So I heard some more of MacArthur on the subject of mysticism and it just gets more frustrating. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0fETODHsoM&t=71s) He's preaching on Colossians 2:18 which he calls a warning against "mysticism." He likes the NASB and my favorite is the KJB, and since the KJB can be hard to read I'm also including the NKJB (New King James) as possibly clearer, so here are three different translations of that passage:
New American Standard
Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self-abasement and the worship of the angels, taking his stand on visions he has seen, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind,
Let no one cheat you of your reward, taking delight in false humility and worship of angels, intruding into those things which he has not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind,
King James Bible
Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind,
There is nothing in the scripture itself which labels this kind of behavior as "mysticism" so this is MacArthur's own idea of what mysticism is. It makes me wish I had another term for what I've been talking about here but the problem is there isn't one. Better the phenomena described above were called "occultism" or "Gnosticism." As MacArthur continues his talk he uses terminology associated with Gnosticism, and there are other places in the New Testament where Gnositicm is specifically warned against. When I first startied reading the writers identified as the Mystics, during the early years of reading back in the late 80s, those years that led to my becoming a Christian, that's what they were called and changing their name isn't going to happen. But they are not anything like what that scripture passage is describing and what MacArthur thinks is mysticism. It is also not Gnosticism. One of my atheist friends during those years didn't like the "fundamentalist" direction my thinking was taking and gave me a book about the Gnostics, which for some reason have a higher standing among intellectual types than Christianity does. I could only read a few pages of it. It so blasphemed God it frightened me and I couldn't go on readingf. I like to think that's because I really was already one of the Lord's sheep who hear His voice and won't follow any other.
Even in my own reading, however, I did come across people who were called Mystics that not only did not attract me, they seemed to be pursuing a spirit completely different from the love of God I'd been finding in the ones that did attract me. Jacob Boehme was positively scary and offputting, so was Mechtilde of Magdeburg. So it has to be acknowledged that there are different mysticisms and some are not good, some are probably witchcraft rather than anything truly Christian. Perhaps Edgar Cayce could be put in the bad cateogry. He had some kind of supernatural or spiritual experiences and was considered to be a healer and thought of himself as a Christian, but there's really nothing in his writings about God or Jesus except as perhaps instruments of the paranormal phenomena he experienced.
I hope I don't have to get more deeply into all of this. I'm no expert, I've merely read enough to have a general idea of the spiritual territory that's involved in these questions, and I've already done some posts on it in the past. In the upper right margin I have listed Andrew Strom's film on how Kundalini Yoga has found a welcome in some churches and needs to be recognized as demonic and repudiated. Hinduism loves to make claims about Jesus Christ and to confuse Biblical teachings with their demonic practices and Christians should not be falling for this. Practices of the eastern religions have found a place in the churches because Christians are naive. Yoga is not necessarily harmless for instance. God says in Hosea 4:6:
My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge
They have rejected the knowledge of the true God and therefore He will reject them. They have forgotten His law and He will forget their children. It is the "liberal" churches that invite the eastern religions in, and they are open to the charge of rejecting the true God and forgetting His law. But unfortunately some of the eastern practices entice the merely naive who are not strongly grounded in their faith..
Maybe I will have to say more about all that after all eventually But this all came up because I wanted to renew my own spiritual life and immersing myself in devotional reading has often accomplished that for me. Devotional reading such as Tozer's Pursuit of God and his book of Mystical Verse can certainly revive my spiritual life, but it also raises these questions about what mysticism is. I usually answer that it is the intense longing after God that inspired Tozer and those writers he includes in his book of verse, that takes the longing soul deeper or higher into the Christian life than many others go or want to go.
One of the most famous mystics is John of the Cross who wrote the poem "Dark Night of the Soul" and the book in which he elucidates the poem at great length, "The Ascent of Mount Carmel."
Here are the first few stanzas of the poem. It is considered to be a mystical poem.
On a dark night,
Kindled in love with yearnings–oh, happy chance!–
I went forth without being observed,
My house being now at rest.In darkness and secure,
By the secret ladder, disguised–oh, happy chance!–
In darkness and in concealment,
My house being now at rest.In the happy night,
In secret, when none saw me,
Nor I beheld aught,
Without light or guide, save that which burned in my heart
If you read the book about it you'll certainly understand that there are some methodological issues involved, as he discusses how prayer is practiced in a way that subdues the flesh and releases the spirit. It's been a long time since I read the book and I'm sure I don't know exactly what he means by many of these figures, but at least the "dark night" refers to the subduing of the flesh, perhaps the overactive wandering mind, perhaps the senses, as does his "house being now at rest," It is when the clamoring of the life of the flesh is "dark" and "at rest" that the spirit is most alive to the things of God.
That is what this poem is about, the soul's drawing near to God in prayer, or the"ascent" to the presence of God in the quietness of the flesh and the world. "Be still and know that I am God" may be the apt scripture reference. In a sense it is a treatise in itself of the practices that lead to the experience of God;s love and our love to Him. "Kindled in love with yearnings" sets the emotional tone, which is probably the engine that drives the whole undertaking. Much of the poem probably refers to the moritification of sin and the growth of virtues such as humility, but I'd have to reread the book to know how he talks about those things. The emphasis on being unobserved, concealed etc., suggests we're not talking about a state of false humility, and there is no hint of anything like the worship of angels here. This is not what Paul is warning against in Colossians 2:18.
The poem is about how by subduing the flesh and the world the soul is enabed through prayer to have a deep loving experience of God. THIS is what I've understood to be Mysticism.
A pursuit of God in prayer that starts out in the right direction can take a person deep enough to start having "supernatural" experiences of various sorts. Or as the mystics may think of it, these may be rewards from God, or "consolations" from God. Tozer isn't writing about that aspect of things but to read any of the mystics themselves will make that clear. Yes there is a deeper or higher Christian life but it isn't something different from Christian life in general, it's the result of a more intense pursuit of the biblical revelations of God.
HOWEVER,
In that pursuit it is possible to get off into the "spirit realms" if you don't know what you are doing or you let yourself be attracted too much to whatever supernatural experiences you might have. The Christian mystics themselves are always warning against taking such phenomena too seriously because you often can't tell where it is coming from. You may assume it is from God when it is in reality a demonic counterfeit. So they recommend simply leaving them alone, not dwelling on them, not trying to hold on to them..
As I hear more of MacArthur's sermon I have to say that he's right about what he's right about. There is a lot of what he is calling mysticism in the churches these days and it is dangerous. I'm in this uncomfortable position of trying to defend what I think of as a genuine Bible-based experience that comes to some people as a result of a true passionate love of the true God and Jesus Christ and not an ego trip and not a pursuit of experience for experience's sake or for thrills, As I said I wish I could just use a different term for it but Tozer called it mysticism and it has a long history of going by that name so that's not going to work. Guess I'm going to have to continue this is in the next post.
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