Happy Rebellion Day

It is Independence Day and I am reminded again that independence is rooted in rebellion. Early American protest turned to resistance, then subversion and then rebellion and war.  And it ended with freedom.

I came to this awareness on the first July Fourth after my exile from the church.  I had protested bad decisions that my church leaders were making.  They said I should submit to authority.  I said, "Which authority, you or God? "   "You or the by-laws of the church? " 

I gave my friends permission to protest their church leadership in accordance with provisions of the church constitution.  My actions were seen as subversive and rebellious, and they were.  I was asked to leave.

To me it just seemed really silly - if not hypocritical - for one Protestant to tell another Protestant that he must not protest.  Huh?  Where did we get the title "Protestant"?  Protestantism is rooted in rebellion.  But the end of it was only partial freedom.  Freedom from the old Catholic oppression and bondage to the newer Protestant oppression.

Anyway, I am a free man today.  Free from institutional oppression by government and religion.

So, happy Rebellion Day, everybody!  Enjoy your freedom.

And Above All... Be Nice!

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free (Gal. 5:1) so there is no list of rules for believers to live by, but if there were it would be a short one with only one directive, and it is this:  Love your neighbor.  Paul said that the entire Law was summed up in this single command.(Gal. 5:14)  Or as I would paraphrase it...

Be nice. (St. Robert 1:1)

It's a really simple concept that we try to teach our kids before they head off to kindergarten.  Treat others the way you would like to be treated (Matt 6:33).

Yet, many of us, as we get older and more mature in the faith, become less nice.

That's partly because there are doctrinal and religious operatives that come into play that have a mitigating effect on our kindness.

Kindness Killers:

1. "Accountability"  It's a buzzword in the religious world right now, and it turns nice people into confrontive "truth speakers" who are taught that their destructive openness with their mentorees and wayward friends is legitimate and necessary as part of the discipleship process.

The unfortunate truth about accountability is that confrontation rarely ends well, at least for the confronted.  The confronter may move on after a confrontation feeling righteous and satisfied in his ability to speak the truth in love.  The confronted withdraws with a sense of injury and defeat.  The hurt may linger for a long time and effect their sense of self-worth and spiritual well-being going forward - maybe for a lifetime.

The discipleship concept of Accountability is a destructive idea that needs to die a quick death.  Let's not offer our advice unless it is strongly requested, and then, only in the gentlest manner.  "A bruised reed will he not break." (Isaiah 42:3)  

Be Nice.

2. Submission to Authority in the Church  This doctrine is a widespread and deep-seated practice that has caused untold destruction to millions of believers across the world.  Good and godly leaders turn into inadvertent tyrants and evil manipulators as they legitimize their actions through contrived scriptural methods.  I have said a lot about the evil of this orthodoxy in other posts, so I'll let it go at that for now (See "Harmful Hierarchy" or "Submission to Authority" in the left sidebar for more on this).

Be Nice.

3. "Hating the Sin" (but loving the sinner, of course).  This idea is used to rationalize mean behavior as a form of "loving the sinner".  The rationalization goes something like this: "I know that my job is to love people, but how is it loving if I don't tell my gay friend that he is destined for an endless eternity in hell?"

The problem here is that truth-tellers are doing the work of the Holy Spirit when they point out sin in their friends.  The one job of the believer is love.  Not conviction and not judgement.  Not even truth.  Just love.  It is the Lord's job to bring conviction if he wants to.  We should leave that work up to him.  "Hate sin" in your prayer closet and nowhere else.

Be Nice.

4. Church Discipline.  This is another endemic belief that causes a lot of destruction among believers.  Thankfully, it is not implemented very often, but when it is, it is often applied for unnecessary and illegitimate reasons.

 I know of a man who was excommunicated from his church because he was financially irresponsible, an unfortunate byproduct of his bipolar disorder; when he was manic he would spend money irrationally.

 Excommunicated.  Seriously.

 Another dear missionary friend of ours in the Mennonite Church told us that he was called home from Thailand to answer to the church council why he wasn't teaching a dogmatic compliance with the ordinances on head coverings for women, and the wearing of jewelry.  Really, the church spent thousands of dollars to fly him home for this.  Unbelievable.

Church discipline is a denominational weapon too often used to strategically remove non-conformists ("purging sin") from the local theological domain.

Be Nice.

5. Politics.  There has been a marked increase in political activism in the church and by believers since Jerry Falwell founded the "Moral Majority" in 1979 following a speaking tour of America during which he reversed the long-standing Baptist practice of the separation of church and state.  Consequently, the increased political rancor that has infected Congress has likewise infected the church as a sense of nationalism grows. 

Sensationalist talk show hosts have shouted angry partisan rhetoric and conspiracy theories in our ears starting virtual fires everywhere. 

Otherwise loving and thoughtful believers have taken to posting inflammatory messages on Facebook and love and respect have become a thing of the past.

The church podium has become a militaristic bully-pulpit in the worst way.

Where's the love?

Let's bring back a humble respect for another's point of view.  Let's quiet our own political and religious rallying cries and re-instate an atmosphere of goodwill.

And let's remove political campaigning from the church; people will vote their values without any reminder from the pulpit.

Be Nice.

6. Submisson of Women   Though liberal churches accomplished this a long time ago, there are many places in the religious world that have not yet eradicated the oppressive teaching that makes the church an unsafe environment for women.  Perhaps appropriate in an ancient Middle Eastern culture when the New Testament was written, this idea is out of place in our modern Western world.  It is a monster that can give license to misogynistic men who dominate their wives - and their constituents - with a so-called scriptural mandate. (Any big-name bullies from Seattle come to mind?)  I've mentioned this in other posts so won't say more here (Look for "Submission of Women").

Be Nice.

7. Preaching  Public discourse - homiletics - became an art form that was developed by the ancient Greeks.  The spreading of religion (and politics) has forever been riding on the back of this valiant steed.  It is an attractive mount to people who love to hear the sounds of their own voices, including all kinds, most of them honest and motivated by a desire to change the world.

The problem is that there is no good method of screening out the others:

 - those who are insecure and cannot be questioned due to their position of leadership

 - those who have a proverbial axe to grind

 - those with psychological or emotional issues (that manifest in their sermons)

 - those with abusive tendencies (they love to preach submission)

 - those who are uneducated or gullible and who believe outlandish conspiracy theories.
 - those with a mean streak (they love to preach hellfire and condemnation)
 - those with controlling tendencies (they have a directive for every detail of their constituents' lives.)

 - and so on.

 Any of the above are hard to challenge; If you question them, you are "rebelling against God".

 Just about anybody can start a church or ministry in the USA.  And that makes preaching a dangerous proposition for the listener.

Be Nice 

8.  The Business of the Church   Man-made denominations and independent churches are businesses.  They are built with organizational structures and business models that determine their day-to-day operations.  And so they must manage their staffs.  Unlike the New Testament church, they hire and fire workers.  And this is where countless thousands of Christian employees are destroyed every year.  The careers of mega-ministers are built on the backs of their paid staff and their volunteers.  It shouldn't be, but the business of the church is a dog-eat-dog world.  A grievous amount of unkindness is perpetrated every day - whether intentionally or inadvertently - through this ungodly system.

Beliefs determine behavior

I think it comes down to this, folks:  If your beliefs or orthodoxies (methods), whether political or religious, are causing you to be unkind, then there is something wrong with your beliefs and practices and it may be time to re-examine them.  This may be hard to do when you are still sitting under the teaching of a convincing preacher in a conservative environment.  

(Yes, there is an underlying message here:  Unfortunately, the conservative religious environment is one of the most likely places to erase your kindness, explaining it away through "timeless scriptural principles".)

It is possible, although a challenge, to think for yourself and study the Bible on your own and draw your own conclusions even when you are surrounded by voices that claim to be speaking for God.  I did it.  Millions have done it.  You can do it.  (But it's easier if you first remove yourself from that environment.)

Here's the thing:  There are thousands upon thousands of Christian denominations in the world.  They all have their own doctrines that differ from the church down the street.  They all believe that theirs is the correct interpretation of scripture.

But they can't all be right.  In fact, they are all wrong at some points.

Knowing this, give yourself the freedom to question your local religious "authorities".  If there are teachings that somehow propagate an atmosphere of unkindness, consider removing yourself from them - or at least removing them from yourself.

Kindness is the thing.

Be Nice.

Disclaimer:  Jesus was nice to sinners and the ungodly.  But he wasn't nice to self-righteous religious bullies.  And you don't have to be either.  What tone of voice do you suppose He used when he called the Pharisees "sons of their father, the devil"?  I don't think he was sweet about it.

So, be like Christ:  Stand up to bullies.  But to everyone else...

Be Nice.

Meanness Theory

  I have a theory about why good Christians so often exhibit mean behavior.  This belief rises out of my own experience, so if you've never been treated rudely by fellow believers, this may seem foreign to you, although if you stay around church long enough you're likely to gain a similar understanding through your own experiences.
  Three years ago I was unceremoniously dismissed from the congregation where I had been a lifelong volunteer in the departments of youth, missions, evangelism, worship and administration.  My fellow administrators and leaders had finally run out of patience with my dissenting views and let me know that I no longer fit.  Diversity is given high value in most institutions, from universities to business and industry, but not in the church.  The church values uniformity.  It's called unity, but really it means that members belong if they think, behave, dress, and vote the same.  That's uniformity.
  But what really surprised and startled me at the time, was the meanness with which my colleagues shared their criticisms of my counterparts and me, and their willingness to trash lifelong friendships in order to maintain their positions.  I've had three years to mull this over, and based on what I know of those good folks and their behaviors, I've concluded there are several factors that can contribute to one's meanness quotient.  Here are some of them:

•   Strong belief in and adherence to the doctrine of Hierarchy.  Organization is essential to any institution, and the larger the institution, the more complex the organizational structure.  Denominations and congregations are institutions, and must have structure.  The problem comes when those structures are spiritualized and  some believers are given authority over other believers, a phenomenon which was not permitted by Jesus (Luke 22:26).  There's an endemic belief among church leaders that once they have been appointed or elected to a position within the church, they are suddenly and automatically endowed with God-ordained spiritual authority.  Wrong. Spiritual authority is only automatic when we function in the spirit of Christ, and friends, the practice of some believers lording it over others is anti-Christ.
•   Strong belief in the importance of the Institution over the Individual.  In the middle of a conflict three years ago I heard district leaders publicly state that "no one person is as important as the church as a whole."  I couldn't believe my ears.  The statement was absolutely backwards.  The individuals are all members of the Body of Christ - the Church Universal - which was created by God at the Cross and commissioned at Pentecost.  Each part of Christ's Body is more valuable and essential than a man-made organization, congregation or denomination.  Leaders have become willing to trash people in order to save institutions.  This is wrong.  Jesus didn't die on the cross to save organizations, he came to save individuals.
•   Strong belief in the Submission of Women.  Untold millions of earth's population have been harmed by this destructive doctrine that has been extracted from very specific and unique texts and then universally applied.  Huge meanness factor here.
•   Judgmental spirit.  Though Jesus was known as a friend of sinners, most of us are not.  We live and move in sanctified circles with fellow believers and never engage with our sinful neighbors.  In our activist efforts to "take back America" for the Lord, we alienate gays, pacifists, atheists, and those who've had abortions.  Yet Jesus did the exact opposite, befriending the sexually immoral and criticizing the self-righteous.  Hmm, it looks as though we are not on Jesus' side after all.

  Our beliefs dictate our behaviors, don't they?  So if our behaviors are wrong, our beliefs must be wrong too.  If our doctrinal positions are causing us to be mean to people, perhaps we should be re-thinking our beliefs.
  A quick comparison of today's religious culture with the religious culture of Jesus' time will reveal that they are very much the same.  Two thousand years ago Jesus decried the self-righteous, hypocritical, judgmental ways of the Pharisees.  I believe he would hold a similar view of a similar religious culture today.  I call upon so-called spiritual leaders of today to make your "attitude the same as that of Christ Jesus, who took on the very nature of a servant."(Phil.2:5-6) There is no rank in the Body of Christ.  So be nice, serve your brothers and sisters and your sinning neighbors all the same.
 
  Have you ever been a victim of Christian meanness?  Do you think it was a product of doctrinal beliefs or did it have some other cause?

Harmful Hierarchy Part 2

Okay, I know where the confusion comes from about this submission to authority doctrine.  Most believers-- and in fact most teachers and pastors-- are thinking of the organization of the institutional church, and the organism of the universal Church, as the same thing, and then trying to apply spiritual truth to a man-made entity.  So let's clarify:
I'm going to define the church (with a small "c") as the man-made denominations, local congregations and structures that have been instituted in order to organize the (capital "C") Church, which is the Body of Believers, the Bride of Christ, that is all believers everywhere.  There are believers both inside and outside this institution, so this organism, the Body of Christ, or the Church, also exists both inside and outside the institution-- the church.
Now, organizations need organization, so some kind of hierarchical structure must be maintained or you'll end with... well, disorganization.  Whether it's a business, an institution, the military, or whatever, there must be hierarchy, and the larger the organization, the more complex the hierarchy.  Denominations and parishes and local congregations are organizations, so they must have an organizational structure-- a man-made hierarchy.  I'm talking about the small "c" church, the institution here.
But the capital "C" Church, the Body of Christ, was not created with a pyramidal hierarchy, it was meant to be an Organism unlike anything else.  It cannot be compared to the military and it should not be run like a business.  There is only one level of hierarchy that exists between the parts of the Body and the Head, which is Christ.  Every part of the Body is answerable directly to the Head.  There are no levels or ranks among the believers, as all are on the same plane and are obliged to respect or submit to one another while submitting to Christ.
All right, I'm not sure that I have cleared up any confusion, but I'll move ahead.  The problem of harmful hierarchies in the church comes when we take a human action such as Paul's appointing of elders in the New Testament churches-- his attempt to organize the local assembles-- and we spiritualize that and build an entire doctrine upon it, calling it a God-ordained clear Biblical principle that should be applied to the church today and without question.
Because this has happened, millions of believers, in their various denominations, are living under an ungodly religious oppression that was never intended by God and is, in fact, anti-Christ, as it perpetuates religious hierarchical empires that stand against the servanthood that Christ taught and exemplified.  The fact is that all believers-- including all leaders in the church-- should "have the same attitude as that of Christ, who...made himself nothing, taking on the very nature of a servant." (Phil. 2: 5-7).  Now where's the hierarchy in that?


Frank Viola speaks for me when he says, "Command-style relationships, hierarchy, passive spectatorship, oneupmanship, religious programs, etc. were created by fallen humans.  And they run contrary to the DNA of the triune God as well as the DNA of the church.  Sadly, however, after the death of the apostles, these practices were adopted, baptized, and brought into the Christian family.  Today, they have become the central features of the institutional church."    ---Frank Viola, Reimagining Church, Cook Press, 2008, p. 37


Viola also says, "The Bible never teaches that believers are given authority over other believers.... The notion that Christians have authority over other Christians is an example of forced exegisis.  As such, it's Biblically indefensible."  --Reimagining Church, p.214, 215


By the way, there is much less confusion about the submission to authority doctrine among believers who are worshipping outside the institutional church in house groups, coffee shops or Boiler rooms*.  Many of those movements are patterned more closely after the New Testament church which had virtually no hierarchy for the first three centuries.  The church in China is an example of one of the largest contemporary house church movements in the world-- where congregations and denominations are outlawed.


* See Punk Monk, New Monasticism and the Art of Breathing, by Andy Freeman & Pete Greig, for more on Boiler Rooms.

Harmful Hierarchy Part 1

I find ironic (even hypocritical) the doctrine of submission to authority as it is widely taught in Protestantism.  The word Protestant means one who protests, and it comes out of a nearly 500-year-old tradition (the Protestant Reformation started in 1517 A.D.) that sprang from the questioning of church orthodoxy by Martin Luther and other reformers.  So, how is it that any Protestant can prohibit another Protestant from being true to the Protestant tradition when he wants to question authority?

Further, many of the existing Protestant denominations rose out of their own protests against earlier groups.  I was raised in the Missionary Church, which was started by a non-conformist named Daniel Brenneman who staged an exodus from the Mennonites.  Yet the Missionary Church is staunch in its doctrine of submission to authority.  Hmm.  Forgetting our roots, aren't we?

I know that this teaching comes from several references citing the naming of elders in the early church and encouraging the respect of those elders.  I believe in respect for elders-- and everybody else in the Body.  Yet the strict and overbearing adherence to this  doctrine regularly generates a forced subjection and oppression that is destructive to multitudes of believers every year as leaders lord it over their people-- in direct defiance of Christ's teaching to the contrary (Matt.20:25-28).*
The submission teaching is an example of a contrived exegesis, and those who promote it are effectively robbing Jesus to pay Paul.  That is, they violate the primary teachings of Christ (servant leadership) while elevating the secondary teachings of Paul (submission to authority).
Further, it's catholic dogma, so Protestants who espouse it are virtual traitors to their own Protestant roots.

The fact is that church leaders often get stuff wrong, and when it happens, there should be questioners who, like Martin Luther, and like Paul who confronted Peter with his hypocrisy (Gal. 2:11-14), will speak up in respectful and appropriate protest.

Shane Claiborne speaks for me when he says, "Dissent is a gift to the church."

Shane Claiborne, author The Irresistible Revolution, thesimpleway.org


See Part 2 of this post for more of who speaks for me on this topic.


*To see a representation of the multitudes of Christians who are hurt every year by harmful hierarchies, visit: www.batteredsheep.com