Sovereignty Experienced

by Leave a Comment

I introduced the term “Personal Sovereignty” in the past week and I want to revisit the topic and give a bit of personal experience on this subject. Personal Sovereignty is not to me some political notion or linked to some group or process. I am simply exploring a concept that I think has significant spiritual and personal implications and which we do well to think about.

I explained last time that Personal Sovereignty, as far as I am looking at it, is the right and responsibility of each person to stand before the Living God. That, I assert, is an amazing privilege afforded every person on the planet. It is a level of personal sovereignty which cannot be taken away from us.We have to submit to authority, as a parent to a child and wife to a husband. But that does not preclude our complete access to our personal sovereignty before God. A slave, prisoner, refugee, paralytic, cripple, child or illiterate fool has the same innate right that the most educated and powerful people on earth are afforded. They can come into God’s presence and ask for God’s help, face God’s judgement and otherwise do business with the God of all eternity.

That’s awesome to me. That’s a level of personal privilege which is inalienable – it can’t be taken away from us. Bankruptcy, death row, the lunatic asylum, torture or any hideous predicament can’t take from us our right to deal directly with the God who created the entire universe.

Now, I promised to share about the first time personal sovereignty was experienced in my life – at least this is a significant moment when I found my personal sovereignty – even though I did not understand the concept specifically at that time. This is the short version. If you get to hear me in public, you may get to hear the ‘colourful’ version.

As a young married man I attended a small church. The pastor was at times quite confronting toward his flock. If he saw a problem he would follow it up, visiting people’s homes to track down gossip, or to otherwise deal with something he deemed out of order. During this season I made it my business to adopt a “guilty until proven innocent” approach. By that I mean that I was very willing to accept that I may have been wrong, even if I didn’t think I was wrong, since the human heart has a way of telling us we’re OK, when we have been out of order.

Several times I was challenged by my pastor over attitudes he perceived I carried. To my wife’s annoyance I always accepted the charge and happily apologised and put things “right”, even if Susan was sure I wasn’t wrong.

One fateful day, however, my pastor visited with some issue he felt I needed to deal with and I came to the conclusion I really was innocent. I politely accepted my pastor’s suggestions, but, rather than assuming I was wrong I responded differently. I said, “I’ll certainly pray about that and see what God says.”

After my pastor left my home I stood in the middle of my humble living room, under the light fitting, and looked up. I said, “Lord, I hear what my pastor says, and You know my heart. If I have been out of order I want to put it right. But I don’t have any conviction that I am out of order. So I present myself to You. I ask You to judge me and to convict me if I am wrong. You know that I will respond as soon as you do. But until you do convict me I’m going to treat this as a non-issue. Amen”

That moment had great impact on me. I never did get convicted about the thing. I don’t even remember what it was. But I knew that I had stepped into something significant. I had stepped before God’s throne instead of before my pastor’s office. I had walked into a new experience of my personal sovereignty. 

Catholic Church’s New Sins

by Leave a Comment

The Vatican has now defined an extended list of sins – updating a tradition that is 1500 years old. And, may I say, it signals a crumbling of the Catholic Church.

That’s a dramatic suggestion and it’s not intended to be anything but an observation. Consider what is happening here and make your own assessment.

A recent Milan Catholic University survey of Italian Catholics, arguably as devout a constituency as could be found on the planet, showed a serious change in attitude toward perennial Catholic practice. Attendance at confession is no longer practiced by 60% of Italian Catholics.

The Catholic University showed that 30 percent of Italian Catholics believed that there was no need for a priest to be God’s intermediary and 20 percent felt uncomfortable talking about their sins to another person.

These findings prompted Pope Benedict XVI to express concern over rising secularization. He told a seminar group that hedonism and consumerism had even invaded “the bosom of the Church itself, deeply undermining the Christian faith from within, and undermining the lifestyle and daily behaviour of believers”.

In apparent response to this trend Archbishop Gianfranco Girotti of the Vatican Apostolic Penitentiary told the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano that priests must take account of “new sins which have appeared on the horizon of humanity as a corollary of the unstoppable process of globalisation”.

“You offend God not only by stealing, blaspheming or coveting your neighbour’s wife, but also by ruining the environment, carrying out morally debatable scientific experiments, or allowing genetic manipulations which alter DNA or compromise embryos,” he said.

Now the Vatican says it is time to modernize the list of sins to fit a global world.

Commendable as it may be to draw attention to all forms of wrong, including those that have previously been sidelined, the TREND of what is happening is more significant than the detail.

Here we have one of the most powerful forces in Christendom acting as a handmaiden to social pressures beyond its control. In previous generations this would never be so. In centuries past the Catholic Church set the trend. Indeed Christianity has imposed itself on cultures, nations, families and individuals with profound impact again and again since it was born 2,000 years ago. Christianity has never had to be a handmaiden to society, but rather called society to accept its truths, receive its grace, comprehend its worldview and cooperate with its agenda.

So, I find this latest invention alarming. It signals that the Catholic Church has somehow embraced a position of powerlessness. It almost ascribes the greatest social prominence to the “forces of globalism”, probably including such corporations as McDonalds and Microsoft.

At the same time however, the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is still as powerful as ever. The truth of Christianity owes nothing to global forces, but stands in their face and in their way, not needing to step aside to accommodate human culture. The Spirit of God does not need a new sales-pitch or a new message. The old rugged cross, that amazing grace and the church triumphant proceed full-force in this new millennium without apology and without need to re-invent themselves. Praise God for a Saviour who does not change, for grace that is always sufficient and for a hope that is eternal.

The Catholic Church may be signaling by this significant step that it has lost confidence in the gospel which spawned it. It will be interesting to observe, over the next decade or so, if similar expressions of accommodation emerge from the papal corridors.

Believers the world over, be they in traditional churches or underground gatherings, in cathedrals or jungle huts, need not be tempted to uncertainly or doubts about the relevance of their long-held faith. The rock cut out of the mountain is still growing into a mountain that fills the earth – and that is the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Sources: Reuters – Vatican lists “new sins,” including pollution / Times Online – Seven new deadly sins: are you guilty? / CNN – Vatican Updates Sins. March 10, 2008