Posted on 09/02/2006 5:53:18 PM PDT by Alex Murphy
For Pastor Chuck Smith, the big issues are undebatable. For Chuck Smith Jr., also a pastor, it's not so crystal clear. Something had to give.
From his pulpit in Santa Ana, Chuck Smith's voice thunders with certainty. He denounces homosexuality as a "perverted lifestyle," finds divine wrath in earthquakes and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and promises imminent Armageddon in a deep, sure voice.
If his message is grim, the founder of the Jesus People and the Calvary Chapel movement bears the ruddy good cheer of a 79-year-old believer who insists he has never known a day's doubt or despair.
From the pulpit of Capo Beach Calvary, 25 miles south of his father's church, Chuck Smith Jr.'s voice trembles with vulnerability and grapples with ambiguity. Without a trace of fire and brimstone, he speaks of Christianity as a "conversation" rather than a dogma, plumbs such TV shows as "The Simpsons" for messages, and aims to reach "generations of the post-modern age" that distrust blind faith and ironclad authority.
There is a tradition among superstar evangelists like Chuck Smith the elder of bequeathing the pulpit to a son. Billy Graham did it, as did Robert H. Schuller.
However, it has been ages since anyone considered the younger Smith a possible successor to his father's 15,000-congregation ministry, the symbolic center of a network of independently run Calvary churches: about 1,000 across the United States, including two of the three largest non-Roman Catholic churches in California, plus radio and TV ministries.
Instead, critics whispered that the son was a dangerous impostor. Last year, those whispers exploded into a full-blown din. Online protests and fliers distributed at the younger Smith's church demanded that he drop the "Calvary" name because of his increasingly liberal drift on such non-debatable issues as the evil of homosexuality and the promise of hell for unbelievers. "What will it take for Chuck Sr. to stop the nepotism?" blogged Calvary congregant Jackie Alnor, one of the critics leading the charge. "Does his son have to burn incense to Isis and Zeus before he is disfellowshipped from a Bible-believing fellowship of churches?"
By last spring, one thing had become clear to Smith Jr.: Sprawling as it was, the church his father had built — the place that once embraced a generation of drug-addled hippies and helped change the way many Americans worshipped — had little room left for him.
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"Even when I speak, some of what I say is opinion and confusion and error," says Smith Jr., 55, who wears shorts and flip-flops as he welcomes a visitor to his church. "I'm more in a place of learning than I am in a place of certainty."
He said he grew up as a true believer in his father's Pentecostal world, a world that could tilt and slide him into hell at any moment, or end with the thunderclap of doom. His earliest memories involve an overpowering sense of sin. "You can never be good enough if you're Pentecostal or if you're fundamentalist," Smith Jr. said. "Jesus may even be upset if you didn't make your bed or brush your teeth."
His mother mostly raised him, because his father was often gone, teaching the Bible, taking outside jobs, shuttling from pulpit to pulpit throughout Southern California. At Newport Harbor High School, Smith Jr. said, he found himself hopelessly estranged from his classmates, who seemed to guarantee their damnation anew every day with sex, drugs and parties.
One day, everyone was buzzing about a band called the Beatles and he was clueless; he had been in church when they appeared on "The Ed Sullivan Show."
When he suffered his first bout of severe depression in his teens, his hearty, ever-upbeat father found the malady so alien he could provide little help. If you're sad all the time, he told his son, you won't have many friends.
Dad, for his part, was reshaping American Christianity. He opened the first nondenominational Calvary Chapel on a Costa Mesa lot with just 25 congregants in 1965. Soon he became famous as the strait-laced pastor who threw open his doors to the ragged counterculture and baptized thousands below the ocean cliffs of Corona del Mar. He became Papa Chuck, the smiling man in the Hawaiian shirt, a staunch-but-benevolent spiritual father to a generation of end-of-their-rope hippies, dropouts and drug casualties.
To his older son, he was more elusive: "He wasn't present emotionally, even if he was present physically. To hear him speak, you just get the impression this is such a warm and intimate person, but the closer you got to him, the more you'd realize he really didn't have those intimacy skills."
When he left high school, Smith Jr. was certain he would not follow his dad to the pulpit. But during his first semester at Orange Coast College, he found himself defending Christianity to his classmates. People kept firing questions, and, because he was Chuck Smith's son, he had answers right on his tongue. About the same time, a pretty coed invited him back to her apartment. Suddenly, he said, his choice seemed vivid. It was between Jesus and being "sucked into the vortex of the evils of the world." He politely declined temptation, dropped out of college and became a pastor, the only one among his parents' four children to do so, and by his mid-20s had founded two churches of his own.
Theologically, father and son were on roughly the same page. They preached damnation for the unsaved, the wickedness of homosexuality, and what the son, looking back later, would call "a general hopelessness about the world," one salved only by the promise of an imminent, cataclysmic Second Coming.
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There was no shattering epiphany, no Saul-on-the-road-to-Damascus moment. It was a slow drift from his father's booming certainties to a universe of questions with murky answers.
About the time he opened a church in Dana Point in 1975, Smith Jr. began reading widely, making friends with Christians of different backgrounds. He began to consider that when Jesus spoke of the kingdom of heaven, he was referring to the rewards of a selfless life, here and now — that the Gospels' core message was real-world compassion, not preparation for the afterlife.
For years, Smith Jr. said, he had preached about hell uncomfortably, half-apologetically, because he couldn't understand why a loving God would consign his children to eternal flames. It felt like blackmail for a pastor to threaten people with hell-scapes from the Middle Ages to induce piety.
Now, he came to believe that the biblical images used to depict hell's torments — such as the "lake of fire" and the "worm that does not die" — were intended to evoke a feeling rather than a literal place.
He also grew disillusioned with the Rapture, the notion that believers in Jesus will be whisked to God's side during Armageddon. His father had predicted the end of the world would arrive in the 1980s, based on his reading of the Book of Revelation. He has continued, year after year, to announce its imminence with absolute confidence.
The father: "Every year I believe this could be the year. We're one year closer than we were."
The son: "To use [the Book of Revelation] for prognostication, to me, is just ridiculous…. I knew of a guy who was racking up debt because he just assumed he was going to get raptured and wouldn't have to pay for it."
During the 1980s, as an AIDS pandemic exploded, Smith Jr. embraced members of the gay community from nearby Laguna Beach.
The father on homosexuality: "It is the final affront against God."
The son: "I met homosexuals who were trying to live celibate lives or be heterosexual, and I heard all about their struggles, and I never wanted to exacerbate that. My heart went out to them. Listening convinced me that homosexual orientation is not something people chose."
One by one they fell away, the doctrinal pillars of the house his father built. Yet Smith Jr. remained under the Calvary Chapel roof, not wanting to embarrass dad by leaving.
Donald E. Miller, a USC professor of religion and author of a book on American evangelism, calls the elder Smith a pioneer of "new-paradigm Christianity" — one who championed contemporary music and casual dress in church, jettisoned traditional church symbols and rituals, deemphasized theological sophistication and paved the way for the modern megachurch. But he remained an old-school biblical literalist, he said, and the contrast with his son is probably fueled by generational differences.
"While Chuck Smith was very much a culturally savvy guy in the 1960s, nevertheless he came out of the Depression period, whereas his son grew up in a completely different era," Miller said.
For Smith Jr.'s part, he believed he was carrying on the work of radical outreach his father started in the 1960s. Since its early days as "the culturally relevant, rock-n-roll worship, hippie church," he believed, Calvary Chapel had regressed into a "hunker-down mentality — ride out the vagaries of this evil world until Jesus comes to the rescue."
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There was also, theology aside, the question of the son's temperament. He hardly fit the mold of the Christian soldier championed by his father in his book "Harvest," in which he spoke of "the ideal of a biblical man who is strong and not vacillating or weak" and denounced "the new touchy/feely men."
Smith Jr. weeps before his congregation, making no secret of his ongoing battle with depression that took him to the brink of suicide after his 1993 divorce. At the time, he stood before his congregation explaining that his wife of 18 years, the mother of his five children, was leaving him despite his effort to save the marriage.
"In my mind," he wrote in his book "Frequently Avoided Questions," "divorce was an alien behavior that could not touch true Christians, let alone a minister."
A friend got him a psychiatrist, and the psychiatrist got him antidepressants. A local pastor called for his resignation, but his congregation sent hundreds of letters of support.
"My vulnerability allowed them to love me in need," he said.
Still, his condition alienated him further from his father's church, where depression is widely viewed as a spiritual problem bespeaking flawed faith.
William Alnor, a longtime Calvary congregant and former pastor, expressed the view in stark terms: "I don't believe any Christian leader should be flirting with depression."
Fundamentalists have also been troubled in recent years by gestures they see as a throwback to paganism, such as Smith Jr. giving the sign of the cross at services and hanging his sanctuary with paintings of Jesus in the iconic Byzantine style. In 2005, to make matters worse, he took several extended retreats to a Catholic monastery in Big Sur.
One of his most vocal detractors, William Alnor's wife, Jackie, denounced his "decline into Catholic contemplative mystical religion" and protested outside his church. "I could sense the darkness around that place," she wrote on her Apostasy Alert webpage.
The squall intensified with the 2005 publication of the elder Smith's book "When Storms Come," which Smith Jr. edited. Among many additions Smith Jr. made was a quote from a priest, Anthony de Mello, whose Jesuit affiliation alarmed evangelicals. And on Page 103, Smith Jr. inserted the suggestion that breathing exercises might put one in a spiritually receptive state.
This seemed, in the eyes of some, dangerously close to endorsing a Buddhist practice.
As complaints mounted, the elder Smith announced that the offending passages had not been his work and ordered the book revised. Then, in May, the younger Smith got a visit from his father's brother, Paul. As Smith Jr. recalled, his uncle spoke of redefining what it meant to belong to Calvary Chapel. He seemed uncomfortable, seemed to be driving at something, but couldn't quite say it.
"We've had some problems with the book," he finally said, as Smith Jr. recalled.
Smith Jr. knew what was in the air — his 35-year affiliation with Calvary was at an end. He volunteered to sever his ties. He said his uncle sighed in relief.
In no time, the link to Smith Jr.'s Dana Point church was dropped from Calvary's website. Soon, the elder Smith issued a memo denouncing the use of icons, Eastern influences, "special breathing techniques," tolerance for homosexuality and "the soft peddling of hell as the destiny of those who reject the salvation offered through Jesus Christ."
The memo did not identify his son by name, but Smith Jr. said he read it as a personal attack.
The elder Smith "loves his son," William Alnor said. "I think that's why he held off so long in lowering the boom. I think if it had been anyone else in the Calvary Chapel movement promoting the doctrines Chuck Jr. promoted, he would have been long gone."
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In person, the elder Smith, a stocky, rosy-skinned man with kind eyes and snowy hair at the temples, is warmth itself. His office is attached to the low-slung, pavilion-size church at the border of Costa Mesa and Santa Ana where he still preaches to a weekend congregation of 15,000. On his desk: jars of candy for his grandchildren and great-grandchildren. On his shelf: a crown made of ferocious-looking thorns from the Holy Land.
He stresses how much he loves his son, regrets that he didn't spend more time with him as he grew up: "Surely he's not a clone, and I respect and admire him for that. There's nothing shoddy about his ministry at all."
He shrugs off the controversy as the result of critics who "get on and blog their ignorance," adding: "If you don't march to their drumbeat, they begin to pick at you, and once you put on that hypercritical mode, you can find plenty of things to criticize."
Reminded of the memo he issued cracking down on his son's views, the father replies, calmly and amiably, that he and his son are just aiming for different audiences, and he doesn't want to alienate the one he has. He says their relationship is stronger than ever, even deepened by the controversy.
"I don't feel that he's an apostate at all. If he would begin to question that Jesus is the son of God, then I would be concerned."
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On a recent summer day, the younger Smith sat in the second-floor office of the Dana Point home he shares with his second wife, Barbara, a physical therapist.
The shelves overflowed with books, biblical commentaries fighting for space with Dean Koontz novels, a Bob Dylan scrapbook and texts on neuroscience. In just a few minutes, his conversation can veer energetically from Russian religious painters, to his upcoming visit to African orphanages, to his belief that Christianity and evolution are compatible.
It is no small irony, as he sees it, that his father, the biblical literalist whose chapel bookstore is full of anti-Darwin tracts, ignited his love of science. Equipped with a cheap telescope, Dad took him under the stars as a boy, rapturously pointing out the constellations and the distances between heavenly bodies — all a reflection, he explained to his awe-struck son, of God's majesty.
"It's sad to me that a man passionate about God's creation should have his education stunted at some level by a narrow vision of creationism," Smith Jr. said. "Because the universe is no less fascinating for being 15 billion years old than being 10,000 years old."
The breakup with Calvary Chapel, as he sees it, was a good and inevitable thing. He wasn't abiding by house rules, so it was only fair he go.
"I knew it was coming," he said. "It was a matter of time."
He had no desire to inherit the sprawling Calvary Chapel from his father anyway, he said, being better suited to a smaller flock. Until recently he preached to a weekend congregation of 1,700 at a church he converted from a bowling alley. He is now taking an extended hiatus from the pulpit, explaining that counseling congregants about their personal crises is emotionally depleting. He is considering whether to open a remote spiritual retreat as a harbor for Christian leaders "who are burned out."
His relationship with his father, he agrees, is tighter than ever. He will even write his dad's biography some day. His challenge, he says, is extricating himself from his dad's fundamentalist evangelical community without traumatizing his parents.
"It's like the parents whose child comes out to them and says, 'I'm gay,' " Smith said. "Hopefully they come around and say, 'You are our son and we will always love you.' My parents are no less loving than that."
Smith Jr. recalls a troubled preacher from Calvary Chapel's early days, Lonnie Frisbee, who was instrumental in helping the elder Smith reach the counterculture. A recent documentary about Frisbee's life makes the case that the church whitewashed Frisbee from church history because it emerged that he was gay.
Though Smith Jr. demurs from that thesis, he appeared in the film, looked at the camera and pointedly asked: If the church shuts its doors to gay people, where are they supposed to find God? It sounded like a direct plea to his father.
Smith says no, he wasn't really speaking to Dad. Then he pauses. "Maybe I was," he says.
I think he's done a pretty good job, too. :-)
But I only have to say it once.
Jesus said: "By their fruits you shall know them." From the sound of it, there is some serious problems with Pastor Smith's son's fruit.
My prayers go out to Pastor Smith senior; God used his ministry and that of Calvary Chapel to make an impact upon my life in Southern California in 1970. This must be heartbreaking for him.
No, if studied first by simple faith in Christ, on His grounds, by His plan and protocols, not by us reading into Scripture, but by simple obedience to Him, allowing Him to do all the iterpretation for us, then we are able to to receive His revelation of Himself in us by His work, not by ours independent of Him.
He is all powerful and all-knowing. He knows the innermost workings of our hearts and souls. As we remain in fellowship with Him, He guides the renewing of our thinking (souls), then from our clensed thinking He also renews our spirit. From our renewed soul and spirit, we have better clensed our heart which manifests us in our works visible to others.
I've read the article and IMHO, the author has displayed less grasp of Bible doctrine in his interpretation of events than probably either one of the Smith's considered. Accordingly the interpretation of conflict might be less accurate than portrayed.
If there are some doctrinl issues upon which they disagree, one and perhaps both of them might not be in fellowship with God on those particular issues. Accordingly, being taught by the one or both who might be in error on particular doctrinal issues isn't fruitful, but then again where elements of faith are used by the Holy Spirit to further sanctify the believer by the work of God and not men, it is still possible for the individual believer to grow through faith in Christ as he studies Scripture.
If doctrinal interpretations are mistaught, then the believer studying them, may be influenced by evil or good to follow a thinking that is independent of God, perhaps even a morally good interpretation, which is still independent from God. Accordingly, the first concern in identifying one's pastor-teacher is to first remain in fellowship with God and allow Him to guide us in that devotion, again through faith in Christ.
Sola Scriptura provides an outstanding doctrine or advanced policy of faith as a type of faith in our thinking, because it leads the believer to focus His thoughts upon what God has revealed through His Word.
When this doctrine is discussed amongst those who have simply accepted it out of faith to Him, there is no problem in their relationship, except when they take Scripture and instead turn it into man made words independent of God. At that point different interpretations are likely to arise, giving way to wrong thinking, and a degeneration of our thinking away from Him, perhaps even when we are unaware.
Just as we don't go out of our way to contrive arguments with other faithful believers if we see an error in their ways by challenging how they have their faith through Christ, it isn't fruitful to attack Sola Scriptura, where it is used by believers to guide them to return to faith through Christ only.
The fellowship between God and man is still a very personal relationship through faith in Christ.
Let God decide and guide. It all begins with faith in Him and resting in Him to do that work through us. We only remain in fellowship as we remian in faith with Him. If we can walk and talk and chew bubblegum at the same time, we can also place faith in Him in all things we think and perform, in body, soul and spirit. It all is based upon us placing our faith in Him.
If this is true, then I would encourage him to reconsider such a worldly and perhaps false spiritual perspective.
I've studied some doctrines on Christian counseling which place it in the same category as Christian Activism, Do-gooder-ism, and moreal degeneration in general, all as being inappropriate behavior for Christian thinking.
I've also observed that when we remain in fellowship with Him and are tested, he provides for our edification. That might come from our remaining quietly in submission to Him, but if ill effects are found from what we perceive as remaining in fellowship with Him, the alternative is far worse.
We don't want to turn our blesings into cursings, but our cursings may be turned into blessings, by remaining in fellowship with Him in all things.
My first thoughts when reading the above passage, was that perhaps his focus on emotional drainage is an indicator of counseling based upon his personal involvement independent of God, rather than an encourage ment of fellow believers through faith in Christ. On the other hand, perhaps God is using this as a method of Provision, so that in the future some other believer who needs to return to Him is led more easily to an environment where that believer in the future does return to Him.
IMHO, best left up to the Lord and His Provision.
BTW, doesn't the term 'spiritual retreat' seem to be a misnomer, if the environment is used for its intended purpose? Perhaps 'spiritual rejuvenation' is a better term?
Both are gifts from God and available for our edification or 'building up'.
The spiritual gift of pastor-teacher is given by God the Holy Spirit to some men. It is a spiritual gift, therefore not bodily gift or soulish gift. Just because somebody happens to be the sibling of a pastor doesn't mean the Holy Spirit also gave that person the same gift.
Conversely, just becasue a son might have the gift of pastor-teacher, doesn't imply his father who happened to be called a pastor also had the same spiritual gift.
It might also be the case, that a father and son might both have the gift of pastor-teacher, but the weaknesses of one are played by the Adversary to cast dispersion upon both by association, meanwhile the weaknesses of the other might also be played against the other to further complicate things.
Both pastor-teachers and Scripture are mechanisms of communication of His faith. More mature growth may occur when these things and different parts of the body unite, but likewise, if somebody fails to remain in fellowship with God through faith in Christ, environment will not change things.
It is interesting to note that each time in Scripture when Satan falls, it is from a situation of Perfect environment. (Heaven, Garden of Eden, after the Millenial Reign)
Please do me the favor of responding with one post to one post. Responding with four or five posts to deal with only four or five sentences makes no sense.
I think you're still missing the point. Sola scriptura is dependent upon the interpreter. It MUST lead to fragmentation. Modern Protestantism is the obvious example of such a movement's effect upon a religious body. All preach sola scriptura (of one kind or another) and yet cannot agree on even essential doctrines. And please don't tell me that they do agree. They don't. The necessity or importance of baptism is an obvious problem which will never be resolved by sola scriptura.
If sola scriptura doesn't work practically how can it be from God for our benefit?
Let me try expressing this in another fashion.
If God abides only by Scripture, must he be inconsistant with Himself?
You wrote:
"Let me try expressing this in another fashion. If God abides only by Scripture, must he be inconsistant with Himself?"
God is not inconsistent. Men are. Sola scriptura is dependent upon interpretation which varies from person to person (leading to fragmentation). Also, God's word is not just the written word.
If God abides only by Scripture, must he be inconsistant with Himself?
I assume you mean to write in post #51 that God is consistent with Himself, so the response to the above question is: No, He does not have to be inconsistent with Himself, but furthermore He is Not inconsistent but always consistent and immutable.
Good.
Let's take this the next step.
When a believer returns to God and places faith in Him, asking Him for guidance, God is sure and just to forgive past sins and recognizes our faith as the same as that of Christ Jesus, being good for righteousness. This simple faith allows God the freedom in His perfect Holiness to bestow further grace upon us. When we then intake Bible doctrine, be it by His Word, by the teaching of a pastor-teacher, by visual stimuli, by any form of communication such that that idea is now thought in our soul, then God the Holy Spirit makes His knowledge understood by us in our thinking. This action is forst a soulish action, then a spiritual action. It is purely the work of God, not by man.
When God performs this work, He and only He is performing the interpretation of which you speak.
If man adds anything at all to faith in Him, we void the faith that is available for God the Holy Spirit to use in the process of sanctifying our soul, our spirit and renewing our heart.
Sola Scriptura is simply a method which acknowledges God has revealed His LOGOS to man. By us using that LOGOS to introduce His revelation into our thinking, He then makes the thoughts that are His LOGOS good for sanctification of our thinking and then our spirit, thereby providing us with the ability in our soul and spirit to act from our heart to perform good works through faith in Him.
If any man or any denomination or any writing, thought by the believer fails to be identical with His Truth, then it is not good for sanctifying our soul or our spirit or renewing our heart, but may end up scarring out heart becasue we become creatures of habit.
You're trying your best to prettify Sola scriptura, but it isn't working. Sola scriptura is from man, not God. It is not an orthodox Christian concept. It is a Protestant concept from the sixteenth century. It is not even contained in scriptura and is, therefore, self-refuting.
I have no intention of participating in "my Church is better than your Church" spitwad fights. The spark of my Christianity was fanned early on by Catholic scholarship, to which I am grateful. My point is that "Sola Scriptura" doesn't apply here. The differences between father and son are more on method than on doctrine. Both believe primarily in reaching out to those struggling in the grip of some evil. That the father may have some misgivings about Jr's incorporating hypnotic and iconic rituals looks to me to be the primary issue.
I like the worship because of its simple focus on The Word sans ritual, and belting out the modern hymns along with a folk music band provides all the head clearing breathing exercises I need.
Fire the editor.
I don't want to impose in your discussions with others, and I personally have no dog in this fight. Can you answer a question for me?
How can one say this..."Sola scriptura is from man, not God. It is not an orthodox Christian concept."
and have a beautiful tag line like this...(Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ. St. Jerome)
Again, no arguments from me, I am merely curious.
Simple.
I do not confuse sola scriptura (which is a theory on how the scriptures are to be viewed and used) with the scriptures themselves.
The scriptures were inspired by God. Sola scriptura was inspired by Martin Luther.
I do not confuse the US Constitution with a theory on how the US Constituition is to be handled or interpreted (e.g. "strict constructionism").
One can be very knowledgeable about scripture as early orthodox Christians were, and wholly ignorant of sola scriptura since it was merely a theory of handling the scriptures not yet invented (unless we want to talk about the Arians use of a similar mistaken concept).
I have been asked the same question you asked by Protestants a number of times. I find it shocking that Protestants cannot tell the difference between the Word of God and a latter day theory of how it should be handled. How could anyone ever confuse the two? It's much like when Marxists confuse the real data of History with the Marxist interpretation of History. This sort of confusion is devastating to a proper understanding of the substance confused. This is why Marxists ignore some historical realities. They cannot accept they exist because they do not fit in with their theories.
Never confuse a thing with a theory on how that thing is supposed to be handled.
Thank you. You have answered my question.
I am satisfied.
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