This is interesting. I hope you don't mind if I share something I just wrote that is kinda long. I have seen Jeremiah 17:9 used recently to silence a writer and was responding to that:
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9) This commenter was telling the blogger that we must be careful in following our hearts. This is a false Christian teaching. My whole Substack is pretty much about learning to discern and trust the Logos who lives within us. Most Christians do not have a problem singing songs like “I Serve a Risen Savior” whose lyrics say Jesus lives within our hearts. Most Christians certainly do not believe that Christ is absent from our lives. Why, then, do we proclaim that we cannot trust ourselves to listen to His guidance? I have been a Christian in the non-denominational church of Christ for over forty years. A common teaching among us is that Christ lives in us only as we know and understand scripture. I both agree and don’t agree...
Do I believe in reading, studying, and understanding scripture? Absolutely. But the word of scripture must always be understood by the Logos. I recently wrote a four-part series on why that is so. In the last one, I talked about knowing and understanding the Logos. I wrote, “Humans are never the ones we obey. Instead, we hearken to the Logos seen within men and women. Obedience is to the Logos, never to a person. Understanding the Logos is crucial. Blind obedience to Scripture without the Logos may often increase pain, not alleviate it. Remember, the Logos frees, heals, and feeds. Once we detect and embody the Logos, we see all Scripture and all words of others through that Lens.” So, churches (and there are many claiming to be scriptural) often take bits and pieces of verses, like Jeremiah 17:9, and hurt instead of help. To only pick and choose verses that uphold our beliefs keeps people from following the Logos—the Christ within them. We must learn to discern and teach others to discern the Logos within ourselves, scripture, and others.
So, what is Jeremiah 17:9 teaching? If we look at the entire chapter, we see verse 5, “Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord.” When we trust in the human heart, in man, who is bent upon the pride of life, lust of the flesh, and lust of the eyes, we err, we are deceived, our hearts are wicked. Following the world leads us astray, but let’s be careful how we determine that in others. It’s not our job to condemn when we believe others have gone astray. Our job is to listen without assumptions or presumptions and see if the Logos—Christ—is being followed.
To condemn others because their views on scripture do not align with ours is not the Way. To lead them back to the path with love and understanding is. (End quote)
For too long the Church has taught that we should embrace suffering as Elisabeth did in her life. How do we reconcile a God who calls for our suffering with a loving God? We can't. Do we sometimes suffer when we do God's will? Absolutely. But the suffering is inflicted by Man, not God.
Thanks for sharing your insights on how many of us have been led down the wrong path!
I read my husband the central paragraphs about discerning the Lord’s will and Elisabeth looking to others for direction. He deadpanned that “Lars just checked Elisabeth’s odometer to make sure that she hadn’t deviated from the Lord’s will. It sounds like he understood his wife very well.”
This is interesting. I hope you don't mind if I share something I just wrote that is kinda long. I have seen Jeremiah 17:9 used recently to silence a writer and was responding to that:
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9) This commenter was telling the blogger that we must be careful in following our hearts. This is a false Christian teaching. My whole Substack is pretty much about learning to discern and trust the Logos who lives within us. Most Christians do not have a problem singing songs like “I Serve a Risen Savior” whose lyrics say Jesus lives within our hearts. Most Christians certainly do not believe that Christ is absent from our lives. Why, then, do we proclaim that we cannot trust ourselves to listen to His guidance? I have been a Christian in the non-denominational church of Christ for over forty years. A common teaching among us is that Christ lives in us only as we know and understand scripture. I both agree and don’t agree...
Do I believe in reading, studying, and understanding scripture? Absolutely. But the word of scripture must always be understood by the Logos. I recently wrote a four-part series on why that is so. In the last one, I talked about knowing and understanding the Logos. I wrote, “Humans are never the ones we obey. Instead, we hearken to the Logos seen within men and women. Obedience is to the Logos, never to a person. Understanding the Logos is crucial. Blind obedience to Scripture without the Logos may often increase pain, not alleviate it. Remember, the Logos frees, heals, and feeds. Once we detect and embody the Logos, we see all Scripture and all words of others through that Lens.” So, churches (and there are many claiming to be scriptural) often take bits and pieces of verses, like Jeremiah 17:9, and hurt instead of help. To only pick and choose verses that uphold our beliefs keeps people from following the Logos—the Christ within them. We must learn to discern and teach others to discern the Logos within ourselves, scripture, and others.
So, what is Jeremiah 17:9 teaching? If we look at the entire chapter, we see verse 5, “Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord.” When we trust in the human heart, in man, who is bent upon the pride of life, lust of the flesh, and lust of the eyes, we err, we are deceived, our hearts are wicked. Following the world leads us astray, but let’s be careful how we determine that in others. It’s not our job to condemn when we believe others have gone astray. Our job is to listen without assumptions or presumptions and see if the Logos—Christ—is being followed.
To condemn others because their views on scripture do not align with ours is not the Way. To lead them back to the path with love and understanding is. (End quote)
For too long the Church has taught that we should embrace suffering as Elisabeth did in her life. How do we reconcile a God who calls for our suffering with a loving God? We can't. Do we sometimes suffer when we do God's will? Absolutely. But the suffering is inflicted by Man, not God.
Thanks for sharing your insights on how many of us have been led down the wrong path!
I read my husband the central paragraphs about discerning the Lord’s will and Elisabeth looking to others for direction. He deadpanned that “Lars just checked Elisabeth’s odometer to make sure that she hadn’t deviated from the Lord’s will. It sounds like he understood his wife very well.”