Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Making Decisions through Wisdom, Part 1

In my last post I introduced this topic with a recent decision that Sara and I had to make. Today I want to begin by laying out why I think the popular 'personal guidance' decision-making model is not based in Scripture. This post is a little long, but bear with me. This idea of making decisions by listening for the voice of the Spirit is so ingrained in our Christian culture that there is a lot to respond to.

The Personal Guidance Model

The unspoken assumption behind the 'personal guidance model' of decision making is that God has an individual blueprint for your life and that we must discover what he has planned for us for each of our decisions. Discovering that plan for my life is what we call "finding the will of God."

Notice the catchphrases and expressions that we use:
  • "I felt led by the Spirit to do this..."
  • "God confirmed this by giving me a peace about it."
  • "God gave me an open door..."
  • "I heard that still, small voice leading me..."
Have you ever searched the Scriptures for these phrases that have crept into the modern evangelical Christian's vocabulary? They roll off our tongue regularly with hardly a thought. Let's take a moment and look at one of them.

The "still, small voice" is commonly heard by those reporting to have heard from God. This phrase occurs in the King James version of 1 Kings 19 (the NIV chooses the phrase "gentle whisper"). Elijah is on the run from Jezebel after his triumphant Mount Carmel experience. The emotional pendulum has now swung, and Elijah is depressed, thinking himself alone as a prophet, and is a little fearful. God has looked after him, though: feeding him, giving him access to water, letting him rest. Elijah gets up and travels for 40 days and nights until he finds lodging in a cave on the side of Horeb.

While in the cave, he shares with the Lord what is on his heart, and God invites him outside to witness the presence of the Lord passing by. Not in the wind. Nor the earthquake or fire, but in a still, small voice.

I want you to notice a couple things abour this account. First, this was not an inward nudge as this phrase often is interpreted today. What does the text say? The voice was an actual sound - Elijah heard it with his ears. "When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face" (1 King 19:13, NIV) and went outside. Elijah proceeded to have an actual conversation with the voice of God.

Second, this phrase does not occur in the context of decision-making. Elijah isn't using the still, small voice to help him figure out what he should do. It is simply the manner in which the Lord chose to reveal his presence to Elijah and speak to him.

The rest of the phrases and terms mentioned above, when seen in their context, do not have anything to do with decision-making. I will save discussion of them for another day, but you may, as good Bereans, search out whether what I'm saying is true or not.

For instance, check for the phrase "led by the Spirit." This phrase only occurs three times in Scripture: Romans 8:12-14, Gal 5:16-21, and Matt 4:1. What does the text actually say about that phrase? If you want to study the idea of inner peace as a confirmation of God's will, then Colossians 3:15 is where most people go. What does the context of that verse say? Care to look up open doors? Go to 1 Cor 16:8-9, 2 Cor 2:12-13, and then Acts 16:26-28. Does Paul always go through an open door provided by God? Did Paul see an open door as indicating God's will for him and something that he must obey?

You will find that in all cases, a legitimate phrase from Scripture has been ripped from its original context and given a completely new meaning. But this is never appropriate when studying Scripture! Our new meanings to these phrases are not inspired, only God's original meaning in context is. Scripture is God's Word, not ours, and spiritual danger abounds when we walk around giving new meanings to old texts. Ours is to mine that original meaning as a '49'er looking for that first lucky strike.

Interpreting Scripture or Interpreting Our Experiences?

If listening for the voice of the Lord is so crucial for us to make decisions, where Scripture teach how I may listen for it? Where am I taught how to hear it? How shall I distinguish the Spirit's urgings from my inner emotions? I must confess that I used to really struggle with trying to figure out what God was saying to me because I certainly never heard anything audible from him like Elijah or Moses. Scripture seems to be mighty silent on an issue of utmost importance, if indeed this is the model we are to follow as Christians.

I know that many of you might have had experiences where you felt like the still, small voice gave you guidance on a particular issue. I urge you to consider that we are to interpret Scripture, not experiences. God's Word is our authority for our life and conduct, not anecdotes or experiences. We should interpret our experiences in light of Scripture, not the other way around.

God's Sovereign and Moral Wills

Now, some of you may be thinking that surely God has a plan for my life. He is sovereign and omniscient after all, and it would be best for me to seek his counsel in order to know what that plan is.

Yes, I agree. God is sovereign, he knows what will happen to us, and he most likely does have a plan for our lives. But, where does Scripture teach that God will share his sovereign plan with us?

Theologians have generally recognized in Scripture two "wills" of God: his sovereign will and his moral will.

His sovereign will cannot be thwarted, no man can stand against it, and it will be done (see Daniel 4:35, for instance). This "will" is not always revealed to us. But, looking backward on our lives, we can often understand God's sovereign plan for our lives and why things happened the way they did.

God's moral will is his will for how we are to live in a godly manner, and it is fully revealed to us in Scripture. Among other things, we are to avoid sexual immorality (1 Cor 6:18, 1 Thess 4:3), hate what is evil and cling to what is good (Rom 12:9), in fact, read all of Romans 12 - it is a treasure trove full of God's moral will for us. He tells us what we should and should not do as we interact with other people. God's will for you is to live a holy life (1 Pet 1:15-16).

So, we should not expect to know in advance his sovereign will, but God's moral will has already been revealed to us. In fact, his moral will is completely revealed to us so that we will know how to live. It is not personalized for me - it is broadly general so that all Christians will know how to live.

God's moral will does not tell us what to do, but rather how to be. God does not tell us whom to marry - it tells us what kind of husband or wife we should be. He does not reveal to us whether or not to take the job - he tells us what kind of an employee we should be. He desires for us to be more like Christ (Rom 8:28-29).

Since God is concerned with us becoming more like Christ, we should be making our decisions, not based on inner hints or feelings, but based on the answer to this question: will this endeavor give me the opportunity to be more like Christ? Greg Koukl of Stand to Reason asks, "When was the last time you made a decision based on humility, self-sacrifice, servanthood,...or the interests of proclaiming the Gospel?"

Does God Hint?

When God speaks to a person in Scripture, it is never through hints, suggestions, nudges, leadings, or checks in the spirit. God acts boldly. When he wants to get someone's attention, there is no doubt who is doing the talking. Think of any person in Scripture with whom God speaks: Paul on the road to Damascus, Moses by the burning bush, Peter with his vision in Acts, Isaiah's vision of God on his throne. Even Samuel hears an audible voice, although as a child he mistakes it for Eli at first. There is no case in Scripture where God tries to communicate to someone and they don't get it. The Lord will get your attention if he has a message for you.

More than this, though, a principle laid down by Paul is violated by the idea that God is trying to communicate to us through hints and nudges. In the context of spiritual gifts in 1 Cor 14, Paul discusses the superiority of the gift of prophecy over that of speaking in tongues, because prophecy builds up everyone in the church, not just the speaker as in the case of tongues. Now, the principle. If you are going to speak in the church, it must be clear. Otherwise, whom will your message help? Now, if we are urged to speak clearly to each other, how then can God get away with being unclear with us?

Ahh, but our sin gets in the way of our hearing God's voice some will say. Well, consider this: God had no trouble getting through to Saul on the road to Damascus even though he was out to kill or imprison Christians. Talk about sin! And yet Saul/Paul heard God's message crystal clear. The Bible just does not teach that our sin will prevent God from speaking to us if he has a message for us.

The Importance of Reading the Word

Another common response is that I am putting God in a box by not allowing him to speak to us. First, I am not saying that God can't lead us through inner promptings and the like. What I am saying is that the Bible does not teach that we should expect it as a matter of course. If God chooses to do something special, that's his prerogative. Second, if you want to hear God speak to you, read the Scriptures.

This point is so important it is worth repeating: if you want to hear from God, read God's Word! Scripture is God's personal, active Word to us. Paul tells Timothy in 2 Timothy that "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work" (3:16-17, emphasis mine). Notice the phrase "thoroughly equipped for every good work." God's Word has everything we need for every good work that we could do for the Kingdom. We do not need anything else. Not urges, hints, leadings, open doors, or voices. 

The problem is that we don't read the Word. This is a grave danger of the personal guidance model of decision making: it often hinders the reading of the Word. If I think that God will just direct my life through inner promptings, then I will not be searching his Word where he actually does speak to us. If we really believed that God's Word was living and active and that God was really speaking to us through it, we would read his Word. But we don't. My friends, God's Word is alive! He speaks! If you want to hear his voice, you have but to open the Scriptures and pour yourself into them. Are you feeling dry, parched, separate from God? Don't seek him in the inner voice of your emotions. Seek his face in the one place where the living God of the universe is guaranteed to meet you: his very Word.

J.I. Packer has written,
What shall we say of [the personal guidance model]? The first thing to say is that this idea of guidance is actually a novelty among orthodox evangelicals. It does not go back further than the last century. Second, it has lead people to so much foolish action on the other hand, and so much foolish inaction on the other, as well as puzzlement and heartbreak when the 'hotline' to God seems to go silent, that it has to be seen as discredited. Third, it must be said that Scripture gives us no more warrant constantly to expect personal 'hotline,' 'voice from the control-tower' guidance than to expect new authoritative revelations for the guidance of the whole church. [Hot Tub Religion, (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale, 1987), 116]

Ok. So far this has been a negative argument. In my next post I will lay out for you the positive case for the wisdom model of decision-making.

What are your thoughts?




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