Charismatics and Traditionalists

I ran into this link about the the charismatic gifts and the hierarchical gifts. It is actually quite a recent document from the church's theology department. Something called the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. I found it interesting because it puts its finger on one of the key issues in the church today. That is the false choice that is put before us. There is this notion that need to choose to be liberal or conservative. Either you embrace a personal relationship with Jesus where your life is animated by the Holy Spirit and you reject the rules-based, stuffy, traditional Christianity or you stick with solid unchanging truth and reject a Christianity that compromises with the world. Lots of Christians view themselves in this way. They pick one side and define much of their spirituality against the other side. This divide happens in pretty much every denomination. In fact, conservative Christians across denominations have much more in common with each other than with liberal Christians in their own denomination and vice-versa. 

What we are called to do is embrace both. The charismatic gifts of the Holy Spirit make Christianity personal. Everyone animates the faith in a different way and we absolutely need to be free to be true to ourselves. We even need to get together groups of people who have common interests and common gifts. St Irenaeus said the glory of God is a human being fully alive. We need a spirituality that is fully alive and life-giving and joy-filled. 

Somehow conservatives have always struggled with this. There is such an emphasis on self-control that it is hard to feel free. Sometime people can feel free in worship but have a hard time feeling free at a party with music and wine. 

It is a problem because if our spirituality comes across as joyless and stuffy then our evangelism is likely to be non-existent. In fact, we might have a problem with sloth because it is hard to maintain energy living that kind of faith.

Hierarchical gifts perhaps need a bit of explaining. It is a bit of a Catholic word. What it means is the gift of orthodoxy. The ability to know the truth about faith and morals and be united around that truth. This is hugely important as well. Our faith has to have content. Something has to make us different from the culture around us. Just talking nicely about Jesus and the bible is not enough. There needs to be something solid, something timeless, something we would die for. 

Liberals have a problem with this because for them the focus is always on the person. Every time you declare something to be part of the faith that many in society think is false you force people to either accept a hard truth or reject the whole faith. Many are going to do the latter. 

Again, if we don't get this right the results are devastating. Who will believe Christianity has the truth when they don't have any agreement on what that truth is? Even for ourselves it becomes hard to lean on our faith for truth when there are so many different opinions that sound good. 

The key is to recognise that both these kind of gifts come from the same spirit. The Holy Spirit that wants us to unite in one true faith is the same Holy Spirit that wants each of us to be unique. It really is a false choice. Any time you find yourself fighting for one side of this divide against the other you need to remind yourself of that.