book review, enjoy?

I wrote a book review, sorta-ish

YOU ARE NOT SAVED

My spirituality brings all the boys to the yard,
And they're like
It's true-er than yours,
D**n right it's better than yours,
I can teach you,
But I have to charge.
In the evening they will examine thee in love. – John of the Cross
I have recently completely wrecked my copy of the book Seeing God, Jonathan Edwards and Spiritual Discernment, because of my vigorous underlining, impassioned note taking, and coffee spills. This author of this paper intends to give a biased description of the book based on what stuck out to him the most, and how it impacted him the greatest.
The authors’ (Gerald R. McDermott) intended thesis in the book: to help people determine whether or not they be elect, and to live accordingly in awe and worship of the beauty of Gods holiness. The subtitle happens to be Johnathan Edwards and Spiritual Discernment so it should be noted that the author also intends to help the believer be spiritually discerning in their appraisal of their own salvation, your salvation, her salvation, etc., and be able to make wise choices as a believer by being able to sift the filth of the worlds theology and know only what is the pure the Word of God, with the assumption that Jonathan Edwards also espouses similar philosophies.
The author of this paper feels compelled to mention that while the author of the book in question has a stated purpose in writing this book, it is not evidenced in the writing of said book. In fact, based on what is considered (by the author of this paper) to be the result or actual purpose in the printing of this book, the reader might agree as well, regardless of their deep and heart felt respect for Johnathan Edwards and those who study his works, there is no good reason. The following three statements seem to be the sum of McDermott’s view and purpose in this book:
“The only man who has a right to say that he is justified by grace alone is the man who has left all to follow Christ.” – Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Jonathan Edwards said that there are two reasons lax saints have a difficult time finding assurance. First, there is little grace in such a person’s life, and whatever grace is present is mixed with abundant corruption.” – Gerald R. McDermott
And finally, “It is no wonder that a negligent saint will be plagued with guilt and fear, unable to find the peace and joy that come with assurance of salvation.” – Gerald R. McDermott
I must admit, I do not find these sentiments in scripture, nor do I find that they are justified by any of the theology popular among men.” – Author of paper

In the Introduction to the book McDermott gives reasons for what he considers to be “Spiritual Confusion” (or disgust) in our world, which is valid in its application to both believers and non-believers alike. He goes on to explain that spiritual confusion is what is wrong with the world of Christians and the world of those who might be or would be Christians. He mentions “Declining trust in religious leaders” as the first reason for a decline in our God awareness, he goes on to cite what were at the time considered to be the 4 most trusted people in industry in order of most trusted to least: Pharmacist, College Teacher, Engineer, and Religious Leader. This list is fairly amusing in that the last 15 years have changed things quite a bit, from Pharmacist being associated with pharmaceutical companies who are considered some of the least trustworthy in the industry, to engineers, who are pretty much on no one’s raider and finally religious leaders, who are almost always suspect, at least in the media anyway. This does not take away from his point though I see a number of his examples as being what once was, and maybe I have had to break out the micro-fiche a little bit when reading him, but otherwise not all is lost.
The second trend that lends our culture to spiritual idiocy is “Disenchantment with organized religion.” I have no idea what was going on back when he wrote this book other than Jim Baker was having sex with someone who didn’t have big pink hair, and that was bad. This point is probably more obvious than it was even then. It seems in America there are more church plants and emerging churches, and entrepreneurial churches popping up than Starbucks. I imagine that this is because they are unhappy with what they see at church and they have an idea of how it could be done better, so they start their own church or find another and another and another. Protestantism in this country maybe going crazy, we seem less like the body of Christ and more like the Schizophrenia of the Christ.
“A third cultural pressure causing spiritual confusion is Religious Pluralism.” I can think of nothing more prevalent, but it seems this is becoming more and more a part of our Christian culture. I am not overly concerned about the broader culture espousing pluralism, though it does seem to make things more difficult. I am more bothered by the amount of friends I have grown up with over the years who have decided that Jesus was good, but not great, and that there are many paths that lead up the mountain side. I might find this point most troubling in that it has affected those I love most the most. I think that as believers who no longer think so highly of God and His word it is not enough for those who love them to console ourselves in saying, “well, at least they’ll be in heaven” I am truly broken by the relationship they are missing in Christ.
Finally, well, not quite yet, I should mention that the reason I spent so much time on these four points is that I found them not only interesting but also very helpful is discerning our culture, and in thinking about how our culture can be better aided. “Intellectual Autonomy” is defined as “…the attitude that I (an individual) am not intellectually mature if I permit other persons, or particularly the institutional church, to influence my thinking” or “all spiritual truth and wisdom is within me.” I do not really understand what he means here in that I don’t really know people who would resonate with that thought necessarily. But I would like to say that if he meant that people like to find their own way, while at the same time not submitting to anything they do not prefer, than I would say yes absolutely. This is certainly a problem of spiritual discernment but also an issue of allowing God to be God, and recognizing that we are not – which is almost impossible for our culture. McDermott ends with, “…they (Christians) don’t know how to judge between different Christian groups, leaders or teachings (concerning competing Christian claims)” while I would add that the world chooses not to.

Explanation of key arguments:
The author spends a great deal of time arguing for a distinction of True Spirituality which is what the author refers to as one’s Salvation, with a ring of assurance.
If you have a “religious experience” or what McDermott considers to be a religious experience and then you peter out, or fall on hard times spiritually – you weren’t really a Christian in the first place. To any individual reading this, regardless of whether they read the book, the above statement is going to sound over the top and biased, but it’s not. Ninety plus pages into the book the author spends a paragraph telling the reader that they should not be discouraged if there not perfect, and then back into the onslaught of stories of fallen “saints?” I’m not sure if I’ve made my point clear yet, but my take on McDermott’s book is that he says he is trying to help people be spiritually discerning, and he illustrates this by telling countless stories of people he knew who called themselves Christians and then stopped calling themselves Christians and behaved in an un-Christ-like manner, which always always left him concluding that they were not saved. Here is the tale end of one such story, “I was not surprised to hear a year later that she had gone back to the ways of the world, and that she had been sleeping with a male song leader while serving our prayer group.” This is what he wrote of Jean who “spoke in tongues and enjoyed the ‘Jesus jollies’ in their prayer group.”
McDermott writes, “I have been trying to argue that true spirituality is rooted primarily in an attraction to God and his works in and of themselves and not because of the benefits he brings.” He goes on to go so far as to say that “the person inhabited by the Spirit will gradually become holy. This is the chief reason that saints have a sweetness and beauty about them…” I believe McDermott’s view of what can take place in the believer’s life completely blocks out the millions of examples of people struggling to walk well in their faith. I’m not saying that it wouldn’t be great if our faith always smelled like roses, but as the great philosophy somewhere said, everybody’s got faith holes and they all stink. (at least a little, right?)
In a word, I think McDermott romanticizes Christians (Which is different from Christ), and in doing so he tends take the focus off of God. This is an excerpt from his book where he describes someone who has been saved“… he was overwhelmed by the beauty of Jesus’ suffering love for his own sin-sick soul. This experience left him with a fear not of eternal damnation but of wounding the heart of the beautiful Savior who suffered for him.” This story, I think is in the book because he wants believers to think of something like this when they think of their “salvation experience” and I don’t think that that sort of experience is true to a lot of believers. Of course McDermott might not have been writing to such a skeptical audience and brutal honesty was certainly not a thing of the eighties, otherwise hair and clothes would not have been so baggy. Though in romanticizing the living out of our faith he draws stark and impossible contrasts between those that have faith and those that “clearly” do not. I should make it clear that I do believe that Christ does a transforming work in us, and once we have become a new creation in Him we are no longer dead to sin, and fortunately now alive to living in righteousness in Christ, but I don’t think we cease to stink, because we are still tainted, we got a little taint on us.
In Summary of his key arguments, I understand him to suggest that basically Christians persevere to the end because of their grasp (any grasp at all will do) of the beauty of God’s Holiness, and thus living as such.
Discuss personal and ministerial application of this material
It seems that from a ministerial perspective there is much to be learned from McDermott’s book concerning culture/people and how we can help them.
I went to an independent Baptist college in my undergrad, and as I sat in church twice on Sunday and again every Wednesday night (three to thrive) I listened to the pastor say some horrible things lots of times. I began to wonder how in the world I could bring my unsaved friends to this church (it had to be that church because we were not permitted to go to another church) when I knew they would never hear the gospel before first hearing how awesome being a republican is and how horrible democrats are. You would be correct in assuming that they were all democrats, but probably not because they weren’t Christians, I digress. Anyway, so as I sat in church week after week I began taking mental notes of what not to do, I have filled steno note pads. I tell this story, though it is extreme, to explain how even though I said a lot of negative things about McDermott’s book I was still able to gather much.
I also should mention that there was lots of very good stuff in the book, I just feel like some of the other stuff he said was a lot louder. I think that for believers the spiritual disciplines that he mentions are important and can be quite helpful as long as we do not think that we can become holy by becoming more disciplined and rigid.
I believe as he does that “the unexamined life is not worth living” and so we must not only examine ourselves, but examine ourselves specifically for whether or not Christ be in us and working in us. Though I do not think that while this can be quite discouraging we should conclude that we are not children of God because of our many many acts of indiscretion.
Finally, I feel the book can be helpful if he would cut out 99% of the illustrations, the emphasis on who is not saved, and the first half of the book.