“It was faith, penitently, appropriating the mercy of God in Christ.”
No truer words could be spoken. So many giants of the faith, I am willing to suppose only needed a grain of faith. God can be silent, but not in the end when it matters most. Where that end comes can be an object of great speculation and impossible to determine from the vantage point of another.
And in his mercy he often does not make us suffer to the uttermost. It could even be said that because Christ suffered to the uttermost, that we should not have to. What remains to be experienced can be a real test of our faith though.
We do indeed have much to learn from both the Psalmists as well as the author of Hebrews.
I suppose one should also allow for silent presence. As in we can be enjoying fellowship or communion also in just the mere presence of a beloved, even if no words are being uttered in the moment.
But an extended silence - and the heart quickly begins to worry.
I don’t know about that. What I mean is it depends I guess on the mark he leaves you with. He makes more of an impression on some I suppose.
The NT talks about an assurance of faith, as I recall, it is something more precious than gold.
I do. As in, when in the presence of a person we love, people can be enjoying communion in silence. But if your spouse is giving you the silent treatment, few could fail to notice that in a hurry.
With God, we don’t literally see God’s presence there as we do a person, so there is a difference to be sure. But since our loves -especially marriage - are often used to teach us about our relationship to God, I think the comparisons still bear something worth reflecting on.
Well said, as this certainly opens up the discussion to consider what your wife’s silent treatment looks like to other people compared to how you understand it before you are married, the first year of marriage, and after ten years of marriage.
I haven’t got to the 20 year mark, so I can’t speak to that.
But how little do we really know what this experience is like for someone else.
Like I said, I have no problem looking away for someone who claims to have a very different experience of God… not so good to marry such a person though 
God through Jesus was and is more real than other people… especially as sin makes us appear so unreal to one another… even by those who are closest to us
Actually - I’m not sure it would be so good to marry a person whose perception of God exactly matched mine! (Or rather - I would strongly suspect they - or much worse, I - was attempting to force our perceptions to be in total conformity to my own.)
MacDonald wrote somewhere that every relationship to God is unique to that human being. Which means that every human being provides a new and unique window into who God is. I think that’s a beautiful view of humanity.
Yes. I think those who once felt that assurance, yet find it has since dissolved after years of silence, apparent absence, would agree. And when the treasure of assurance is no more, the feeling of loss is acute.
It’s easy for me to rely on theological statements that I’ve learned, in order to explain others’ experiences neatly in terms I’m comfortable with. Believe me (if you so will), taking the contrarian’s position against MacDonald, whose works I’d prefer to embrace completely, makes me very uncomfortable. However, truthful accounts I’ve heard here and elsewhere present me with harder questions, that I don’t believe MacDonald is answering, or answering sufficiently.
It’s hard to listen to the experiences, even from a position of faith, and recognize that the experience of loss could very well be mine. It would be vastly comforting to be able to look to MacDonald, or anyone else and be able to shout, “Eureka!” What a gift to be able to share with a friend, “That thing you were looking for; I have found it over here.”
The nit picker in me can’t help but take notice of ‘theological statements’ as a way to minimize the writing in the NT.
Clear statements like “they went out from us because they were not of us” set a frame that cannot be entirely ignored. Maybe they’ll come back, maybe they won’t, maybe they left because we were not with as we should be. There are many ways to slice it.
But I really like what you said earlier, the comment where I said “I like this a LOT.” Each one of us knows what we know, and either we know him as the OT foretold, or we don’t.
I’m so glad he is the Lord of unity and diversity!!
No. I’m not trying to minimize anything. I find, though, that
is in direct conflict with the life-experiences that have been described to me. My calvinist-leaning heart would love to say your verse explains it all. I’ve said it myself. And then I’ve talked to people.
So, I’m wrestling here in public in front of God and everybody.
Here’s the full quote that you referenced:
And the part you said you liked a lot:
I wasn’t sure, and still am not, what you like about this. (Feel free to explain.) My intent in both posts are nearly identical. Yes, we know what we know from our own experiences (observation of miracles, loss of faith, persistence of faith, all of it). But the sharp designation of “know or not” is not, as far as I am understanding it, necessarily part of the picture.
To clarify the “necessarily”:
For example, one must eventually make one’s faith one’s own, rather than relying on the familial and cultural structures that support it. (An interesting rumination on this can be found in “Tuning Up” in Fear and Trembling.) This might fit with your OT reference. It’s a common experience among young adults.
However, for one who has been in the fold, not only lived within the covenant community, but had an active, vibrant faith, but who through years of eroding circumstances and divine silence, in spite of wrestling with God and everyone else to hang on, continually comes up empty handed. For years. Decades.
It’s easy for me to say, “Yeah, well, it’s obvious that you didn’t believe/experience/wrestle/practice right.” “Once a goat, always a goat.” I think in taking that regularly-approved path of thinking, I’d be wrong.
I don’t have “approved” categories to deal with this second example, that I find adequate.
There are clear examples and there are not so clear.
When someone stops believing in Jesus and goes on a vacation, then that is one thing and something I cannot see myself doing. For me there is a very real sense, that I have nowhere else to go. And I say this as someone who was convinced that Jesus was a myth.
Because it seemed as if you were saying, you know what you know, and were withholding judgement from others who don’t appear to know what you know.
There are some really outstanding cases of grief and silence. I’ve been there, and in my all or nothing desperation, I was blessed with a more intimate knowledge of Jesus. Where others are on that path, and if they are even on it, is hard and even impossible to tell. He warned about trying to separate the sheep from the goats.
My former pastor would sometimes remark the Jews had 500 years of silence before the Messiah came to them.
Precisely. Therefore my insistence at not forcing their experiences into a model that only works for us.
Again, all of this is a great challenge to my own thinking. I’m not saying that any answer is obvious or easy. At least to me.
It seems that we all (at least, I do) try to justify our highest ideals. …the classic justifications of not feeling near to God are because sin from the beginning has separated us; and for a Christian, sometimes it throws the onus back on us too, as in " if you don’t feel close to God, guess who moved." I don’t think Jesus himself would support such a thinking, as he invited the children to come to him. The very concept that God does not respond to all pleas seems to be confirmed by the fact that many have not even heard the gospel.
I think Macdonald is also trying to justify his faith in God’s goodness by supposing that having a need, and asking for an answer, brings another dimension to our relationship with God. One stark contrast between Macdonald and the harsh theodicy of my experience (here I am trying to excuse Macdonald, myself, because of my enjoyment of his writings) appears in that he continues to believe that whatever the cause,. God’s plan is for yet closer relationship …not a response of pitying magnanimity. Even though his idea does carry huge flaws, he keeps his sights on the image of the father seeking the son.
It’s when they force their model of what God can or cannot do on your experience that it gets interesting and better lines can be drawn.
And then there are wolves in sheep’s clothing
Probably, better lines can be drawn or redrawn. One always needs to evaluate the effect of what one can control, that is, one’s own actions.
Sometimes it’s best, if one is “done” with the matter, to withdraw oneself from it.
Absolutely. The false teacher/prophet parading around as a follower of Jesus with special wisdom or knowledge is a real danger. We see them all over the place in pulpits, leading Bible studies, pumping out best sellers.
That pretty much sums it up.
Allow me a little digression here. Craig Keener has some great words here in his lectures on Revelation concerning the letters to the seven Churches. As you may know he is charismatic or as James Smith prefers the term small p pentecostal. Keener gives no quarter to cessationists like John MacArthur.
I absolutely love Keener as a scholar and apologist and yet I fundamentally disagree with his egalitarianism.
Some of these things we have to agree to disagree on, even when we cannot.
Apart from doctrine, it comes down to who do we say Jesus is and do we love one another, even your enemies in and out of the Church 
One last thing regarding false teachers, somewhere around 2001, I was a recently converted Christian. God had done some cool stuff to heal me and pull me out of the world. I had been attending this local non-denominational Church for about a year and took an interest in another Church. So I went to one of their meetings in the pastor’s home and he preached from Jude. What he said about false teachers scared me. Like for the first time I felt the fear of God. And I’d say it was a few months later I had a real encounter with Jesus and understood how much I deserved to go to hell. “But God, please allow me a place under the table, like an unsightly dog, and at your feet I can be near you.”
And MacDonald is a firm believer that the loving Father does not leave you in that state - ‘under the table’; but instead wants to clothe you in the best robes, put a ring on your finger, and let the party begin! We have that image of the hospitable Father too. But it is probably good to keep all these scriptural depictions of God close at hand, since each of them seems to have its necessary season in our lives.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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