My fellow Lutheran blogger over at Putting Out the Fire, Frank Gillespie, was recently Twittering about a workshop he attended – put on by the Southeastern District of the LCMS – that was promoting various forms of mysticism. I’ve also been listening to Fighting for the Faith episodes that deal with various purpose-driven evangelical churches promoting the same kind of practices.
Some of this actually sounds very familiar.
Mysticism has been practiced and promoted in American evangelical circles for years now. Thus the fact that certain segments of that population are now openly promoting Roman Catholic monastic mysticism is not terribly surprising to me. When I was an evangelical, mysticism was a big part of my spiritual life. I would have never in a million years have called it that. But looking back it seems clear and obvious.
When I was a young Christian in my late teens/early twenties I heard stories told by people in my church about their experiences of God speaking directly to them, and of the experiences they had of feeling the presence and love of God. Various teachers that I listened to (which were looked upon with favor by my church) promoted the practice of reading the Bible in order to receive a direct message from God (while bypassing its meaning in context) – read until you come to a passage that pops out at you, and then meditate on it to see what God is saying to you personally. The “Practice of the Presence of God” is something I am entirely familiar with because it got favorable mention at my church. I practiced journaling in such a way that I believed God was speaking to me directly through those means. I used my imagination and my feelings in order to hear God speak to me.
An interesting side-effect of my discovery of the Reformation was that I stopped being a mystic. The reasons why became clear later – reasons which make more puzzling and disturbing the fact that certain corners of the LCMS are now promoting such practices.
The beginning of the end of my mysticism came sometime back in the summer of 2008 when I read a particular article in Discipleship Journal. Earlier that year, before discovering the White Horse Inn, I had subscribed to the evangelical magazine because of an ad that had promised to revitalize my walk with Christ and cure my spiritual dryness. At the time I had never heard the word “pietism” but a few months later, devouring everything by Michael Horton and Rod Rosenbladt I could get my hands on, I realized that what I had been taught all my life could be described as a form of pietism – stressing inner experience above external promise. And I discovered that “pietism” was a good word to describe much of what I was reading in this journal.
The author of the article wrote about how she felt like she was in a “spiritual wilderness” and how she longed for God to speak to her. The Spirit supposedly led her to the Song of Solomon so that He could speak to her heart directly in what I would describe as a mystical experience.
Whereas previously I probably would have sought a similar sort of experience – such things weren’t foreign to me at all – now I found myself rather disturbed. Where in Scripture does it promise that God will speak directly to our heart if we ask Him? And where in Scripture does it tell us that the Holy Spirit gives us “spiritual dry spells” so that He can lead us to be alone with Him in mystical experiences rather than convicting us of sin and leading us to repentance and faith?
The misuse of Scripture became rather obvious to me at this point. It wouldn’t be long before I walked away from those kind of practices and never looked back. When I discovered the external Word and Sacraments in Lutheranism it was the end of my mysticism.
All this made me wonder – why did I – or why does anyone – turn to mysticism in the first place? What’s the appeal of it? What drives a Christian to seek a direct experience of God?
At first I thought it was the a-sacramental nature of my evangelical beliefs. God did not have any objective means of coming to us, so naturally one might turn to mystical means in order to experience Him. But Roman Catholicism is replete with sacraments and still produces mystics galore.
The more I think about this, the more I think at least a large part of it has to do with assurance of salvation. For me the reasoning went something like this: if I can experience God directly, then I can know for sure that I am really His child and that He really has forgiven me. If I can experience God directly, I can know that I really do have a personal relationship with Him and that He loves me personally. I really believe that was my motivation for seeking God in such a manner. In fact, many of my journal entries from that time bear that out.
The answer to the question of “how do I know I am a true believer?” became “because I felt God’s love and He speaks to me directly through His Word.” It sounds innocuous but when evangelicals say “God spoke to me directly through His Word” they don’t necessarily mean “through the plain sense of the passage.” They often mean “reading my own experiences and feelings and desires into the words of Scripture, regardless of the context or plain sense of the passage.” I vividly remember “hearing God speak directly to my heart” once using 2 Timothy 1:3-7. I read this as a personal message from God. Never mind that the passage was really about the Apostle Paul encouraging the young pastor Timothy – none of that mattered. Mystical eisegesis was a small price to pay for gaining some glimmer of assurance that I was a true and sincere believer. It must have been only the grace of God that kept me from more serious forms of error.
Like seeking such assurance through my daily obedience, such a method was bound to be a dead-end – and I inevitably discovered this. The question always came up in my mind – how do I know all this isn’t just me talking to myself? I grew increasingly uncomfortable using the Bible as a crystal ball. The God that spoke to me through my journaling sounded suspiciously like me and didn’t know anything that I didn’t know. And when I did not “hear” from God in this way it was personally devastating. When I felt like God was speaking to me everything was fine. But when I didn’t I wondered what God really thought about me and all the old fears about whether I was a true and sincere believer came flooding back.
When I discovered that the Gospel was entirely outside of me – and that He comes to us where He has promised to be, in the hearing of His Word and in the receiving of His Sacraments – everything changed. I hear God’s Word confident that He is speaking plainly and that the Holy Spirit will use it to convict me of sin and point to Christ. How do I know that I am really God’s child and that Christ’s perfect life and sacrificial death on the cross is really for me? I am baptized into Christ and the name of the Triune God is upon me. In my Baptism I have been buried and raised with Christ, washed in water with the Word. How do I know that God forgives me even that sin? Because I hear from the lips of His called and ordained servant “I forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” How do I know that God wants me to be saved? “Take, eat. This is My body, which is for you.” “Take, drink. This cup is the new testament in My blood, shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.”
So I can only think that those who promote mystical practices within the LCMS have lost confidence (if they ever had any to begin with) in the objective promises of God’s Word and Sacraments. They are embracing and promoting a form of what used to be called “Enthusiasm.” Lutherans need to be aware of the dangers of such practices. We need to cling to the words of Christ above our own feelings and experiences, regardless of how “spiritual” the latter may seem.
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