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Ask Theophilus: Back to the Beginning

CAN GIRLS BE CADS?

Dear Professor Theophilus: You've criticized guys who tell girls "I love you" without meaning much by it. Well, I did mean it — I was hoping for marriage. She didn't mean much by it — but for the next two years, she kept saying it too. Here's what I want to know: Have I been a "cad," as you said that other guy was, or am I the one who's been strung along? And if I decide that I want out, will I dishonor or embarrass her? (I don't feel at this point that I'm worthy of a horsewhipping.)

Reply
How could it be wrong to pull out, when there isn't anything to pull out from? By your own account, the two of you aren't engaged to be married, and she's not even interested in talking about the possibility. So no horsewhipping this time.

Now for your other questions. Do girls string guys along too? Yes. Have you been strung along? Sure sounds like it. Then are they just the same? No, there's a difference. Guys who say "I love you" without meaning much by it are usually angling for sex. Girls who say "I love you" without meaning much by it are usually trying to keep the relationship going. Are both motives wrong? Yes. Are they both equally wrong? Usually not, but they can be.

Peace be with you,
PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS

I WON'T BE HAPPY TILL I SUFFER

Dear Professor Theophilus: How can I know my motives in following Christ are pure? Or, how can anyone for that matter? When I follow Him, I'm happy. When I don't, I'm not. Does that mean that I'm following Him for my sake, not for His? It seems like the only way to be sure that I'm really following Him is if I'm miserable about it. I'm utterly confounded.

Reply
No wonder you're confounded; you're confusing Christ with the philosopher Immanuel Kant. God is the source and root of joy, and He made us for Himself. That doesn't mean that we will never suffer — we are to take up our cross and follow Him. But as Paul writes to the Corinthians, "as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too."¹

To put it another way: Considering what God is, you can't separate knowing God from knowing joy, and you can't separate longing for God from longing for the joy of His presence. Christ and the Apostles can't get enough of talking about joy. We are even commanded to rejoice. The idea that you aren't following God purely unless you are miserable about doing it doesn't come from the New Testament, it comes from thinkers of the early Enlightenment who had lost their Christian faith and converted the life-giving love of God into the life-starving legalism of sheer duty.

Peace be with you,
PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS

WILL GOD PUNISH ME FOR FAILING?

Dear Professor Theophilus: I fear failure terribly. I'm afraid of ever having to say to myself, "I've made a big mistake" or that "I didn't listen to God enough." I'm afraid that I might be punished for doing something wrong. I guess I have misconceptions about what failure and success are in God's eyes.

Reply
Good for you: You have accurately diagnosed the problem. You are suffering from misconceptions about the true meaning of failure and success. Let us proceed to cure them.

What the world considers success is that whatever you want to happen, happens. You make a lot of money, or you bed a lot of girls, or you write a lot of books, or you make a lot of converts, or you impress a lot of people with your holiness — whatever it is that you want. All of this misses the point. Don't get me wrong. We should set appropriate goals, we should try our best to achieve them, and we should revise both our goals and our methods if we discover that we're on the wrong path. Ultimately, though, we are only in control of our actions; we aren't in control of the results. Results are in the hands of God. He doesn't guarantee that if our goals are appropriate and we try your best to reach them, then we will. He doesn't say that if everything falls apart, we must not have been listening to Him. Christ died the most humiliating and scandalous of all deaths, deserted by everyone but John, Mary, a few other women, and a thief. Was He a failure? The world said He was, but the Father judged differently.

God also judges differently with us. Yes, of course, we should strive to do the work He sets before us with all our might, but what primarily interests Him is what is happening to our souls while that striving is going on. Are we putting our trust in Him? Are we loving Him with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our mind, and with all our strength? Do we depend on Him, even when (so far as we can tell) we have failed? While we are acting out our "Thy will be done" in the world, He is preparing us for heaven. He is working to make us into likenesses of Christ. Our striving matters, but the reason it matters is that it is how we cooperate with His grace, every bit of which is gift.

And so we little ones may take comfort. As Christ says, "Many that are first will be last, and the last first."² As Paul implores us, "Consider your call, brethren; not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth; but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong, God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God."³

Peace be with you,
PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS

A POX ON BOTH THEIR HOUSES

Dear Professor Theophilus: I've been really frustrated with the state of our so called democracy. Before I started really walking in my faith I wanted nothing to do with republicans because of things like their blatant disregard for the environment and the poor. Now that I'm walking in more Christian circles I'm surrounded by people I love, but who feel that abortion and gay marriage are the only issues that matter. I'm so frustrated that I've opted not to vote at all this year. The two parties are shrouded in so much evil that I can't even choose a "lesser of two evils." Do you have any advice?

Reply
Some years ago I wrote a pair of articles called "The Problem with Liberalism" and "The Problem With Conservatism." A funny thing happened: Liberals wrote to tell me how much they liked my criticisms of conservatives, but they ignored my criticisms of liberalism. Conservatives wrote to compliment my criticisms of liberals, but — you can complete the sentence, can't you? So I understand the temptation to say, "A pox on both your houses."

But that temptation has to be resisted. God has placed us in a desperately fallen world, and He hasn't released us from the obligation to put our love for our neighbors into action. Care for our neighbors includes not only our personal relationships but our civic ones. It wasn't Christ who said "I wash my hands of [this matter]. See to it yourselves."⁴ It was the derelict statesman, Pontius Pilate.

I see that you lean in the liberal direction. There are still a few old-fashioned liberals who understand that hardly anything hurts the poor more than weakening marriage and family and encouraging mothers to turn against their own babies. Christianity allows you to be that old-fashioned kind of liberal, but I warn you: You'll need to hang tough. The newfangled kind of liberal will hate you for it.

You'll also be a better liberal if you learn something about what the thoughtful kind of conservative actually believes. There are good and bad folk on that side too, and here I have to scold you a little, because you haven't taken the trouble to inform yourself. The serious differences between liberals and conservatives aren't about whether to keep the environment clean and better the lot of the poor. They're about how to keep the environment clean and better the lot of the poor. For another view of caring for the environment, you might read "The Cornwall Declaration on Environmental Stewardship," by the Interfaith Council for Environmental Stewardship. For another view of caring for the poor, you might check out with The Tragedy of American Compassion, by Marvin Olasky.

NEW AGE BELIEFS — LIKE, UM, PRAYER?

Dear Professor Theophilus: A lot of talk is floating around Christian colleges, seminaries, churches, and conferences about contemplative prayer — things like lectio divina. Some people say it's OK, others say it opens doors into New Age beliefs. What do you think?

Reply
First I think we had better fix up your terminology. There are three kinds of prayer. One kind is vocal prayer — prayer in words. The model for that kind is the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples. Another kind is meditative prayer — attentive, prayerful reflection in which we strive to understand the truths of faith more deeply in order to follow Christ more deeply. Yet another is contemplative prayer — communing with Him, entering into His presence, gazing upon Him inwardly. Remember two things about all three kinds of prayer. First, although all three kinds require effort, fundamentally, prayer is a gift of God's grace. We can't reach Him just by trying. Second, although all three kinds can be distorted, for example by the New Age confusions that you mention, all three in themselves are biblical and good.

Lectio divina — "divine reading" — is usually considered a form of meditative prayer, not contemplative prayer. Here is how it works. The idea is that you don't just read the Scriptures, you pray them. You select a passage of Scripture; you focus all of your intellect, imagination, emotions, and desire for God upon it; then, with all of those powers active, you offer it back to God word by word, thought by thought, as a prayer. Is this good? Of course it is. I've even recommended it in one of my "Office Hours" columns. But can't it become false and distorted? Of course it can, but the fact that a good thing can be ruined doesn't mean it isn't good.

For example, suppose that during lectio divina, you imagine yourself as one of the characters in the Gospel story. That's perfectly good in itself. But now suppose that you imagine Christ saying to you different words than He actually did, words that distort His teaching. That's not good, is it? Does the fault lie in lectio divina? No, it lies in the way that it's been twisted.

Peace be with you,
PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS

TESTING THE SPIRITS

Dear Professor Theophilus: The Bible says we should "test the spirits," but if two different people test the spirits and one of them feel it's OK and the other one doesn't, does that mean one of them isn't listening to God?

Reply
It's more likely to mean that neither of them is listening to God. As you can tell by reading the verse in context, when John wrote "test the spirits to see whether they are of God,"⁵ he wasn't talking about following mysterious spiritual feelings — he was talking about exercising sound judgment. You're right about one thing, though: God does not contradict Himself. A thing is either godly or not. It can't be godly for Fred, but ungodly for Louis.

Peace be with you,
PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS

REALLY, REALLY TESTING THE SPIRITS

Dear Professor Theophilus: In your book Ask Me Anything, you talk about nine tests for the authenticity of alleged gifts of the Holy Spirit. It includes a footnote which led me to the Web, but I couldn't find the answer to my question. Where online do you discuss these tests?

Reply
Check out one of the very earliest "Ask Theophilus" columns, "An Even Dozen." It's amazing that people who claim to be biblical so often assume that every strange thing someone claims to be doing or saying "in the Spirit" is really from God, because that is diametrically opposed to what Scripture actually says. Here's another thing people tend to forget: Paul, who certainly believes in things like speaking in tongues, warns not to become too puffed up about them even when they really are from God. That's the context of his famous warning to the Corinthians, "I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal."⁶ (Bet you thought that was about marriage.) Read the passage in the context of three full chapters, Romans 12, 13, and 14.

Peace be with you,
PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS

THANKS FOR BEING TOUGH

Dear Professor Theophilus: Thanks for your reply to my letter, "I'm Not Repulsed by You — Marry Me! I've learned a lot since writing that letter — about that guy and about myself. While I thought that he was "androgynous," he isn't. He didn't understand why my heart was so broken, and I learned that his homosexuality is a symptom of a deeper heart problem going back to his relationship with his parents. Our relationship came to a very rocky end, but an end, nonetheless. We've got a lot of undealt with sin against each other — a lot of anger, unkindness, judgment, hatred, and malice. I'm being counseled in conflicting ways (again) on how to deal with the conflict. Any suggestions about how to talk to each other and get this right? Thanks again for your straight-talk. I really needed it.

Reply
Thanks for writing back; some people thought my answer to your previous letter was just mean. Have I any suggestions about how to talk to each other and get this right? Only this: If the relationship is over, why do you think you need to talk with the fellow at all? "Over" means that it's finished; talking implies that it isn't. Of course you have to repent of your own sins and forgive him for his, but you can't go back in time and make a rocky landing soft.

A number of things in your two letters — for instance, your remark about "getting this right" — make me think that you may be one of those people who want to fix everything, and that some of your advisors are pushing you to think that way too. I am sorry to say that there are some things we can't fix; we can only pray over them. We can repent our own malice, but we can't repent other people's malice; we can only forgive it. Occasionally — when saying "I forgive you" would only cause more hurt — it isn't even loving to say it. We have to forgive in silence.

Peace be with you,
PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS

C O F F E E  S H O P

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