Totally Forgiving God Is A Totally Misguided Practice

Posted on August 24, 2012 by Pastor Foley

The blog era seems to have sanctioned the puzzling practice of reviewing books one has not read. (Note to self: What a great idea for a new blog! “A Review of Books I Have Not Read.”) So please note that this is not a review of R.T. Kendall’s new book, Totally Forgiving God, since I have not read same. (For a review of Kendall’s book by someone who admits he has not read it but wants to review it nonetheless, you can check out this piece by Sam Storms.)

Instead, I want to review Kendall’s concept of totally forgiving God, which he presents in two pieces that may save you the price of the book. First, there’s his Will You Forgive God? piece in Charisma Magazine. Second–and, in my view, preferably–there’s his live interview with DrAlvin.com, which, though clocking in at a lengthy 14:22, is really worth a full-length listen. You just have to hear the skeptical tone in Dr. Alvin’s voice as Dr. Alvin makes what to me is the achingly obvious point in the matter, namely, that someone who feels the need to forgive God is clearly not a person who knows God very well:

Dr. A: Let me ask you something. Just between me and you. We’re sitting here, you know, you got some ice tea, I got some lemonade. We’re just talking, OK?

RT: (Cautious.) All right…?

Dr. A: Now when a person tells me–

RT (Puzzled)–Are we on the air?

Dr. A: Yeah, we’re on the air. We’re on the air.

RT: OK.

Dr. A: We’re just, we’re just–

RT: You drink lemonade on the air?

Dr. A: We’re just visualizing sitting talking, OK? Now if someone came to me and said, “I’m mad at God,” for me, that would let me know that they must not know God, because if they really knew God, they wouldn’t ask that question…. One thing I’ve discovered is that if you have an intimate, personal, one-on-one relationship with God, that kind of question–there’s no way in the world I would ever even ask God that kind of question, because I know the nature of God. So when a person’s upset with God, just between me and you, doesn’t that indicate that they really don’t have a one-on-one relationship with the true and living God?

Correct response: Yes. That’s exactly what that means. But RT Kendall disagrees, and, in the process, offers a peculiarly thin conception of forgiveness:

RT: You forgive God first of all by telling him what you feel, and you don’t tell the world… I draw an analogy between total forgiveness when we–we show that we have totally forgiven others who have hurt us when we don’t tell what they did; we only tell the Lord. And so, too, when it comes to totally forgiving God: Don’t utter your complaints to the world. Just say to God, “I don’t understand this.” Because he can cope with that.

Come again?

RT: Totally forgiving God is something you’re going to have to do as long as you live. Never think that just because you do it once it’s over with, it’s dealt with. The truth is, as I teach, that total forgiveness is something that you’ve got to keep doing as long as you live. So in the same way we will always have things that we won’t understand, that we’ll say, “Lord, why did you let this happen to me? Why, when I needed you the most–or why, when I was trying to get so close to you, and I was praying more than ever, reading my Bible, going to church, and I lose my job, or I have this financial reverse, or my best friend betrayed me, God, you could have stopped that! It looks like you don’t love me.” The truth is, this is why we have to set him free, and let him off the hook, and we have to do this as long as we live.

But as Brauns notes in his excerpt from Caneday, there are two salient facts that are just awfully hard to square up with Kendall’s approach here:

  • Forgiveness always concerns sin.
  • God forgives confessed sin.

So unless God confesses a sin to you, you’d be out of line to forgive him. And if God does confess a sin to you, you had better double-check with whom you are speaking.

Kendall is fond of citing Jeremiah as an example of someone who voiced his complaints to God. (It sure seems like the news got out to the world, given that it got included in the Bible and all, so that would seem to violate Kendall’s first forgiveness dictum of not telling anyone else). In his Charisma Magazine article he says, “I do know that Jeremiah said, ‘O Lord, you deceived me, and I was deceived’ (Jer. 20:7, emphasis added).”

God, however, does not seem to be particularly eager to be let off the hook by Jeremiah–though he is quite gracious in extending forgiveness to Jeremiah for Jeremiah’s egregious thinking. Notes one of the commentators at the bottom of Kendall’s article:

Instead of asking Jeremiah to “forgive” God, the Lord instead told him: “You must repent of such words and thoughts! If you do, I will restore you to the privilege of serving me. If you say what is worthwhile instead of what is worthless, I will again allow you to be my spokesman (Jer 15:19)”

“The privilege of serving God”–that’s a powerful (and all too seldom practiced) attitude. Rather than letting God off the hook, let’s count it a privilege to be hooked to the God in whom there is no shadow of turning–and as Dr. Alvin suggests, let’s count it all privilege to get to know him better, regardless of the season through which he is shepherding us.

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Forgiveness As Evangelism

Posted on August 22, 2012 by Pastor Foley

I was teaching about proclaiming the gospel to our North Korean Underground University students in class this past weekend. I asked them if they recalled the official announcement of Kim Jong Il’s ascension to power and, if so, who made the announcement, where did they hear it (e.g., radio, television, meeting), and what were the specific words that were shared?

One by one the students recalled how they first heard the message. One student remembered the announcement being made triumphantly by a famous news announcer. Another shared about a cadre bellowing out the news in a communist party meeting in his village. They recalled the messengers using words like “Dear Leader” and “Beloved Father.”

I explained how the word “gospel” was a technical term that predated Jesus and meant the announcement of the ascension of a new leader. “August Caesar is Lord!” would be a typical formulation of the gospel (or “Kim Jing Il is the Dear Leader” in North Korea), to which those who heard the gospel would be expected to respond in kind, even bowing the knee in submission. This gives us new insight into Philippians 2:9-11 (NIV), where Paul says:

9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

That’s what a gospel proclamation looks like, and that’s how we’re called to respond when we hear one. In Rome, that meant publicly affirming that Jesus was Lord; in today’s North Korea it would mean publicly affirming that Jesus is the Dear Leader.

Our manner of evangelism suggests that we modern evangelical Christians understand the Jesus is Lord/Dear Leader part (I hope we understand that, anyway), but not the bending the knee.

Bending the knee is an unmistakable sign of submission, surrender, and fealty, and it is a key response to the proclamation of the gospel. Every culture has a different version of bending the knee, and no doubt every culture knows what that gesture of submission is. It reminds us that the Christian gospel is not only the announcement of a new leader but also the extension of forgiveness to those in rebellion. I like the phraseology of Dan Phillips of Biblical Christianity here, in a comment posted on Chris Brauns’ blog. Dan writes, “(A)bandon your case against God, repent, and humble yourself in genuine faith.” Preface that with Acts 17:30-31 (NIV) and you have yourself a pretty accurate and compelling presentation of the gospel:

30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”

For years, evangelism stressed the personal vision aspect of the gospel (“God has a wonderful plan for your life”). Now, narrative and testimony are big. But labeling rebellion as rebellion and issuing a call to lay down arms–“(A)bandon your case against God, repent, and humble yourself in genuine faith”–reveals a far deeper understanding of the authority issue that’s involved anytime a gospel is proclaimed.

Even new North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, son of Kim Jong Il, understands that. As the “gospel” of Kim Jong Un’s ascension is proclaimed, North Korea’s agents are spreading the word to North Korean defectors: Return home. All will be forgiven. Kim Jong Un Has a wonderful plan for your life.

“They went back to the North via China after being lured by the North’s promise not to punish them for deserting their country as well as new homes in Pyongyang and new jobs,” she said. “The number of North Korean defectors who returned to the North this year is estimated to top 100.”

Sum it up and say: any gospel proclamation that announces a new reign but does not invite a new repentance doesn’t understand life in North Korea or in the Kingdom of God.

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Persecuted Christians Struggle With Unforgiveness, Too

Posted on August 20, 2012 by Pastor Foley

As I travel around the world speaking about the North Korean underground church, one of the things I observe is that Christians in the West invariably love to hear stories about how persecuted Christians produce jaw-dropping, heart-warming forgiveness with the same frequency and ease with which McDonald’s produces french fries.

The one small problem with this is that it’s not true.

In my own experience, persecuted Christians struggle with unforgiveness at least as much as Christians in the West do. They may even struggle with unforgiveness more than we do, given the suffering their families, villages, and churches regularly experience. Persecuted Christians are sometimes some of the least forgiving and most bitter saints I meet.

I can recall a Voice of the Martyrs/US Conference years ago to which Mrs. Foley and I had brought a North Korean brother to speak. An American man and his five year old son came up to meet the North Korean after his presentation, and the American greeted our brother by saying, “This is my son, Little Timmy. He prays every night that God will open Kim Jong Il’s heart to accept the gospel.” Our North Korean brother turned to us and said, “Really? I just pray every night that God kills him.”

When we assume that forgiveness somehow flows spontaneously in a persecuted setting, we overlook the reality that forgiveness is described in Scripture as a spiritual discipline, not a miracle. It is learned, in other words, not latent. We learn how to extend forgiveness to those who commit big sins against us by first extending forgiveness to those who commit little sins against us. And when we fail to see the connection between extending little forgivenesses and extending big forgivenesses, we hyperspiritualize persecuted Christians, letting ourselves off the hook from growing in the grace of forgiveness and ignoring the reality that it doesn’t matter where you are a Christian; God is going to seek to grow you daily in the Work of Mercy of forgiving and reconciling.

At Seoul USA’s Underground University we train North Korean defectors to serve as missionaries wherever North Koreans are found. One of the ten curriculum tracks we teach is forgiveness. It may be the hardest track of all for the students, even more arduous and demanding than survival training and the constant Scripture memorization.

After teaching UU for four years, I can assure you that genuine, authentic, lasting forgiveness of the North Korean regime does not arise spontaneously in the hearts of North Korean Christians. It must be practiced–not because it’s a human effort but because it’s an act of surrender to the work of the Holy Spirit. Truth is, we don’t like where the consequences of forgiveness lead us, i.e., to the hard (and yes, Holy Spirit-powered) life of reconciled relationships.

In order to ensure that we grow in our practice of forgiveness each day, Jesus inserts into the Lord’s Prayer a daily petition that God’s forgiveness toward us be shaped by our forgiveness toward others. “Forgive me today in the same way I am forgiving others today, Lord.” That is humbling and stretching no matter in what nation God calls you to be his disciple. It is not an ounce easier in Nigeria than in North Dakota.

Yes, beautiful, breathtaking forgiveness does happen among persecuted Christians. But it happens among those who have daily kept their hearts tender before the Lord through far less breathtaking, far more mundane acts of forgiveness preceding the hurt. The most moving stories of forgiveness in places like North Korea and Pakistan and Eritrea are not ones where a persecuted Christian spontaneously extends forgiveness to those who harmed his family. The most moving stories are the ones where a persecuted Christian prepared for the major forgiveness he would need to offer by working daily through the mundane morass of underground church conflicts, fights with his wife, and spats at work with co-workers.

The miracle, in other words, is not the spontaneous extension of forgiveness but the hard-won battle quietly waged daily by the Holy Spirit to keep each of us from slipping into the sludge of bitterness, not at the hands of our worst enemies but rather our regular and closest companions.

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