Mystical Practices Enter the Christian Culture

PIETY AND EXPERIENTIAL ZEAL

The pietism movements of the middle ages progressed rapidly in Roman Catholicism. This, in turn, produced an experiential theology among monastics and others that exhibited great zeal on the part of the participants. But Christian zeal can be misplaced when based on other than the scriptures. In the Christian church today it has produced a lack of proper moderation and balance. Ephesians 4 indicates this with an outline of God's method for moderation. This is not new to the New Testament. There are many sources in the Old Testament which testify to the need for scriptural knowledge and balance (Ho 4:6; Isa 29:13 and Mt 15:8). Mysticism in the modern church has many fingers and is producing a pendulum effect from one extreme to the other:

• Academic versus Experiential


• Reason versus Faith


• Objective versus Subjective


• Mind versus Heart

As it goes back and forth, we are reminded that God made all things very good (Gen 1:31), then it was perverted by sin. Things are not sinful, but the use of them, including the intangibles of thoughts, reason, motivations and even philosophy can be unclean (Rom 14:14), just as in the amoral issues.

MYSTICAL PERVERSIONS

We have mentioned before contemplative prayer, labryinth praying, imagination and visualization. Now add piety and experiential zeal. Rom 10:2 says, "For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. Knowledge of the Word of God with good rules of interpretation is paramount.

Piety is the desire to have the Chrisian life experienced as more than just an academic, theological or intellectual discussion or feeling. It occurs in the modern church because of the decline into ritual, confession and cold intellectual discourse. It has its roots in four pivotal players of pietistic practice:

• Arndt - looked for the Kingdom of God within; zealous for a changed life
• Spener - was more aggressively experiential
• Francke - expanded the emphasis on changed life and missions
• Von Zinzendorf - spoke of and developed the "theology of the heart"

The children and grandchildren of pietism generated first the use of the Scriptures for the basis of their experience while still advocating the need for individual experience. Second generations of children stressed experience but often without a proper biblical basis. And the grandchildren in the third generation questioned the practice or individual experience not backed by authority to have it. The Scripture has been lost as the authority to them, and a new authority is sought. The "default" of the human experience is the flesh, consequently in the absence of scriptural authority human reason or subjective experience fills the void. The pendulum is swinging, swinging and swinging. Where it stops nobody knows.

The great-grandchildren of Pietism is deism, skepticism and rationalism. In the fourth generation by following the logical path of their forebears, they are now "liberated" from the traditions of the previous generations. They are free to experiment with new and "better" experiences. It becomes more "mystical", ...in feelings, experience and relationships. Here are the new freedoms:

• Freedom #1 - deism: God is there but transcendent and not dictating what experiences are proper so one can use his own reason to get to a religious experience if one is desired; if not just be rational and live your life
• Freedom #2 - skepticism: Who knows if God is there anyway? Doubt replaces certainty; authority is one's own mind. Nothing can be certain except you probably will not have to answer for anything, will you?
• Freedom #3 - rationalism: The charade is over; you and your reason are all that is left. Matter is the only absolute and morals are baseless except as agreed upon principles of reasonable parameters of behavior. Pragmatism reigns or is preparing to reign.
• Freedom #4 - Freed from the shackles of the absolutists and their mindless subjection to tradition but repulsed by a world that has no "spirit", reason is abandoned for the more spiritual subjective experience. Knowledge, too, has been abandoned.
• Freedom #5 - Insecure with no tether to hold them, a new generation seeks the old ways with a robust skepticism toward both human reason and emotional excesses. Thus, a new, revived pietism begins all over again.

When will the pendulum stop?