Author Archives: Gregg Monteith

70: Eminence or Evidence | Expectations Around Experiencing God

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In this episode John enquires into the result of Gregg’s 6 month stay in Switzerland, at Swiss L’Abri.  Gregg recaps his time by noting that his writing has been very productive, and especially his most recent topic: “everyday” experiences versus exceptional experiences (particularly, ‘experiencing’ God). Gregg is concerned not only to lay out the content of such experiences–his own included–but also to offer sufficient theoretical, theological, philosophical background for the discussion to appear credible.

In brief, Gregg’s view on the matter is that we should expect such exceptional experiences—experiences of God acting currently, in people’s lives—to be personal but not necessarily individual. In other words, we should expect God to “show up” and act in people’s lives but not necessarily our own lives, which raises both the importance of testimony and of understanding who God is and what God’s priorities are (so as properly to set one’s expectations, relative to God’s action, within Christianity).

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68: Hot Dogs & Tow Trucks | Does God Meet Our Needs?

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In this episode John and Gregg discuss a recent conversation Gregg had with a person at Swiss L’Abri concerning their expectations that God should “meet their needs.”

John’s sees the idea of “God meeting our needs” as one that was over-sold in his Christian experience. John feels this way because he felt that God has rarely met his needs in the way he expected or understood that God was supposed to do so. John’s expectations come from the experiences he’s heard other Christians describe. Gregg is curious how the people giving these testimonies actually validated their experiences of God.

John gives an example of someone in a difficult time who prayed to God for help and support. The person then opened their Bible to a random page where they read something in the Psalms that they found to be very comforting (and so helpful). Gregg replies with some skepticism: by randomly opening a Bible it’s fairly easy to open to the Psalms (which are right in the middle) and the Psalms is very full of supportive, comforting material.
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67: Enjoying All of Life

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In this episode John and Gregg go further on the topic of “rigor,” which they initially discussed in episode # 64.  In that episode they discussed rigor specifically in the context of reading and interpreting the Bible. In this episode they expand that discussion as Gregg suggests that rigor applies broadly to our entire lives.

Gregg explains that, in his view, human beings are not just cognitive machines or solely intellectually focused.  Further, while a Christian perspective focuses on character, God is concerned with more that our character.  Such other concerns would be improvement, diversity, and enjoyment.  So Gregg notes that C. S. Lewis starts his Narnia series with Aslan proclaiming to all of the talking creatures, “I give you yourselves!”  Yet the tendency with Christians is either to overlook this or overemphasize it.
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66: Church Challenged | Listener Feedback

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In this episode John and Gregg discuss feedback from a listener wanting to understand how to continue being part of / partnering with a church where one holds different views from that church’s?  John identifies three questions out of this situation: a) What is the church?  b) What is a Christian’s responsibility to the church? c) How can someone be part of the local church in such cases, and how can this be productive?

Gregg suggests that, at its most basic, the church is a gathering together of those who believe that / are considering whether Jesus Christ is the son of God.  John’s experience is that this notion is actually very problematic, both because its precise definition is very slippery and because Christians use “church attendance” as a way of judging the validity of other’s faith, which John finds alienating.

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65: Self Love and the Ten Commandments

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In this episode John and Gregg consider a comment by listener Melinda to episode #35, Love is more than grace.  Melinda makes three points/questions:

  1. That internalizing God’s love seems crucial, but sermons and the Bible often don’t seem to support this
  2. Gregg expressed that “grace is that mode of expression by which God most truly expresses Godself: grace shows God’s love in its truest and best light.”  Is grace given too much weight over love?
  3. Can you offer more discussion on “self-love”?  A Bible teacher recently said that self-love is not biblical because none of the ten commandments relate to loving oneself.   This teacher thinks that the ‘as yourself’ (i.e., love you neighbor as yourself) is just a reference point, such as, don’t harm others because you wouldn’t want to harm yourself.

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