Prophesy vs. teaching: a parable (I wrote this for CRC-Voices)

There was a man marooned on a deserted island. The man’s goal was to construct a boat that would take him back to civilization. There were trees and other natural resources on the island that could help him construct a craft that might reconnect him to civilization, or so he thought. Even though he didn’t know a lot about sailing or boat building he set himself to the task of building a boat and learning to sail with the means and resources available to him.

The island, as one might expect since he washed ashore on it, received a fair amount of floating debris. The tide would wash various things up onto the beach. Some of these things may be helpful, some of these things may not be. The cast-away’s ability both to employ the natural resources already available on the island AND his ability assess the potential value of the debris is dependent upon his knowledge of the project he has undertaken in pursuit of his goal. It is easy to see that both the debris and the natural resources on the island have value, but the key is the cast-away’s ability to recognize that value. We call that discernment.

The CRC tends to prioritize the natural resources. Other traditions tend to value the debris. Does that help?

Someone then said “no”, so I continued

I’ve been around charismatic prophesy enough to know that the Biblical admonition to “discern the spirits” is important. I remember in one worship service a member was developing the gift of interpretation of tongues. During the offering someone dropped the collection plate and it make a racket and this person thought that someone had spoken in tongues so he stood up and gave an interpretation. He was thoroughly embarrassed afterwards to discover he interpreted the clanging of the collection plate and the change.

Just yesterday I caught an interesting piece on Sex Symbols who speak in tongues from Charisma news. http://www.charismanews.com/opinion/38090-sex-symbols-who-speak-in-tongues.

CRC folks often look at this and say “let’s just stick to the Bible, it’s there in a book.” This doesn’t say that charismatics don’t use the Bible. CRC folks would rather cut down trees, braid vines, hollow out coconuts, in order to construct their raft.

At the same time the gospel itself, and the Bible itself, is the product of “debris that washed up on our shores” as it were. Jesus comes from heaven, incarnate via the virgin. Prophets come and say plenty of things that CRC folks would find strange if it hadn’t already been part of the canon.

God speaks through is word and he moves through history. Both the resources on the island and the debris washing up are gifts from God. If there were more cast-aways on the island some would likely focus on cutting down trees while others would focus on combing the beaches for useful debris that would wash up. What a find a plastic water bottle could be, or a map, or a GPS!

Tree cutters shouldn’t look down upon debris gatherers and visa versa. That’s my point. pvk