Knowing, Feeling & Doing

One of the things characterizing the message of "Health and Wealth" preachers is quick, easy solutions to complex problems.  They tend to reduce the Christian life to knowing the right technique or formula, or following the prescribed steps  to achieve prosperity.  Thus, the Christian life is reduced to methods of success rather than to the gradual, life-long and painful task of forming character.

Although many Christians do prosper and achieve good health, often strong character is developed through times of difficulty, struggle, and pain.  There is no quick and easy way to develop character.  Character is a quality of life produced by consistent actions and thousands of little decisions during times of testing.  In Romans 5:3-5, Paul says, "We also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance proven character; and proven character, hope; and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us."

In their desire to be positive and provide quick, easy, victorious solutions, many preachers/televangelists say nothing about the character acquired through sufferings (see also James 1:12; Phil. 2:22).  The desire for quick and easy solution to problems also short-circuits the Scriptural process of gaining wisdom and discernment.  Those qualities of character are gained not be reciting a formula, having a positive attitude, or knowing the prescribed steps.  The way to discernment involves deep thought and consistent practice.

Hebrews 5:14 reads, "Solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil."  Notice the connection between solid food and maturity.  Not only do the mature digest solid food, but they also practice what they have learned.  They have thought hard about what they believe, and then have felt whatever emotion that thought produces and then have acted on it.  One cannot act on something without being moved to do so (emotions).  But one cannot be moved to do something unless one is inspired by a particular thought, concept, doctrine, or idea.

Those who press on to learn more about God, and then experience and live out that knowledge, become men and women of character:  "Get wisdom, discipline and understanding," Scripture commands (Prov. 23:23).  "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" (Psalm 111:10).  Although we may, in our sinfulness, be tempted to take a shortcut to character, we must remember that such neglect is not in accord with Scripture (see Rom. 12:2; Gal. 5:16-25; Phil. 2:12-13; 4:8-9; Col. 3:9-17).

Essential to the development of character is the solid food discussed above.  One important step in developing character involves educating the conscience.  Recently, many writers have described the moral decay in our culture.  One author in particular has discussed the "death of ethics in America" and locates the solution in moral education:  an education of the conscience.  The televangelists could help here but I am afraid they do not.

Again, a few simple answers are not adequate to prepare us for the complexities of life, and the fruit of their own shortcut mentality has been amply demonstrated.  The absence of an emphasis on conscience from the preaching of televangelists indicates a lack of connection between knowing and doing.  Conscience is where doctrine and practice meet and is where general principles are brought to bear in concrete cases.

The Absence of Conscience

Again, a few simple answers are not adequate to prepare us for the complexities of life and the fruit of their own shortcut mentality has been amply demonstrated.  The absence of an emphasis on conscience from the preaching of Faith Movement/televangelists indicates a lack of connection between knowing and doing.  Conscience is where doctrine and practice meet and is where general principles are brought to bear in concrete cases.

Conscience is viewed in Scripture as one of the central goals of instruction.  Paul says, "The goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith" (1 Tim. 1:5).  Do you see "a good conscience" as one of the central goals in the teaching of the televangelists?  If you were asked to give two phrases to describe what it means to "fight the good fight," how would you respond?  Paul says, "Fight the good fight, holding on to faith and a good conscience" (1 Tim. 1:18-19).  Most of the leading televangelists are doing neither.  

I believe that how well we are going to be able to conduct ourselves in this life will be determined by whether we are able to get and keep a clear conscience.  Getting a clear conscience, of course, is essential to maintaining one. (see Paul's goal in Acts 23:1; 24:16; I Tim. 3:9; II Tim. 1:3).  Getting a clear conscience depends on how convinced we are that God's grace and not our own spirituality or obedience is our sole salvation.  Without assurance of our acceptance before God, based entirely on Christ's performance and sacrifice, not our own, we can never have a clear conscience.  We will always be wondering if there is one thing we've left undone.  

Keeping a clear conscience means that we are regularly examining our lives and confessing our sins to God and others if we have offended them.  Also involved is refusing to compromise our conscience. The recent moral lapses on the part of some televangelists raises the question of conscience and character.  It could be that the message of easy solutions is too superficial to deal with the deep struggles in our lives.  We must recapture a wholeness in our lives, which may be summed up in the word integrity.  In order to do that, we must recapture the profound relationship between knowing, feeling, and doing.  

Integrity is the heartfelt response to sound doctrine.  It is the "amen" cheered by the whole person in response to God's truths.  This is the way to wholeness and integrity:  truth (light), experienced (heat), and lived in such a way that the world is once again stirred to ask concerning our Lord, "Who is this Man from Nazareth?"  

-- Art Lindsley


For more information on Victory Churches and the Faith Movement, go to the Reference Library.  Click on any book title to get a brief overview of the book.  All books on the list are available through www.amazon.com. 

Feeling

There is often much enthusiasm surrounding a T.V. ministry.  Some of the T.V. ministries make great appeals to the emotions and stir up rousing sentiments but deny the importance of the mind.  Now feelings are not wrong.  Feelings of love, joy, peace, and many other responses are all gifts from God.  He created our capacity to feel, and above all He created us with a capacity to enjoy Him.  One important Christian catechism asks, "What is man's chief end?"  and answers "To glorify God and enjoy Him forever."  So we see that enjoyment of God is one of the central purposes of our creation.  God also created us to enjoy relationships with other creatures and to enjoy the natural world.  The problem with the message of many televangelists is not their appeal to desires or feelings; the problem is that they settle for "mud pies in the slum" rather than "a holiday at the sea."  They, along with their followers, are far too easily pleased.

Even if we do gain perfect health and perfect wealth and achieve the power to accomplish many miracles, we can still lack the key to ultimate satisfaction:  knowing God.  Augustine once said, "Our hearts are restless until we find our rest in Thee," not, "until we find our rest in miracles," or, "in prosperity," or "in great feelings," but in God Himself.  All humans have a spiritual hunger that only God Himself can satisfy.

Even an atheist, Franz Kafka, recognized the importance of satisfying his own spiritual hunger.  In one short story, The Hunger Artist, he summed up his thoughts.  He wanted his other works burned but insisted that this one story be saved.

Please read the following more than once.

In a typically bizarre fashion, Kafka has the hunger artist making his living by professional fasting.  He is the practitioner of a once venerated profession.  Seated on straw in his small barred cage, he is marveled at by throngs of people.  After forty days, his fasts were terminated in triumph.  His manager would make a speech, the band would play, and one of the ladies would lead him staggering in his weakened state out of the cage.  

However, the day arrived when fasting was no longer understood or appreciated by the people.  He lost his manager and had to join a circus.  His cage was placed next to the animals.  He became depressed by the smell, the restlessness of the animals at night, the raw flesh carried past him and the roaring at feeding time.  The people barely glanced at him in their hurry to see the animals.  Even the circus attendants failed to limit his fast by counting the days.  Finally, he was discovered lying in the straw, and in his dying breaths he told his secret:  "I have to fast," he whispered.  "I can't help it.  I couldn't find the food I liked.  If I had found it, believe me, I should have made no fuss and stuffed myself like you or anyone else."  

Kafka was a writer of parables.  The parable of the hunger artist is not about physical hunger but about spiritual hunger.  Kafka was the hunger artist, and he realized he was starving to death spiritually, but he couldn't find any food he liked.  

There is a hunger within us all that only God can satisfy.  That's what C.S. Lewis meant when he said, "We are halfhearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition, when infinite joy is offered us."  The meeting of those material desires is not wrong in its proper context.  Yet we can be far too easily pleased.  The followers of these preachers are gorging themselves on junk food.  It is attractive.  It is sweet.  It tastes good.  But it does not satisfy, and it ends up destroying its host.  Many preachers today appeal to our desires for well-being but fail to emphasis (or perhaps fail even to see) the real need.  Christians need the knowledge of a just, holy and merciful God.  We need to know God's character and His attributes.  It is not that we desire too much.  We are not asking for too much when we demand health, wealth, and happiness, but too little!  Some preachers are passionate about things that can only bring partial satisfaction.  They appeal to halfheartedness when infinite joy is offered.  They call us to settle for "mud pies in a slum" because they cannot imagine what is meant by "a holiday at the sea."


For more information on Victory Churches and the Faith Movement, go to the Reference Library.  Click on any book title to get a brief overview of the book.  All books on the list are available through www.amazon.com. 

Knowing Truth

Neglecting the serious questions for cheap thrills, one way some televangelists have settled for less is by depreciating the mind, centering almost entirely on feelings.  Sometimes the impression is given that faith and intellect are in a state of war.  "The mind," says Hagin, "is something that might trip you and cause you to fall."    Yet, in truth, though our minds are fallen, they are the door to our heart, our conscience, our feelings, and our actions.  What we believe determines how we feel and act.

The call Jesus gave to love God "with all of your heart, soul, strength, and mind" is not at all foreign to Christianity.  Some of the greatest intellects of all time have found no contradiction between faith and reason. Since God is the author of both, faith and reason can (indeed should) be as compatible as a left and a right hand.

Many argue that it is more spiritual and faithful to believe without any intellectual reasons.  "Just love Jesus," they say, apart from any serious knowledge of who this Jesus is or what He accomplished.  Their argument, of course, is wrong.  Paul wrote, "We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ."  (2 Cor. 10:5).  In other words, it is a profoundly spiritual task to critique the philosophies that hold us back from knowing God and His Son, Jesus Christ.  It is actually a sign of a lack of spiritually that makes one fail to provide a well argued alternative to secularism in our universities and in our culture.

Christians often object to studying philosophy (and even theology!) on the basis that in Colossians 2:8, Paul warns us to beware that no-one takes us captive to such deceptive principles of the world.  Although Paul did issue such a warning, the only way for one to beware of the negative influence of some philosophy is to study and understand it thoroughly.  In order to beware of philosophy we need to be aware of it.  If we understand the competing ideologies well, we will know when they are affecting us.  For instance, because the preachers under criticism in this book apparently do not know church history, they are unaware that they are repeating the errors of past ages.  Because they do not understand Greek philosophy or Oriental mysticism or 19th theosophy, they do not know how seriously they have been affected by such thinking.  To take thoughts captive we have to think.


For more information on Victory Churches and the Faith Movement, go to the Reference Library.  Click on any book title to get a brief overview of the book.  All books on the list are available through www.amazon.com. 

Settling for Mud Pies

What's Missing?

Many of today's preachers make appeals that focus on fulfilling human desires -- especially health, wealth, and happiness.  But other things, too, like peace of mind, joy, satisfaction, self-esteem, power, and victory.  It's not that these things are always wrong in themselves.  Indeed, they are often gifts of God.  However, it is difficult to resist the impression that there are preachers who have set their sights too low.

C.S. Lewis gave us the following insight:

Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak.  We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition, when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.  We are far too easily pleased.

Many preachers, reflecting a common emphasis in modern evangelicalism generally, are settling for "mud pies" because they "cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday by the sea."  These preachers appeal to our selfish instincts, which may be momentarily satisfied by promises of success, unfailing happiness, and good times, when all the while our deepest needs, our truest needs -- for eternal love and acceptance in a world where performance is usually a prerequisite for acceptance, for certainty in the midst of doubt, and for purpose in a period of despair -- go untouched.

Our desires are too weak if we are simply making our own comfort and success our focus, while ignoring the larger issues.  Our desires should be broader, transcending our self-centredness.  We are far too easily pleased!  

Something is missing.  Let's discover the identity of that missing element.  The particular type of message many media preachers communicate has come to be known as the "Health and Wealth Gospel."  Prosperity teaching abounds on their television programs as well as in their written material.  One statement summarizes the technique used:  "God's got it, I can have it, and by faith I'm going to get it."  

We see additional examples in titles such as Kenneth E. Hagin's pamphlet, "How to Write Your Own Ticket with God" and Robert Tilton's magazine, Signs, Wonders, and Miracles of Faith, in which testimonials of financial and physical success abound.  Or in Kenneth Copeland's brochures "God's Will is Health" and "God's Will is Prosperity"  Oral Roberts promises people on his mailing list "Prosperity Miracles That Are Within Fingertip Reach of Your Faith," and his most recent book to date is titled How I Learned Jesus Was Not Poor.  Peter Popoff invites his followers to wash with an "anointed" sponge and then to send a monetary gift to his ministry.  This "will unlock heaven's storehouse of blessings for you."

We have seen responses to such teachings in Bruce Barron's The Health and Wealth Gospel and Gordon Fee's The Disease of the Health and Wealth Gospel   Yet whether or not the Health and Wealth teachings are true, they do reduce life to a tragically narrow and trivial focus, meeting only surface needs.  They ignore a larger vision of reality.  Christians must know truth about all areas of life and must develop a character that is able to make commitments to people, the community, and the nation outside themselves.  These teachings promise a satisfaction of our desires.  But we need to ask, "Are these desires too weak?  Are they too trivial? Are we far too easily pleased?"

-- Art Lindsley


For more information on Victory Churches and the Faith Movement, go to the Reference Library.  Click on any book title to get a brief overview of the book.  All books on the list are available through www.amazon.com.