Nojo

Church was great last night, as always. But it was also disturbing. In the sermons and videos I’ve seen lately, and in my studies, I have seen a thread that suggests something bad is up ahead, and that I may not be able to do anything about it. I feel like I’m being prepared. But I’m not sure.

The thing I’m concerned about primarily involves someone else, not me.

Pentecostals always strive to get the gifts of the Spirit and the fruit of the Spirit. We’re told to “covet” the gift of prophecy, although it’s not clear that the thing identified as “prophecy” in this context is the same thing that word describes in the Old Testament. Ancient Jewish prophets were supposed to be stoned if they ever prognosticated wrongly; they had to be infallible to be considered prophets. I have heard people describe the New Testament “prophetic” gift as something different. An ability to exhort and instruct people, with God’s guidance. If that’s true, it’s unfortunate that we use the same term to describe it.

I always ask for the gifts called the word of knowledge and the word of wisdom. If we understand the word of knowledge correctly, it means God informs us of things we otherwise could not know. For example, a prophet told Paul he would be bound and imprisoned. This is a good gift to have, because we always profit from knowing bad things are on the way. Very often, we can avoid them through prayer and repentance, or just by taking the appropriate action, such as taking a different road or changing a flight. Other times, we can’t avoid them no matter what we do, but we can be prepared, and we can find whatever blessings follow in the aftermath. And we can avoid being offended. People who live by faith get used to having God solve their problems, and on the occasions when he doesn’t, it’s easy to get angry at God and question his goodness, and that’s worse than the problems themselves. If you see things coming, you’re not as likely to take that attitude.

God has never spoken to me. A lot of people like to yap about how God told them this or that, and I am always highly skeptical. It’s not that I don’t think God tells people things. But I think it’s unusual to be completely certain that God has told you something. I’m sure God has put ideas and motivations and so on inside my mind, but I would never claim God had “spoken” to me unless I clearly perceived words, either written or spoken, which I knew came from God. I would have to hear a voice or read something. That has never happened to me.

Many times, I’ve felt that something I was considering doing or an idea I had had was right and inspired, and then it has turned out I was wrong. What if I had stood up in church and hollered, “GOD TOLD ME THIS,” and then rattled on about something God had nothing to do with? People do that all the time. I’ve seen ministers do it. They say extremely stupid things, and they attribute them to God. Isn’t that taking the Lord’s name in vain? You claim you speak in his name, and then you say something dumb. Is there any better example of violating that commandment? Think about the harm a person like that can do. They can convince their followers to commit suicide, for example. That has happened. What if Moses had made up the thing about God directing the Jews into the desert? “God said we’d be fine. Those dried-up corpses are an illusion.”

I absolutely refuse to say God has told me things. It will never happen, unless I have experienced miraculous events I know I can rely on. God sent Joseph an angel. He sent Mary an angel. He spoke to Moses and Abraham. He sent an angel to the father of John the Baptist. He doesn’t need me to sit down here guessing. My guesses are often wrong. If he wants me to know something, he is well able to tell me. I think God illuminates the Bible when I read, and he gives me wisdom when I need it, and many times, during prayer, I’ve felt sudden rushes of faith that I considered confirmation that I was going to receive what I had asked for. But that’s not “God spoke to me.” It’s wrong to confuse these things.

I saw a preacher the other day, stating that Jesus appeared to him after his daughter’s death. He said Jesus explained some things to him, and he related it to the audience. This is a guy who can say “God spoke to me.” But if you’re trying to quit drinking, and you suddenly have a feeling that God won’t mind if you have one more bender, it’s probably not God, and whatever it is, it’s not someone “speaking” to you. If you’re defaulting on your loans, and you think God is telling you to give him a big offering which you could be using to pay your debts, you may be hearing from somebody, but I doubt it’s God.

I have known someone who claimed to give generously to ministries and charities. I later found out that this person was a financial train wreck, with huge debts and a negative net worth. How can that be, if we are promised time and time again that God will provide for people who help the poor? It had to be because this person robbed men to give to God. If you rip off your creditors to give to charity, aren’t your creditors the real givers? Surely, when this person told me God directed the giving, those claims were untrue.

That’s something I need to think about, actually. I avoid incurring debt, but there is one matter involving debt which I should look after.

I always hope I’ll reach a state where God will supernaturally inform me before bad things happen, in a very explicit and direct way. That would sure be nice. Because I have not been taken in by the liars who stand in the pulpit making highly questionable statements about people who “refused” to let bad things happen to them, “by faith.” I am used to experiencing deliverance and God’s generosity, but I am not a complete idiot. If Peter was crucified, and if Paul was shipwrecked, stoned, flogged repeatedly, and beheaded, bad things are going to happen to me and the people I care about from time to time, and it’s just plain stupid to think I can run around squalling, “I’M STANDING ON THE WORD” and avoid misfortune every single time.

The neat thing about many of the bad things that happened to Biblical figures is that they knew about them in advance. Nobody wants to be beheaded, but if it’s going to happen, it looks much more like a defeat if it happens unexpectedly and they drag you off kicking and screaming. It’s really not the same, when you take it calmly and get your house in order first. For the enemy, there is no real victory in harming you. The victory is in stealing your faith and your dignity.

So this is a gift I would like to have. It’s good to say, “I don’t understand why this happened, but my faith is not shaken.” It’s better to be able to say, “I am grateful I knew about this and was able to get all the blessings out of it.”

I don’t have that gift, but I think just about any believer will routinely receive subtle–or not so subtle–clues about the future. God tends to prepare us for things, and sometimes we realize it as he’s doing it. I hope I’m misinterpreting the things I’ve seen lately.

In other news, I think I’ve made a wonderful discovery. When I started getting into tools, I got myself a big pump jar full of Gojo, because ordinary soap is useless on the kind of greasy dirt you pick up from working on machinery. And the Gojo did not work very well. In the old days, it was great. It took just about anything off, and you didn’t even need to add water to it. It was miraculous. So I was disturbed to see that the new stuff didn’t do the job.

Finally, I pinpointed the likely culprits. Hippies. Who else routinely removes great products from the marketplace? I knew the old Gojo was full of scary chemicals. The new stuff says “natural” on the bottle, and “natural,” like “eco-friendly,” is often a synonym for “more expensive yet totally ineffective.” Like the pathetic pyrethrin-based bug sprays South Florida insects cackle at. I don’t know what the hippies didn’t like about the petroleum-based chemicals in Gojo, but they must have found fault with them, because Gojo is worthless now. I will never buy it again. I also tried Zep, and it’s also worthless.

Yesterday I went to Northern Tool to look at a band saw and a chain hoist. Because I am crazy. And while I was there, I spotted some obscure brands of hand cleaner. I figured the hippies had probably banned all types of good hand cleaner, but I checked the labels anyway, and I saw some very promising references to “petroleum distillates.” I bought the smallest size of a product called Permatex, and I took it home and did my best to grease up my hand, and I applied the cleaner. Seems to work. It has that same mysterious vibrating quality the old Gojo had; remember watching the can shake after you slapped it down on the sink? And it took the crud off my hand.

My advice is to run to Northern Tool and buy several crates of this stuff before the hippies find out about it. They think we should all be free to take street drugs full of lye and baby laxative, but they can’t bear the thought of allowing us to have bug spray and hand cleaner and breast implants. Yoda might have put it this way: “The dark side clouds everything. Impossible to see the logic is.”

I’m going to empty my Gojo can and fill it with Permatex, which doesn’t come in nice pump bottles. Life is too short to spend with black grease smears on your hands.