The Turning Point 11

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51. I had to graduate in three years because my full tuition scholarship only applied up to the amount of credits necessary to graduate and I had come in as a sophomore because of AP credit. Before I knew that, I had worked out plans to stay a fourth year to finish my chemistry major and add a math major. Alas, it was not to be. [1]

So my third year at Central would be my final year in South Carolina. No more Table Rock. One of the most significant moments in my spiritual journey happened on my final Easter Sunday, April 19, 1987. I've mentioned the four most significant up to that point that I remember:

• The moment on the stairs at home when I felt at peace about salvation (followed of course by periodic doubts)
• The moment in a field where I acutely felt God's presence as we caught up with a troubled boy who had run away from camp
• The moment in the car when I felt at peace about entire sanctification
• The moment in the library when I realized my sense of holiness standards was out of whack

But perhaps more significant for the shape of my life than any of these was that Easter Sunday.

52. For some reason, I'm not sure why, I decided to read the book of Galatians before church on Easter Sunday. As I read it, I had a sinking feeling. Paul's opponents were trying to bind the Galatians to works, to circumcision, to the observance of days and seasons. But justification was by faith, not works. Paul attacked those focused on such works, on "weak and beggardly elements." He gets quite angry. If his opponents are so keen on cutting things off, he'd just as well they cut their whole thing off (Gal. 5:12).

The sinking feeling inside said, "Ken, you are not on Paul's side in this debate. You are on the side that Paul is arguing against."

That was a turning point. I had been building toward the turn, but that was the moment when the turn took place. It was also a major step toward a lasting spiritual peace.

I have come to see my previous self somewhat in terms of what Paul says of his brethren in Romans 10:2, "a zeal without knowledge." I think Paul thought of his previous self when he said this. He was so convinced he was right. He thought he was fighting for God. But he was actually misguided.

I have identified with Paul's story in more than one way. I don't have his personality. But I feel an affinity for his ideas. It's no wonder I am drawn to his writings in the Bible the most (even more than Hebrews :-).

Not that I was particularly zealous before, but I felt quite strongly about things about which I was mistaken. I see much of fundamentalist Christianity in this way. There is a great deal of zeal out there. It thinks it is standing up for God. It is laying down the law. But in some ways it is very mistaken. Sometimes it even fights against God's will and God's values.

53. There was some transition time. In my first years at seminary, I would have such joy and peace at Asbury. Then I would go home and the cloud of doubt would return. Was I wrong to start going to movies? Was I wrong to eat out on Sunday? Then I would go back to Asbury and the joy and peace would return. One cannot live in this back and forth forever. Eventually I decided for peace and joy.

I got into some discussions in those days. Sometimes I would apologize for arguing. "We're not arguing. We're just having a discussion." I eventually decided that argument was not productive. I was just venting. I wasn't sure I really wanted anyone to change their mind anyway.

It's OK for people to have different convictions and come to different conclusions, as long as no one gets hurt. I believe God is very patient with us. We are so overwhelmingly stupid. If he wants us to have any free will at all, he must choose to put up with our inevitable and continual idiocy.

54. In those days, Romans 14, 1 Corinthians 8-10, and Colossians 2 became my best friends. Romans 14 says that whether one observes the Jewish Sabbath or not is a matter of personal conviction (14:5). Colossians 2:16 tells a Gentile audience not to let anyone judge them in relation to the keeping of a Jewish Sabbath. [2] Paul basically tells these predominantly Gentile audiences that Sabbath observance is a matter of personal conviction.

In discussion, someone pushed back that the Sabbath is based on creation in Genesis 2:3. "I know," I responded. "it's amazing that Paul doesn't seem to care." There are obviously issues where Paul was not "relativistic" like this. Paul was an "absolutist" when it came to loving God, no exceptions. Paul was universal but apparently not an absolutist when it came to the prohibition on divorce, because he made an exception. But he is not a relativist on the issue of divorce.

But on some of the hot issues of his day--like eating meat sacrificed to idols--Paul was a relativist. "Nothing is unclean in itself. If someone thinks it is unclean, then it is unclean" (Rom. 14:14).

By the way, I would eventually realize how confused discussion of absolutes and relativism is. By "absolutes," most people really mean that there are things that are definitely wrong. But that's not what an absolute is. A moral absolute is a rule or principle to which there is no exception.

By the same token, if someone is a relativist on a particular issue, they do believe in right and wrong. They just think it is relative to the person or culture. So much of popular rhetoric like this is muddled, but it makes us feel smart and it justifies our "zeal without knowledge."

I have to wonder if a good deal of the relativist/absolutes rhetoric is really about a fear or anger about change. Language of absolutes really means, "You can't do something different than the tradition on this issue." Language of relativism really means, "You can't think differently than the rest of us."

But once you realize that the Bible makes exceptions to certain universal principles (like divorce or obeying the government) and once you realize that Paul sanctions personal convictions on some disputable issues, the rhetoric fails to achieve its subconscious goals. Now we are back to doing the hard work of ethical "improvisation" and "working out our salvation with fear and trembling" together.

55. Paul's comments in Romans 14 stand at the heart of my Wesleyan ethics. Yes, from one perspective, there are acts that are sins whether you intend them to be or not. If I drive without enough sleep and accidentally kill someone, I have in a very real sense wronged or sinned against the person I killed. There is such a thing as unintentional sin in the Bible.

But the heart of New Testament ethics lies with intent. Sin is when I know I shouldn't do something and I choose to do it. Sin is when I should do something and I choose not to do it. As Wesley said, sin properly so called is "a willful transgression against a known law of God."

In that sense, sin is most meaningfully a matter of what I think I am doing. Two people can do the same thing. One may think it wrong and intentionally violate a what they think is a "law of God." That person has sinned. Another may do the same thing but not do it thinking it wrong. That person has not sinned.

56. I did an honor's project my senior year. I did not yet have a computer that could print. I hand wrote out all the chapters and then we typed it up. Even during the graduation time, my mother was helping me type it up in a motel room. In those days if you mis-typed, you hand to type over the mistaken letter with whiteout, then retype it. Woe is you if you missed a line or needed to add something back in.

The title was "An Integration of Theological and Psychological Aspects of Holiness: An Initial Study of the Biblical Doctrine of Holiness and its Relationship to Human Psychology." At one point it was in the special collections room of the library at Central, off to the left when you go through the entrance. It is 128 pages and nine chapters--my first book, so to speak.

This study laid the ground work for the way my thought would develop later. My basic sense of the holiness of God as God being set apart is laid out here. To say that God is holy is to say that God is God. It is to say that God is not humanity and humanity is not God. It was my first foray into Hebrew although I had not studied it. The etymological fallacy pokes its head up here and there.

It has a section on anthropology before the Fall. I set out here my sense of how Adam could sin and Christ be tempted even though they did not have sinful natures. It was here that I suggested that they were tempted because a good drive was turned upon an inappropriate object. The desire for knowledge is good but the desire to each the wrong tree to get that knowledge is temptation to sin.

It is a little different than Augustine because I am following Paul in Romans 14:14. No act is intrinsically sinful. It is rather the context of the act, my intention in particular, that truly makes an act sinful. The seeds of my later nominalist tendencies were set here by Paul.

It looked at the Spirit-fillings in Acts. In this study I still argued for the two-step process of 1) conversion and 2) sanctification. But I realized the Samaritan incident of Acts 8 could be taken in the way I would soon take it in seminary--that they were not truly "in" until they had the Holy Spirit. I had that nagging feeling that I would have more than once in the next seven years. It said, you may be wrong on this Ken.

It was in this study that I concluded that sanctification and conversion were closely associated in Acts. It was here as a transitional thought that I concluded that, ideally, we would be entirely sanctified at conversion.

57. And so I graduated from Central. It was a crucible for me. It was a time for me to mature and grow up a little. Yes, I learned things and formed ideas. But more significant was the way it shaped the trajectory of my life.

I did not feel ready to pastor when I graduated. I was still only 20 years old in April of 1987. I was always the youngest for a long time. And then I wasn't. I decided to do what most Wesleyans used to do in my shoes. I went to Asbury Seminary.

[1] About 10 years ago I started working through college physics and calculus books as a kind of nerd mid-life crisis. Since I learn best by teaching, I started putting videos for each section on YouTube. It's still on my bucket list to finish those 1000+ page tomes. I now have over 1000 videos on YouTube and over 4300 subscribers.

[2] It's important to note that the Sabbath discussion of the Bible is entirely about Saturday (sundown Friday to sundown Saturday). A professor at Frankfort ingeniously once suggested that the expression, "the first of sabbaths" on Easter in Luke 24:1 meant that Easter was the first time the Sabbath was on Sunday. But this is just a figure of speech for the first day of the week. Monday would then be the "second of sabbaths." There is no Scriptural text that transfers the Jewish Sabbath to Sunday.