MYSTICISM AND RICHARD FOSTER: IS IT POSSIBLE TO TRUST GOD TOO MUCH?

While it is not possible to trust God too much, it is possible to trust Him wrongly and unbiblically. David had trusted God in the wrong way. He had been celebrating the return of the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem – a good thing – but he was trusting God in the wrong way. Instead of appointing Levites to carry the Ark, as God had instructed, he thought he had a better way to convey the Ark – in an ox-drawn cart:

·       And David and all the house of Israel were celebrating before the LORD, with songs and lyres and harps and tambourines and castanets and cymbals. And when they came to the threshing floor of Nacon, Uzzah put out his hand to the ark of God and took hold of it, for the oxen stumbled. And the anger of the LORD was kindled against Uzzah, and God struck him down there because of his error, and he died there beside the ark of God. (2 Samuel 6:5-7; ESV)

We find this very disturbing. Often, we too do things that we think will honor God, but instead, we are disciplined. We had thought that we had been led by right motives, but we weren’t. When we violate God’s concerns and His Word, we are not led by the right motives but by our own. Scripture gives us many warnings against departing from His Word:

·       And when they say to you, “Inquire of the mediums and the necromancers who chirp and mutter,” should not a people inquire of their God? Should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living? To the teaching and to the testimony! If they will not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn. (Isaiah 8:19-20)

·       I have applied all these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, brothers, that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up in favor of one against another. (1 Corinthians 4:6)

When we violate the Word or go outside of it in ways that compete against God’s counsel, we incur His needful discipline. Jesus therefore taught:

·       “It is written, “‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” (Matthew 4:4)

I bring this up because many, in the Name of God, go beyond the Word of God to the detriment of the people of God. For example, the “Christian” mystics add many things to the Word, which they claim are essential for our Christian life. However, the Bible claims that whatever is essential is already contained in Scripture:

·       All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16-17)

However, in Celebration of Discipline, the mystic, Richard Foster, proposes many “essentials” that go far beyond anything that Scripture has to say:

·       “Often we assume we are in contact [with God] when we are not…Often people will pray and pray with all the faith in the world, but nothing happens. Naturally, they are not contacting the channel [of God]. We begin praying for others by first centering down and listening to the quiet thunder of the Lord of hosts. Attuning ourselves to divine breathings is spiritual work, but without it our praying is vain repetition. Listening to the Lord is the first thing…(34)

Often, “nothing happens” for many years. Abraham had to wait 25 years for the birth of his promised son, Isaac. Moses had to wait 40 years until God appeared to him in the burning bush. Therefore, the Bible counsels us to wait patiently:

·       For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised. (Hebrews 10:36)

However, Foster suggests that there is something wrong if we don’t promptly receive from God. Yes, we can create barriers against God that can cause us to miss “the channel.” Unrepented sin creates such a barrier, for example:

·       Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered. (1 Peter 3:7)

Our motives can also create a barrier:

·       You ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. (James 4:2-3)

However, failure to implement Foster’s unbiblical practices presents no barrier whatsoever.

Foster also promotes the use of imagination in meditation and prayer:

·       Hence, you can actually encounter the living Christ in the event, be addressed by His voice and be touched by His healing power. It can be more than an exercise of the imagination; it can be a genuine confrontation. Jesus Christ will actually come to you.

According to Foster, we can imaginatively visual Jesus coming to us, and “Jesus Christ will actually come.” This is little different from idolatry. In one instance, we create a physical idol; in another, we create a mental idol to do our bidding, something strictly forbidden by the Ten Commandments:

·       "You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.” (Exodus 20:4)

Foster is instructing us to make for ourselves a mental idol, one that will actually serve us. Instead, Jesus requires us to worship God in “spirit and in truth,” rather than in our imaginations. We do not have the privilege to imagine or conjure up the God that we want. The KJV translation brings out the fact that many have hardened themselves to God by creating for themselves a god of “their imaginations”:

·       Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. (Romans 1:21-23; KJV)

Instead, we are to expose such false imaginations which oppose the “knowledge of God”:

·       For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds; Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. (2 Corinthians 10:4-5; KJV)

Nevertheless, Foster insists that:

·       Imagination opens the door to faith. If we can ‘see’ in our mind’s eye a shattered marriage whole or a sick person well, it is only a short step to believing that it will be so. (36)

Perhaps our imaginations do open the door to faith, but to which faith:

·       Imagine the light of Christ flowing through your hands and healing every emotional trauma and hurt feeling your child experienced that day. Fill him or her with the peace and joy of the Lord. In sleep the child is very receptive to prayer since the conscious mind, which tends to erect barriers to God’s gentle influence, is relaxed. (39)

Not only is this practice unbiblical, it is also assumes that we can coerce God, through the use of our imaginations, to give us what we want and when we want it. This represents both a serious debasing of God and an exaltation of our own manipulations. Against such presumptions, James warned:

·       Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that." As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil. (James 4:13-16)

Foster’s teachings are no less boastful. We cannot presume that we can manipulate God to give us what we want and when we want it. This is how Satan tempted Jesus:

·       Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, “‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and “‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.’” Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’” (Matthew 4:5-7)

Foster is also putting “God to the test,” assuming that He must perform in accordance with Foster’s techniques. Instead, blessing doesn’t depend on such manipulations but on God’s specifications:

·       Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. (Joshua 1:8)

·       But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. (Matthew 6:33)

Foster is teaching an unbiblical God, one who cannot bless “since the conscious mind, which tends to erect barriers to God’s gentle influence.” Instead, God is all-powerful and is not impeded by our conscious mind:

·       But Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” (Matthew 19:26)

·       "To the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: ‘These are the words of him who is holy and true, who holds the key of David. What he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open.’” (Rev. 3:7)

Foster also suggests that our minds are an impediment to receiving the grace of God. Instead, we are taught that our minds are a tool that enables us to connect to God:

·       And he [Jesus] said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” (Matthew 22:37)

Foster has imagined an unbiblical God. How does God react to us when we go beyond Scripture? Here is how He addressed his most righteous servant:

·       “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” (Job 38:2)

·       “Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty? He who argues with God, let him answer it.” (Job 40:2)

After Job repented of his foolishness, God turned His anger upon Job’s three friends:

·       “My anger burns against you and against your two friends, for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has. Now therefore take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and offer up a burnt offering for yourselves. And my servant Job shall pray for you, for I will accept his prayer not to deal with you according to your folly. For you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.” (Job 42:7-8)

We must speak of God correctly. However, after Job repented in dust and ashes, it was as if he had never sinned at all.

Freedom in Worship, Richard Foster, and Mysticism

We have a lot of freedom in Christ. We are often surprised to read that we are allowed to go to temples and even eat foods that have been sacrificed to their idols (1 Cor. 8:1-8). However, we are not free to worship in any way we please. Some of us would like to think that “as long as I have God in mind, I can worship in whatever way feels right to me.

However, Scripture has never given us such freedom. Moses told Israel:

·        You must not worship the Lord your God in their way, because in worshiping their gods, they do all kinds of detestable things the Lord hates. They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire as sacrifices to their gods. See that you do all I command you; do not add to it or take away from it. (Deut. 12:31-32)

The way we worship is the way we live and behave. If we believe that God is unjust, we will act unjustly. If we believe that He is compassionate, even towards the criminal, we will likewise seek to be compassionate. Consequently, as Moses pointed out, our worship was to be directed by every word of Scripture, without any additions.

Likewise, Jesus taught that we have no choice but to worship God in truth, according to whom He is. He explained to the Samaritan woman that worship had to be according to the way He revealed Himself in Scripture to the Jewish people:

·        “You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth." (John 4:22-24)

According to Jesus, we are not free to imagine God in a way that might feel right to us. Instead, God requires that we worship Him “in spirit and in truth,” with all our heart and mind.

In contrast to this, the mystics claim that we are missing out because we fail to make use of their techniques of visualization and imagination. In Celebration of Disciple, Richard Foster insists that:

·        “As with meditation, the imagination is a powerful tool in the work of prayer. We may be reticent to pray with the imagination, feeling that it is slightly beneath us. Children have no such reticence.” (172)

·        “Imagination often opens the door to faith.” (173)

Scripture never mentions that “Imagination often opens the door to faith.” How then does imagination open the door to faith? Foster explains:

·        “Let’s play a little game. Since we know that Jesus is always with us, let’s imagine that he is sitting over in the chair across from us. He is waiting patiently for us to centre our attention on him. When we see him, we start thinking more about His love than how sick Julie is. He smiles, gets up, and comes over to us. Then, let’s put both our hands on Julie and when we do, Jesus will put His hands on top of ours. We’ll watch the light from Jesus flow into your little sister and make her well.” (173)

According to Foster, not only does “Imagination often open the door to faith,” it also coerces and channels Jesus’ grace and healing. In essence, this teaching claims that we are in charge instead of God.

In contrast to Foster, the Apostle Paul that we are not free to imagine and visualize God according to our own inclinations:

·        For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. (Romans 1:21)

Our imaginations provoke God’s wrath. Although humankind knows God, we refuse to worship Him “as God!” As a consequence of refusing to abide in God’s light, we become darkened by our own imaginations, as God revealed through the Prophet Jeremiah:

·        This is what the Lord Almighty says: "Do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you; they fill you with false hopes. They speak visions from their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord. They keep saying to those who despise me, 'The Lord says: You will have peace.' And to all who follow the stubbornness of their hearts [“walketh after the imagination of his own heart;” KJV] they say, 'No harm will come to you.'” (Jeremiah 23:16-17; Ezek 13:2; Luke 1:51)

I know that this sounds like an overly harsh indictment of many people who seem to be sincerely seeking God. However, imagining or visualizing Jesus has absolutely nothing to do with Scripture. In fact, it is condemned! Therefore, it’s either the case that those who seek Jesus in this manner are either ignorant or rebellious.

Sadly, many among the church remain haters of the light of Scripture, according to Jesus:

·        This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. (John 3:19-20)

To love our Savior is to abide in His Word:  “And this is love, that we walk after his commandments” (2 John 1:6). When we refuse to abide in His commands and teachings and instead pursue mystical techniques, we demonstrate that we really don’t love Him!

Isn’t this very limiting? Yes, but what’s the other alternative? Complete freedom? This concept is as meaningless as playing chess without rules. We thrive when we confine ourselves to the worship that He has designated. We are like a goldfish in his tank, who maximizes his freedom by remaining in the water for which he was created. We were created to trust and serve God in accordance with His truth. Let us abide there!

Mysticism and how it Violates Scripture and Christian Growth

Mysticism is the attempt to directly experience God through various “spiritual” techniques. It attempts to do this apart from believing the truths of God. I can understand wanting to lay aside the attempt to understand God. It can be very frustrating. Sometimes, we yearn to just turn our mind off, find a safe refuge, and just experience the peace of God.

However, this is not the Scriptural way to find God’s peace and blessings. Instead, in many ways the Bible instructs us that finding God’s blessings has to come through the knowledge of God:

·        Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. (2 Peter 1:2-3)

It’s God’s truth that transforms:

·        Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Romans 12:2)

However, to a large degree, the church has ignored this biblical counsel in its pursuit of mystical experience. Instead, practices found in the spiritual formation movement - silence, imagination and visualizations - which promise quick results, have achieved enormous popularity.

Richard Foster is a prime example of this movement. In the late 70s, he wrote a book —Celebration of Discipline - that is still highly popular today. While some of it is good, other parts envision a different God. For example, Foster wrote:

·        Often we assume we are in contact [with God] when we are not…Often people will pray and pray with all the faith in the world, but nothing happens. Naturally, they are not contacting the channel. We begin praying for others by first centering down and listening to the quiet thunder of the Lord of hosts. Attuning ourselves to divine breathings is spiritual work, but without it our praying is vain repetition. Listening to the Lord is the first thing…(34)

There is nothing wrong with waiting and listening for God. Regarding prayer, I do many extra-scriptural things. I journal as a form of prayer and I also like to walk as I am praying. However, I would violate Scripture if I taught that everyone needs to journal in order to have a full and blessed relationship with God. However, Foster claims that “without it [his disciplines] our praying is vain repetition.” In essence, he is writing that what Scripture teaches isn’t adequate to truly “connect” with God—that we need to add additional practices.

However, according to Paul, Scripture is sufficient to make us complete in regards to our relationship with God:

·        All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. (2 Tim. 3:16-17)

However, Foster insinuates that we are not complete without his techniques of “centering down and listening to the quiet thunder of the Lord” and “attuning ourselves to divine breathings,” we are simply not going to have our prayers heard, let alone answered. This amounts to adding to God’s Word (Deut. 4:2). Indirectly, he is claiming that God’s Word isn’t sufficient without his practices.

Perhaps even worse, Foster claims that if “nothing happens,” it means that we have simply failed in “contacting the channel” of God despite the fact that we are trusting our Savior in faith. This means that faith alone isn’t enough to sustain contact with God. If “nothing happens,” it signifies that our faith wasn’t enough and we’ve failed to make contact. This is in contrast to the many verses that claim that God is close to those who trust in Him. For instance, Proverbs assures us that if we trust in God, we connect with Him:

·        Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight. (Proverbs 3:5-6)

However, Foster’s teaching undermines this most basic confidence. It teaches that our God is more interested in mystical techniques than in trust and obedience. However, this contradicts God’s assertions about what He values. For example, Micah 6:8 reads:

·        He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

Nowhere is there any mention of practicing certain spiritual techniques. Besides, Foster’s god is no longer close to the brokenhearted as the Bible assures us (Isa. 57:15; 66:1-2). Consequently, those who have despaired in themselves and are trusting in God alone will be disappointed by God unless they learn Foster’s disciplines. How discouraging and how contrary to Scripture to be informed that we are “missing the channel” when our prayers aren’t immediately answered! Had Abraham been nurtured on such teaching, he would have thought that he was “missing the channel” because he had not received his promised child after decades of waiting!

Instead, James 4 instructs us that we miss “the channel” when we ask with “wrong motives”:

·        You ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. (James 4:2-3)

At other times, it’s sin that blocks us from God. However, Scripture never tells us that we receive not because we lack the right spiritual practices!

Foster also teaches unbiblically about the imagination:

·        Imagination opens the door to faith. If we can ‘see’ in our mind’s eye a shattered marriage whole or a sick person well, it is only a short step to believing that it will be so. (36)

There is nothing wrong with exercising our imagination, but there is a lot the matter with believing that we can move mountains with it. This thinking seems to claim that we have power that we clearly don’t have. Instead, Jesus claimed that without Him, we can do nothing at all (John 15:3-5). Foster’s teaching places our faith in our ability to imagine and not in God alone (Psalm 62). Besides, if it’s about us and the quality of our imaginations, our attention will naturally focus on ourselves, the source of our hopes. This will enslave us to self-preoccupations.

It also suggests that we can coerce God through our imagination and fails to give adequate acknowledgment to the will of God (James 4:13-16), as if God has no plan or will of His own – as if He is no more than a passive blob waiting for us to learn how to exercise our minds before He can bless us.

Although imagination can be used profitably when writing a children’s book, it has no place in regards to connecting to God. Instead, the Bible refers to imagination as an evil to which people resort in favor of the Word of God.

Similarly, Foster’s teachings portray God as unwilling or unable to heal without the right visualizations:

·        Imagine the light of Christ flowing through your hands and healing every emotional trauma and hurt feeling your child experienced that day. Fill him or her with the peace and joy of the Lord. In sleep the child is very receptive to prayer since the conscious mind, which tends to erect barriers to God’s gentle influence, is relaxed. (39)

Why worry about performing the right visualizations if God is the healer! Instead, Foster would have us place our faith in our ability to “Imagine the light of Christ flowing through your hands and healing every emotional trauma,” and not in Christ Himself. In contrast to Foster, it is so liberating to not have to worry about the quality or intensity of my prayers and visualizations and instead to look to Christ alone.

However, there are even more toxic implications to this teaching. Foster is claiming that we have the power to “Fill him or her with the peace and joy of the Lord” – that we can channel God’s healing power through our visualizations. This places us in charge of God’s grace, dispatching it in whichever way we choose.

Besides, the Bible never teaches visualizations. If anything, it teaches against them as aids to worship (Exodus 20:4-6).

Foster’s teaching also calls into question the omnipotence of God, by claiming that our conscious mind “tends to erect barriers to God’s gentle influence.” In essence, Foster is saying that our mental activity can block God’s mercy. If our conscious mind can interfere with God’s grace and plan for our lives, we cannot confidently place our trust in Him. In contrast, Isaiah identifies sin as the real impediment:

·        Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear. (Isaiah 59:1-2)

This teaching also disparages the mind that God has given us. According to Foster, rather than recognizing that God gave us a mind to serve and adore Him (Mat. 22:37), the conscious mind is an impediment to “God’s influence.”

Armed with this understanding, the mystic attempts to deactivate the mind in the hope of experiencing God directly. The writer Brennan Manning (The Signature of Jesus) claims that:

·        “The first step in faith is to stop thinking about God in prayer…” “Contemplative spirituality tends to emphasize the need for a change in consciousness…we must come to see reality differently.” “Choosing a single, sacred word…repeat the sacred word inwardly, slowly, and often.” “Enter into the great silence of God. Alone in that silence, the noise within will subside and the Voice of Love will be heard.” (Ray Yungen, A Time of Departing, 83).

However, the Bible requires us to be mentally sober and watchful to guard against deceivers (Mat. 7:15), taking all thoughts, philosophies, and false teachings captive according to the teachings of God (2 Cor. 10:4-5).

How does Foster justify his teachings? Although, he appeals to the Christian mystics and desert fathers and their spiritual “triumphs,” some of his justification is based on imagination:

·        Scripture tells us that John was “in the Spirit on the Lord’s day” when he received his apocalyptic vision (Rev. 1:10). Could it be that John was trained in a way of listening and seeing that we have forgotten? (14)

If he was, Scripture is silent about it. Perhaps this is the best place for Foster to exercise his discipline of silence!