Month: May 2018

Copyright  by Shea Oakley

All rights reserved

“The various elements of truth stand in perpetual antithesis sometimes requiring us to believe apparent opposites while we wait for the moment when we shall know as we are known. Then truth which now appears to be in conflict with itself will arise in shining unity and it will be seen that the conflict has not been in the truth but in our sin-damaged minds.”

-A.W. Tozer

I have long had a ready answer when some skeptic claimed that the Bible was full of contradictions. I would simply ask the person to name one for me. I do not think I have ever had anyone then quote chapter and verse to prove his or her point. 90% of the time these individuals are simply repeating what they had heard somewhere else about these alleged contradictions. In each case they were not biblically literate enough to give an example of one.

That said; the thoughtful student of Scripture cannot help but discern passages that at the very least seem to contradict one another. The classic examples are verses that seem to support “Five-Point Calvinist” type pre-destination vs. others that point towards God’s universal love and desire for the redemption of every human being that has ever walked the earth, but there are many more. Is God’s ultimate nature stern and punishing or is it compassionate and forgiving? Is salvation something you can forfeit or is it “once saved always saved?” How can God allow, and even use sin, when He is declared not to be the Author of sin by the Bible?

The truth does sometimes seem “to be in conflict with itself” and a sensitive Christian soul can become disturbingly perplexed when pondering something about his or her God that does not seem to add up rationally.

One way theologians have long addressed these conundrums is by employing the concept of paradox. Webster’s Dictionary defines paradox as “a statement or sentiment that is seemingly contradictory or opposed to common sense and yet perhaps true in fact.” When wrestling with troubling conflicts between Scripture verses that seem to cancel each other out; the explanation provided by this definition can help us to look beyond our conventional understanding of reality to find satisfaction in what is, admittedly, an appeal to mystery. Paradox is not easily explained by conventional human logic but it remains probably the best answer we have to what at first glance appears to be a contradiction that might shake our faith in the inerrancy of the Bible.

Actually it stands to reason that The One who created the universe would have to transcend that very reason. If human thought could explain every aspect of God’s nature He would not be God. Deity exists beyond the grasp of finite creatures, especially fallen finite creatures. In fact the impenetrability of God is part of what helps us to know that He truly is God, and not just a human construct designed to explain how we came to be.

For the sensitive and thinking Christian who longs to understand there remains the prospect of Heaven, a place in which we will come face to face with our Lord and truly know His truth in a way we never could when our residency here played such a role in our “seeing through a glass darkly.” There we might hope to see the unity of truth Tozer speaks of. There that which seemed so untenable to us will become ours to know at last.

And then everything will make perfect sense.

Copyright  by Shea Oakley

All rights reserved

Once we have tasted of Heaven continuing to live voluntarily in a hell of our own making is no longer an option for most of us. The sins that once captivated us are progressively exposed for what they are every time we are visited by the reality of God’s loving touch in our lives.

Before we crossed the threshold of salvation we thought the sins we committed actually gave us some kind of life. Then we realized that they were killing us and many of us came close enough to the final spiritual death they engendered to deeply understand, perhaps better than most, that drinking the poison of such transgressions had to stop.

Soon, however, most new Christians realize that some sins are more easily shed than others. Often the initial transformative power of conversion allows us to put down one or more of the sins that were present in our lives. Others are not given up so easily. This is most often true with habitual actions that resulted from lifestyle choices we made as non-believers. Habits are not easily broken. Some, if not all, Christians still struggle with saying no to certain wrongdoing  years after Christ entered their lives.

It is dangerous to presume to judge how long someone can fail to have full victory over habitual sin without that failure doing irreparable damage to their relationship with God. The process of sanctification is just that, a process, and the purification of a soul is measured over the span of years, not days or weeks. The key is attitude. There is a world of difference between one who continues to vigorously resist whatever the particular temptation is, confessing when he or she falls, and someone who most of the time gives in to that temptation and is decreasingly concerned about it.

For many of us taking the second path is not one we could easily consider. I often tell people I am witnessing to that the first ten seconds of the compassionate presence of God, which I experienced at my time of conversion from Atheism, surpassed every experience the world had offered me prior to that time. Since then I have been blessed by other moments of unspeakable joy in communion with Him. Even when such moments are widely dispersed in the midst of long periods of great trial they never fail to profoundly encourage me. I think of them as someone once described such visitations; they are “postcards from Heaven.”

All true Christians receive such moments of blessing at various times and to varying degrees. When we are caught up in these moments committing sin is the last thing on our minds and hearts. When our eyes are filled with the surpassing goodness and beauty of God nothing else matters. As the hymn writer tells us “the things of this world grow strangely dim”.

After such experiences end what does not end is the deep heart-awareness that nothing is better than this. The believer is haunted by the memory of times of intimacy with God. Sadly the old temptations often return as we descend into the valley after our time on the mountain-top, but the knowledge that the pleasure of sin does not come close to what we were lifted into during that blessed time I believe never completely leave us. It is hard to return to sin-induced hells of our own making afterwards. We have known something (or, more accurately, Someone) surpassingly greater than whatever pleasure the sin has given us in our life, and this stays with us.

We do well to call to our memory what it was like to dwell in the light of His countenance whenever the struggles of the Christian life tempt us to give up and give in. We also do well to look forward with the eyes of faith to the next time Our Lord will touch us with His love. These times, both remembered and looked forward to, are powerful motivators in our ongoing battle with temptation. They speak to us of the final victory over sin we will someday know in eternity.

Copyright by Shea Oakley

All rights reserved

There are some conservative Christians who have made a crusade out of attacking the rapidly growing Christian counseling movement. They particularly target ministries which they believe have succumbed to the wiles of “secular psychology”. For certain Christians who lean towards the fundamentalist end of the spectrum the integration of the Bible and psychology is anathema. They maintain that everything in psychological theory is somehow of the Devil. For them the only answer to any mental or emotional problem sometimes appears to be to read the right Scripture verses and then repent of all known sin.

Much has been written on both sides of this debate, although the anti-counseling faction has written far more to attack the concept of integration than Christian psychologists have written to defend it. This is too bad because much can be said in the defense of psychological truths that dovetail quite clearly with what the Bible teaches about human nature.

That said, this piece is not about making arguments in favor of mainstream Christian counseling from a theological perspective. Instead I would like to suggest a reason why many of those who hold the Bible up as the only source of counseling wisdom are so adamant about staying away from psychotherapy done through the lens of Scripture, but also with the aid of psychological knowledge that does not contradict that scripture.

They are scared to death of it.

What they are so afraid of is what they might find out about themselves if they were to submit to such therapy.

You see, counseling is hard work, more than that it is sometimes scary work. For one thing, contrary to the usual assumptions of the anti-counseling crowd, it is not about finding out who damaged you in your past and then conveniently blaming them for every problem you have today. Nor is Christian counseling about dodging responsibility for your own sinful response to what they may have done to you. In fact honestly dealing with your own sin is one of the primary goals of any Christian counseling methodology worth its own salt.

Beyond that good Christian psychology (and, no, that isn’t an oxymoron) requires the facing of the deep pain that abuse truly does inflict on the mind, heart and soul of the one who has received that abuse. It is about getting past defenses like false-piety and self-condemnation to the point where a client can enter into the grief that accompanies realizing the sometimes permanent losses he or she suffered from people who took away, often during the helplessness of childhood, something precious to them. This grief process is ordained by God, the same God who told us to mourn with those who mourn, not tell them to read a verse and get over it. Grief must precede healing and often that grief can only be drawn out by a spirit-directed psychologist who knows, from divinely-given knowledge of human psychology, how to circumvent the walls we put up because we do not want to experience the sometimes great pain that accompanies facing what has happened to us.

Once we experience that pain we can come to the place where both forgiveness of those who hurt us and repentance from our own sins is finally possible. That is the holy goal of a sincere Christian psychologist. In fact this goal has a very scriptural name: it’s called sanctification.

The whole process is very hard. It is not fun, it is not frivolous, it is the hardest work many of us will ever do and there are some people who are so afraid of facing that prospect, whether consciously or unconsciously, that they create theological justifications to avoid it, and that is what the anti-counseling movement is really about, avoidance.

I have worked in a psych hospital with the sexually abused. The victims of these crimes were the most sick and wounded people in the building. They did not need to be told to read the bible, repent of the sin of depression, and then be sent out into the world without human support or the benefit of what God has granted us to help them through His common grace. They needed counseling, they most likely also needed medication, and they needed people who would walk beside them in the journey of healing. All these things Christian psychologists and psychiatrists are willing to do for them and the fact that they are vilified for it by people who attack them as heretics, out of their own fear and self-righteousness, is a great sin in and of itself. Such people are someday going to have to give an account of their actions to the God who gave us both the Bible and the insights of psychology so that we might bless the walking wounded among us and help restore these children of God to experience the life He always intended for them.