believe is drawn from whatever amount of God’s word you’ve learned and metabolized.

Not to say the Holy Spirit can’t or doesn’t direct creative function. He certainly can and does. I couldn’t write if I didn’t believe that. But it’s just like with the Pastor. The Holy Spirit speaks through his message, but if the man never studies the word, the Spirit’s not going to have much to work with.

I could go on in this vein, but I’ll desist. The point of this post was to sort through my thoughts on this association with creativity and spirituality and I think I’ve done what I wanted to do there.  It’s been like having a lightbulb go on in my head to realize that it’s part of how we were all made, and I find the fact that God made half our brains to think in ways we can’t direct or understand to be amusing. And significant.