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 PrintableVersion Gideon - Power from WeaknessGIDEON: power from weakness This is a likeable but curious book, which it is possible to read on three levels. On the first, it is an exposition of the story of Gideon by a popular Pioneer-stable speaker, who is engaging, genuine and very funny. It is an imaginative recreation rather than detailed exegesis, so it is sometimes difficult to tell where research has stopped and imagination taken over. On the second level, this is a state-of-the-nation address from one Pioneer leader to his constituency. Each of the sections of the Gideon story is followed by a present-day application, and it is no surprise that there is a straight correspondence between Gideon's experiences and ours. Jeff Lucas moves in circles where visions, signs and prophecies are common coin, and so it is easy for him to transpose from then to now. Readers of EN might be less convinced by his approach, which completely lacks any serious interaction with biblical theology. Dancing with the Lord?But it is on the third level that my worries focus, which is to take this book as an example of how the Bible is handled. The author is a thorough-going Arminian, and doesn't seem to know it. We are called repeatedly to 'dance' with our 'dynamic' God as our 'partner', who is open to our suggestions and promptings. One quotation will serve: 'Tragically there are some Christians who are appalled at the idea that God would want to partner his people. Their theology paints a black and white portrait of a God who is somewhat transcendent, aloof even. For them, he is the static, fixed, unmoveable being, who, to quote the theological terms, is transcendent and immutable. No skip or spring in the step of this God. No dancing shoes on his feet . . . But there is a major problem with these mutated concepts of our God. The Westminster Confession states that 'man's chief end is to know God and enjoy him for ever.' Enjoy a dictator? To love such a God is difficult, if not impossible. I know. I tried (pages 91-92). His mixing of categories and placing of false antitheses is horrendous - is God then not transcendent? Can one not love a Lord? The position he abhors is what is (in his view) ordinary Reformed thinking (although his allusion to the Westminster Confession should actually be to the Catechism), but I suspect we'd call it either a wilful misrepresenting of Reformed thinking, or (if any church does worship a cold, unrelating dictator) call it a deformed hyper-Calvinism. Worse, the tragedy he goes on to unfold, is how he had been told as a young Christian that God had a perfect plan for his life, but that none of the methods he was given to find that plan, worked. Sticking his finger in the Bible at random, expecting peace from God when he made the right choice, going in the opposite direction from his own inclination, because God opposes our fleshly desires, and so on, were failures. So he rejected that theological position, and instead has become what I would call an Arminian with a tendency to mysticism. Painted into a cornerIn other words, he was discipled in a context of weird pietism and twisted hyper-Calvinism, but for some reason has come to identify that with standard Reformed thinking which he now rejects. Put briefly, he thinks that a strong view of God's sovereignty would make him so responsible for evil that it must be avoided as a major error - and the only alternative is that God is open to our choices and suggestions. And so a commentary on one of God's most awesome judges has an index ranging from Affirmation to Weakness - because it has ceased to be a story about God and has become a story about 'me'. The lesson I learn is that those of us who think of ourselves as Reformed mustn't allow ourselves to be painted into a corner where we have no relational language to describe our experience of God. We know him and love him as our Father and friend, and those are the words to treasure and talk about. There is more, much more in this little book, and some of the creative understanding of the story would be helpful in preaching the story. But a haphazard method of application makes it deeply unreliable, even if it is a fascinating guide to a different part of the Christian subculture. And its theological stance, which surely must be borne out of innocence and ignorance rather than knowledge, is worrying for the future, because it shows how easily liberalism could slide into the driving seat of an enthusiastic but ill-taught church. Chris Green,
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