Nyssa’s Conversion Story–Or, how I discovered Holy Orthodoxy: Part 2

[Part 1]

To this day, we’re still skittish at the words “glory” and “glorify,” afraid of encountering Calvinism again.  Cugan feels the Evangelical-Free church was spiritually abusive, especially since it’s taken him a while to recover from it.  Even when he’s in a church and hears the same songs the E-Free church began singing before it turned Calvinist, he fears that church will start going in the same direction the E-Free church did.

And yet, I’m glad we went through this experience, because without it I never would have had an inkling that American Evangelicalism is suffering from great sicknesses: Not only is there materialism and pop Christianity in the churches these days, but bad theology keeps going hither and thither.

Also, while I did not agree with much of Cat and Dog Theology, it did have some good points which influenced me.  For example, the idea that we’re not supposed to base worship and other things on our own inclinations.  I resisted this part at first, thinking that one’s favorite music can be powerful in church, but eventually it sank in.  The results of this are below.

Also, I was influenced by the idea that praise and worship songs should not focus on what God does for “me,” and agreed that American Christianity was becoming far too focused on “me” in various ways.

By the way, on May 2, 2007, I discovered on the EFCA website that a new Statement of Faith was in the works.  It went into far more detail than the vague 13 statements we were familiar with.  According to page 13 of the third draft revision (no longer available on the Web), “Throughout this Statement, we affirm that God’s glory is the ultimate aim of all God’s works in creation, revelation, and salvation.”

This Calvinist theology was nowhere to be found in the original Statement of Faith; it was not mentioned in the New Member classes; we never heard it in the sermons until the pastor introduced Cat and Dog Theology.  So, essentially, it seems like bait-and-switch.

Has the denomination changed its views in the past several years for whatever reason–reading John Piper, following Evangelical trends of bringing in Calvinism, resurrecting the Calvinism which I’ve discovered has influenced much of Evangelicalism, moving away from the Arminianism of the other side of Evangelicalism (Arminianism=free will)?

Or has the denomination always believed this way, but kept it under wraps for whatever reason?  Supposedly, you could be Calvinist or Arminian in an Evangelical Free church, but the supremacy of God doctrine tilted it toward Calvinism.

In any case, if the old Statement of Faith had been as clear as the third draft revision of the new Statement of Faith, we never would have stayed in the Evangelical Free Church for so long.  Rather, we were given to understand that outside of the 13 vague statements in our version, there was plenty of freedom.  That would have meant freedom to reject the pastor’s supremacy of God doctrine.

The third draft revision of the Statement of Faith could have forbidden from full membership anyone who says this doctrine is unbiblical and against the traditions of the Church.  There was no way we could stay in that church with a good conscience; this third draft revision confirms that.

The strange thing is that the revision says Christ is the center of theology/the Bible.  Our E-Free pastor said that God’s glory was the center.

I did a lot of searching on the Presbyterian Church-USA website, which is full of information, and felt satisfied that it was a good denomination.

They did not appear to follow the supremacy of God doctrine, and had left traditional Calvinism far behind, especially double predestination.  The local church is thriving, and has plenty of programs for children.  Tithing is encouraged, but you’re not accused of a lack of faith if you can’t manage it.

The PCUSA allows considerable theological freedom among its members; I could be a conservative Calvinist, a liberal who believes homosexuality is perfectly okay with God, a universalist, or somewhere in the middle.

Since I was in the midst of theological searching, and no longer believed in inerrancy, premillennialism, or strict literalism in the first chapters of Genesis or in Revelations, this was a comfortable place to be.  Cugan and I became members in April 2005, and felt we were finally home.

I discovered Cugan and I had an HTML website free with our Internet provider, and began tinkering with it.  I posted a theology page as a reaction to things the E-Free preacher had taught, a way to deal with them, then began expanding it.

As I searched for theological webpages disputing the supremacy of God doctrine, they seemed to be sadly lacking, and I wondered if we were wrong.  Then Cugan, being Lutheran, found a webpage by Lutheran writer Don Matzat that contrasted the theology of glory to the theology of the cross.

As it turned out, this did not deal with God’s passion for his own glory, but with man’s constant striving to be “good enough” for God, the Sinner’s Prayer, rededicating your life to God when you “fall away,” etc.  My own Nazarene church fell under this kind of theology of glory.

In the first reading, I was offended that it said the teachings of Holiness churches were wrong.  After a second reading, I was amazed at how much I needed to reexamine what I believed.

Then, while reading a paper on the Lutheran (MS) official website disputing premillennial dispensationalism, I discovered that dispensationalism, along with Calvinism, are sources for the doctrine that God does everything for his own glory.  Lutheran theology disagrees vehemently with this, saying that everything is centered in the Cross.

Not only that, but I discovered the Nazarene church is premillennial dispensationalist, and that many of its teachings are wrong.  This was quite a shock; I couldn’t tell which doctrines were correct and which were wrong anymore.  I believe this was in the summer of 2005.

I kept searching around Lutheran websites, particularly http://www.lcms.org and the writings of Don Matzat, who was trying to return the Lutheran church to traditional Lutheran doctrines.

Since Lutherans and the PCUSA agree on single predestination, or the doctrine that believers are elected based on God’s choice because we are totally depraved and can’t possibly make a decision for Christ on our own, I studied this as well.  I tried to convince myself of it.

(Traditional Calvinists believe in double predestination, or that believers are elected to be saved, while unbelievers are elected to be damned, based not on our decision but on God’s glory.)

Some of it made sense, but how can you have one set of people elected to be saved, without the rest being elected to be damned?  I read the answers to this question, but just could not understand it.  Still, I tried to stop being “Arminian,” or believing that we make a decision for Christ, because it wasn’t the theology of the PCUSA or the Lutheran Church.

The more I searched the Lutheran Church website, the works of Don Matzat, and blogs on various issues, the more convinced I became that evangelicalism was full of wrong doctrines–but I wasn’t sure what was correct doctrine.

Hubby and I tried reading Purpose-Driven Life by Rick Warren, but it was full of prooftexting and wrong conclusions, so we couldn’t finish it.

I read most of the way through the Message Bible, which our E-Free pastor had recommended, but discovered it took far too many liberties with the original text.

The pastor of our new church occasionally asked the congregation to do motions to songs, but we didn’t, standing there motionless while the people around us did these motions.  We’d had far too much of this at the E-Free church, especially when visiting song leaders told everyone to do “clap offerings.”

I began to see the problem with emotionalism in worship services, because I felt manipulated by song leaders.

Then one Saturday evening, probably in 2004 or 2005, I sang one too many silly songs in our new church’s contemporary service, and began to want to sing hymns again.  For examples of these “silly songs,” see here (“Trading My Sorrows” by Darrell Evans) and here (“Every Move I Make,” which also has motions, by David Ruis).  I posted about this on a Christian Goth web forum.  Others there agreed that many modern praise choruses were awful.

I also didn’t like the invasion of Powerpoint into church services.  I preferred looking down at a hymnbook–which usually had information on writers, original sources of tunes, dates, etc.–to lyrics being posted on a screen.

I looked up critiques on the Web of Purpose-Driven Life and praise music, to see if anybody agreed with me.

Many sites opened my eyes to the problem of bringing modern culture into the church, rather than influencing modern culture with the church.  These may have been Calvinist and conservative Lutheran sites, where you can often find a backlash against the rise of “contemporary services” in the churches.

While I went to the Evangelical Free church, I loved Willow Creek type services, with bands and modern music.  I wanted to see the day when Goth or metal music was sung in church.

But now I was beginning to see the man-centered nature of trying to bring your favorite styles of music into the church, where first and foremost you are to worship God with reverence.

[to be continued]