The curse of the restrictive ism

Back in the middle ages when men wore hairy capes and women stirred cauldrons with big sticks people were not too concerned with rationalism. After all there wasn't too much to rationalise, most peoples worlds probably didn't extend much beyond the edge of their village or town, If it did it was flat, and had an end which you might fall off. Life revolved around hunting, eating and running away from vikings. By the end of the 1700's hairy capes went out of fashion, you could no longer fall off the edge of the world and people started to think a bit more. Enter modernism. Architecture got boring, art went abstract, Nietzsche got excited, Freud got in your head and belief in God became irrational. Everything was explainable and an explanation for anything that couldn't be explained was found. The curse of the restrictive ism had started.

Lots of good stuff came out of modernism but what about christianity?  Now christianity had a God that could be rationalised, constrained by logic and restricted by an ism.  God was in the box.  The previously immeasurable could now be measured, the uncontainable could seemingly be contained.  The illogical, supernatural, superstitious world of the fairies, trolls and ghosts had vanished (well not vanished because that would be inexplainable) reality had arrived.  God was dead.  The church responded, while in their eyes God was not dead, the ability to give him a makeover didn’t pass them by.  God himself could not be completely understood, but the things that he did could.  God could now be rationalised and explained.  He became limited, which is a subtle form of idolatry where in limiting God a defective version of Him is created in our own image; behold the god idol.  The church by in large embraced modernism which has left us with a bit of a hangover.  Its the curse of the restrictive ism. 

The restrictive ism says that unless we can rationally explain what God is doing it cant be from Him.  But God does not orchestrate his moves based on our poorly written nursery rhymes, but his glorious symphony.  Yes, God is a God of order, but this does not mean He is predictable.  He is a God who does new things.  He is also not just a God of revivals past or revivals future but a present reality and experience.  And this is the problem with the residue of modernism that exists in the church.  The rationalism of modernity restricts the God of experiences to a God of the cerebal.  We become a people who simply think God, rather than experience him.  I once heard Mark Stibbe say that experience of God comes before theology.  In a way he is right, it wasn’t intellectual prowess that led Charles Wesley to write ‘my chains fell off, my heart was free, I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.’ It was his experience of a saving, gracious, merciful, experiential God.  Now before you start filling in the comment box at the bottom of this page (as many do) let me clarify. I love theology, I eat theology all day, I simply love it.  I am not saying that we should ignore God with our minds.  What I am saying is that if we don’t experience God we end up as religious and numb slaves walking in partial freedom.  After all the bible is a collection of experiences!

Ask yourself; When was the last time I experienced God?  I don’t mean feeling good because the ‘singing’ was ‘good’ at church.  Nor do I mean the warm and fuzzy you get when you listen to ‘that’ worship song on your i-pod.  I mean an encounter with the father.  A moment when you can truly say I just experienced God.  And no this cant be put in the category of ‘Charismatic’ theology, its biblical.  Experiencing the real, tangible power of the presence of God is not something conjured up by people with rainbow strap guitars in the 1970’s, it is imbedded deep in church history.  For 300 years after the apostolic era the early church understood the importance of experiencing God.  They baptised converts in water and in the Holy Spirit through the laying on of hands, saw regular miraculous healings, spoke in tongues, brought prophetic words, raised the dead and tangibly experienced the presence of God. 

The challenge? Too much rationalism is a pathway to cynicism which is a slippery slope towards quenching the Holy Spirit - Which the bible says is a pretty bad thing.

Comments

Always good to read something that sets where we are in a wider context, a reminder that it wasn’t always like this, that there can be more if we want it.  Super article.

By Kevin. Posted on Tuesday 17th Aug 2010 at 16:01

Enjoyed this. God gave us the gift of theology so he could be known intimately, we instead used it to come up with formulas, and I don’t like algebra.

By Jamie. Posted on Tuesday 17th Aug 2010 at 18:17

Great article! Too often we complain about the emptiness we experience when we find ourselves simply going through the motions, relegating time in the Word as an item to check off a to-do list.  Then we rationalize what God can and can’t do based on our own limited perspective. So often when I find myself limiting Him or doubting His ability He does something amazing and I’m faced once more with the reality of how awesome He is. We must learn to wisely study Scripture while enjoying His presence. Otherwise, how can transformation take place?

By Amber. Posted on Monday 18th Oct 2010 at 10:28

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