What Is 'Sacred Reading?'

Tom:

Thanks, Gary. You’re listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which we encourage everyone who desires to know God’s truth to look to God’s Word for all that is essential for salvation and living one’s life in a way that is pleasing to Him. If you’re new to our program, in this first segment we’ve been discussing some of the mystical practices that have been introduced to Evangelical Christianity, particularly to young people, and by that I mean the entire spectrum of young evangelicals from young adults to high schoolers to middle schoolers, and even to, as you will see, to primary grade schoolers. These practices are prevalent in fellowships that call themselves, Emerging Churches, but they are by no means the only promoters of mystical techniques among those who profess to be Evangelical. As I said, we are going to go through a number of these organizations, address them and so on. In the past weeks we’ve addressed mysticism in general, and explained the practices related to icons and to, last week we dealt with being still, or silence before God. These techniques are supposedly, they supposed to aid us in drawing closer to God, and supposedly, or we are told that they will enable us to live a more godly life.Tony Jones, an EmergingChurch leader, whose book, The Sacred Way, Spiritual Practices for Everyday Life writes: “Being quiet and being alone makes us better, more spiritual, more Christ centered human beings.” Now, not only are these spiritual practices without support in the Bible, they are condemned by it. They are included in what the Bible calls, “divination and sorcery.” Today we are going to consider the mystical technique known as, Lexio Divina, or sacred reading, and if we have time we’ll get to other techniques such as the Jesus prayer and centering prayer. Now Dave, it’s not that the Bible reading according to Lexio Devina sacred reading, and it’s not that the Bible reading is completely abandoned by those who promote this technique, but it’s hardly kosher, if I can borrow that term. Lexio Divina, as I said, means sacred readings, but it’s far from what most of us think about when we consider the Bible. Jones says this idea, and Dave, I want you to comment on this, he says, “The idea is to purposefully shed the common methods most of us use in our everyday reading.” And of course, he says “you need a Bible like The Message.” And we’re going to see that on the one hand The Message may be poetry to some people, but it’s idiocy to conclude that it’s accurate. He calls it accurate, he says that’s an accurate and a poetic Bible. On the other hand it does seem to fit with the four elements that Lexio Divina utilizes. For example, I’ll give you a breakdown, and Dave, just jump in and address any of these things. This is Latin, they try to---well, this comes out of Catholic mysticism, so that’s why the terms are in Latin, but Lexio or reading just simply means reading in Latin.Anyway, you read a section of the scripture slowly and repeatedly. Okay.Then metitosio, which means to meditate, but actually you are looking for meanings beyond words. Now here’s what Tony Jones writes: “As you attend to those deeper meanings, begin to meditate on the feelings and emotions conjured in your inner self.” What does that mean?

Dave:

Conjured in your inner self? I don’t know. To conjure something up---it’s not biblical, it doesn’t come from God, it doesn’t come from the Holy Spirit, it sounds like you are making it up. Well, but not only to conjure, that’s magic, you’re going to create something.

Tom:

Dave, but meanings beyond words? God has given us His Word, now we’re to look, we’re to take a phrase out of the Bible, and now never mind that they are words and words have meanings, now we have to really meditate upon how I feel about those words---unbelievable!

Dave:

Now Tom, I don’t know how you can get a meaning beyond words, because the words express the meaning.

Tom: Right.

Dave:

Well, there are people who want to say that feelings are more important, how you feel about it.

Tom:

That’s what psychology tells us.

Dave:

But that means nothing. There are those who want to say that we think in pictures, we don’t, we do not think in pictures, we think in words. Go through the Bible, “Thy Word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”It doesn’t say, Oh, the meanings that I conjure up in my imagination beyond your words, they are a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. We are rational beings, it’s not just feelings. That’s a problem that we have. Well, you have that problem in many aspects, for example, in psychology, in science. It’s amazing that God has---I don’t know that we’ve dwelt on this much in the past, but God has written out on the DNA, I guess we have talked about it a bit, the precise instruction manual for that tiny cell that we began as, that’s where we began at one cell. And on the DNA, the instructions are written out for that tiny cell to replicate itself and build a body of more than a hundred trillion cells, but it’s all laid out in words.How are you going to operate all the machinery? How are you going to do this, and so forth? God goes by words, and we’ve talked about it again in the past, but we have to emphasize it. Peter says: We are born again by the Word of God, that liveth and abideth forever. And then he says: This is the Word which by the gospel is preached unto you. Jesus said: Except a man be born again he cannot enter the kingdom of God. So, if you’re going to be in heaven you have to be born again, it’s that simple. This is not some phrase, some idea that evangelicals have dreamed up---Oh, these born again Christians, they’re always talking about that. The Bible, Jesus very clearly says, you must be born again, and Peter tells us we are born again by the gospel, by the Word of God. So, it’s through believing the gospel and this is why we must preach the gospel. Jesus said: Go into all the world and preach the gospel. So, if anyone is going to be saved, if they are going to go to heaven they have to hear the gospel, they have to understand it, and they have to believe it. But these people now have thrown all of that out---never mind what the Word of God says. There’s a deeper meaning somehow behind these words, and that, Tom, just to be blunt, is not only pure nonsense, that’s the path into the wilderness of doubt, confusion and denial of the truth.

Tom:

Dave, in past programs we have tried to underscore, communicate, explain to our audiences that if they want to have a handle on what Satan is about, how he is trying to destroy the human race, you need to go back to Genesis Chapter 3, start with just verse one. His first words to Eve were: “Yea, hath God said.” The whole idea is, No, we’re talking about words and words have meanings. No, there is something beyond that, you’re not really understanding this right, that’s the whole idea here. And what really grieves me, and it’s why we’re spending so much time on this movement within Evangelical Christianity called, The Emerging Church, because although we are addressing mystical techniques, as you look at these mystical techniques which are being used, utilized by, I would say, perhaps all the emerging churches that I’ve looked at, they are undermining the Word of God. They are saying, No, it’s not in the words, it’s how you feel about them, and so on. So, this is another device, another scheme promoted by Satan and it’s being utilized to great affect within Evangelical Christianity.

Dave:

See Tom, what we are talking about right now is very, very important. Tom, I’m trying to think of Mortimer J. Adler, brilliant man, University of Chicago, one of the co-authors and originators of the Encyclopedia Britannica, Great Books of the Western World.

Tom:

And how to read a book, that’s a book that I know.

Dave:

Right. A brilliant man, he was an agnostic, but he wrote a book that I read---could I have read it in the thirties, forties, at least, it was titled: The Difference of man and the Difference it Makes. Now he was an evolutionist up to that point, and he finally concluded that the real difference between man and animals is the ability to conceive of conceptual ideas, and to express them in language and speech. That that is a chasm, that is a chasm between man and all animals, and it cannot be bridged by evolution, there is no way you can get it from there to here. Okay. This is why the emphasis upon words. Jesus is called, The Living Word. The Word of God that liveth and abideth forever, born again by the Word of God. Because, Tom, we are rational beings, we are supposed to understand. Now this EmergingChurch, they don’t want you to understand. Oh, it’s beyond our understanding, they say. But God says---well, we’ve quoted it many times---wisdom is the principle thing, therefore get wisdom and with all thy getting get understanding. And we’ve also quoted a number of times Jeremiah:9:24But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the LORD which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the LORD.
See All...:“Let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth Me…” Jesus said, This is life eternal that they might know thee, the only true God. Now in contrast, Allah is unknowable. And, It’s popular in universities, for example, well, you can’t really know, I mean we are exploring this, but you can’t arrive at truth, you can’t arrive at certainty. No, the Bible gives you certainty, but it comes through words. No wonder these people,--- Tom, you could tell us, who was it that said, well, we can’t be sure about homosexuality whether it’s right or wrong, take another five years, was…

Tom:

Brian McClaran.

Dave:

Brian McClaran, right I thought so. So, we can’t really come to an understanding. No, the whole thing is we must understand, you cannot believe what you don’t understand, and over and over the Bible emphasizes understanding. Words, words have meaning. This is the way the entire human experience works. We do have courts of law, they quibble over words, what is the meaning of this word? When you write a book you try to be precise so people will understand what you are meaning. But now these men and women are telling us that God wrote a book, He wrote the Bible, this is God’s word, and he didn’t make it clear so that we can understand it, and He leaves it up to our imagination and our feelings to decide what we think it means.

Tom:

Dave, this technique and these techniques that we are going to be addressing, initially they sound like they are moving in a direction that many Christians could receive and accept and so on, but this is why we are going over them in detail because they are not. This is, as I said earlier, this is divination, this is sorcery. For example, we talked---

Dave:

Explain divination, Tom, and divination device for example.

Tom:

Right. Well, first of all it is condemned in the Bible, but what does it mean?If I look for a technique, a ritual, a device in which, supposedly it’s going enable me to communicate with God, enable me to get to know God better.The Bible condemns it because that’s not the way, as you’ve been saying, that’s not the way we are to approach God, go on the basis of His Word.

Dave:

Amen. You can even get to know the future---we could name a number of them. You know, the magician’s wand, that’s a divination device.

Tom:

Well, crystal ball, tea leaves, all of these things. But you say, Well, wait a minute, that’s not what we’re talking about, we’re talking about religious things, or Christian things gained from, gleaned from the desert fathers and the Christian Catholic, really, mystics. No, it’s the same thing, this is occultism.

Dave:

Amen. It’s not the Word of God, they have abandoned the Word of God.

Tom:

Okay, so just, maybe for someone who has just joined us, we’ll go back---we said there were four elements within this technique called Lexio Devina, meaning sacred reading. We talked about you take a section, read a section of scripture slowly, then you begin to meditate on it, but you don’t meditate in terms of understanding, as you said, the words or the meanings of the words, it’s really more important to understand how you feel about them.So, then we go on to point number three: Oratio. Oratio is like oratory, talking, speaking, it’s conversing with God about the meaning of the what, the words? No, of the emotions that are being experienced. There we go again, Dave, I’m turning within, I’m looking within, I’m playing this game of, How do I feel about this, or how do I feel about that, and that’s supposed to lead me to truth?

Dave:

And then I’m going to talk to God about, What is the meaning of my feelings? So my feelings become the criteria for truth, but they’ve abandoned truth long ago.

Tom:

Well, listen to this Dave, here’s the fourth point of Lexio Devina:Contemplatio, it means, according to Tony Jones, and I’m quoting from his book, you remember the book is called, The Sacred Way, Spiritual Practices For Everyday Life, and this is what he says about Contemplatio. He says:“True contemplation that moves beyond words and intellect and into that thin space where time and eternity touch.” Then he adds: “It’s in moments like these that some of the greatest saints in the history of the church have had a mystical union with Christ.” Dave, this is demonic. I’m not saying that Tony, you know, I don’t know whether he’s witting or unwittingly, you know, really understands this, but the practice that he’s teaching is demonic.

Dave:

I’ll go back over that, Tom, a minute, it goes beyond the meaning of words.

Tom:

Right--- “True contemplation moves beyond words and intellect and into that thin space where time and eternity touch.”

Dave:

Now we’ve just lost the distinctive of man. What am I, some kind of an animal now? What did Mortimer J. Adler say, and I’m not putting him up as the gospel, but he became a believer, a Christian through this understanding because it did away with evolution for him. It’s the distinctive between man and animals, the ability to form conceptual ideas in the mind and express them as words, and God created man in His image, and God said, Let there be light, and so forth. God gave us His Word over and over, he emphasizes, and these men are trashing this. No, no, the meaning is not in the words, somehow there is a meaning beyond---you’ve got to get into this contemplation, and you kind of begin to feel this. Tom, dangerous, it’s occultic, it will take you away from God, and away from His Word.

Tom:

Dave, let me wrap this up by quoting from Tony Jones’ book, oh and by the way, it’s nice to have a book here in which he lays out all of these mystical techniques so that we can address them and deal with each and every one.But as I said, this is not just the EmergingChurch, this is Richard Foster, this is many of the Renovari, who are part of his organization, but Dave, later, perhaps not today, we may not get to it, but this is even coming into Awana. I’m going to quote from an Awana book that lays this stuff out for, really, young children.

Dave:

Awana has been a good program to kids.

Tom:

It’s been wonderful, my kids have all been through it, but it’s changing like everything else is changing, Dave. It’s staggering, and again, it’s not just the EmergingChurch, but mysticism, Catholic mysticism really was what’s it’s all about, and then we could go back, occult mysticism has entered the church. Well, Tony Jones kind of wraps, regarding Lexio Devina, he wraps it up for us. He says: “After an opening prayer the passage is read two or three times slowly and deliberately, and participants are asked to mull silently over the word or phrase that speaks to them. After a time for sharing that word with others in the group the passage is read two or three more times with a different voice, different gender or two or three in unison.Again in silence participants reflect on the word or phrase that speaks to them, this time attending to the emotions or feelings that it conjures.Finally, after more time for sharing within small groups the passage is read twice more again in distinct voices, then a longer period of silence is kept to ask God why this word and this feeling have been provoked. A final and more lengthy time of sharing ends the session with each person telling the small group what God is saying through the text.” This is Lexio Devino, which is being promoted, as I said, in many, through many organizations to the evangelical community.

Dave:

Well, on the one hand, it sounds as though they are trying to arrive at the meaning. I’m going to latch onto the phrase that, what? catches my attention? Why would it catch my attention, it must have some meaning.

Tom:

Well, it’s evoking feelings in a person, Dave.

Dave:

Oh, I see, feelings. Tom, what is the point of all of this? In other words, what they are saying is, let’s take Psalm 1: “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the council of the ungodly, or stands in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.” Now that meant get some understanding, seek to understand. Now these people are saying, No, we don’t want understanding, we want feelings, how do you feel about it? They are saying that the church has had the wrong idea. Well, where does the church get this idea? From the Bible. That this is not the way to go about it, trying to comprehend and deeply understand, but we’ve got to see how we feel about it and find some understanding behind the words.

Tom:

Today this is really sensuality, this is sense oriented spirituality, which is to me, in true spirituality that would be a contradiction in terms. But where are they turning? Where is the evangelical church turning to this? They are turning to Roman Catholicism, to Catholic mysticism, that’s where all of these techniques have been generated.

Dave:

And why? Oh, well, it doesn’t work, you know, to understand the Bible, to study the Bible in the old way---we’ve got to have some new, something new.

Tom:

Yeah, but Dave, very simply, the Bible is my authority. I am to do what it says, but now if I become the arbitrator of what’s true and how I feel about it, and forget authority, it’s gone.