Thank God this dry and challenging patch has passed, and at the strangest time. This is due in large part to my shutting out of certain conservative-legalistic influences under which I have been toiling lately. It has been a discipline to resist engaging them but it has been an endeavour that was both necessary and fruitful.
These were not the villains I would have expected to be taken by. A year ago, in a time of what I now see was spiritual overconfidence, it seemed that I was indestructible. I guess in a spiritual sense, knowing in whose bosom my spirit is held that’s true – but I found that it didn’t mean I couldn’t be wounded.
The last 8 – 12 months have been months filled with small lessons from which a number of bigger-picture lessons have been born. The danger of spiritual overconfidence should not be underestimated. I grabbed a bit further than I could reach and what I pulled down, what was on the shelf that I could not see until it was coming down at me, pinned me to the floor for a while.
My adversaries were more prepared than I expected them to be; I wasn’t over-matched, I was under-prepared. My preconceptions misled me, having heard of the surface of their shallowest convictions from even shallower informants. I give them credit for this preparedness, although I have come to believe it is a misdirected effort on their parts. There are things they detest, and while their protests may have false foundations, those foundations are completely reasonable in their minds and exclusively believed.
The strategy of these groups (in this case what I would describe as conservative neo-Anabaptist), of most groups of a controlling nature (I could just say “cults” and save myself the keystrokes but…) is to pick certain authors and teachings and a build a theory of a thread running through them that unlocks the door to “what they were really trying to say”. And you can include biblical authors and passages in that pool of resources.
They will claim that they are “the Remnant”, the only remaining trace of true Christianity on the earth. They then proceed to shield their adherents from the full spectrum of Christian historical thought at nearly any cost while presenting selected passages of Christian thought in such a way that it appears to support their premises.
Once the new follower has been so misled, he or she is told that even the investigation of opposing views is an invitation to spiritual corruption. They are then in a trapped in a position with few escape options other than chewing off the leg or arm by which they have been ensnared. So when they come away, if they come away at all, they come away wounded or impaired or both.
Not to worry though, the one who heals our wounds and clears our impediments is waiting with open arms.
