8.14.2009

A Toppled Pedestal

I was first introduced to Hannah Hurnard when I was about ten through the book Hind’s Feet on High Places. It packs a wealth of conviction, challenge, and insight between its covers! More recently, Mama discovered a stack of Hannah Hurnard’s books that belonged to my Great-Grandmother. Excited to read them, I chose one called Hearing Heart and dove in. I devoured this book, which candidly told of Hannah’s journey from a miserable, rebellious non-Christian to the point when she finally submitted herself to God. She emphasizes listening to God and being willing to trust and obey Him unconditionally. Once again, I loved her writing.
It was then that I realized that I knew nothing about Hannah Hurnard. Of course, I headed to my research center and typed her name into Google. I almost wish I hadn’t.
I soon discovered that this woman was Quaker, but throughout the first part of her life she adhered to traditional evangelical doctrine with which I would agree. She even wrote some wonderful, doctrinally sound books.
Then, something began to change. She began to believe in universal salvation; that is, that God would not stop loving someone who died without accepting Him. Therefore, she believed that God would save non-Christians after death. She embraced reincarnation and other New Age philosophies, becoming a vegetarian because of these new mystical beliefs. She even believed that Jesus was essentially an angel who somehow became the Son of God. As the sad end to this sad story, she died in 1990 after refusing conventional treatment for her cancer.
I must confess that I was shocked, confounded, and even depressed. My first impulse, in fact, was to mourn. How could this woman, who shared a genuine conversion in her books, a love for God that was deeper than mine, and a relationship with her Lord that seemed to surpass any earthly tie go so wrong? I almost felt that, if someone as great as Hannah Hurnard could fall prey to such lies, what hope have I?
My hope can be in one thing alone: Scripture.
Hannah listened to Satan and allowed herself to be led away from Scripture by His lies. She knew that universal salvation was against Scripture, but she was taken in by a twisting of Scripture. Isabel Anders wrote in Standing on High Places,“In the later years of her life, Hannah herself ceased to attend church. Her lifelong conviction that God would speak to her personally, giving her deeper and deeper insights and ‘light’ that was to be widely shared with others, led her to believe that there could be no spiritual authority over her or her speaking and writing except the Lord Jesus Christ himself” (pg. 170). This sounds wonderful, but she ended up putting words in Jesus' mouth and falling for lies. Proverbs challenges Hannah Hurnard as well as myself when it says, “Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life….Let your eyes look straight ahead, and your eyelids look right before you. Ponder the path of you feet, and let all your ways be established. Do not turn to the right or the left; remove your foot from evil. My son, pay attention to my wisdom.” (Proverbs 4:23, 25-27, 5:1a)
250 years ago another writer echoed those thoughts in “Come Thou Fount:”

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.

The character Christian in Pilgrim’s Progress made a sign to warn others not to be tricked by the Giant Despair as he had been, and “many, therefore, that followed after, read what was written, and escaped the danger.” Likewise, the story of Hannah Hurnard stands as a warning sign to all those who will take heed. So I stand at Hannah Hurnard’s warning sign, mourning the loss of the Hannah I had imagined for myself, the one I had put on a pedestal only to find out she was human and weak after all.


Picture from: http://www.1st-art-gallery.com/Frederic-Edwin-Church/Broken-Column,-The-Parthenon,-Athens.html

5 comments:

  1. Wow, that is really sad. It is absolutely staggering how easily we are deceived. How beautiful, humbling, and amazing are God's grace and forgiveness!

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  2. What a sad story! I really enjoyed "Hind's Feet on High Places" when I read it a few years ago and was in the midst of reading it again...but now am unsure whether or not I want to finish it.
    I was aware of some of the things you shared about her, but not the extent. It just goes to show how important it is to be anchored in God's Word.

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  3. My alternate title was "A Sad Story" which would have been very appropriate, I guess! However, Ruthie, I wasn't writing to dissuade people from reading Hannah Hurnard's earlier books such as Hind's Feet, but rather to make them aware that not all things that she wrote were Biblical. Hind's Feet remains one of my favorite books, although I will now read it with some sadness and I will probably not risk reading unknown books by her.
    However, I completely agree with you, Sarah--God's grace is so beautiful and huge!

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    1. Perhaps some of these doctrines she later adopted were not as unbiblical as you think. Remember it was translated from one language to another many many centuries after its completion. People screw things up. They screw up translations of books. The same goes for the Bible. And I know for a fact the word hell was well over used in some Bibles, especially the King James version. And the word that they translate into “eternal” is better translated as “age lasting”. And the word for “punishment” used in the Greek can be translated as “correction”. Christians over the centuries have adopted some pretty twisted sick view points. One of those is how God is supposedly going to mercilessly roast people for all eternity. Hitler was a more loving figure then the God that many Christians believe in. That’s what I think is sad. Hannah Hurnard finally came to believe that Jesus accomplished or would accomplish all of what he came to accomplish. She didn’t believe his sacrifice failed 80% of human beings. She might have believed in Hell which is biblical. But she also believed Hell would be overcome by victory which is also biblical.

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    2. Hi Jason!
      Thanks for reading and commenting! I haven’t read this post in years, so I had to go back and re-read to even remind myself what it was about! (-;
      I believe that Scripture is without error. Yes, there can be original Greek and Hebrew words that could have several English word options for translation, but that is where the beauty of concordances and online tools come in—I love that we can look this stuff up ourselves and get in deeper!
      However, it doesn’t sound like you and I have an issue of hair-splitting with English translations as much as a disagreement about Scripture’s overall teaching on Hell. I believe that God is actually extremely merciful in giving us time and opportunity to repent, but for those who repeatedly choose a life without Him here on earth, why would He force them to spend an eternity with Him in Heaven? He is a loving God, but He is also just. It would not be loving to turn us into robots, nor would it be just to allow people like Hitler to get off unpunished.
      There are so many passages in Scripture that show this, that I don’t think you can argue simple “mistranslation”. Here are just a few:
      Matthew 25:41-46: “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
      Revelation 20:14-15 “Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.”
      I agree…this is not the stuff of fairy tales and bedtime stories. But again, what kind of God would let murderers and rapists go free without any punishment? And hell is not His desire for us! He offers us free salvation and commands us over and over to spread this good news to all. I hope and pray you have heard and believed in the good news of Christ’s sacrifice for you too!

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