When best-selling white evangelical books claim to have a “message from God,” that message always sounds like this: “As you walk along your life-path holding My hand, you are already in touch with the essence of heaven: nearness to Me.”
Somehow it never sounds like this:
Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you,
the glory of the Lord shall be your rearguard.
Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.
That’s from the book of Isaiah. The author of that book claimed to have a message from God. So did the author of the book of Micah:
He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?
The Gospels, too, contain what they say are messages from God. You can even buy editions of those Gospels that have the message-from-God parts highlighted in red ink.
But those messages from God don’t seem very popular, so I guess we had to keep looking for something more appealing — something nicer.
Ruth Graham (not that one) writes about the controversy surrounding the devotional Jesus Calling — “The Evangelical Best-seller You’ve Never Heard Of.” Written by a reclusive former missionary named Sarah Young, Jesus Calling has sold more than 10 million copies, as well as millions of dollars worth of ancillary tie-ins, for publisher Thomas Nelson.
The gimmick of Young’s book is that it’s written in the first-person voice of Jesus. That hand-holding-Jesus pudding in the first sentence of this post is an example of the kind of thing “Jesus” has to say in the book.
Young practices what she calls “listening prayer,” in which she says she receives messages from God which she then writes down. That’s similar to the process by which her target audience imagines the Bible was written (it’s not how the Bible was written — “inspiration” is not a synonym for dictation — but that’s the popular idea). Over on the Pentecostal/charismatic side of white evangelicalism, the idea of new revelation and new words from God isn’t controversial. But over on the fundie/inerrancy side of white evangelicalism, Young’s claim is perceived as a dangerous threat to the alleged doctrine of sola scriptura.
As Graham writes:
If Jesus Calling has become a cash cow for its author and publisher, it has also, it’s fair to surmise, become something of a headache. Though many evangelicals talk of listening for God’s voice and experiencing his presence, the notion of speaking publicly in the voice of God is questionable at best, heretical at worst. Young’s book has prompted objections from within the mainstream evangelical community, from people who say the book is misleading, or even dangerous. “She puts her thoughts into the first person and then presents that ‘person’ as the resurrected Lord,” David Crump, professor of religion at evangelical Calvin College, told Christianity Today. “I’m tempted to call this blasphemy.”
Thomas Nelson specifically requested I not use the word “channeling” to describe Young’s first-person writing in the voice of Jesus — the word has New Age connotations — but it’s hard to avoid it in describing the book’s rhetorical approach. And on the edges of evangelicalism, where alertness to “New Age” influence runs high, concern has bloomed into outrage.
That last sentence is inaccurate. These folks didn’t read Young’s book and then, as a consequence, become outraged. These folks exist in a perpetual state of outrage. They maintain, nurture and tend this constant outrage with great care, which requires them to be always on the lookout for new pretexts and new targets at which it can be directed.
In this case, though, I’m sympathetic to their concern, if not their outrage. I think there should be a substantial burden of proof for anyone claiming to have received a “message from God.” Any such message should be treated with great skepticism.
If someone claims to be don’t-say-channeling the voice of Jesus, then whatever it is they say Jesus said has to be considered in the context of the other things that Jesus has said. If this new “message from Jesus” tells us to worry about tomorrow, to hate our enemies, to establish financial security, and to shun outcasts, then I think it’s safe to conclude that this message is not from Jesus.
“As you walk along your life-path holding My hand, you are already in touch with the essence of heaven: nearness to Me,” doesn’t strike me as the sort of thing Jesus ever said before or would be likely to say now.
But let’s not single out Young. Most of her evangelical critics have the same problem. Actually, I think their problem is probably worse than hers.
A goofy first-person-Jesus devotional based on “listening prayer” isn’t upsetting or confusing to me. But when other evangelicals turn to the Bible itself seeking a “message from God,” it seems far weirder that they should come away with their own endless variations of walking along their life-paths holding Jesus’ hand. That stuff ain’t in there, yet so many claim to have found it there.
But the really confusing and upsetting part isn’t the stuff they find in there that ain’t there, it’s the stuff that is in there that they somehow never see. “Loose the bonds of injustice … share your bread with the hungry.” “Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly.” Those are messages from God, spelled out right there on the page.
Yet for white evangelicalism, they might as well be written in invisible ink.
“If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”
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