BEHAVIORAL REFORMATION
The first task before the Church is to come to agreement about what constitutes proper Christian behavior. Until our behavior is consistent with our message, we will not succeed in fulfilling the purposes for which the Church was left on Earth. We have been characterized as the bride of Christ, and Scripture attests that our holy and godly lives will speed the return of Christ (2 Peter 3:12.) To date, our behavior, both individually and collectively, has largely been characterized by three qualities, none of them good.
1) Indolence. The Church, by and large, is lazy. It has been said that after all is said and done, more is said than done. This is true, but also wrong. The Church has a job to do and when we don’t do it, it is left for the next generation. The early Church expected Christ to return quickly, yet his only return to date has been in judgment on the political and religious institutions of Judea in AD 70. It has gotten to the point that theological innovations such as Dispensationalism actually counsel and encourage passivity and laziness as a sign of Christian piety. The Biblical metaphor of the Church as the Bride of Christ explains the delay in Christ’s return. The sensitive groom, knowing of his bride’s preoccupation and lack of preparation, avoids embarrassing her by coming too soon. His patience is great, but why try it further? We are the heritors of very good news about God and ourselves. Why should we delay in getting that news out, through word and deed?
2) Preoccupation with position. Even though the Church is ineffective and lazy, she has not been still. The Church has set new standards for preoccupation with matters of organization, staffing, economic security and busy-work. Whenever opportunities to institutionalize present themselves, Christians show themselves to be quick studies and ardent workers. Hierarchical control, titles, and rank are particularly appealing to those enjoined by our Lord to serve others. We secede, morph, reform and reorganize to our own shame and guilt. Organizations, each with its own leaders, sycophants and servants, abound, while mergers and agreements are few. The fractures of Christianity, East vs. West, Roman vs. reformed, church vs. parachurch, are sad testimony to fragmentary revival in the past, nurtured and kept alive by human pride in the present.
3) Moral Disobedience. Christians have no rights. We cede them to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This refers to our whole selves: mind, body and spirit. When we reassert our rights in any of these realms, we go against the very nature of the Christian experience. Moral liberals invoke Jesus as Savior, as well they might. They forget, however, that He’s also Lord, and you can’t cut Him in half. If you agree you have past sins that require forgiveness, you’ve also got to agree with God’s assessment of your incapacity to change and function aright in the future. God has provided a comprehensive set of guidelines on how we should behave so as to “abide” in His Son. That would be the Bible, in a plain sense reading. The job of the Church is not so much to rehearse the saving acts performed by God on behalf of humanity, as important as those are. The real job of the Church is to offer ethical instruction so we might not abuse our status as saved and sanctified people who are already in God’s good graces. The Bible is old, but the principles outlined therein are new and dynamic. It’s the job of the modern cleric to interpret that record in a way that is faithful, accurate and relevant to modern needs. Failing in that regard, the Church is at best a repository of quaint, sanctimonious religious traditions of the most offensive and dangerous type.
In Acts 15 the first ecumenical council of the Church is reported to have taken place. The question before the Church was this: what standards of behavior must be enjoined upon new, Gentile converts to Christianity? Their response deserves study in the present context. What was decided was this: new converts should be subjected to the minimum in terms of behavioral requirements, and next to nothing in terms of cultural or ritualistic requirements. The four things mentioned were abstention from food polluted by idols, sexual immorality, eating meat from animals that were strangled, and from eating blood. Although the dietary restrictions carry a great deal of cultural baggage, a refined set of guidelines for today might read thus: abstain from sexual immorality, avoid getting involved in empty ritual, and don’t do anything that would offend other people as being unseemly. We should ask no more of converts today, yet no less of Christians either.
In addition to an agreement on what constitutes proper Christian behavior for the future, the Church needs to offer a blanket, unconditional apology to the world for much of her behavior over the past 2,000 years. Although different individuals and groups are guilty of inconsistent and harmful behavior at different times, the watching world ascribes all to our Lord and His Church without regard for subtle distinctions. We must accept this, and accept blame collectively and graciously. Continued blame shifting and denial will only slow the process of recovering our credibility and our ability to engage in fruitful ministry.
The apology should include reference to specific historical events, general attitudes and also doctrinal errors. In many ways, the Church has adopted methods that her Lord specifically proscribed. For example, our Lord never forced people to believe or do anything; he left them to their own decisions. Yet in spite of this gracious example, the Church has, unfortunately, required that people submit to sacramental rituals or adopt creedal confessions under threat of corporal, economic or even capital punishment. Likewise, in many times and places the Church has put a premium upon the acquisition of political power and economic wealth instead of favoring a less secular agenda. In addition to actions that betray the methods and intentions of our Lord, the Church has often been passive and unmoved in the face of opportunities for self-sacrifice and ministry. National and institutional churches have often sided with the political and social agendas of temporal regimes instead of standing in solidarity with the neglected and abused of the world. There are happy exceptions to these observations, but they are fewer and more infrequent than is allowed by an ethos that claims to look beyond the temporal and transient to a more complete and abiding reality.
THEOLOGICAL REFORMATION
There are many Christians who consider themselves reformed and fully arrived in terms of revelation and resultant doctrine. This should not be the case. The Reformation of the 16th >century attempted to answer the question of who arbitrates human salvation, God or the Church. The answer, to the dismay of the medieval Roman Catholic church in the West, is God alone. This is not enough. There are other questions, no less important or compelling, that the Church needs to answer for our own welfare and that of the listening world. We need to be more clear about how a holy God brings about the salvation of a sinful humanity, and just exactly what kind of response is expected of that humanity. Past formulations, even those in the reformed tradition, are deficient and destructive in terms of what they say about God and us. The Reformation of the 16th century is both too narrow in scope and incomplete in extent.
The fundamental stumbling block to all Christian theologians grows out of a defective, Western notion of chronological time. According to Christian dogma, Jesus of Nazareth submitted to execution at the hands of a sinful humanity in order to perform a great exchange. Jesus, sinless, submitted to the punishment reserved for sinners, and thereby bore the penalty for all human transgressions. As a consequence of that substitution, humans were transferred to the position of perfection and freedom reserved for Jesus who was Himself without sin or blemish. What was His is now ours, but only because what was ours is now His. On this Christians, for the most part, agree. Where the disagreement comes in is when we try to explain how an event in the past; perfect, efficacious and complete, can be reconciled with on-going sin and rebellion on the part of the humans who were intended to be the objects and recipients of such grace.
The solution proffered by the Roman Catholic and reformed churches alike has been to try to bring the sacrificial death of Christ into the strictures of chronological time. The Roman church has done this by saying that in the sacrament of Holy Communion, the sacrifice of Christ on the cross is repeated in a discrete, contemporary manner to the benefit of those who partake of the sacrament. That which is historical and distant is thereby reintroduced into the present in a way that is relevant in terms of time and space. In transubstantiation God is brought to us in a physical and temporal manner that is under human control, if we have the proper liturgy, personnel and materials.
In response to and in opposition to this view, the reformed church has developed the ideas of election and predestination to solve the riddle of how God can act in the death of Jesus Christ and still encounter sin and rebellion in the present day. Rather than say the death of Jesus Christ must be rehearsed sacramentally by the Church, the reformed church says that the death of Jesus Christ is limited by God of His sovereign free will in terms of both space and time. By the doctrine of election, God’s grace is limited in terms of who receives grace. Some are chosen, some are not. The behavior of individuals is controlled not by free will or the content of our character, but by the express, divine will that some should be created for destruction and eternal torment. Similarly, the related doctrine of predestination says that such decisions are made before Creation, and that nothing in our bearing or desires can sway what’s already been determined. Thus, the reformed church feels it has improved upon the Roman doctrine of transubstantiation: rather than manipulating God through ritual to bring Him to the aid of a specific individual in time and place, the reformed thinker says that God is self-limiting in terms of when and to whom His grace is allocated. In doing this, the reformer protects God’s sovereignty. In solving one problem, however, the reformer creates at least two.
Simply put, reformed doctrine renders the importance of human choice and action moot. If what happens to me is already set by divine decree, why bother being good or bad? Why live out human history? Why strive? Further, how shall we frame our appeal to the lost and rebellious? Do we simply say we’ve been chosen and they’ve not? Are there no grounds for repentance and reform? What kind of God creates some to damnation, without regard for their behavior? Thus, reformed doctrine succeeds in preserving God’s sovereignty, but does so at the cost of our ability to minister to either Christian and non-Christian. The reformer doesn’t try to bring God here and now, which is good. What he offers by way of substitute, however, is possibly worse. The reformer says that the here and now don’t matter, as they are illusions created by a cruel and capricious God.
Now note, election and predestination are both words and concepts found in the Scriptures. They cannot be dismissed as simple errors on the part of the Biblical authors. They must be studied and reconciled to the whole counsel of the Bible, however, if they are to be rightly understood and used. We do not seek to reject these concepts, bur rather to understand them properly.
The only solution to the current stalemate in Christian theology as outlined here is to redefine the notion of time. We are enjoined by our Lord to love God with, among other things, our mind. Perhaps the greatest contribution to theology has come to us in the 20th century through a man who does not consider himself to be a theist, let alone a Christian, Albert Einstein. What Einstein pointed out is that chronological time is not an absolute. Time is interrelated with mass, distance, energy and speed in such as way as to be variable. Viewed in this way, it is a function of Creation, not the other way around. Time, as we know it, started with the Big Bang or Genesis 1:3, depending on your perspective. God, who preceded Creation and was its author, is therefore outside of time. He is therefore not troubled by the issue theologians have tried to solve for 2,000 years, and that is how Christ’s death and resurrection can have validity today within the limitations of time and space. With God, all is yesterday, today and tomorrow; He is the Lord of time. He is also everywhere at the same time. This is how we understand the Holy Spirit, to be Jesus Himself poured out for all humanity without physical limitation. Freed from the necessity of time, we don’t have to explain why some obey and others do not, though the cross of Christ is past. We do not have to bring God here and now at all; He’s already everywhere and at all times. The source of the problems we continue to experience must have some other genesis than the limitation of God through either sacrament or doctrine.
The answer to this dilemma is found when we examine some of the more confusing and hence under-reported passages of Scripture. What the Church has always said, for reasons of economic and polemical advantage, is that humanity is lost until it is found. Whether by ritual action or divine choice, God’s grace is limited to certain individuals at certain times. What the Bible really says, if we read all of it, is not that at all. Rather, what it says is that God’s grace is unlimited by time and space, and that all have benefited from the sacrificial death of Jesus of Nazareth around 30 AD in Palestine. In the language of Romans 5:9, all humanity of stands “justified” in the sight of God because of the obedience of Jesus Christ. The guilt of humanity, whether original or actual, has been atoned for, and is no longer held against us by God. The atonement of Jesus Christ is unlimited in terms of both time and space. He was, in the words of John, the atoning sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. This revelation, of course, is bad for business, as it makes it impossible to put God in a box and sell him to the highest bidder. Thus, the Church, both Roman and reformed, has suppressed this truth and peddled a diluted gospel in its place.
This is not the end of the tale, however, for we too must deal with the reality of human sin and rebellion. What Paul goes on to say in Romans 5:9 and other places, is that there is a coming wrath for those who do not “obey” the gospel. This is also the message of all the parables, where all are included in the beginning, good and bad alike. The consistent message is that although all humanity stands justified by the death of Jesus Christ, it is also possible for us to frustrate that grace and lose the benefits of that forensic sacrifice through continued rebellion against that same Jesus Christ. Jesus is two things: Savior and Lord. He has already saved all people, past, present and future. He’s also a living Lord, however, who does not force people to believe or obey. The Bible is clear, however, in both Testaments, that God will judge those who take such a standing and privilege lightly, and not show gratitude through subsequent obedience. What Paul says we need to be saved from is not so much the stain or original or actual sins, but rather the coming wrath of God against those who squander their justified status by obeying their base nature and recommitting Adam’s sin of erecting a parallel and lower moral standard of what’s good or evil. The issue is not, therefore, being lost until we’re saved, but being saved until we’re lost. All reformed promulgations about perseverance of the saints or eternal security have done great damage to the message of the gospel.
This sheds enormous light on the theological debate of the last two millennia. First of all, it shows what’s needed to please God. What God’s looking for is for us to show gratitude for what’s already been done for us in the loss of His Son. We show gratitude by agreeing with the moral verdict on sin as expressed in the Cross, and by thereafter striving to obey His Word as communicated to us in the pages of the Bible. When we fail, as we all will, rather than dilute the demands of the Scriptures or argue against the moral nature of the universe, we are to ask for help in meeting those unobtainable demands. We do have a role, but that role is only negative. Lacking any good thing in ourselves, we must nevertheless suppress our desires and displace our wills in favor of the desires and will of the Holy Spirit of the living Lord. As we surrender moral autonomy to the Spirit, He takes over and does through us that which we are incapable and unwilling to do on our own. God is looking for moral surrender on our part. Secondly, it establishes an objective standard for behavior which is beyond argument and cultural interpretation. What the Bible says is that the Father has granted all authority to judge to the Son, who in turn has passed that authority on to His Word, the Holy Scriptures. This is Jesus’ meaning of when He says the only unforgivable sin is blaspheming the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit caused the Scriptures to be written, and when we disobey them, we blaspheme Him and disqualify ourselves from Jesus’ atoning sacrifice.
Only when the Church reforms her theology can she legitimately ask the world to listen and obey. The current divisions in the Church are not signs of life but signs of death and stagnation. Doctrine has been established through the device of ecumenical councils in the past, and usually to good effect. The Council of Trent and the Synod of Dort, however, do not represent the mind of Christ, and we need to denounce them and move beyond them if we are to have a message that is accurate, comprehensible and helpful.
ORGANIZATIONAL REFORMATION
Like Peter on the Mount of Transfiguration, Christians seek to build booths to capture divine revelation and keep it for our future control and amusement. God, however, does not live in booths, and as surely as Moses and Elijah disappeared then, the Holy Spirit disappears today when we try to confine and control Him. Many of our ecclesiastical institutions are booths of our own invention and construction. The idea of the Church should not be to see how much we can build by way of superstructure, but how little. The little we do build must be vetted and reviewed on a regular basis to make sure that it’s still necessary and pleasing to God. Form must of necessity follow function. When the Church adopts forms and institutions at variance with her stated function, she imperils her continued favored standing with God. Most of the trappings of institutionalization in the Church are either distractions, duplications, or idols that need to be removed outright. There are some things that are necessary and justifiable, and these need to be conserved. What are they?
First of all, Christians need to be educated. The Gospel consists of propositional truth about historic events and spiritual realities that must be systematized, summarized, and communicated to the people of the world. This cannot be done unless we are educated. We are enjoined to love God with our minds, and this requires formal education and intellectual formation (Mt 22:37.) There is no Biblical precedent for ignoring the mind, except when it competes with the Spirit for primacy. Christians need to know history, languages, sociology, psychology, and theology in all her forms, particularly soteriology and ethics. If Christians could agree about what constitutes knowledge and competence, they could be educated together. Much was lost when Christians stopped providing quality education for the world at large. Only she can complement knowledge with wisdom. The Church has and always will need schools.
Secondly, the Church needs some authority structures to ensure moral accountability. Authority structures on earth are a reflection of the fundamental hierarchy of spiritual authority in heaven and throughout creation. Where sinful people are involved, there needs to be a method of accounting for behavior and rewarding the good while punishing the wicked; what is needed in the secular domain is also needed in the sacred. It is inevitable and indeed helpful for the Church to establish and maintain authority structures so that her work might be orderly and effective. Universal standards of moral behavior and technical competence will allow mutual recognition of Holy Orders. Those who dedicate themselves to ministry full time should be taken care of in terms of insurance, health benefits and pensions like their secular counterparts. Economies of scale are no doubt great in this area if Christians will cooperate and pool resources. The workers in the vineyard are few; let’s take care of them. Why do we fight over jurisdiction and rank when the harvest is spoiling in the fields?
Thirdly, the Church needs to engage the world in terms of leisure time and entertainment. Focus on excellence in the arts, sports and appreciation of nature should be priorities within the Christian community. As the basic survival needs of the world are met more and more readily, this imperative of ministering through entertainment will become increasingly important. This can and should be a local and distributed ministry due to cultural preferences, but opportunities for economies of scale and mutual aid will nevertheless be great.
Fourthly, all human activity requires buildings and their associated equipment, and divine endeavors are no exception. We need to be mindful of the purposes for which these things are being used, however, and we must remain in control of them, and not them us. When built, they should be excellent in conception and execution, so as to best represent the wealth and excellence of our Heavenly Father. When they take on a life of their own, however, they become idols that must be removed. They are a means to an end, and not an end in themselves. Even the historic appeal of items generated by past movements of the Spirit can prove a snare.
Finally, the Church needs to agree on a rational program of social and economic relief. All relief programs are not justifiable. Too often Christian initiatives palliate symptoms allowed by God to bring individuals to repentance. By interfering with the fundamental processes of punishment and correction that God has built into creation, the Church risks operating at cross-purposes with the Spirit and hurting both people and our Savior. On the one hand the Church is the conscience of society in a world of scarcity and decay. On the other, she has an obligation to discern what should be done and when it’s helpful and when it’s not. The current health care and welfare crises suggest it’s time for the Church to reenter these arenas of humanitarian activity.
All the rest of what Christians are so busy doing is probably not that necessary if not outright harmful. All the talismans, objects of veneration, relics, shrines, and such must be either destroyed outright or relegated to the care of museums. All physical edifices, human rank, position, titles, celebrations, empires, bank accounts, and works of art that the Church has accumulated over the millennia are so much religious humbug. Get rid of them all.
