Thanks for so beautifully expressing some of the systematic theology associated with your branch of the church.
We all have different experiences and traditions somewhat like the colours of the rainbow where the pure light of the Word is filtered out into beautiful colours depending on history and tradition.
We can however agree on foundational truths like the Nicean Creed agreed before the great divide.
My journey has been somewhat different as you are probably aware.
The Person of the Holy Spirit communing within individually is a very important aspect of my Christian experience.
That emphasis on the individual experience of the Spirit was very much a major part of my upbringing. I wasn't raised in a traditional Christian setting, that very much came later in life for me.
My first eight years of life were spent in my mom's non-denominational church, where she met my dad when he was leading a young adult/college age Bible study group. However we were forced out when I was 8 because of some very unsavory activities by some of the church leadership (not the pastor, but the pastor actually had very little control and input in the church, who was among the few people in that church who continued to stay in contact with my family afterward).
Following that we found a warm welcome at the local Foursquare congregation that met at the local YMCA. They were absolutely wonderful and lovely people who made us feel welcome and home. And it was in that church where most of my religious upbringing took place.
As I entered adolescence I went through many experiences, at the age of 12 a visiting evangelist laid hands on me to "baptize me with the Holy Spirit with evidence of speaking in tongues", I was "slain in the Spirit" a number of times in my teenage years. Much of my life was spent focusing quite enthusiastically on my personal relationship with God, and trying to hear and experience the Holy Spirit. Sometimes I felt like the Holy Spirit was nearer than my own skin, and other times I felt like I was a trillion miles away from God. Like a yo-yo moving through spiritual highs and lows, attributing my highs as spiritual successes, and lows as spiritual losses. Such feelings were intensified by teachings about the need of bearing fruit, showing my sincerity of faith and belief through living a particular kind of lifestyle.
As much as I loved--and continue to love--everyone from that church, and I hold no ill-will toward anyone. The reality, for me, was that all of that was crushing my faith.
It's only been over the course of the last two decades since then that I've been able to understand both the spiritual and psychological harm that was going on.
I think Enthusiasm is actually very dangerous for the spiritual (as well as the psychological) health of the Christian.
And I'm not saying any of this to be combative or argumentative. This comes from a place of genuine concern, because I believe quite strongly that Enthusiasm is among one of the most dangerous ideas that is quite popular in modern Christianity.
Think about how many people post in the Christian Advice and New Christian boards who talk about how they don't "hear" God, or "feel" God, like the Christians they know talk about. Their lack of particular sorts of experiences is leading them to despair. Their questions come back to "am I really even saved?" "Is God angry at me?" and I read these questions and my heart absolutely breaks for them, because I know exactly how they feel, it's how I felt for years.
What saved me was the Gospel. That is obvious of course; but I mean that in a different sense also: The Gospel has saved my mind and my heart from the chaotic whirlwind of doubt, despair, and anxiety of trying to be spiritual.
And that's why I get very emphatic and even confrontational toward certain ideas. I don't want my brothers and sisters to be in the kind of place I was, a place of darkness surrounding God, because eyes were aimed inward rather than outward.
Which is also why when I talk about the joy of confession, and the life of repentance, and the beauty of the Eucharist, and the wonder of Baptism, I'm talking about that freedom that has come from not having to be a slave to my own mind and heart.
Jesus hasn't been made less real to me, but more real. It's like having spent so much of my life trying to peer through a dark cloud, with the vague and dreaded God hiding behind it--a God I could never really know--a God that I don't know that I was ever able to love. But here, where the Gospel is allowed to just be the Gospel, and where I know that no matter how I feel, no matter how many sins I have stacked on top of one another--regardless of my own subjective sense of the spiritual, that chains have been broken, the Son of God died for my sins, and I belong to Him.
Which is why I've written the posts I've written here, in the hope of allowing you to look at it from this angle.
The Lord has turned my mourning into dancing, I am free in the Spirit because my sins are forgiven and I belong to Jesus Christ, and I am guarded against every fiery dart of the evil one by the faith which God has granted me as pure gift.
I'm just a wretch and a beggar. I'm not a teacher, I'm not a theologian, I'm certainly not a pastor. I'm just a plain, regular, wretched sinner and a nobody. But I rejoice, because God loves the nobodies.
-CryptoLutheran
