Book review: Release of the Spirit, by Watchman Nee

　

Watchman Nee, Release of the Spirit (Indianapolis: Sure Foundation, 1965)--my personal impressions from reading this book (one may or may not consider this a "review" in the formal sense of the word)

Back on August 10, on Frank Viola's blog, he picked what he considered the five greatest ministry books (frankviola.org/2012/08/10/bestbooksonministry). From that, I decided to read one of them, Watchman Nee's "Release of the Spirit." Back in the '70's, I tried reading Nee, but found it to be something strangely difficult to understand.

Have you ever attempted to assemble an item with a large amount of parts, such that you were following instructions like "put bar X into slot on plate BB, then insert nut J into hole at end of bar X and attach nut K"? After one does it right once, the directions finally make sense. Likewise, the more one has actually walked and lived through some of what Nee describes in this book, the more one can learn from what is left that one hasn't gone through. Conversely, when I attempted to read "The Spiritual Man" in college, when I had only been a believer since high school, and still attended what in this culture is traditionally considered a "church", and certainly had not had the years of following God's direction both correctly and incorrectly nearly as much as now, his writing seemed to be to be too difficult to get much out of, in spite of the words being simple.

Likewise, in reading this, what you have already experienced, you can relate to, even though you may never have seen anyone attempt to describe it in a sentence, and what Nee's writings are notable for is teaching for ministry from one's spirit, as opposed to the western norm of teaching God's ways through the intellect or emotion. The more that one has walked through what he is writing about, the more one can learn from the rest. If one has not desired to do what Nee is describing in the beginning, the harder (maybe it is impossible) to learn from what he writes later. I would guess an unbeliever would find this irrational nonsense, or, in the case of some involved in Eastern thinking, come up with some bizarre interpretation of parts.

Early in this book, Nee refers to Brother Laurance's "The Practice of the Presence of God." That book is short, easy to understand, and something of a prequel. I know that Nee was influenced as a young man by T. Austin-Sparks. As Austin-Sparks made his works available such that most of it is now online (www.austin-sparks.net), but I have yet to read any of them, I may someday wish to add some of those to a list of good introductions to this book, but, obviously, I cannot at this time.

I found the first three chapters of this book to be the most difficult to read, but this is where Nee sets up concepts that are necessary for the rest of the book. This is a book where one cannot just sit down and fly through it, even though it is very short, as books go (under 100 pages)(a). You may need to read a paragraph, or even a sentence, and then stop and think about what Nee has said, and compare it to your experience in following Jesus, with regard to both when you walked rightly, and when you didn't. Chapter 3 is about everyday things that can distract us from spiritual things. Albeit a valid point, I don't practically know how one gets around that when one needs to be in the world working. I am saying this in the light of a person who has held a normal job for most of my life (i.e. not in a church position), but am now in a position where I cannot work eight plus hours a day, and have more time to think.

Chapter 4 is about the worker as spiritual doctor. Some readers may recognize this as an early Reformation concept. Nee uses the same words, but approaches this phrase in the manner of discerning another's spirit, as opposed to plugging a problem into a theological answer. Even here, he is not speaking of modern Pentecostal "discerning of spirits", but a more general realization of whether you sense a person is attempting to follow the Holy Spirit, and opposed to plugging everything into an intellectual or emotional or some type of worldly framework. In my opinion, Chapters 4 through 9 are easier to read than 1 to 3, but I believe that the latter part will not make sufficient sense unless one works through the first third.

Chapter 7 gets to the beginning of Nee's conclusions, with this chapter dealing with God revealing his way of seeing things to us. He refers to this as enlightenment (one must note, with no surprise, that this is quite differentment than the western use of the term, both in Christian and the world's circles of thought), and that only that shows us how to divide soul and spirit. Chapter 8 is titled "What Impression Do We Give?" My feeling is that what Nee says gets really simple now, but all of the previous writing was necessary to build up to this. Chapter 9, the last chapter, speaks more on an idea that has been brought up continually in previous chapters, that to truly move in Spirit-guided ministry, a prerequisite is to allow our spirit to be broken of its sinful independence from God's moment by moment guidance, and submitted to the Holy Spirit's guidance, to truly be God's servant. Nee discusses the qualities that indicate that in a person.

Ultimately, this, I believe, explains why there are so many ungodly acts going on in our supposed "churches" and "ministries", particularly among leaders. Nee is speaking about the believer's walking in serving God, which is God's, although not man's, idea of leadership, which is not connected to having a title. Those who are, as Nee describes, are those of unbroken will, be it to favor their intellect, or emotion, or cleverness, or whatever, would misconstrue this criticism. Those who are unbelievers will, or more properly, have considered such books something to be ignored. The last sentence of this book sums up this teaching: "The inward man is freed only after the outward man is broken. This is the basic road to God's service."

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a) Note that most modern books are forced by publishing companies, without regard to genre, with the possible exception of textbooks, to be no less than 160 pages or more than 250 pages. Note over time, if one reads a book in which the material seems to be stretched, that it ends exactly on 160.

I have noticed over the past couple of years that the blog postings of mine that get the most page views are the book reviews. Personally, if I could ask you to read any one of these writings, it would be my post on June 20,2012, entitled "13 definitions of the word 'church'". None of it is my ideas, as indicated by the footnotes at the bottom of it, but I believe that it might make for some stimulating research. If one can read it (if one has not run into it previously) and not look at this idea further, whether to confirm or debunk what I've said, I would question what one cares about.

on music

I think the reason people like music is to suppress thought—the wrong kinds of thought—not to produce it.

            --Marvin Minsky, mathematician/philosopher/scientist

            A couple of days ago, I took my folder of quotations that I had copied down over the past few years, and compiled them into the entry, “Quotations.”  During that process, I wound up going over the one above, and it got me thinking about music.  As I have indicated in previous writings, I moved from a traditional, institutional church to a house church about two years ago.  Between growing up with television and radio, I was quite exposed to music, and then exposed more being sent to church.  Since coming to faith in Jesus in high school, I was, first, exposed to music in church more, and saw music outside the church in a more questioning light.  I can specifically point to the why of that.

            It actually goes back to when I was in junior high school.  My room was on the second floor of my parents’ house, and the heating system used wood and coal.  The first floor was extremely warm, and my parents had tv on in the evening, so I went upstairs in my room to study.  Given how the heating system worked, my room was about 50 degrees fareinheit.  I just always wore a sweater while studying.  Somewhere along the line I found an old radio.  The first time I plugged it in, the first station I ran into was WGN-AM in Chicago, which was a news talk station, although, at that time, all news talk stations had moderators which took strictly neutral positions on the stories of the time.  I remember thinking that it would be interesting if the moderator would take a position on one side or another.  Given that is what we have now, I am glad my wish didn’t come true any sooner than it did.  After nearly a year, I decided one day to turn the dial and see what other stations there were.  I fairly quickly ran into Top 40 rock stations.  When I was in 8^th grade, I developed the idea of catching as many different Top 10 to Top 77 (that was from 770 in Milwaukee) countdown shows and tracking how songs went up and down.  Living in the Midwest with this old time am radio, in the evening I could find over 20 stations from around various parts of the east coast to Midwest which had such programs.  I can remember one evening having on WWWE in Cleveland, which had a 7 to 11 pm dj whose gimmick was to over feature the music of the Doors.  Be that as it may, one evening, he introduced for the first time Jimi Hendrix’s song “Foxy Lady.”  Given that this was about 1966, roughly half of the first sixty seconds was bleeped out.  It popped in my head that I didn’t use that kind of language, my friends didn’t, those that did weren’t my friends, and this was just wrong.  I wasn’t a believer, yet.  I just picked that up from however I grew up.  I turned the station off and stopped listening to rock stations, and junked my Top 10 tracking.  I don’t remember what I switched to, if anything.

            About a year later, I came to faith in Jesus.  Over time, I came to hear the idea, which I believe Calvin proposed that music was created for man to worship with.  From that, one can infer that all other use of music is a perversion of God’s creation, although no more than sinful man’s misuse of anything else.  I think I heard it, but may have felt that such a statement was an overstating a case to make an idea fit a theological system.

Still, I just have never cared much for secular music except for instrumentals.

            Maybe, I have thought of this because the heat went out in my house a couple of days ago, so I’ve worn sweaters more this week than I have since I was in that wood heated house.  Maybe, I have thought about it due to being a sports fan, and Wednesday being the day sports and music are inseperably connected by Howard Cosell, on Monday Night Football, 30 years ago that night, announcing the assassination of John Lennon.  Of course, Lennon’s song “Imagine” is about as close to stating the polar opposite of Christian ethics as one can write, and also one of the few songs that comes close to making an intellectual, albeit anti-logical, case for a point of view.  Then, I ran across the Minsky quote, above. 

            The last one year plus, I have been at a house church in which, shall we say, music has not been a featured item.  Most weeks we use some to begin worship, but those who play guitar haven’t really had time to practice, so it doesn’t come off anywhere close to as polished as the music I have experienced in church over the years.  I’ll argue that that isn’t a bad thing.  While we can use music to worship God, it, and all other music, can be used to get oneself into a mood.  That’s the same as what Minsky calls suppressing thought.  While I certainly thought when I was a teenager that I could study better with music on, and it may have been a positive versus battling the sounds coming from the tv on the first floor, I cannot work well with music with singing in the background.  More and more, I prefer silence to even instrumental music.  Still, music is helpful in eliminating logical speech in the background, whether it be the words of a gripping drama or the pre-school level communication of Nick Jr.  As my 4 year old grandson is in the next room, its usually Wow Wow Wubbzy that’s the distraction of the moment.

            That said, my question is, is even our worship music a means of suppressing thought?  The more I am thinking about it, I am feeling the answer is yes.  The radio going on in the car isn’t all that bad—one should be concentrating on driving safely first.  For the musician, I know there is all this research that musical training assists in non-musical intellectual study.  But just having music cranking, not performing it, but just having it in the background, can give one the feeling of being a part of something while not actually being a part of something, or even associating with others, although the dj is, in a one-way manner, associating with you and all kinds of other people, and everyone else cannot usually associate back.

            As I write this, I’m not saying, at this time, that I’ve gotten a mental grip on this idea yet.  What do you think?