Natural versus spiritual

Discerning the difference between the natural and the spiritual - 27 June 2008 (John)

There is terrible confusion in Christendom today between the natural and the spiritual. Recently my daughter came home and told me about hearing someone speak of a girl who felt called to be a missionary, yet was wrestling between this and her love of graphic design. From the speakers account it seems his answer to her was along the lines that surely God had given her this gift for graphic design and the desire to use it “for him”. Now, I have nothing against Christians having careers, work is good and necessary, but in hearing this I couldn’t help make comparisons to the story of Bruce Olsen. Bruce Olsen was an American teenager called by God to be a missionary to South American Indians, yet he initially struggled between this calling and his desire to go to university and become a linguist. When he was rejected by the mission board he was actually relieved, thinking now he could follow his desire and go to university. But God wanted him to be a missionary, and so with only seventy dollars in his pocket, no connections and no real idea what he was doing, he flew down to Venezuela. Everyone thought he was mad, yet after a few years he became the first white person to live through the experience of making contact with the Motilone tribes living in the hills between Venezuela and Columbia. His experiences in the early years were appallingly hard, yet he ultimately led an entire people out of bondage to demons and into the light of salvation in Christ. You can read about this in his book, Bruchko, one of the most moving mission stories I’ve ever read. God may give us our native strengths of mind, body, character, etc, yet how he wants to use them and how we want to use them can often be poles apart. Bruce did end up using his gift for languages, both to learn the difficult Motilone language, and later in order translate the bible into it. If he had resisted his calling and become a linguist in some American university, he may have gotten involved with bible translation work at some stage, but it’s hard to imagine him finding the kind of wildly fruitful ministry that came about when he followed God to South America. And yet, many of our elders, pastors and Christian teachers today seem intent on dispelling the idea that our ambitions could possibly be in conflict with God’s calling. This way of thinking is now seen as old fashioned, or even worse, a corruption of Christian thinking based on Greek “dualism”. No, what they are telling us these days is that God gave us our talents and desires and wants us to use them for him. Of course there are certain elements of truth here, but it ignores the fact that we have both a carnal fallen nature and the spirit of God (if in fact we really are born again, not just using that label). Genuine Christians have always struggled with the conflict between the two natures. Paul explains the matter like this:

For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can it be. (Romans 8:6-7)

Most of chapters seven and eight of Romans deal with this great struggle between our fleshly mind and the mind of the spirit dwelling in us, and so do many other passages of the New Testament. If we simply tack “for God” onto the exercising of our own will, we attempt to make God the endorser of our carnality rather than allowing ourselves to be drawn into a deeper spiritual reality. Now all of this doesn’t mean someone can’t be a graphic designer. Some peoples primary calling is no doubt to work, support a family and raise Godly children. Being a graphic designer is a trade that may facilitate this. But, if someone has a calling to serve God in a more radical way, they should not be told that a career is an equal, or perhaps even superior, calling of God. Bruce Olsen received just this kind of bad advice from church members, but thankfully he listened to God not them. Going back to the person my daughter heard speaking, it’s sad to me that they didn’t even have the basic Christian discernment to give the young person better career advice. I have experience working alongside the graphic design industry and I believe it would be one of the hardest industries in which to maintain a Christian walk. It is a glamour industry, a subset of the advertising industry, and as such it tends to embrace utterly the ethos of money, looks, style and seduction. It is also a high pressure industry that takes fresh young talent, burns them out and then often casts them aside.

This confusion between natural and spiritual is not an isolated event; it is seen in so many things these days. For instance, Christians doing what are in effect psychology-based personality tests to find their “spiritual gifts”. A classic example of this Rick Warren’s SHAPE program which helps you find your SHAPE, and thus your “ministry” as a cog somewhere in the mega-church machine. KP Yohannan, founder of Gospel For Asia, was incredibly shy, and in his own words a kind of “non-person” in his village. Yet God supernaturally empowered him as a preacher when out of sheer conviction he made himself stand up and preach the gospel in public. He went on to build one of the world biggest and most effective missionary organizations, which now has tens of thousands of indigenous missionaries throughout the Asian subcontinent. If he had gone through Rick Warren’s SHAPE program to find his calling, he probably would have become the church librarian.

The Bible College of New Zealand, along with many other Christian groups, is now really pushing the whole “faith in the marketplace” thing. At a certain level I agree with the concept. Yes, let Christians stand out as Christians and be a witness to those around them at work. Yes, we should all see ourselves as full time in the ministry. And yes, I believe Christians who run their own businesses should apply biblical principles to their business. However, the focus can so easily end up becoming the business. What are the proponents of marketplace theology trying to achieve? Is this about spreading the true gospel so that people can be saved, or is it about promoting “Christian world view” and Christianizing society by getting Christians in positions of power and influence? From my observation there are people who come at it from both these angles, but the latter seem to dominate. The heathen can be Christianized. Catholicism has achieved this before, but it was by no means a spiritual revival. You know, as Christians we are all so easily corrupted by the world that the more integrated we become with it, the more danger there is of a subtle change of heart. We start off intending to do good when trying to integrate our business and our faith, but often end up consumed by business, stress and worldliness. At the time of writing this I was just at the end of my first month of being self-employed. I had been self-employed before and this first month was a real reminder to me of how hard it is to avoid thinking about money all the time. There are two parts to the problem. The fear that goes with an unknown income and the temptation that goes with an unlimited one. It’s a real battle to continue to give God first place and simply allow him to provide at the level he sees fit. However, if I were more self-deceived I could simply pursue money making with a vengeance, satisfying myself with some lofty ideal of how I would use this success for God. What I know though, is that a few years of this would leave me a hollow shell with regards to the faith. Again, I’m not saying a Christian can’t be a businessman or even a politician, but there are very real dangers as soon as we forget to “seek first the kingdom of God”. William Wilberforce may have been able to do good in parliament, but it’s a deeply corrupting environment that I believe is more likely to corrupt those who enter it than it is to be reformed by them. Mark Hatfield wrote a book called, Between A Rock And A Hard Place, which is a biographical account of how being a US Senator was such a powerful pull against his Christian faith.

In the end what bothers me most about this great confusion between natural and spiritual is that I believe it is leading straight to Anti-Christ. Anti-Christ will be a man, presented to the world as Messiah. He will come with all signs and lying wonders (II Thes 2:9), and no doubt be seen to fulfill many prophecies concerning the return of the Lord. But he will be a natural man, not the son of God who returns supernaturally on the clouds of heaven in great power and glory (Matthew 24:26-30). The Anti-Christ, whose coming precedes the true coming of Christ, will however deceive all but the truly elect. Those who have followed money in the name of ministry or ambition in the name of vision, will be as the foolish virgins who ultimately are found to have no oil in their lamps. They will have run a race, but not the right race. They will have served a different Jesus and subtly preached a different gospel. To many of them Christ will say on the day of judgment ‘depart from me I never knew you’. We need to discern what is spiritual and what is carnal. We need to choose carefully the direction we follow and make sure we are part of the true vine.

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