“Don’t get mystical.” This is one well known pastor’s advice on how to reach people with the Gospel. The thinking is that we need to express the Gospel message in practical terms. We need to tell the Gospel story by appealing to morality and reason. Instruct people how they can live a better life. Show
them how to make sense of our lives and the world in which we live. While there is truth in this way of thinking, it goes too far when it strips away anything that isn’t first processed through the mind. In this way, what might be considered unusual or out of the ordinary, supernatural encounters with God come to be viewed as unnecessary distractions from the fundamental truth of the Gospel.
One problem with this is that it doesn’t seem to make best sense of the nature of Christianity as expressed in the Bible. The Biblical world is full of strange and wonderful things. It is enlivened with the presence of an immaterial spirit world. It readily embraces the inbreaking of the Spirit of God into the present age. It celebrates the transcendent work of God in His world. It welcomes the mystical as a fundamental part of the faith. Union with Christ is not just intellectual assent. It isn’t just agreeing with Jesus! It has to do with being somehow invited into the divine life and into fellowship with the Trinity. Biblical Christianity is not cold, emotionless intellectualism. God’s work in us is not restricted to what keeps us respectable in the eyes of the world. In the words of J.K.A. Smith, “The way we ‘know’ is more like a dance than deduction.”[1]
[1] Smith, James K. A. Thinking in Tongues: Pentecostal Contributions to Christian Philosophy (Pentecostal Manifestos) (p. 82). Eerdmans Publishing Co - A. Kindle Edition.
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