Thinking Straight About Everything

It's truly said that everybody has a theology. Even atheists have "ideas about God" that they operate on. Indeed, they, like Satan, are created beings in rebellion against God...which makes Him as much the Center of their lives as He IS for the most-dedicated believer.

It's also true that we all have our beliefs about human beings.

Those two belief-systems, I think, are where we get all our thinking right: or, it seems more often, wrong.

My beloved brother Tim, in his "Onesimus Files" blog, has been writing about many aspects of the "cessationist" controversy, newly stirred up by John MacArthur's anti-charismata "Strange Fire" book and conference. In reading and musing on his posts, it seems clear to me that MacArthur and his followers base their beliefs in basic false ideas of God, and of man:

that God may withdraw His "charismata and calling," as Romans 11:29 specifically says He does not;

that when men do not receive God's grace (and "charismata" denotes "manifestations of grace," charis), it is God's fault.

All false ideas come from some error-of-concept in our thinking about God, or about man. But it's hard to think of a false idea so deeply grounded in both kinds of error as "cessationism" is.