Behold, how good and pleasant it is
when brothers dwell in unity!
It is like the precious oil on the head,
running down on the beard,
on the beard of Aaron,
running down on the collar of his robes!
It is like the dew of Hermon,
which falls on the mountains of Zion!
For there the Lord has commanded the blessing,
life forevermore.
I may be in for a horrible rude awakening if ever the Lord blesses me to lead a congregation. I have heard that the sinfulness of humanity, even those in the Church, is best exemplified in the event called the “Annual General Meeting”, with acrimony present between various factions of the Church with people wishing to eliminate other factions, and fights about the pastor’s salary and benefits taking up hours of heated debate.
That has not been my experience.
Perhaps God has been protecting me, and maybe I’ve just been not seeing things that are there, but I just got back from the annual meeting of the local church I’m privileged to be a member of, and I gotta say, I enjoyed (yes, enjoyed) it. Sure, it had the normal sets of discussions about what is actually happening with the finances of the Church, and some parliamentary discussion about whether a motion had to be filed two weeks in advance for a specific order of business. Yet it also had the voting in of new members, and gentle ribbing between friends about their roles in the Church. It had friendships and discussions before and after, and learning, and vision. we heard about God’s ultimate plan for His Church, and God’s ability to use us to reach our city.
Afterwards, I even had to tell someone I was giving a ride to that I had to go so I could get home and write this before midnight because he was engrossed in a conversation about the way God calls us to teach our children about His deeds and His character.
Maybe it’s just that I love my Church, but an annual general business meeting of a Church can be a beautiful thing. To you, my readers, facing AGMs that may not be so blessed, may I say a few things:
I’m praying for y’all. Seriously, I hope an AGM can be a blessing to you.
I pray you actually go, not looking to pick a fight, but looking to vision about God’s call on you and your church for the coming year, and to see your family again.
When your AGM isn’t as good as it could be, I pray all y’all (can a U.S. southerner tell me if I used that correctly?) pray and work this coming year to build relationships with your fellow Church members that can make sure next year is a blessing to everybody.
Generally speaking, we don’t live in a world of nuance. For all the talk in the popular culture for the many shades of grey out there and of the many varieties of truth, when it comes right down to the actual discussions we have, everything seems radically simple.
Socially you’re either conservative or you’re progressive. Politically you’re either right wing or left wing. Spiritually, you’re either “religious” (whatever that means) or secular.
While these labels can have their use in framing a discussion, or at least in avoiding long explanations each and every time people discuss other topics, the fact is that we have moved away from the use of labels to simplify real communication, and moved into using these ad hoc labels and begun to use them as definitions as to what people believe.
The problem is that labels can be useful as long as they’re taken as tentative. When they become definitions, they will often end up making things far more difficult instead of making things easier. People will begin to talk around each other rather than to each other. This has especially become the case when talking about “evangelical Christianity” (so much so that some theologians are confused about whether to cop to the title, at least in North America).
In my experience, though, the most troubling development has been the desire to lump Christianity in with some very… not Christian opinions. It’s even worse when it’s not open opponents to Christianity that do this, but people who claim to be Christian. Such is the case of one Bill Whatcott.
Mr. Whatcott is in the habit of attacking homosexuality in our culture, advocating (it seems) the very extreme position that because homosexual practice is unbiblical (a position I agree with), that it should also be illegal (yeah, not so much). The worst part is that in advocating this position, he promulgated flyers which included a parody song winsomely entitled “kill the homosexuals”. He claims (through a lawsuit no less) that this was simply (horribly ill-advised) hyperbole, which he modified by explaining later in the pamphlet that he simply desired that those who practice homosexuality repent and come to saving faith in Jesus Christ.
As a Christian I can only agree that people who engage in unbiblical behaviour should repent and come to saving faith in Jesus Christ. As many of my less-theologically-conservative friends lament, I believe that includes homosexual practice, but (much less lamentably, methinks) it also includes advocating the murder of identifiable groups of people. Thus, in my (and I think most evangelical Christians’) understanding of evangelical Christianity, Bill Whatcott needs to repent every bit as much as the most promiscuous homosexual. The problem is that in our age of radical simplification, Whatcott’s hyperbolic opinion is often referred to as “Christian”, even if most Christians would clearly disavow the opinion.
When it comes to what beliefs are “Christian”, the defining characteristic cannot be that many (or even most) Christians believe it, but rather what Christ taught, as revealed in scripture. Indeed, if people take the time to understand Christ’s teaching, I think we’ll find that He provides correction and even open rebuke to many of the things most Christians seem to think and do. While we need to be clear about the message of Christ and its implications, we need to be careful of the tendency to exchange clarity for simplification.
Of course, this does not mean Christianity has no meaning (if you do not believe in Christ, you are not a Christian…. even as if you do not submit to Allah, you are not a Muslim and if you do not seek to follow the enlightened one, you are not a Buddhist). Rather it means that as Christians, lets be careful to limit the beliefs we call “Christian” to those advocated through the one we call the Christ.
Welcome to reading some of the things I’m finding interesting today:
November 11: While in my present home of Korea, November 11 is “Peppero Day”, back home in Canada, it’s Remembrance day, and there is a debate this year about the white poppy as opposed to the red poppy.
Abortion and Slavery: Thabiti Anyabwile gives some ideas about making the link to abortion while not being disrespectful about one of the millennium’s (other) greatest evils.
Gay Rights and Freedom of Religion: The Daily Mail reports on a case where the two are coming into direct conflict. I have passionate opinions on this one, but it’s a difficult dilemma to say the least.
How to Listen to a Sermon: For those of you who listen to me on the itunes feed, here are some ideas on how to get something out of the preaching of a very fallible human.
“If a wise man has an argument with a fool, the fool only rages and laughs, and there is no quiet.” Proverbs 29:9
“A rebuke impresses a man of discernment more than a hundred lashes a fool.” – Proverbs 17:10
One of the advantages of living in east Asia is that election results I’d have to stay up late to hear when I was back in Canada, come in at pretty regular intervals during my waking hours in Korea. It’s even better when it’s during a US election, which tends to have interesting commentaries, and honestly has very little to do with me, a Canadian expatriate.
That said, it also gives me an opportunity to see the opinions of friends of mine as they express their own understanding of the situation in the US. To be blunt, very few wind up agreeing with me on much of anything when it comes to politics, which is honestly okay, because I’m not too worried about being silenced for my difference of opinion quite yet.
That said, I have been noticing a very troubling trend in public discourse over the last little while. I don’t think it’s a new thing, just something I’ve only noticed recently.
Political satire can cause us to question cherished beliefs, but it can also harden prejudice. The ability to laugh at something does not mean you are more correct than those you laugh at.
It has become common to make moral judgements about people who come to different conclusions than you do. I noticed this first when I expressed my right wing proclivities to a friend of a friend, who said that the only person who could be right wing was either evil or stupid, and I was forced to ask which he thought me to be. Of course, he stammered for a while, since previous to this, he had had no reason to doubt either my love for my fellow man, or my intellect. I never really got an answer.
The reason he had made his statement, however, seems to me a rather common set of assumptions in modern western dialogue, and I think stems from a mixture of pride and a misunderstanding about intelligence. Quite simply, people want to be seen as smart, because in the modern technological age, it’s seen as very important to be intelligent, and to be seen as intelligent. You can see this most readily in the way people denigrate opposing positions (as my friend did) as “stupid”. Note that the problem isn’t that the opposing position is incorrect or dangerous or immoral, rather, the opposing position is seen as lacking in intellect, meaning that the person holding the position is also seen as stupid.
The problem is that this shows a fundamental failure to understand the nature of intellect. While it is true that smart people often know a lot of details about things, it is not the knowledge of details that makes one intelligent. Even less is intelligence marked by holding “correct” opinions about given subjects. The simple fact is that there are many very intelligent people, who for very good reasons, have held incorrect opinions; most commonly due to a lack of pertinent information (or a lack of seeing information that is pertinent as pertinent).
Intelligence is not marked by the ability to hold correct opinions, but rather by the ability to come to correct conclusions. This is NOT the same thing. Anybody can learn correct opinions and not know the reasons behind those opinions (which means they cannot adequately critique their own opinions). An intelligent person is one who, once given the necessary information, will be able to synthesize that data into valid conclusions based on the data.
Unfortunately, finding out about that takes a great deal of work. To know if a person’s opinions are intelligent based on that kind of synthesizing of information, you need to look at the information, and the person’s reasoning, not just the conclusion. It is far easier to simply look at the concluding opinion and make a judgement on that. Unfortunately, the result is that people who do that often then label conclusions that are different from their own as stupid without actually looking at the evidence and reasoning, meaning that the opposing position cannot do any work to correct errors in our own thinking.
This is compounded by a level of pride in society that wishes for us to see ourselves as intelligent. Being corrected is hard, and often not comfortable. It can lead to the questioning of cherished beliefs, or to isolation from a majority position, and is almost always a blow to pride. Thus it is often much easier to insulate our own opinions from critique, by grading opposing positions based on the conclusions rather than on the reasoning that got there.
This is why it is important to know, not just correct opinions, but the reasons behind correct opinion.
I think that is also why in the recent political movements in the United States, denigration of the opposition as unthinking or stupid became the norm, with statements themselves seen as being stupid without looking at the reasoning behind them (why do Keynsean economists think that government spending can stimulate an economy, why did a failed senate candidate think that the first amendment did not contain “the separation of Church and state”, etc.).
The question then is simple. Will we take the easy road of acceptable opinion, or the much harder road of humility and examination? Will we do the work of finding out why an opinion is correct or incorrect, or simply rest on the perceived intelligence of our own conclusions?
I fear in my own heart, I often do not answer that question well.
There are a lot of reasons for this. It makes me feel like I’m needed, as if the world can’t function without me. It means that I do not have to think about future and plans and vision and such, because I’m wrapped up in the now, and of course this is only compounded by the fact that I’m single.
If I spend the day busy, I don’t need to worry about my own questions and insecurities, that I am somehow now too old to start a family, or that I may be failing in part of what God calls me to in not actually finding a family. That’s not to say that I believe I am a lesser pastor or a lesser Christian guy because I’m single, but it’s easier to ignore my doubts when I’m too busy to face them.
As a pastor, it is easy to remain sinfully busy. Yes, I mean that. Sometimes we can be so busy it’s sinful, and as a pastor, it’s actually much worse.
Personally, from what I’ve just admitted about my own doubts and questions and needs, and the desire to avoid them, I’m making my busyness my salvation. Instead of bringing my requests before the Lord, or facing the problems I have squarely, thinking and praying on them, and repenting of where my opinions are sinful, I instead focus on preparing too many Bible studies.
Worse, as the busyness becomes where I get my value, I place my value less and less in the person and work of Christ. As what I do becomes the measure of my own importance, I am placing less value on God, and that is a form of idolatry. My work, even godly work, becomes the measure of who I am rather than my status as beloved of God, an heir of Christ, and fearfully and wonderfully made by a good God.
And in each of these things, I am training those who watch me to think the same.
So today I’m seeking to let go.
I’m going to do less “churchy” work, and spend more time reflecting and getting to know the God I serve. I’m going to place some responsibility in the gifts of people in my congregation, gifts that God has drawn here in His own sovereign will.
Hopefully, dear readers, this also means I’ll get back to semi-regular postings. We’ll see how this goes. You’re welcome to call me to account, by asking me if my posts again become too sporadic. :-)
(considering) 8:28 