Mike Parsons –
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The Danger of Over-Spiritualising Everything
For me, the danger in allegorising everything in terms of the Bible is that it can make things that are actually real seem as if they are not real, and only spiritual. For instance, I have heard people like Kay Fairchild and others say, “Heaven is in you.” And in a sense, they are almost saying, “Well, there is no actual heaven. There is no actual real place that you can go to, because it is in you.”
Now, I know the kingdom of God is in us. And there is a sense where the presence of God in us is a manifestation of heaven with us, but it is not heaven. All of the heavenly realms, the spiritual realms, and the angelic do not live in me. They are a spiritual dynamic of a real place. It may not be physical as we know it, but it is no less real.
Literal Reality and Spiritual Truth
I think the danger in saying everything is just allegorical and spiritual about our lives means that we can end up saying those things are not really true, they are just ways of looking at life. So people say, “Well, we do not have to wait until we die to go to heaven.” But actually, they are not talking about heaven in the same way that I would say I can engage heaven now, as I can engage God within me now.
There is a danger in throwing out what is literal reality and spiritualising it all. People who take that view often do not believe in literal angels, or literal fallen angels, or a literal devil. They say it is just the accusations in my mind that cause me not to believe the truth. They do not see the devil as a personal being, and they do not see angels as personal beings. I think they are missing out on a lot if they make it purely a spiritual thing of ‘my relationship with God and nothing else’.
Finding Balance, Not Extremes
There is a danger if you do not get a balance in it. Often, when the pendulum swings back to where it should be, it swings too far the other way before it comes to rest in the right place. And sometimes people get caught in that swing and go too far. I do believe in a personal fallen angelic being, whatever you want to call him. I do believe in personal angels. And I do believe in a literal heavenly realm that you can encounter.
We are seated there with Christ in those heavenly realms. It is not just figurative, as in “I rule and reign with God in my life.” That is true, but there is also “on earth as it is in heaven,” which needs to be factored into the equation. There are extremes on both ends of everything. We need to be discerning, not go too far, and not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
We need to find the truth in the middle ground, and then live in the reality of that truth and experience the fullness of it.
Not “All Done” and Not “All Us”
You cannot just go from one extreme and say, “It is all done, I just have to believe it.” Most people who try that find it is not all done, and they struggle. Then they feel guilty because they think they do not have enough faith. And on the other end, “It is all about us, and we have to do everything, work out our salvation with fear and trembling.”
There are extremes on both ends.
God has done it all. We have to come into that reality.
Creation Is Waiting for Maturity
In Romans, it talks about creation longing, waiting for the sons of God to be revealed. It is not talking about us waiting to be revealed. It is talking about creation waiting for us to be mature enough that it can recognise our sonship, rather than recognising our immaturity.
Creation will be set free into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. That glory is who God says we are, in its fullness. That is what brings freedom to creation. If we are not fully embracing who we are, then creation is not fully going to be set free. It is down to us, with God, expressing oneness. We are one spirit with Him. In that union, creation can recognise our sonship in the relationship we have with our Father, not independently.
Allegory and the Old Testament
Yes, some people say it is all allegory, and that is going too far. You can allegorise some of the Old Testament and say there is a spiritual story there that is not meant to be taken literally. But I think most of what we have in the Old Testament reflects that the people who wrote it did not really know God, and wrote from their own understanding.
The Holy Spirit can take any story and apply it to our lives and bring truth out of it. That can be true. But I do not think it is necessary if you have a relationship with the Holy Spirit, with Jesus, with the Father, where they can reveal that truth to you directly.
Relationship Over Interpretation
Why go through a mediator of a book, trying to understand God through stories? Jesus is the truth. He is the living Word of God.
There is too much focus on trying to find God in the Bible, in allegory, and in stories, when we can actually meet Him, follow Him, hear His voice, and encounter Him every day. I do not see the point of spending all that time trying to use a story to understand God. That is theology: understanding God through the Bible.
I would rather understand the Bible through God than try to understand God through the Bible. Whose version would we use? Whose allegorical interpretation?
Do We Need the Book?
I would focus on relationship.
God will reveal Himself and reveal who we are in that relationship without the need to focus on trying to understand the book, whether literal, allegorical, or anything else.
Why do we need it?
Jesus did not say we were going to have a book. He said we were going to have a relationship. A lot of time is spent trying to understand a book that we do not really need to spend. However, if people are used to the book, then you can use it as a frame of reference for them, because they do not yet have the experience.
The Missing Dimension: Experience
My perspective on people who teach like this is that they do not have a personal experience of heaven. They do not have a personal experience of engaging God on the inside. They are trying to explain relationship using the allegories of the book. I am not saying the truth they teach about grace, love, and the finished work is not true. It is wonderful. But the relationship is the relationship. The mystical dimension is missing from a lot of their experience. They have not gone to heaven. They have not had face-to-face encounters with God. They are not dwelling and abiding in that face-to-face presence.
Or if they have, they are not sharing it.
I am not saying they have not had those experiences. I do not know them well enough. But they are not sharing that relational encounter dimension. Instead, they are presenting a different belief system.
Belief Versus Experience
It is not about believing something differently about God. It is about experiencing it. When you experience it, you will believe it. If you are just trying to believe it, it becomes another belief system that you are trying to have faith in.
There is a danger in creating another good belief system that may be mostly true, but is not fully encountered. Experiencing the truth is very different from believing the truth. If you have experienced Jesus as the way, the truth, and the life, if you have encountered Him face to face, spoken with Him, and He has spoken with you, that is very different from believing what the Bible says He said.
Encouraging Real Encounter
I resonate with a lot of what these teachers say about the love of God, the unconditional nature of His love, and grace. But something may be missing if people are not being encouraged to have real encounters that are actually experienced, not just believed.
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