Dear Friend,
Thank you for your long letter. The more I know you, the more likely I will say what applies to you. There is a reason that I am sure that you will be a Christian shortly. It is from Jeremiah 29. It is speaking of Judah at the end of 70 years of captivity, but I think it applies to all seekers. Verse 13: “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”
You described your search for God as starting around age 12, and then later you said, “I still wanted to be a Christian; it simply began to occur to me that prescribed methods were not working.” The methods you say you used were not prescribed in the Bible. They are standard prescriptions in all the world’s religions. They were duties you were doing, religious duties. You were reading to read, a duty. You were also reading critically. You were not reading to receive.
Romans 9:30-10:4: “What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; but Israel, who pursued a law of righteousness, has not attained it. Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the ‘stumbling stone.’ As it is written: ‘See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame.’ Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved. For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge. Since they did not know the righteousness that comes from God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.”
This righteousness comes from God.
I do not know why God allowed the Holocaust to happen or Genghis Khan or the tens of thousands of evil men who have raped and murdered. It is true that no one gets away with evil (Psalm 73). God is just.
In the Korean war, I was ordered out of my battle station for a still unknown reason, except it is known by God. While I was away from my station, the ship hit an underwater mine. The mine exploded right under my battle station. I was not there. It was very much like the USS Cole in Yemen. We lost 16 men, 11 in the explosion, 4 overboard, and 1 in the hospital. No one from my battle station survived. I was 22 years old. I conducted the funeral service for the man I left in charge. He died in place of me. Over the next four days sailors would come to me and ask why their friend died. My reply was something like this: “Sixteen men died; why are you asking me about only one? Everyone dies. The question is not ‘Why?’ The question is, are you ready to die?”
I understand your feelings about manipulating evangelists and emotional conversions. The danger is that you might be rejecting the real because of the fake.
Certainly I believe that you have tried “very hard to base my world solely in the INTELLECTUAL; it is safe and does not change, and I have experienced a degree of success in navigating it.” I believe that too.
It seems to me that you are a self-disciplined do-er. Because you have had so much trouble with your bipolar emotions, you did not trust them. It is right not to trust emotions. It is also right not to TRUST your intellect and your reason, and you do not. It is right to trust God. He is the only one who is trustworthy, who keeps his word.
Here is another one of your statements: “Intellectually, I know this is wrong, but I ask you, what other standards can I possibly apply? Intellectually, I understand that God is the architect of morality, but in my fallenness, I cannot escape the thought that regardless, it is WRONG for God to ask Abraham to sacrifice Isaac.” You have just said that you are not going to go by your intellect, but by something else that dogmatically declares something WRONG. You call it fallenness. I agree.
In between your emotion and your intellect, you have missed the spiritual. This is where love and grace come in. You need both very much. God provides both very much.
Romans 5:12-17, 20: “But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! Again, the gift of God is not like the result of the one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ... The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more.”
Grace is far more abundant than sin and is the solution for the very real sin that you see all around you, in you, and in history. Grace is a very real solution for a very real problem. There is no other solution that even pretends to work, much less produces forgiveness of sins and everlasting life.
There are two kinds of faith: experimental and experiential. Experimental faith produces experiential faith, not the other way around. Perhaps you should confess to God in repentance the things you admit to me in your letters. Not that that will save you, but right now you are hanging on to these things that you know are false. These things may be your present excuse for future sin.
Trust is like sitting down. When you sit, you quit trying to hold yourself up, and you let the chair do the work. Trying is willpower; it is work. God does all of the saving. Quit trying.
You may believe the Cross academically and intellectually, but that belief is not trust. God did it all. Your emotions keep you from trusting, and your intellect keeps you from trusting. They are both man-centered, not God-centered.
Next time, maybe, we will get to share how to know that we are saved.
Your friend,
Jim Wilson
Thank you for your long letter. The more I know you, the more likely I will say what applies to you. There is a reason that I am sure that you will be a Christian shortly. It is from Jeremiah 29. It is speaking of Judah at the end of 70 years of captivity, but I think it applies to all seekers. Verse 13: “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”
You described your search for God as starting around age 12, and then later you said, “I still wanted to be a Christian; it simply began to occur to me that prescribed methods were not working.” The methods you say you used were not prescribed in the Bible. They are standard prescriptions in all the world’s religions. They were duties you were doing, religious duties. You were reading to read, a duty. You were also reading critically. You were not reading to receive.
Romans 9:30-10:4: “What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; but Israel, who pursued a law of righteousness, has not attained it. Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the ‘stumbling stone.’ As it is written: ‘See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame.’ Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved. For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge. Since they did not know the righteousness that comes from God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.”
This righteousness comes from God.
I do not know why God allowed the Holocaust to happen or Genghis Khan or the tens of thousands of evil men who have raped and murdered. It is true that no one gets away with evil (Psalm 73). God is just.
In the Korean war, I was ordered out of my battle station for a still unknown reason, except it is known by God. While I was away from my station, the ship hit an underwater mine. The mine exploded right under my battle station. I was not there. It was very much like the USS Cole in Yemen. We lost 16 men, 11 in the explosion, 4 overboard, and 1 in the hospital. No one from my battle station survived. I was 22 years old. I conducted the funeral service for the man I left in charge. He died in place of me. Over the next four days sailors would come to me and ask why their friend died. My reply was something like this: “Sixteen men died; why are you asking me about only one? Everyone dies. The question is not ‘Why?’ The question is, are you ready to die?”
I understand your feelings about manipulating evangelists and emotional conversions. The danger is that you might be rejecting the real because of the fake.
Certainly I believe that you have tried “very hard to base my world solely in the INTELLECTUAL; it is safe and does not change, and I have experienced a degree of success in navigating it.” I believe that too.
It seems to me that you are a self-disciplined do-er. Because you have had so much trouble with your bipolar emotions, you did not trust them. It is right not to trust emotions. It is also right not to TRUST your intellect and your reason, and you do not. It is right to trust God. He is the only one who is trustworthy, who keeps his word.
Here is another one of your statements: “Intellectually, I know this is wrong, but I ask you, what other standards can I possibly apply? Intellectually, I understand that God is the architect of morality, but in my fallenness, I cannot escape the thought that regardless, it is WRONG for God to ask Abraham to sacrifice Isaac.” You have just said that you are not going to go by your intellect, but by something else that dogmatically declares something WRONG. You call it fallenness. I agree.
In between your emotion and your intellect, you have missed the spiritual. This is where love and grace come in. You need both very much. God provides both very much.
Romans 5:12-17, 20: “But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! Again, the gift of God is not like the result of the one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ... The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more.”
Grace is far more abundant than sin and is the solution for the very real sin that you see all around you, in you, and in history. Grace is a very real solution for a very real problem. There is no other solution that even pretends to work, much less produces forgiveness of sins and everlasting life.
There are two kinds of faith: experimental and experiential. Experimental faith produces experiential faith, not the other way around. Perhaps you should confess to God in repentance the things you admit to me in your letters. Not that that will save you, but right now you are hanging on to these things that you know are false. These things may be your present excuse for future sin.
Trust is like sitting down. When you sit, you quit trying to hold yourself up, and you let the chair do the work. Trying is willpower; it is work. God does all of the saving. Quit trying.
You may believe the Cross academically and intellectually, but that belief is not trust. God did it all. Your emotions keep you from trusting, and your intellect keeps you from trusting. They are both man-centered, not God-centered.
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.’ Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.It may be that you are thinking of the experience of being saved, not salvation. That is similar to putting your faith in faith. It does not work.
Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: "Let him who boasts boast in the Lord."
When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness and in fear, and with much trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power. (1 Corinthians 1:18-2:5)
Next time, maybe, we will get to share how to know that we are saved.
Your friend,
Jim Wilson
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