by Frank Viola
As I said in the opening of this chapter, there is something called “the background consciousness of God’s presence.” If God were to remove this background consciousness, you would know it immediately. The background consciousness of God’s presence is largely undetected and unnoticed by us Christians. We don’t recognize it for one simple reason: It’s always present. It’s not dissimilar to why you don’t notice the ring on your finger or the watch on your wrist at every moment. You don’t notice it because it’s always there.
However, if the consciousness of God’s ever-abiding presence were removed, it would register heavily upon you. (This is what happens when someone experiences the dark night of the soul.)
So in one regard, we are always conscious of the divine presence in that we are used to it. The light of God is always on. But it looms in the background. Yet at another level, we can be deliberately conscious of His presence. We can be focused on His presence in the foreground. We can be attentive to it.
At this point you might ask: How do I begin to become deliberately conscious of God’s presence? There are many ways, but they are beyond the scope of this book. For the purposes of this chapter, however, I will introduce you to one of the simplest ways that will also help make my overriding point.
At this very moment, turn your attention on the Lord who is always with you and who is always in you. Open your mouth and say to Him, “Lord Jesus, I need You.”
As soon as you do, you are consciously practicing His presence or whatever other name you wish to assign to it. This is true regardless of what your senses or feelings may say.
God’s presence is deeper than any human sensation or perception.
Continue this simple practice the rest of your life, and you will have found one of the wellsprings and mainstays of spiritual formation.
CHAPTER 7
CAPTURED BY THE SAME SPIRIT YOU OPPOSE
REVISING OUR ATTITUDES
Numerous things about the Christian life amaze me. One of them has to do with a phenomenon that has repeated itself throughout church history. I call it “being captured by the same spirit you oppose.”
I was first introduced to this phenomenon while reading the work of a well-known sixteenth-century Reformer. He was writing about the infinite evils of inflicting violence upon his fellow Christian brethren over doctrinal disputes. This man was the leader of one of the best-known denominations during the Reformation. At the time, his group was being mercilessly persecuted by the accepted church of his day.
As I was reading his impassioned indictment against persecuting fellow members of the body of Christ, my jaw dropped in bewilderment. The reason? This same man and his movement were responsible for slaughtering countless numbers of Anabaptist Christians in the most cruel and gruesome ways over doctrinal differences!
What happened to this man?
He had been captured by the same spirit that he opposed. And as typically is the case, he was blissfully unaware of it.
For me, this was more than a history lesson. I’ve watched this same phenomenon happen so many times that I’ve lost count.
For Instance
Recently, I was talking to a friend who spent considerable time with a certain minister. My friend told me that this minister condemned the evils of sectarianism, elitism, and arrogance more clearly, more eloquently, and more articulately than any person he had ever met in his life. This minister also spoke vehemently against being dishonest and using unethical methods in the Lord’s work.
Shockingly, my friend went on to explain how this same minister happened to be one of the most sectarian, elitist, and arrogant individuals he had ever met in his entire life. And the minister was also incredibly dishonest and unethical. He built the kingdom with one hand while tearing it down with the other.
How could this be?
He had been captured by the same spirit he opposed.
History is rife with examples of this. In the early nineteenth century, two movements that were born of God emerged on the Christian horizon. Both originated in Ireland. One spread to the United States; the other spread to England. Both began around 1830.
The founding fathers of both movements sought to restore the primitive expression of the early church. Both abhorred divisions in the body of Christ. And both sought to recapture the unity of the Christian family.
Yet as time went on, the members of each movement began to gripe with one another over doctrinal matters. The disputing became so intense that both movements split into multiple sects, all of which fought bitterly with one another. Each faction believed that the truth lived and died with them.
Both movements crystallized into denominations that came to regard all other Christians as standing outside the pale of authentic Christian truth. They began to view all other believers as being unwittingly deceived at best or heretical at worst.
Ironically, both movements were founded by men who resolved to end sectarianism and establish unity among all Christians. Yet both ended up spawning some of the most sectarian and elitist groups in Christian history. Each one turned out to be a case of high ideals gone dysfunctional.
What happened? Both movements were captured by the same spirit they set out to oppose.
“Diversity without division, unity without uniformity” is a beautiful slogan. But those who are captured by the same spirit they oppose always end up betraying it in practice.
The Root Cause
Now why does this happen? What’s the source of being captured by the same spirit one opposes?
I have my ideas and speculations, but I don’t pretend to know the answer. In fact, the purpose of this chapter is not to try and offer an answer. Instead, it’s to make the point loud and clear that we are all susceptible to this spirit. Like any sin or shortcoming, none of us is immune. Each of us needs a steady dose of God’s infinite grace to avoid falling sway to it.
I will simply say that anytime God moves through an individual or group, this spirit crouches at the door, waiting to jump out of the bushes and capture its prey.
Since God is once again blowing on His church today in some fresh ways, it’s imperative that we understand the danger of being captured by the same spirit we oppose.
What follows are some specific observations I’ve made over the years regarding how this spirit works. I trust that isolating them here will help us all to avoid being captured by it.
(1) Judging Motives
Those who are captured by the same spirit they oppose tend to impute the motives of their own hearts onto those who threaten them. Christian leaders who have inflated egos or deep insecurities are easily threatened by others. As a result, they will unwittingly read their own heart motives into the hearts of other people.
Psychologists call this “projection.” I can’t face my own shortcomings and defects so I unconsciously project them onto other people. I accuse others of the very same dark things that are lurking deep within my own heart.
I’ve watched some Christian leaders engage in projection when they came into contact with those who were just as (or more) gifted than they were. The root was jealousy. You can call it a “Saul complex,” if you will.
Herein lies a great lesson: Those who judge the motives of others are simply revealing what’s in their own hearts.
In Matthew 7:1–4, Jesus points out that those with defective eyesight are all too willing to perform eye surgery on others. Yet within this text, the Lord makes this chilling assessment: If you impute an evil motive onto someone else, you’re simply making known what your motives are.
To put it another way, the piece of sawdust we see in our brother’s eye is simply a small chip off the two-by-four that lies within our own. And a piece of wood will always distort our vision.
When people cannot face the reality of what’s in their own hearts, they project it onto oth
ers—particularly those who they find threatening to their egos.
One of the most profound influences in my life was a talk radio show host from many years back. When this man first broke into the talk radio business, he sat at the feet of a man whom he idolized. He was this talk radio show host’s mentor. We’ll call the mentor “Nelson” since I don’t wish to disclose his name.
When Nelson discovered that the man who he had mentored began to surpass him in popularity, all hell broke loose. Nelson’s monstrous ego began to flicker, and he was loaded for bear. He launched the first salvo, and the two men waged an on-the-air radio slap fight that marched off the map of dignity.
Pointed insults were swapped. Disparaging remarks were cast. Both men drew blood from one another, and the listeners got caught up in the carnage. It turned out to devolve into something quite vicious, and the exchange deeply hurt my radio friend.
Unfortunately, no one could reel in the egos or squash the infighting. It turned into bad blood. Nelson was radioactive for quite some time, and the two men didn’t speak a civil word to each other for many years.
What happened to these two men is not an isolated incident. I’ve watched it occur numerous times since I’ve been a Christian. King Saul is not the only gifted man who has been threatened by a younger David.
What was at the root of that painful period in David’s life? Jealousy and envy in the heart of Saul and the threatening feeling (as well as the irrational paranoia) that comes with them.
As they danced, they sang: “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands.” Saul was very angry; this refrain galled him. “They have credited David with tens of thousands,” he thought, “but me with only thousands. What more can he get but the kingdom?” (1 Sam. 18:7–8)
Incidentally, jealousy and envy are what provoked the religious leaders of our Lord’s day to put Him to death. Tragically, this same drama has played out since Cain slew his younger brother out of jealousy.
I’m no fan of Sigmund Freud nor of his theory of the Oedipus complex. (Please reread that last sentence.) But what led Freud to construct his oedipal theory was a legitimate observation about human nature. Namely, Freud observed that some fathers and some father figures become threatened by their own sons. That is, they fear being supplanted by their sons, and so they grow to hate them.
This only happens when there’s an excessive root of pride and insecurity in the father figure’s heart. The absence of such pride and insecurity is what separates those spiritual fathers who become proud of their sons from those who grow to despise them.
Regrettably, some mentors suffer from both an inferiority complex and a superiority complex at the same time. Their shaky sense of identity cuts in both directions. In such cases, they become masters at the fine art of denial.
Caution: If you’re a person who will one day mentor others, I have a sobering warning. If your ego hasn’t been annihilated by the cross of Jesus Christ, you will end up becoming a Saul in the lives of those who are just as (or more) gifted than you are. And when God begins to elevate them in His service, you will go insane.
You’ll become another sad example of lions eating their young. And as with every modern Saul, God’s favor and anointing will leave you and be given to another. As Peter said,
God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. (1 Peter 5:5 NKJV)
Saint John of the Cross warned Christians to be very careful whom they chose to be their mentors, for, in his words, “as the master so is the disciple; as the father so the child.”1
To my mind, one cannot show genuine respect for one’s mentor by perpetuating his shortcomings and flaws.
Every father should be extremely proud of the son who surpasses him. True mentors freely give what they have to their spiritual sons and hope that their sons will exceed them. False mentors use their sons to increase their fame and carry on their legacies, and they become infuriated whenever their sons share their glory.
(2) Constructing Fellowship Tests
Those who are captured by the same spirit they oppose tend to create explicit or implicit “fellowship tests,” which end up excluding genuine members of the body of Christ. A “test of fellowship” is a belief or practice that people employ as a gauge to determine if another person is worthy of their complete fellowship. Let me illustrate.
When I was sixteen, I was baptized in water to confess my faith and allegiance to Jesus Christ. Some years later, I joined a movement (or a “nondenominational” denomination) that told me that I had to be baptized in their church because any other baptism was null and void.
This “denomination” refused to recognize my former baptism simply because they had the elitist viewpoint that they exclusively had the corner on genuine baptism. Baptism was a “fellowship test” for them. Unless a Christian was baptized in their church, that Christian would always be viewed as second class.
Years later, I spent some time with a movement that carried this same spirit. For them, however, baptism wasn’t their fellowship test. It was something else. Essentially, they believed that unless you were part of their particular movement, any experience of church life you had was meaningless. And they were terribly disinterested in hearing anything about it.
You had to be part of their movement in order to have a valid spiritual experience. And if you didn’t, you were regarded as second class. To their minds, only they and their tiny movement were the divine custodians of true spiritual experience, both corporate and individual.
For me, it was déjà vu. It was the same song that the “we are the gatekeepers of authentic baptism” people had sung, only to a different tune. It reminded me of the rebuke that Jesus leveled to His disciples when they began to entertain the same sort of elitist mentality:
“Master,” said John, “we saw a man driving out demons in your name and we tried to stop him, because he is not one of us.” “Do not stop him,” Jesus said, “for whoever is not against you is for you.” (Luke 9:49–50)
Note the words “we tried to stop him, because he is not one of us.”
The Corinthians were not alone in their tendency to create a “we are of Christ” party (1 Cor. 1:12–13).
There’s nothing new in any of this. You can find it on the earth today in thousands of movements and denominations. It’s like the saying goes: “It’s the same song, third verse; could be better, but it’s gonna get worse.” And that song is commonly sung among those who have been captured by the same spirit they oppose.
It’s my strong feeling that a genuine revelation of the fullness of Christ will strip you and me of all exclusiveness and sectarianism. And it will demolish an elitist attitude.
Think about what seeing Jesus Christ did to Paul of Tarsus. It transformed him from a religious, bigoted, sectarian, elitist Pharisee to someone who welcomed and embraced heathen Gentiles—the very people he was taught to despise all his life.
Paul’s sighting of Christ annihilated a bigot and created an apostle.
If we see only a part of Christ and build a monument around that “sighting,” then we are ripe for embracing an elitist spirit. But if we stay open to the whole Christ, looking for Him in other places, people, and movements, elitism will not find a home in us.
(3) Deifying a Unique Contribution
Those who are captured by the same spirit they oppose tend to make their unique contribution more important than Jesus Christ Himself. One can talk a great deal about Jesus Christ, and even about the need for knowing Him, and yet betray Him by one’s actions and attitudes toward those who are His.
One of the most sobering passages of Scripture is where Jesus makes the statement that if a person rejects one of His disciples, they are rejecting Jesus Himself (Matt. 10:40; Luke 10:6).
Every church tradition, movement, and denomination has a valid contribution to make to the body of Christ.
Some more than others, for sure. But there’s great danger in making our contributions about Christ more important than Christ Himself.
(4) Refusing Diversity
Those who are captured by the same spirit they oppose refuse to live with diversity in their movement. Everyone in the group must rehearse the same party line. Those who do not are viewed with suspicion. They are either overtly silenced or excommunicated and shunned.
When diversity is forbidden in a group, it creates a “walking on eggshells” situation. People are not free to share what they really feel or believe. Legitimate concerns are swept under the rug. Rushes to judgment are routinely made, and the faintest hint of diverse thinking is viewed as subversive. (Note that I’m not speaking here of judging motives, being critical, and having a spirit of faultfinding. I’m speaking of legitimate concerns that are rooted in reality.)
Some group leaders use explicit tactics like overt threats to intimidate those who have valid concerns. Others use the vindictive weapon of public ridicule to belittle, demean, and insult them. This is a gutless way of evading an issue by seeking to make its victim the butt of contempt in a public forum.
Instead of dealing with the issue maturely and graciously in Christ, one uses ridicule to strike at another person and humiliate them in front of others in juvenile fashion. (Incidentally, those who feel they need to ridicule others have very low self-esteem. Vitriol is an effective way to hide one’s own insecurities.)
Schoolyard belittling, juvenile taunting, and blue-blooded mockery are all tools of the flesh. And those who wield them smell of flesh. They grieve the Spirit of God and betray the spirit of the Lamb. And we have not so learned Jesus Christ.