Monday, June 20, 2011

MERLIN CAROTHERS, PRISON TO PRAISE (BOOK REPORT 4)

(One’s level of piety, whether devotional or practical, depends much on knowledge being either learned or misconceived. In these analyses we have made mention, occasionally, of books that either help or hinder the grand object of piety. It seems natural, consequently, to supplement the analyses, now and again, with correlating book reports.)


GABOURY’S CRITICAL BOOK REPORT

Merlin Carothers, Prison to Praise (Escondido, California: Merlin R. Carothers, 1970), 106 pp.

Tired of waiting to get sent into action during WW2, a cocky young soldier goes AWOL. He steals a car, botches a stick-up, gets a suspended sentence, then finally gets his wish to go into battle overseas. He then serves as a paratrooper, Demolitions Expert, and guard for General Eisenhower. And he gets into all sorts of adventures, perhaps the strangest one involving a training exercise during which paratroopers plunge to their death all around Marlene Dietrich, the actress. After all of that, Merlin Carothers goes back home. A civilian now, he aspires to become a lawyer. While visiting his grandparents, his grandmother makes him an offer he’d like to refuse but can’t, to attend a church meeting in a local barn. There God speaks to him and he gets converted. After making restitution for his faults as best he can, he gets a pardon, in part, on account of his excellent combat record. He sums up his intentions from there, “If God could make a preacher out of an ex-jailbird, paratrooper, gambler, and black-marketeer, that would be a greater adventure into the unknown than anything I’d ever tried before” (p. 21.) Applying himself diligently, he accomplishes four years of college in just two-and-a-half, and crams three years of seminary into two. His first charge is the Methodist church in Claypool, Indiana, where “young people accepted Christ in growing numbers” (p. 23.) In 1953 he responds to an inner pull and becomes an Army chaplain, and adds to this the profession of pilot. Feeling like something’s missing in his spiritual life, he launches upon a search for power: “I began to read everything I could find about psychic phenomena, hypnotism, and spiritism, hoping to find a clue to the secret of letting God’s Spirit work in and through me” (p. 27.) The search heats up when an eye is partially blinded in an accident. Still disabled in the eye after two operations, and on his way to a third one, he receives a communication: “Your eyes are going to be all right” (p. 27.) The eye gradually heals. But his search for power continues. He gets wise to the dangers of hypnosis and other dark phenomena, and goes to Camp Farthest Out where he receives the ‘gift of tongues’ on the authority of a woman. An experience of love, joy, and courage is the outcome, and “everywhere I went, men accepted Christ,” he says (p. 40.) Promoted from the rank of Major even before he is eligible, he goes to Vietnam as a Lieutenant Colonel in 1966. Through his instrumentality, many conversions and healings happen, and the Lord guides him in the decisions he should make, by which he is several times prevented from certain death: “At the last minute I was strongly impressed to cancel the service. At the exact time and place where we would have met, an explosion set off the bombs” (p. 62, 63.) Similar things happen all around him: “Man after man told me how he had been saved from death by a power beyond his understanding” (p. 64.) Thanking God in all circumstances in order to all things working out is the theme that gradually takes over; Merlin gets victory after victory for himself and whoever he can convince to apply the biblical principle; and this theme runs on into an excerpt from his next book, where he leaves us hanging.

There is a current of victory in this book that is definitely above the experience of most Christians. In a bedridden state Mr. Carothers decides to put impure thoughts away for good. After that episode of sickness he seems no more tempted in this area (p. 51.) There are remarkable victories in his ministry to others, especially by the inculcation of that injunction to thank and praise God no matter what and for everything. There is a vision he tells us about, which shows very well how most Christians accept a level of victory that is sub-Christian, while those who persevere by praising God through the darkness eventually come out on top. “Often the prayer of praise is done in sheer teeth-gritting willpower; yet when we persist in it, somehow the power of God is released into us and into the situation” (p. 92.)

But there is another current running through these pages, an unbiblical one that makes me suspicious of all those wonders and victories or at least of the greatness of many of them. (1) His promotion to greater usefulness began when he received the gift of tongues by a woman’s ‘laying on of hands.’ Because of all that’s thoroughly unbiblical in this, it would be foolish not to suspect all the marvels and conquests that follow. Carothers himself was suspicious at first (p. 34.) (2) At one point he prays in tongues to heal someone’s fears (p. 62.) But nowhere in the New Testament is healing transmitted this way. (3) He says that God couldn’t do a thing for the Israelites when they were in unbelief (p. 44.) But if that were true, they had never left Egypt! (4) He thinks it’s a good thing when a brand new convert teaches Sunday School (p. 57.) That doesn’t sound right. (5) Instead of sermon prep, he lets his mind go blank to receive what is impressed upon him to speak (p. 46.) This ‘letting go and letting God,’ as he calls it, is not a valid principle, as he believes. It’s more like Transcendentalism than the Bible (2 Timothy 3.16, 17.) (6) His theory of healing is not as foolproof as he lets on. When symptoms of hay fever persist after he has been ‘healed,’ he rationalizes like this, “Now I knew that the symptoms meant nothing. Faith in God’s promise was all I needed; then Satan could fake all the symptoms he wanted!” (p. 81.) That’s a denial of reality. Then, supposedly, God spoke, “You will never again have even one symptom unless you need it for your good” (p. 82.) I always get a skeptical feeling in my gut when I read stuff like that, especially the kind of talk that slips into a dialogue with God, and there’s lots of that in here.

Some passages seem eerily satanic. After laughing for fifteen minutes in a prayer group (what some nutty churchgoers do for fun), God, he maintains, begins to speak to him like so: “It really makes you glad that they took my Son and drove nails into His hands. It really makes you glad, doesn’t it?” (p. 70) I can’t shake off the feeling that this sounds like Satan or a demon speaking. Carothers too, before he gave in to the spirit, seems to have had doubts: “Everything became very silent. I didn’t know how to answer” (p. 71.) Maybe it’s just the way Carothers records the event that makes it sound like the voice of Satan. I suppose that’s possible. But note: he got this communication while he was in this laughing hysteria. We should be very suspicious of that. Certain of his anecdotes, like the one about him seeing Jesus kneel before him, seem blasphemous: “He was holding my feet and resting His head on my knees. He said: ‘I don’t want to use you. I want you to use Me!’” (p. 52.) The trouble with a bio like Prison to Praise is that you want to believe all the fantastic stories; but because of all the unscriptural paraphernalia, you just can’t.

Content: C (More believable stories of God’s mighty acts are available.)
     Style: B (It reads okay.)
    Tone: C (Unintentionally irreverent in places.)
                       
Grading Table: A: a keeper: reread it; promote it; share it.
                        B: an average book: let it go.
                        C: read only if you have to.

Thursday, June 2, 2011

JAMES B. RICHARDS, THE GOSPEL OF PEACE (BOOK REPORT 3)

(One’s level of piety, whether devotional or practical, depends much on knowledge being either learned or misconceived. In these analyses we have made mention, occasionally, of books that either help or hinder the grand object of piety. It seems natural, consequently, to supplement the analyses, now and again, with correlating book reports.)


GABOURY’S CRITICAL BOOK REPORT

James B. Richards, The Gospel of Peace (New Kensington, Pennsylvania: Whitaker House, 1990), 203 pp.


Richards’ object is to present the converse of a “works-righteousness [which] always brings fear and rejection” (p. 93.) The book seems mainly for believers who may have slipped back into an unbelieving works-righteousness attitude in their too fearful approach to God. “There should be no fear of God in the heart of a believer” (p. 11.)

It is true that a works-righteousness attitude may lead to feelings of fear and rejection, and that this was common in the Dark Ages among persons who feared God. But are such feelings necessarily unhealthy? And is this our problem today? Fearing God is not our problem. Our problem is that we do not fear God. We have no craven fear, no reverent fear, nor any other kind of fear. No more shame…no more fear! says the subtitle, when shame and fear are exactly what we need!

It is often difficult to make out to whom Richards’ counsel is directed and in what manner his ‘no fear’ is intended. This may be on account of his attempt to apply the book to everyone. When we examine the basis for Richards’ counsel of peace, it becomes obvious that The Gospel of Peace must be classified as heresy. I was encouraged to discover some soteriological doctrines in this Gospel of Peace, like justification, propitiation, and reconciliation. The heresy is that these contributors to gospel peace are nullified by Richards’ position that says man has been at peace with God all along. If we were enemies to God only in our minds (p. 65), then what need of reconciliation? If “God has never been the enemy of mankind” (p. 66), then who needs any of the whole system of salvation and the coming of Christ to make peace? If “God is at peace with man” (p. 96) already, do we really need to preach that souls are in peril of hell? Literally everything pertaining to salvation and judgment is nullified if God has never been man’s enemy. Richards doesn’t realize this, obviously. I do not question his desire to minister. But his is truly a case in which the order to “lay hands suddenly on no man” (1 Tim. 5.22) was not heeded, and a man who knew not the gospel was appointed to preach it. By the uncritical and relaxed standard of some college or seminary, a babe, or maybe even an unbeliever, was given the title of doctor. When the gospel is undermined by the notion that God is at peace with mankind and always has been, then it is no surprise that Richards’ evangelism is void of saving substance. The sinner’s prayer that he urges upon the reader at the close of his Gospel of Peace is self-defeating, “…You [God] have never hurt me. You are not judging me. You are not the source of pain in my life…You love me; You accept me,” &c. (pp. 196, 197.) If God has never hurt me and if God is not judging me, what’s the problem? Why a sinner’s prayer? Where there is no condemnation, there is no need of being saved. 

It is common among charismatics to wrongly assert that the source of all discomfort is the devil. I think that’s why Richards views peace with God as something that just needs to be acknowledged instead of obtained. Why does he promote the idea that God has always been the friend of every soul? Part of the answer, I believe, may be gleaned from the Dedication in which Richards exalts his uncle as “the only real father I ever knew…without rejection.” My guess is that Richards is constructing a theology around the wounds of his youth as a balm to help him get through this tough world. And he thinks to help troubled teens in his ministry to them by applying the same unbiblical psychology. We trust that some youths are actually helped, regardless. And let us generously suppose that some are helped for eternity, not just temporally, for the Lord can use an ounce of truth in a pound of heresy. Richards himself was saved through a twisted mix of profanity and Scripture when he overheard a blasphemer curse an evangelist! (p. 175.) Strange things happen. We can be sorry that Richards had no father. We can rejoice that he is not on the typical charismatic sign-gift hobbyhorse. But he has a long way to go before he gets the gospel right. We must disapprove any gospel of peace that negates what was done by Christ to obtain our peace.

Richards arrives at his false interpretation of Scripture by two avenues mainly. (1) He selects verses that emphasize only one side of a truth, and then promotes this truth as the whole truth. Example: It is written that we reap what we sow. But does this truth mean there is no judgment of God in plagues and afflictions? (p. 128.) Did God not plague Egypt, for instance? (2) He selects verses that touch on his theme, and then he stretches the meaning of these verses to support his proposition. Example: In Proverbs there are certain prohibitions concerning anger. But does this mean that fiery preaching (what Richards calls ‘hard preaching’) is unbiblical? (p. 165.)

Embarrassing errors can fall out from a halfhearted stab at interpreting Scripture: “Because I am in Jesus and have His righteousness, every promise God ever made to anyone in the Bible is mine” (p. 69.) Let’s test this proposition. So God’s promise to Abraham, that his seed would be as the dust of the earth for number (Gen. 13.16), consisting of nations and kings (17.6), this is God’s personal promise to me? I can be the father of all Israel? Just as embarrassing are sweeping statements made that call an author’s integrity into question: “As I have traveled around the world, I have seen every miracle in the New Testament,” says Richards (p. 189.) And so are we to understand that Richards has witnessed men walk on water, the dead raised up, virgins found pregnant by the Holy Ghost, and even fishes with coins inside for paying the tax? I guess so. 

I should not leave the impression that this book is entirely bad. Some basic truths are simply iterated. Example: “Works place the emphasis on what I have done. Faith places the emphasis on what Jesus has done” (p. 70.) But because his idea of peace makes what Jesus did unnecessary, Richards must be included among those he warns us about, who “have run forth out of their own zeal…anxious to perpetuate their own perceptions…not sent with the Gospel of peace” (p. 121.) What Richards says on page 170 should give us goose-bumps, “What I sow from the pulpit is what I and the people will reap in the church and our lives.” We hope, then, that his book is not too popular. In more ways than one, you don’t get what you pay for. This book runs to 203 pages. Sixty-seven of these are blank. And each chapter begins halfway down the page.

Content: C (No gospel is a false gospel.)
     Style: C (Unremarkable.)
     Tone: C (Presumptuous.)
                       
Grading Table: A: a keeper: reread it; promote it; share it.
                         B: an average book: let it go.
                         C: read only if you have to.