Review: Experiencing the Depths of Jesus Christ by Jeanne Guyon

            Of late, I have been attempting to help my family in sorting through various groups of personal property my son has acquired.  In doing so, I ran across a copy of Jeanne Guyon’s “Experiencing the Depths of Jesus Christ”, as printed by Seedsowers, (the original title would have translated into English as “Short and Very Easy Method of Prayer; Which All Can Practice With the Greatest Facility, and Arrive in a Short Time, by Its Means, at a High Degree of Perfection”).  As I have been writing on house church issues, I was familiar with Seedsowers as the publishing house connected with the works of Gene Edwards, a pioneer, but controversial figure with those believers involved in simple expressions of Christian life. At this time, I have not read any of his works.  This particular issue has a forward and afterward to the writing, which has no indication whether it was written by Edwards or someone else.  Anyway, in my recent free time, I read it.

            Jeanne Guyon was a woman living in France in the 17^th century.  France, of course, was politically and socially dominated by Roman Catholicism in that time, and she was officially Catholic throughout her life.  This writing drew the ire of parts of the religious and political status quo, and she was denounced as a heretic and imprisioned.  History shows that her writing influenced John Wesley, the Quakers, Zindendorf and the Moravians, the Holiness Movement and Watchman Nee, among others.

            This book is on the subject of prayer.  As those of us who have been believers and desired to follow Jesus learn, prayer is something, in one sense more complicated, and in another sense defying description, in comparison to our society’s concept of what it is.  On the first page, she quotes 1 Thessalonians 5:17 “Pray without ceasing.”  The unbeliever, who thinks of prayer as a thing done publicly by one person, recounting God’s acts and verbalizing requests, thinks this to be impossible.  Reviews of her life describe her as a mystic, I would assume for considering this command to be possible, which, of course, it is not by human effort alone.  She attempts to describe entering this depth of following Jesus and prayer with the term “prayer of simplicity.”  To the world, this isn’t prayer at all, and I know that we who are believers daily deal with the idea, even among fellow believers, that the formal public prayer is what is meant by prayer.  Whoever wrote the afterword to this version wrote, “Even in the original French version, the book is vague and complicated with a vocabulary at once so exacting and yet so obscure that reading it has always been a study in frustration.  The English translation did nothing to help.” 

            Much of the early explanations about how to pray in the early part of this book appear to be extremely similar to explanations of Eastern meditation, with the substitution of Jesus or scripture inserted in place of a point, place on the body, or emptying of the mind.  While the two are far different, how to pray is a thing that Guyon and others I have read struggle to put into words, not that I feel that I could do any better.

            There are, though, some really good parts of this book.  In the later part, as she begins to describe the results of learning what she describes as depth in prayer, and what others might describe as basic Christian maturity (as the two are different descriptions of the life of desiring to live God’s way, and not separate compartments), she started describing things I have sensed, but have never heard publicly stated.  Some of these things I will say are true Christian, mature spirituality, but are insidious to status quo religion, be it the Catholicism of the 17^th century French culture she lived in, or modern Western Christian status quo, be it Catholic, Protestant, Pentecostal/Charismatic (if you consider that flavor separate from the previous), or unaffiliated informal believers (which would be where Edwards’ and my interests would come into play here).  I won’t tell you what these are, I wouldn’t want to spoil the ending, as some say about movies. 

There are places where I question whether she chose the right words to describe a certain thing, in many places, and this makes this simple to read book a challenge to read.  I fully well recognize that she didn’t have the advantage of a modern Christian book’s being gone over by proofreaders and scholars before being printed.  Still, for the believer desiring to do some spiritual mining, there’s a lot of gold amongst the rock here.

            As most books concerning simple worship are not readily available in bookstores (Christian and secular), and, further, this has an original publishing date in this version of 1975, I will state it is available at www.seedsowers.com, and I must note that, in comparison to virtually every publishing house I am familiar with, all there books are quite reasonable, with regard to price.

Thoughts on Leadership

            I will start with a disclaimer:  although I lived in the greater St. Augustine, FL area for a number of years, I do not personally know Tim Tebow or his family, although I cannot help but think I am one introduction away, but by who, I have no idea.  Today, it came across my mind, while watching sports news, that he must be the most divisive athlete in the U.S. since Jackie Robinson.  With Robinson, the issue was race, and this country has seen sufficient healing with this regard that the way it was then is unimaginable to those of us who didn’t live through it (that was about two decades too far back for my memory).  With Tebow, the divisiveness comes from his faith combined with what the media has told us is his exceptional leadership ability at a time where there is more open hostility to believers in Jesus. 

            I live in a military area, and what we hear in the recruitment ads speaks about leadership.  This concept of leadership is nearly totally based on discipline and training.  I occasionally read articles about a military unit, and it seems it always has to be mentioned that, for those in the unit, what they do is a job, and not a matter of passion for the ideals of this country.  The ideals are respected, and mentally saluted, but it isn’t a matter of passion, the way a football team gets worked up before a game.  Of course, that type of emotional excitement only is functional for certain short periods of time, and totally the opposite of functional for many endeavors.  I say this, as my son is in the military working on electronics, where getting excited (upset) is a reason to go take a walk for a minute.

            Leadership is a fascinating subject for me.  I had the honor to be around about two persons in high school and three in college who had a gift for leadership.  One of the persons I knew in college is a believer, and has been involved in leading in traditional churches during his adult life.  I can clearly say that his gifting for leadership was on his life at 19, long before the denomination he is connected to accredited him as a leader.  I didn’t know him before he was a believer, so I have no clue how believing increased his leadership ability.  I fully well know from the other persons that exceptional leadership ability appears in them to be a natural gift, not a learned thing.  At my age, I don’t really know how to separate a natural ability to lead, and the spiritual gift of leadership Paul speaks of in Romans 12:8.

            I can further say that, when I was in high school and college, a gift of leadership, whether natural or spiritual, was more obvious then than when I became an adult, where our society, be it business, politics, church, or whatever, attributes leadership to a position, so it is really hard to tell whether there is giftedness behind it.  First Corinthians 12:10 tells about gifts (plural) of healing.  Further, nothing is indicated in scripture that the spiritual gifts spoken in Romans 12, Ephesians 4, and First Corinthians 12 are the complete list.  Therefore, it is unsaid that there may be degrees of leadership ability.  One problem in the church in North America is the idea on both sides of the divide within the church on understanding spiritual gifts is that the discussion gravitates toward the gifts of tongues and prophecy, and doesn’t discuss the others much.  To that effect, when I walk over to the discussion of leadership, there is a problem on both sides of the previous controversy that leaders are oftentimes recognized by positions given by fellow humans.  One aspect about any spiritual gift is that, if it is truly given by God (I am not questioning God’s giving these gifts, I am using “if” in the sense of a logical if-then sentence), then the gifting upon a believer is not dependent upon whether an organization, or even any other believer recognizes it.  It is God’s gifting that makes one a pastor (Eph. 4), a discerner of spirits (1 Cor. 12:10), a giver (Rom. 12:8), or, possibly, one who possesses a gift God gives over and above the names he has elaborated for us. 

            A further problem with leadership giftings is beginning to show itself here in the West, with the rise of the megachurch, which could not have happened previously without the ability of most people to come many miles, experience the presentation called worship that is dependent on many modern technologies, and the highly able leader.  I avoided the word “gifted” there, in that we have seen such churches built around one person with extreme talent, or is it a spiritual gift, for leadership, and then the world has seen such organizations financially collapse if something happens to that person, and there is no other person who can fill his shoes.

            I come back, once again, to First Thessalonians 5:11, which tells us to edify each other.  Such a gifted person can speak to thousands, but it gets in the way, not only of those persons edifying each other, but in some cases even knowing each other.  I have come to believe that Jesus, who as God had more ability than any of us, chose to intensely mentor 12, and it appears mentor to a significantly lower degree, another 70.  Paul taught 24 young leaders in Ephesus.  We can have “iron sharpens iron” relationships with only a few others.  If you ask me a question that I haven’t thought about lately (or ever), it may take me a little while to think and study through it, and give a proper answer.  ESP is not a (Godly) spiritual gift, and to say that a traditional pastor preparing a sermon is answering the questions those listening to him/her have (knowingly or unknowingly) is implying that something like it is.  I have come to believe that the participatory Bible study, where everyone to wishes to knows what will be examined to examine beforehand for him/herself to prepare so as to help others, makes for a situation in which those who have not grown to the maturity to study for oneself, will ask spur of the moment questions which are far more likely to produce the “teachable moment” in which the right statement, which is actually the Spirit speaking into that persons’ spirit, happens. 

On recent reading

            The last little while, I’ve been at least attempting to read a couple of books.  The first one, I’m not going to mention author and title, because, to my surprise, I wasn’t particularly impressed with it.  I forget whether the author had a masters or doctorate (probably doctorate), and is a respected figure within his flavor of the church.  He was #2 guy to one of the biggest name’s within the church a couple of decades ago.  Somehow, in spite of the branch of the church he’s part of being different from my background, I wound up with this book, and decided to read it one day where I knew I’d be stuck waiting for hours.  The subject he was writing on was the names of God in the Bible.  The book was written in 1991.  The flavor of the church he was in was not a Pentecostal/Charismatic one, which is important, as this subject was one consistently covered in those flavors, and emphasized through the Christian media via the songs “El Shaddai” and “Jehovah Jirah.”  In the introduction to the book, he said that his writing was not to encourage an infatuation with secret knowledge, but to assist those who receive it in prayer.  I found this troubling, for assuredly he knows that the phrase “secret knowledge” in the Bible referred to the early Gnostics (heretics) and not to proper knowledge of the Bible that somehow had been passed over with regard to its teaching, as is the case with this subject.  Further, assisting in prayer, albeit a valid goal, can also be a problem, in that much of what goes on with regard to prayer is never provable outside one’s own spirit. 

            Within a few pages, he states that Yhvh and Adonai are two different names in scripture, even to putting in a graph of qualities of various names of God, with a column being the word in Hebrew, with which there was a definition without a word in the space for Adonai.  Just to explain for anyone reading this who may not know, Yhvh is the main Hebrew word for God, translated The Lord in the KJV and many other English versions.  In ancient Hebrew practice, it came about that Yhvh was considered to be too holy to be pronounced, so Adonai was said in its place, but Adonai was not a separate word in the Old Testament.  This writer had to have known that, and I can’t picture what he was thinking, other than that those people who read his book would be persons who respected him, and would accept what he would write, but were “lay” persons who wouldn’t be all that involved in desiring to know details of God’s Word, which would be a shaky premise indeed in this day and age.  There were a few other more minor things that just weren’t quite factually right, and I quit reading after about 30 pages.  I also wonder what the editor at the publishing house (one of the major Christian publishers) was thinking to allow these ideas to be printed without explanation by means of footnotes, although I don’t believe there is a valid explanation.  Amazingly, a large Christian college now offers the contents of this book on their website.  Let’s just say I was disappointed.

            After that, I found that I was in possession of the book, “Experiencing the Depths of Jesus Christ” by Jeanne Guyon.  Guyon was a housewife in Grenoble, France in 1685.  One can reasonably conclude, from what we know of history that the area she lived was dominated socially and politically by the Roman Catholic Church, and that she would not have had access to much information behind the Bible other than the Douay Bible.  Since this book was on the subject of prayer, and pretty much all churches, Catholic, Protestant, and other, institutional and not, tend to guide those not in leadership toward personal introspection, and the One who can rightly guide us in that most correctly is when we are in prayer, which we sometimes oversimplify as talking with God.  I find the few writings on prayer to be difficult to read, in that the writer is attempting to explain a thing which in some ways is impossible to put into words.  This everyday housewife from over 300 years ago also has problems with this, and the translator’s notes before and after the text imply that in the French some of what was said was even more difficult to understand.  Nonetheless, as I got near to the end of her writing, she made some conclusions about more mature stages of the life of following Jesus that resonate with me, given that I’ve been on this walk for over 40 years now, and that at least one of these conclusions is one I have never seen written or heard spoken before, but I can say that I have experienced.  I hope to comment on this writing in greater detail soon.

            Part of the reason for getting into reading this was that I accidentally opened the back cover, and saw that this was printed by Seedsowers, the publishing house connected to the writings of Gene Edwards.  Edwards is a controversial person in the house church branch of believers in Jesus, having added some writings at a time when almost no one was saying the teachings connected to this move of God, but has also said other things many disagree with (I am understating the case).  Bizarrely, in this copy, Seedsowers was listed as being based in Auburn, Maine, and I had only seen it as being credited with its being based in Jacksonville, Florida. 

On www.tithing-russkelly.com

                        One feature of the church I am part of is that of the background difference of the three adult men who take an overly large amount of the discussion of the Bible passage in question any given day.  I say overly large in that I believe that we wish everyone would take an equal share, and would encourage that, but that is something that can’t be forced.  Anyway, one of us has come from a fundamental Baptist background, another (myself) comes from growing up in a mildly Calvinistic background, followed by a couple of decades in Pentecostal/Charismatic “churches”, and another from our modern western secularist/mildly anti-Christian culture.  This variance in background brings into our church’s study of the Bible a variety of streams of thought that bring about greater understanding for all of us, I believe.

            Yesterday, we were continuing to study the book of James.  Somehow, as various persons came into the study, we wound up back on the subject of tithing, which I think a couple of us (myself being one) have had to go over so often over the past couple of years, I, personally, am sick of it, but is totally necessary for my brothers and sisters who have only heard our western status quo teaching which has no basis in the New Covenant.

            To that effect, my brother sent out a Facebook post, which I imagine included those who came in yesterday who had not heard this discussion before.  As I glanced over it, this writer brings up some historical points that I had not heard expressed in the manner he does.  Therefore, this is written to point out this writing: www.tithing-russkelly.com. Other than this writing, I know nothing about this writer other than what is on this site.

On James and wrongdoing in this life

            Last week, I had an afternoon in which I volunteered to cover a position knowing that, in all likelihood, I would be doing nothing.  The next Sunday at church, I knew that we would be beginning to look at the book of James.  Therefore, to begin studying it, I brought with me a commentary that I have found useful in the past, the IVP Bible Background Commentary—New Testament, edited by Keener.  As the name implies, it specializes in explaining the background of the writing, which is important in that that time and place is so different than the one we live in.  Specifically to this writing, we in North America live in participatory democracies; James and the believers of Jewish ancestry which were believers in Jesus lived in a dictatorship in which what they believed was technically illegal.  The government didn’t trust them because the Jews had rebelled against the government before, and would again soon after James finished this writing.  The Jewish religious establishment didn’t trust them because, in accepting Jesus as their Savior, they had effectively rejected their leadership.  Further, the Saducees, who had the ear of the Roman Empire, for that same reason, were not respected by the average Jew.  In Jerusalem, James, by the time he wrote this book, had the respect not just of the believers in the city, but also among average Jews because he was known to care for the poor and was willing to speak out against the abuses of the wealthy.

            The Jewish Law called for treating others fairly, but Roman Law had in it that the upper status persons could take legal action against those of lower statuses, but those of lower status could not take legal action of someone of higher status.  Those of higher status had come to a point of taking advantage of the poor, knowing that they would not be punished.  The Zealots, the Jewish political revolutionary group, was more and more being seen as being reasonable in calling for revolt against Rome and the rich.  Some rich were Romans, but among those who were Jewish, it was still seen as reasonable, as such persons, even in the time of Jesus, were seen as traitors to their people.  James speaks to the feeling that was coming into the believers in Jesus that the Zealots were right to urge revolt.

            In our day and age, James is oftentimes seen as a book somewhat of a New Testament likeness to Proverbs.  In the context above, the way James goes from one thought to the next, and connects back to a thought after a chapter or more makes sense, and seems less disjointed.  The ultimate conclusion James makes is that it is right to speak up against wrongdoing, but condemns being involved in armed revolt against the government.  Given the history of the U.S., that this country gained its independence by armed revolt from a country treating us at the time as a source of raw materials, a place to give land to political favorites, and a place to send criminals, the correct cultural context is not going to be popular. Today, the leaders of too many churches (in this case used in the traditional sense of the term) wish to promote, albeit between the lines usually and overtly in some instances, economic prosperity as a key to a church’s plans. 

            How do I reasonably speak up about wrongdoing?  In the first three drafts of this writing, I enumerated wrongdoings which have particularly affected me, given that none of them are points which our society (or is it the media?) currently considers important.  There are a lot of pieces of wrongdoing that go under the radar.  As a sports fan, I’ve gotten a pile of reporting about the Penn State scandal, the acts of which go back to 1998.  As a former college football player, I know that little wrongdoings go on all the time, albeit not of the degree of the current news.  For instance, I would imagine that all college football teams have a grad assistant who has assigned to him walk-ons in which the coaching staff have determined are insufficiently talented to help them, and the grad assistant’s job is to make those players lives and practices as miserable as possible, so as to give incentive to such players to quit.  As having worked for various companies at bottom level jobs for all my life, I know that little wrongdoings go on all the time; its almost an idiom that any rich person, knowingly or unknowingly, “stomped on” some little persons (economically and politically, not the abnormally short) on their way to wealth.  Further, if an employee has been determined to be a good enough worker that a company doesn’t want to fire them, but wants them gone, a manager can always find some personal imperfection such as to give the employee a first, then second, then third, write up, with the last being sufficient reason to fire a person and not be liable to some state department of labor penalties.  The world considers this normal.  It is sufficiently distasteful that the world doesn’t want to talk about it unless it crosses the line to illegal, or something that should be. 

            It is hard for us in this culture to absorb the idea that we have no more right to expect fairness from the world than we can be grateful that, thanks to Jesus, we don’t expect what we deserve from God.

The Paradox of Free

            For those of us who are believers in Jesus, we are aware of the paradox of the concept of “free.”  The salvation we have been given by Jesus is the most valuable thing in the universe, but it was His free gift to us.  Conversely, to the person who chooses to not believe, or at the least has not chosen so far, it is worthless.  It our culture where there are so many offering things, those things that are offered free in this world are easily treated as worthless, be it the tidal wave of blogs of which this is one more drop of, or the weekly wad of advertising that I get in my mailbox each Wednesday.  Part of the reason that beer advertising is the most humorous is that, to stand out from all the free offerings, more money and talent is spent to make it special.  Way too often, the message of Jesus in this culture is ignored not just because it is free, but if sampled is less than special in the eyes of the beholder.  Fortunately, in my opinion (and I cannot prove this to be anything higher than my opinion), most who have not overtly examined the truth of Jesus and have gone another direction are going another way because they are either deceived or self-deceived.

            We live in a day where, in the world, free is giving one thing to sell another.  In the 1800’s, King Gillette gave away razors to sell blades, and that eventually built a large company.  Today, internet companies give storage space, blog accounts, games, etc. so they can sell advertising for you to see.  Google gives 411 service so as to hear a variety of dialects and accents in words to improve their voice recognition technology, which is more valuable to them than any price they could charge for the service, assuredly to the irritation of competitors or non-competitors attempting to sell the same service.

            The information in the last paragraph comes from Chris Anderson, “Free—Why $0.00 is the Future of Business,” Wired, March, 2008.

On quoting Jim Rutz

            Previously, in one of the five minute commentaries, I quoted the 30 dichotomies between western traditional church and what the author, Jim Rutz, called “open church” in his book, Megashift, which appears extremely similar to what I and many other writers have called simple or organic church.  I thought I’d take a moment to say that, while I believe that what he has said in the 30 dichotomies is valid, it in no way implies my agreement with what Rutz has said about society and politics.

            At this point, I was about to quote the humanist/atheist philosopher Voltaire’s famous quotation, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” when, in proper fashion, I decided to fact check my memory.  First, without fact checking, I would have said “disagree” instead of “disapprove”, although that is trivial.  Second, according to www.quotationspage.com, while the above statement contains a summation of Voltaire’s opinion, and was written as a quote in a book in 1906, there is no evidence that he actually ever said or wrote these exact words, although he wrote something quite similar.  I am really not in a position today to fact check that website.  That said, and with the recognition that I probably agree with far more of what Rutz has written than Voltaire, I must point out that the quote doesn’t align me with much of Rutz’ modern day prophecying, in a secular, opposed to Christian, sense of the word.

            Particularly, I ran across Rutz’ prediction that we will discover how to run cars on water, and from that, the economies of Middle Eastern countries will collapse, and from that, so will the structure of Islam.  My training is not in the natural sciences, so I cannot say whether there is good science to back up the first prediction, although I have seen on tv or read little blips that imply that there might.  If such a thing were to happen, and global warming might begin to reverse, and I believe that there is good recent history that creator God has made this world in a way that is to a degree self-healing in a way that science is only beginning to attempt to understand, all that would be nice.  Could the two conclusions come from the first premise?  I can picture it in my mind, but in and of itself, the premise would need many other occurrances to bring about the economic collapse, and even that would be dubious as to bringing about the second, without many other occurrances.  Of course, there is nothing in the prediction that is ruling out the many other things happening. 

            Even if I believed that, I am not sure that saying so publicly is advisable.  I think of the prophecy of Agabus recorded in Acts 11:28 about a coming famine.  Since Acts was recorded years later, I am certain Luke included it due to Agabus’ having heard the Spirit correctly, as proven by intervening history.  Rutz has shown a penchant for including some ultra-conservative political ideas.    At this time, in this culture, even if I was in agreement with them (and I have not taken the time to read and consider most of them, one way or another), personally I see such as interfering with communicating the message to a lost and dying world.  I also recognize that not doing so is part of what the Spirit has put on my heart to do and not do, and (at best) another person seeking to live for Jesus can have some opposite aspect of life upon their personal calling.  Also, neither you nor I can judge whether any person other than oneself is following, at one’s best, the Spirit’s personal direction upon their unique giftings (by this, I mean that one is first called to accept Jesus’ gift of salvation, then we are called to learn how Jesus taught us to live for Him, as shown in the Bible and by the Spirit in our spirits, and, if we have been faithful to that, and unfortunately many believers appear to live their lives without pursuing the second, then the Spirit can place a part of God’s work upon one’s heart, which is, in some way, connected to what He has given us, maybe physically and mentally, which includes a genetic part and also includes our life experiences and the spiritual aspect, and as spiritual gifts, which may be greater than the 25 or 26 enumerated in the Bible).