I now know that I have never believed that God loved anyone, or that if He did it was only conditional on one's keeping of the Law, which I cannot do, so therefore I am excluded.
There is not the slightest value in my asserting propositions just because they are true. Such is not faith but hypocrisy and it is an effort I can no longer endure let alone practice. This effort is not holding fast to sound doctrine as St Paul commands but is in fact a refusal. a self righteous one to boot, to acknowledge the sin of unbelief whereby we have already forsaken said sound doctrine.
Thus the primacy of the intellect, a doctrine the Puritans built their lives on, is part of the hypocrite's mandate. In repressing my unbelieving heart I stirred up my unbelief to an unmanageable extent. It is better to confess unbelief than pretend faith, and C S Lewis notwithstanding, pretending to faith is a blasphemous absurdity.
How can I be a Christian then? Not by what I believe but by Who I met that dark night now just over 38 years ago. Indeed without such encounter I hold that no one is a Christian at all, though what the encounter is, the nature of it, is to be determined by what God knows is needful in every individual person.
And how does the Lord keep me safe, for my sense of safety in Him is slowly but genuinely growing?
He gives me ecstasy in my meditations of the Mysterium Tremendum, the tremendous mystery of His unutterable holiness.
Some 5 years after I was converted he gave me a revelation of this, as I previously shared here earlier.
Although at this time my terror is coming out, He leads me in one on one counsel to confess to Him that I am in fact terrified - no "confessions of faith" here. Then He leads me to repent of some aspect of the unbelief behind the fear, whatever it suits His purpose to lead me in at that time. This is pure personal relationship between a terrified child and his daddy, or a patient and his counsellor - but God the Spirit is the only counsellor I will ever accept now - and it is nothing else. I am totally helpless and reliant on His leading in cleansing.
My safety is that He is Holy and Terrible. This is not fear but Awe. And if I must tell Him that the notion that loving Him is utter nonsense or that He loves anything but Himself is pure wishful thinking, so be it. Such as this must be confessed, for if not, and it is in you, it will destroy your faith as it nearly destroyed mine.
But I am drawn by the Tremendous Mystery of the Holy and Terrible. the one thing I have always listened to. If I could admit to it I have discovered by experience and relationship His gentleness patience and kindness, but that I cannot bring my self to do. Not yet, at least.
So though unbelieving I am relatively safe.
This work, though provisional, being a stepping stone to a further goal, is the Lord's doing and it is marvelous in my eyes
There is not the slightest value in my asserting propositions just because they are true. Such is not faith but hypocrisy and it is an effort I can no longer endure let alone practice. This effort is not holding fast to sound doctrine as St Paul commands but is in fact a refusal. a self righteous one to boot, to acknowledge the sin of unbelief whereby we have already forsaken said sound doctrine.
Thus the primacy of the intellect, a doctrine the Puritans built their lives on, is part of the hypocrite's mandate. In repressing my unbelieving heart I stirred up my unbelief to an unmanageable extent. It is better to confess unbelief than pretend faith, and C S Lewis notwithstanding, pretending to faith is a blasphemous absurdity.
How can I be a Christian then? Not by what I believe but by Who I met that dark night now just over 38 years ago. Indeed without such encounter I hold that no one is a Christian at all, though what the encounter is, the nature of it, is to be determined by what God knows is needful in every individual person.
And how does the Lord keep me safe, for my sense of safety in Him is slowly but genuinely growing?
He gives me ecstasy in my meditations of the Mysterium Tremendum, the tremendous mystery of His unutterable holiness.
Some 5 years after I was converted he gave me a revelation of this, as I previously shared here earlier.
Although at this time my terror is coming out, He leads me in one on one counsel to confess to Him that I am in fact terrified - no "confessions of faith" here. Then He leads me to repent of some aspect of the unbelief behind the fear, whatever it suits His purpose to lead me in at that time. This is pure personal relationship between a terrified child and his daddy, or a patient and his counsellor - but God the Spirit is the only counsellor I will ever accept now - and it is nothing else. I am totally helpless and reliant on His leading in cleansing.
My safety is that He is Holy and Terrible. This is not fear but Awe. And if I must tell Him that the notion that loving Him is utter nonsense or that He loves anything but Himself is pure wishful thinking, so be it. Such as this must be confessed, for if not, and it is in you, it will destroy your faith as it nearly destroyed mine.
But I am drawn by the Tremendous Mystery of the Holy and Terrible. the one thing I have always listened to. If I could admit to it I have discovered by experience and relationship His gentleness patience and kindness, but that I cannot bring my self to do. Not yet, at least.
So though unbelieving I am relatively safe.
This work, though provisional, being a stepping stone to a further goal, is the Lord's doing and it is marvelous in my eyes
