I often recall seemingly random acts of selfishness when I reflect back on my life. It’s unfortunate, but true. Oh, there is much to rejoice about and be thankful for and I’ve been a good guy from time to time, but there are those troublesome bad things, the unkind word, the ethical mistake, the moment of thoughtlessness, the feeling of self righteousness, the disrespect of someone, the submission to greed or lust or ego, etc., that often pop into my mind when I have time on my hands and am in a reflective mood. Those are the things people would be trying to dig up and reveal if I were ever to threaten anybody in power with a run for political office.
The truth is that there’s no good reason to expect anything other than selfishness from our natural selves since we begin life as totally self-absorbed infants and hopefully spend the rest of our lives in recovery from it. The objective, as Augustine wrote, is that “…as we grow we root out and cast from us such habits.” (Augustine’s Confessions VII:11). So there is good reason for regret, not just for the things we have done, for which we can obtain forgiveness, but also for lack of progress in growing and rooting out. Or, to put it another way, we, or at least I, have a lot of trouble with this challenge from St. Paul, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect…” – Romans 12:2
One good way to root out the undesirable and work on that transformation is replacement of it with something desirable. There is a foundation called the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation which is dedicated to getting people to plan and organize acts of kindness. I think that is a good thing, but such acts wouldn’t really be random, would they? I guess they might seem so to the recipients. I have frequently been involved in planning and carrying out acts of kindness. Even the Boy Scouts emphasized doing a good deed daily, and my parents and grandparents always set good examples of kindness and helpfulness but still there are those selfish things that pop up randomly. And, to further complicate matters, we can, of course, do “kind” things for selfish reasons. The bottom line is that I need to keep planning those intentional acts of kindness to keep growing and rooting out the bad stuff and keep it from taking over while working on a slow renewing of the mind.
There is an advantage to those memories of selfishness. They help stifle pride when I think of a good education, a successful career, a wonderful family, and a happy retirement, or when people talk about good stuff I do from time to time. Those acts remind me that I need confession and forgiveness and that my approach to Heaven will not be with pride saying, “Here am I, the good guy you have been waiting for. Open the gates!” but on my knees praying, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.” (The Jesus Prayer)
And speaking of pride, which happens to be one of the seven deadly sins and is being actively promoted in American culture today, check out the posting below.
OK, I’m a grouch, but I just don’t like the general idea of pride. It is so self-focused. It seems to me that a much more desirable response to good things is thankfulness.
It’s related to that self esteem movement that has become so popular, and I don’t like self esteem either. (Since the implication of the verb “esteem” is positive, I’m thinking “low self esteem” qualifies as an oxymoron.) The fact is that self esteem, even in the case of super achievers, is unjustified and that we would all be much better citizens if we would just be thankful for all we have and seek self respect and self confidence instead. We don’t need to be thinking highly of ourselves. We need to be behaving ourselves and learning and building skills so that we can be helpful and make a real contribution to society and thereby earn a living if we need to do so. If an education system is teaching skills and developing talents at a satisfactory rate, the result will be students with self respect and self confidence. If it is failing to do so, I guess the only thing left is to go directly to emphasis on pride and self esteem.
Of course self respect and self confidence have to be properly informed. A person may have both for being the best bank robber or the biggest con or having the most sexual exploits. (Check out Frank Abagnale for a good example.) I suggest there’s no better non-threatening (avoiding theological stuff here) starting point for such informing than the Boy Scout Law. A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. The toughest ones for me are cheerful and brave.
What called the subject of pride to my attention was a recent letter writer’s comment in The State newspaper, “I am proud of my Confederate heritage.” I guess that means it is something he likes to talk about and reflect on but it is certainly nothing he personally had anything to do with. It probably also means he likes seeing the Confederate flag flying on the SC State House grounds. So, it seems that perhaps what he meant to say is that he is thankful for his Confederate heritage. I think that would be fine. There is certainly no reason anybody should be ashamed of his or her Confederate heritage either because, once again, it is nothing the person had anything at all to do with.
In the present tense, I am often tempted to express pride in some project I have just completed if it turned out well or to be ashamed of it if not. But thankfulness for the skills, talents, tools, resources, and assistance that were required to complete the project seems to me to be a more appropriate emotion in case of success. I think it is generally true that success depends a lot on things we may influence but have no direct control over while we are perfectly capable of failing all by ourselves. And that may be cause for shame when it happens.
Or I might be proud of the South Carolina Gamecocks who recently won the College Baseball World Series. But I didn’t have anything to do with that. And the team will be better off in the long run if they focus on being thankful and on being good role models rather than on being proud. I’m thankful for the win primarily because it provides some opportunity for positive commentary on South Carolina after all the recent bad publicity surrounding our local politicians. I’m not ashamed of even them, however, because, once again, I had nothing to do with their words or actions. I don’t believe the NYT or the WSJ mentioned the Gamecock victory.
We have an anti-litter organization in South Carolina called Palmetto Pride. I’d rather think of keeping my litter in the car until I get home and can appropriately trash it as personal responsibility rather than having anything to do with pride. Certainly anybody tossing their trash out along the road should be ashamed, but they probably don’t have a clue.
Speaking of shame as an opposite to pride, I believe that is where the idea of “Gay Pride” came from… a reaction to tendency of many in society to cast shame on gays…but it seems to me that if gayness is just a normal variant in human sexuality, neither pride nor shame is appropriate. Now behavior is an entirely different thing. Clearly many of us, gay and straight, should be ashamed of our sexual behavior. Well, it’s clear to me anyway. There’s really nothing in that Scout Law about sex except as possibly covered by trustworthy and loyal. Well, maybe reverent, for those of us who believe that we are created by God. I’m pretty sure that if I were gay, I would be ashamed of “gay pride.” But I’m not proud of that.
I was Googling “pride” and found a website, Custom-Essays.org, which offers custom essays for $9.95 a page. The sample essay they provide at their web site to entice students to cheat by doing business with them is entitled Definition of Pride Essay. It includes such literary gems as:
“This is my pride is family.” “A good job is a big accomplishment nowadays because a lot of forces are put into it.” “Having a job implies having more possibilities in life and showing true professionalism that is why pride is job.” “Pride is a lot of things at the same time.”
Somebody should be ashamed of that writing!
Proverbs 16:18:Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.
One of the courses I took at Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary was Dr. Daryl (Tony) Everett’s Conflict In The Church. It might have been better titled Conflict in the Congregation beause it was designed for fourth year Master of Divinity students getting ready for their first pastoral assignments. Dr. Everett has assisted many congregations during difficult and stressful times and has gained significant wisdom from such experiences.
An important issue raised by the subject of church conflict is the question of authority, especially on theological issues. It may be fine for members to vote on who may be interred in the church cemetery, how large a parking lot to build, or what color carpet to buy, but I have become uncomfortable with the idea of voting on moral and theological issues such as Biblical interpretation or concepts of God. I don’t believe there is any evidence that The Church founded by Our Lord was intended to be or ever functioned as a democracy until recently in the United States. We are not a social club, a civic club, a neighborhood association, a co-op, a mutual aid society, or any other self-governed entity, nor are we supposed to be worshippers of our wonderful pastors. We are “The Body of Christ” and subject, I suspect, to the authority established by Jesus in his founding of His Church.
So, with the caveat that important theological truths are not to be arrived at by any congregational negotiations or compromises, I think the principles and processes I learned in Dr. Everett’s class are excellent for avoiding and, when necessary, resolving conflict over more secular issues important to the members. Based on his favorable critique, I think I did a pretty good job of soaking up all he taught and organizing it and feeding it back to him in the paper below. So, if you are a church member dealing with conflict in your local congregation, maybe you will find some food for thought in this May, 2003, paper.
Pastor-Led Process for Church Growth Following Conflict Based on 1 Corinthians 10:1 – 11:1 Darryl K. Williams – May 5, 2003
Introduction
Conflict in churches began with the disciples who walked with Jesus arguing over who would be first in the Kingdom of god and has been a constant throughout the centuries. In spite of such problems, the one holy catholic and apostolic church has survived and even prospered and has continued to grow and spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ and thereby influence the entire world through its work and through the transformed lives of individual believers. Other world religions notwithstanding, no other organization or institution can point to such a history as that of the Christian Church.
That is the good news on a macro basis. The bad news is that, on a micro basis, individual congregations have suffered and stagnated and sometimes died as a result of conflict poorly managed. Even in the 21st Century, disagreement among church members about matters large and small is a given. We come from various religious, educational, and family backgrounds, and we have differing understandings and priorities about worship, music, Christian education, pastors, stewardship, mission, church architecture, and church management. To top it off, we are in bondage to sin, selfish and self-centered. Individuals have been hurt and have left the church, and pastors have suffered personal stress and failures and have had their careers terminated. Many such bad outcomes could have been prevented by scripturally based, Holy Spirit inspired, pastor led, conflict prevention, management, and resolution processes, tools and skills. It is the purpose of this paper to outline some of those processes, tools, and skills and to consider them in the light of an excerpt from St. Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians (NRSV).
The Literary Context of 1 Corinthians 10 and the Situation in Corinth
The Corinthian Church had its share of issues, disagreement, and conflict, and the members sent a letter to St. Paul, their founder and organizer, asking for help with some of their questions. We know this because, at the first of Chapter 7, Paul refers to them having written asking about relationships between men and women. Then at the beginning of Chapter 8, he first refers to the issue of concern in 1 Corinthians 10: whether to eat or to reject meat that had been sacrificed to idols. The discussion about the meat beginning with 8:1 and leading up to chapter 10 might be summarized as follows:
8:1-6: We all know there is no such thing as an idol. There is one God.
8:7-13: Well, not all of us. Some still are struggling with the idea of idols.
9:1-27: I, Paul, am free but still consider feelings of others in all that I do.
Then, in the first part of Chapter 10, Paul reminds the Corinthians about the Exodus as a cautionary example for them to follow. He finally gets to the bottom line in the latter part of Chapter 10, reminding them who they are, what they have in common, and how they should behave as a result.
The meat problem faced by the Corinthians was that there was plenty of meat in Corinth, but, unfortunately, there were also lots of idols and lots of idol worshippers. Most of the meat available for sale probably was from animals that had been sacrificed to idols. Some Christians were saying there was no reason not to eat such meat. After all, the idols are not anything at all so what difference does it make if someone in ignorance has sacrificed meat to them? Others were saying that eating such meat was a sin…that it was the same as idol worship. It is not difficult to imagine what kind of internal strife was caused by one group in the church accusing another of idol worship and in turn being characterized as superstitious or ignorant. From Paul’s response to the Corinthians in Chapter 10, key Biblical principles for conflict management, even in the 21st century, can be derived.
Scriptural Principle 1: Remember the Past (10:1-12)
The Jewish people of Jesus’ time already had a long history and apparently knew their history well. Bible scholars believe that, for Jewish people, brief references to incidents in their history called to mind the entire story which was the context of the incident. That is probably why such references are so common in the New Testament writings, both Gospels and epistles. The interesting thing in this passage is that Paul’s audience is primarily Gentile Corinthians. However, even for them, “scripture” would have been the Hebrew writings. So Paul’s words here apparently were powerful reminders, even to gentiles, of past mistakes and warnings about priorities for the present time. As Paul reminded the Corinthians, the Israelites had fallen into idol worship, had been guilty of sexual immorality, had “tested” the Lord (See Exodus 17 for an example), and had grumbled against the Lord and been destroyed by serpents (Numbers 21).
The message in this recounting of history seems to be that the Corinthians needed to remember that God is one God, that they were to avoid idolatry and sexual immorality, probably singled out because they were common practices in Corinth, and that they were to avoid testing the Lord and grumbling against Him.
Scriptural Principle 2: Remember Who and Whose We Are (10:13-23)
Then Paul switches from history to the present. He cautions the Corinthians against overconfidence (So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall.)
What he is asking of the Corinthians may seem difficult given the community in which they live, but God will not test them beyond the ability He has given them to endure the testing. God is faithful, and they must be faithful also, fleeing from the worship of idols. He reminds them, using his “one body” metaphor (See Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12), that they are one in Christ, sharing in His body and blood. Because of that difference, and because of the strong symbolism of the sharing of food at the table, the Corinthian believers cannot participate with the idol worshippers in eating the meat that has been sacrificed. Paul distinguishes between such sharing of the “table of demons” and simply eating left over meat from such activities. Strictly speaking, just eating the left-over meat is of no real consequence. Sharing the “table of demons” is in direct conflict with sharing the “table of the Lord.”
Up to this point, Paul’s comments could be taken as directed to the congregation in its entirety. Now he shifts to intrapersonal relationships. For Paul, the final answer does not rest with strict definitions of legality. The believer in Christ must go a step further and put the advantage of others in the church ahead of his or her own advantage. Of course the believer who knows there is no significance to the worship of the false gods is free to buy the left over meat and take it home and fill his or her own belly with it without any guilt at all, unless, as a result, support or encouragement is offered to the worshipper of false gods or unless the church is weakened or some Christians discouraged. If those bad results occur, it would have been better not to have eaten the sacrificed meat.
Scriptural Principle 4: Remember Why We Are Here (10:31-11:1)
Finally, Paul reminds the Corinthians that they do not exist primarily to satisfy their own desires, to look out for themselves, and to seek their own advantages. They exist to glorify God. As was suggested in verse 23, their focus as believers should be not on whether particular practices are lawful but on whether or not they are beneficial and edifying. After all, the purpose of the church is that many might be drawn to Christ and be saved.
Conflict in the Church of the 21st Century
In the secular world, where many successful persons thrive on conflict, where selfishness is acceptable, at least to the point that persons are expected to look out for their own interests, and where efficiency is a key value, it is common for one person to say to another, “If you and I always agree, there is no need for both of us to be here.” In the Church, where we thrive on the Body and Blood of Christ, and where efficiency takes a back seat, we like to fantasize about pews packed with believers in total agreement on all the important issues and totally lost in love of God and each other and our neighbors. It’s not going to happen before the second coming of Christ, but that doesn’t relieve us of responsibility for working toward that end.
Disagreement in the closet may seem harmless, but brought into the open it leads to conflict, and conflict can lead to criticism, negative campaigning, bitterness, hurt feelings, and separation. There are cases in which friendly separation may be an appropriate result of conflict, but these other results are never good outcomes. The important thing is not to deal exclusively with bad outcomes on a crisis basis but rather to manage the disagreement and conflict proactively, using appropriate processes, to prevent the bad outcomes. A fundamental of good management practice in business and industry is that prevention of problems is better than inspection and detection. And, in the case of detection, corrective action is better than compensating action. That same principle applies to life in the church. What are the scriptural principles for conflict management that will most effectively lead to building up rather than destroying the Body of Christ and that seek to bring others into the Body of Christ? They are the same principles just identified in St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian Church, and they are just as applicable to the church today as they were in the 1st century.
As spiritual leader of a congregation, it is difficult for the pastor to escape responsibility for conflict management. The pastor who does not know his parishioners and their histories, does not know the history of the congregation, does not properly fulfill his or her own responsibilities and focus the congregation through “paying the rent,” or does not understand how to identify the need for and bring about transformation without disruption and discontent is a pastor likely to cause escalating conflict. How can a pastor apply these four scriptural principles in the 21st century to help a church grow spiritually following conflict on in the face of conflict?
Helping the Congregation Remember The Past
It has often been said that those who do not study the mistakes of the past are bound to repeat them. Certainly the Church has a history, one that is littered with huge mistakes and the high prices that have been paid for those mistakes. Possibly the greatest price that has been paid is the splintering that has resulted in hundreds of groups around the world today calling themselves Christians but not communing together or agreeing on essentials of the Christian faith.
Any congregation, especially one that is decades old, also has a history, and the pastor must know and understand that history to be able to lead successfully. Because of its history, any church will have in place a system, consisting of invisible processes and sets of relationships, that determines which issues are raised and how things are done. The same is true for companies and other institutions, but the church is different and much more like a family because many persons come into the church as children and grow up in it. That results in a different mode of operation than for institutions which persons enter as adults. Because so many enter as children, early childhood emotions are easily carried over to influence the behaviors of adults decades later. Tradition also is particularly strong, especially in multi-generational churches, and strong feelings of parents and grand parents and great grand parents may surface from time to time in the words of current members without the current members being aware of the source.
The new pastor entering such a church must intentionally join the system over a period of time and earn the confidence of the congregation. That can best be done by leading the members to share with each other and the pastor their faith stories and the stories of the congregation. Through sharing and discussion of such stories, the pastor will get to know the people and the history and the systems in place, and the members will be able to reflect on their own pasts and better understand the sources of their current beliefs and practices. They may also be able to laugh about or repent for past mistakes that have been made and then use those mistakes as warnings for the future just as Paul suggested to the Corinthians. The pastor, as a new person on the scene, has the perfect rationale for leading such a sharing effort.
It might also be pointed out at this point that a Pastor who does not know and love and care for and enjoy talking to the members of the congregation will probably not be successful in entering the system. Just as the love of St. Paul for his churches and the people in them was evident, so must the love of the 21st century pastor for his or her flock be evident and freely expressed if he or she is to be able to successfully lead. There is an old saying: People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. That is particularly appropriate for a person in a caring job. Step one in letting the parishioners know how much their pastor cares is for the pastor to quickly learn all the names.
Helping the Congregation Remember Who and Whose They Are
All that story telling and sharing must happen within a context of the key things a pastor is called to do: Proclaiming the gospel, administering the sacraments, teaching the Bible, visiting the sick, and challenging the members to faithful worship and service. The focus of that ministry must be the same as the focal point of the 1 Corinthians pericope as outlined above: …the church is one body sharing the Body and Blood of Christ (14-17) a. The cup of blessing is a sharing in the blood of Christ b. The bread we break is a sharing in the body of Christ c. Therefore, we who are many are one body
Such “paying the rent,” so to speak, keeps the congregation centered and focused on the essentials and helps avoid destructive controversy over issues that are not critical in view of those essentials. St. Paul seemed to never miss a chance to remind his churches who they were and to call them back to the center. He began this letter to the Corinthians with such a gentle reminder.
NRS 1 Corinthians 1:2 To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours:
Helping the Congregation Remember Others (In the Church)
Within the congregation there are persons at all stages of spiritual development, with various interests and emphases, and with various skills and abilities and knowledge levels. It cannot be expected that all will react in the same way to issues that arise or that all will experience God’s presence in exactly the same way for any given worship style or practice. For example, those who experience God in Bach and Beethoven and those who thrill to I’ll Fly Away and When the Roll is Called Up Yonder may want to attend different worship services, but must refrain from criticizing each other and calling each other names.
Helping the Congregation Remember Why They Are Here
It is the responsibility of the pastor to remind the members that the congregation does not exist for its own sake but for the sake of others. That can be done through emphasis on the commandments to love God and neighbor and the command of Jesus to baptize and teach. A congregation focused on such ministry will be less likely to get bogged down in internal controversial issues of less importance.
An important part of helping the members of the congregation remember why they are in the church is for the pastor to keep a clear sense of priorities and to be objective. The answer to the question, “Why?” has to do with purpose and purpose has to do with plans and plans require broad support, careful formulation and diligent execution. A pastor who sees any criticism or question as a challenge, who routinely catastrophizes issues, or who is unable to follow through on projects will cause confusion and lack of direction and fire fighting among the congregation.
Summary of Practical Suggestions For Conflict Management, Now
(Most of the information in this section is from Class Notes from Dr. Tony Everett’s spring 2003 Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary Class, Conflict in the Church.)
There are some simple guidelines, including those practiced expertly by St. Paul and buried in the previous sections of this paper, which can be put into checklist form and used to avoid escalation of church conflicts beyond the healthy and helpful problem solving stage.
1. Get to know and love the congregation members, including their names, and make sure they know you know and love them.
2. Learn the history of the church and its members.
3. Learn how the church operates and join the existing system before trying to change it. Only by so doing will the new Pastor convert authority to real power.
4. Keep a focus on preaching, administration of sacraments, teaching, and visitation and, by so doing, make it clear to the members of the congregation who their pastor is and what their pastor believes in and stands for.
5. Don’t take positions on theologically non-critical issues. Instead, serve as a teacher and facilitator in order to help the church explore the various alternatives objectively and make a choice all the members can accept. To get people thinking, make observations and ask “magic” questions from the list at the end of this paper. Don’t make suggestions. Then, for such non-critical issues, be willing to accept the decision of the congregation.
6. Always help the congregation put issues in proper historical context, both for the congregation and for the church as a whole. Try to avoid re-inventing the wheel.
7. For any major issue, whether theologically significant or not, take the time to try to figure out who really cares about the outcome. Is it just a few key players with the rest of the congregation on the sidelines or taking sides? Or, are almost all members developing strong opinions?
8. Establish a process for exploration and resolution that is agreeable to all sides. The process must be judged as fair and open.
9. Be a calming influence on the congregation throughout the process of resolution. In the words of Dr. Everett, “Reduce the fear!”
10. Don’t set unrealistic time goals. Be willing to wander with the congregation in the wilderness believing that God will find you in due time.
11. Anytime a conflict has the potential to move beyond the problem solving stage, ask for expert or experienced help. Prevention is better than detection.
12. Remember that, over time, transformation of the congregation and its members and pastor from what they are to what they can be is the goal.
Dr. Everett’s Magic Questions
1. Has anything like this ever happened before?
2. What did you do then?
3. Was there a peacemaker?
4. How long has this been going on?
5. Where does it hurt the most?
6. Who will be hurt if we face this issue head on?
7. What would you like to see happen?
8. What will it look like in 3 to 5 years if we do or don’t do this?
9. What has happened to cause this to come up now?
10. What will happen if we don’t do anything?
11. Have any norms for the congregation been transgressed?
12. Who, what, where, when, why?
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cosgrove, Charles and Hatfield, Dennis. Church Conflict: The Hidden Systems Behind the Fights. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1994.
Leas, Speed B. Discover Your Conflict Management Style. The Alban Institute, 1997.
Rediger, G. Lloyd. Clergy Killers. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997.
Richardson, Ronald W. Creating a Healthier Church: Family Systems Theory, Leadership, and Congregational Life. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 1996.
Schrock-Shenk, Carolyn and Ressler, Lawrence. Making Peace With Conflict: Practical Skills for Conflict Transformation. Scottsdale, PA: Herald Press, 1999.
Congaree River looking north from the Blossom Street Bridge, Columbia, SC. We live at the east end of the Gervais Street Bridge seen in the distance.
Rivers have always had an emotional hold on me. Maybe it started when I was a kid in an old wooden boat on river shoals during the night with my granddaddy or uncle checking a trotline for catfish surrounded by the dark and the sounds of the river moving over rocks and rubbing against the boat. It’s enough to get a kid’s adrenalin flowing.
With their constant movement and varying depths and currents, rivers are like the passing of time and like life experiences. I can throw out an anchor and stay in one spot, but the river, or life, will still keep delivering new challenges from upstream. I can cut loose and just flow with the river and try to be prepared to deal with the surprises around each new bend. Or I can manage and navigate the river, adding speed in the slow spots and steering to the safer, or the most dangerous, passages through rapids, keeping the boat properly aligned. I can burn a lot of gas or calories moving upstream to enjoy the float back down later. Or I can just sit on the bank and watch everything go by though, even then, there is the danger of flood waters.
There is a cleansing aspect to rivers. They can become filthy with human or industrial waste, but, leave them alone for a time, and they clean themselves. Maybe that is why the preference in the early church was for baptism in “living” or moving waters and why Jesus was baptized in the River Jordan.
A lot of stuff is readily visible on the surface of a river, but underneath are dark mysteries, things from the past and living creatures of various types and sizes. Do I stay on the bank or float enclosed in the safety of the boat, or do I take a swim or do some wading? I can spend my time speculating about such things as how long it will take for a single molecule of water passing by to come this way again. Or I can catch a catfish and have it for breakfast the next morning. The possibilities are limitless.
I live overlooking the Congaree River in Columbia, SC. I can put a boat in and go a few miles south and see the same view that Catawba Indians floating the river five hundred years ago would have seen, the only man-made items in sight being the boat I am sitting in and its contents. And right in the city, I can walk our dog by the river and listen to its calming gurgling whisper.
The incredible timelessness and infinity and variability of a good river are insignificant compared to the attributes of God, but, perhaps observing and experiencing rivers can give us a glimpse of The Creator.
In the fall of 2003, I took Dr. Monte Luker’s course in Old Testament Theology at Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary. The notebook full of my notes and work from the course is lined up with about twenty similar compilations on a shelf above my desk. I have found it useful once in a while to take down one of those notebooks and look through it for a brief refresher on some of the things I used to know.
In Dr. Luker’s course, we learned (temporarily in my case) some basic Hebrew and did some simple translations. One assigned task was to translate Psalm 29 to English and write a brief (single page) comment on it’s genre, literary form, structure, possible use, and meaning. We had learned, for example, that most Psalms can be classified as Laments, Hymns of Praise, or Songs of Thanksgiving, and it doesn’t take long to decide that Psalm 29 is a Hymn of Praise.
I learned to enjoy playing around with structure of Bible passages by formatting and highlighting of similar or common words and phrases because it helps ferret out the focal point. That kind of treatment of Psalm 29 can result in something like this:
And here is what I wrote about the Psalm in November, 2003:
The 29th Psalm is a hymn of praise consisting of a summons of imperatives (“give” or “ascribe” and “bow down” or “worship”) followed by a proclamation about the majesty and power of the voice of the LORD. The hymn is concluded in verse 11 with a prayer that the LORD will give strength to His people and bless them with peace. “Strength may be seen as an inclusio, ascribed to the LORD in verse 1 and then given by him to his people in verse 11. Just inside that inclusio are ‘waters” in verse 2 and “flood” in verse 10. The phrase “voice of the LORD” is used seven times, interrupted by proclamations of what the LORD does. This Psalm could have been used as a responsive reading in liturgical worship.
The proclamation uses the dramatic and destructive wonders of nature to show the power of God in this Psalm. Thunder is used frequently in scripture, particularly in Exodus and Revelation, as an indicator of the presence of God. The breaking of the cedars may imply strong wind, flames of fire may imply lightening or wilderness fires, and shaking of the wilderness may be due to earthquakes. Either wind or fire could strip the forest bare. Within the proclamation, there is strong identity of the LORD with the voice of the LORD. The proclamation easily shifts from one to the other as subjects of similar verbs as in verse 5 where the voice breaks the cedars and then the LORD breaks the cedars.
Broyles (Craig C. Broyles, New International Biblical Commentary: Psalms (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1999), 151-153.) points out that the Caananite worshipers of Baal would have been very familiar with the idea of associating these natural wonders with God and suggests that the Israelites may have modified an existing Canaanite hymn to Baal. But in the Psalm, there is no worship of nature or of the wonders of nature. God is in control and is over even the flood, forever. It is interesting that the summons is addressed to “heavenly beings” or sons of God and not to the people, and that also may be explained by having borrowed from the Canaanite religion. However, the heavenly beings are not gods, as the Canaanites might have thought, but are ones who bow down to and worship the LORD.
There is a striking contrast in the Prayer with the details of the proclamation. In spite of the mighty power and wonder of God, the prayer is that he bless his people with peace.
A few months ago I attended a funeral at a suburban Presbyterian Church and noticed something in their printed order of worship which I found to be very funny and thought provoking. In their bulletin, the instruction, “Stand,” is always followed by, “as you are able.” Now, I am completely used to seeing those same four words after the instruction to kneel at my own Lutheran church but was taken aback to realize that we have not given any consideration at all to worshippers who are, for one reason or another, unable to stand. Actually, the words, “if you are able to get back up,” might be a more appropriate concession during parts of the service where kneeling is suggested.
Of course Presbyterians are not kneelers, I guess because Calvin was a lawyer before he was a pastor. Lawyers are not accustomed to kneeling. Luther, on the other hand, had become well accustomed to kneeling as a Catholic priest and made that submissive position a regular part of Lutheran worship. I suspect that, if Presbyterians were kneelers, both kneeling and standing would be considered optional based on ability. Only sitting would be required of Presbyterian worshippers although Lutherans will probably continue to require both sitting and standing. It is interesting that neither group requires singing, leaving that entirely up to the discretion of the individual worshippers.
It seems that there are two or three things we could do to either eliminate these differences and move slightly in the direction of church unity or to present more rational and defensible instructions. We could add the phrase, “…as you are able,” to instructions to sit and to stand. This would accord wheelchair bound individuals and hemorrhoid sufferers the same accommodation we now accord those who are unable to kneel. I have no idea whether the Presbyterians would be willing to go along with making sitting optional.
Or, we could, in a blow to the political correctness movement, eliminate all such qualifying phrases and just print the simple instructions: Sit, Stand, Kneel, Pray, Sing, etc., and just leave it all up to the individual worshippers. After all, if someone who is unable to kneel, were to kneel, or if someone who is unable to stand were to stand, that would be a miracle worthy of celebration and thanksgiving and not at all something to regret or criticize. (People who are unable to sing, me included, frequently sing, but such instances are not normally considered miracles.)
Finally, we could truly celebrate our Christian freedom and print after each such instruction the phrase, “…if you want to.”
Of course there are environmental considerations which probably rule out any expansion of these qualifying phrases since printing of “as you are able” twice in each bulletin times 250 or so bulletins per week times 52 weeks per year (104,000 words) has a carbon footprint approximately equal to the difference between one 60 watt incandescent light bulb and one of those squiggley little fluorescent bulbs Al Gore wants us to use.
And, if the subject is brought up in a Lutheran congregation, someone is bound to play the “change” card.
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Here’s a note added April, 2011. Fifteen months after writing the above I saw this in the bulletin at a big Methodist church:
*Congregation standing. If standing is uncomfortable, please remain seated and continue your participation.
As I implied in Big Methodists, it is tough to out-accommodate Methodists, though there is still little consideration for those who are uncomfortable sitting…or prefer not to participate. This is closer to allowing the worshippers to do whatever suits them…which seems quite reasonable to me. Anyway, I still like those big Methodist churches and am increasingly uncomfortable with the PC movement.
Quite a bit has been written, pro and con, about Brit Hume’s public recommendation to Tiger Woods that he take advantage of the forgiveness and redemption available through faith in Jesus Christ as a route to starting over. Some have objected to his use of the airwaves to make such a personal statement, to the advice itself, or to the implication that any one religious faith has an advantage over others. Mr. Hume is not backing off or apologizing. Some say the uproar and objections are not fair because people often get away with publicly mocking Christianity while freely advocating or openly respecting other faiths while Christians sometimes cannot talk freely in public about their faith without being criticized or ridiculed.
Of course the United States was founded on religious freedom as one of its pillars, but the focus was on freedom of the various Christian groups from being dominated by whatever Christian group was in the majority and might possibly be established as an official state religion. Such freedom was not a sure thing. Before the English took over in 1664 and adopted a policy of toleration of other churches, the Dutch Reformed majority along the Hudson River prohibited Lutherans from bringing ordained pastors from the Netherlands to the new country and from free practice of their religion. We have Roger Williams, libertarian in spirit, to thank for founding Providence, the first colony based on the principle of religious freedom, in the mid 1600’s. It had nothing to do with Islam or mysterious Indian or Eastern religions. Catholics, Protestants, Lutherans, and Baptists had all fought and died and killed and suffered persecution in an environment not too different from that in the Middle East today, and many coming to the new world wanted to be free of that and free to worship as they pleased without any laws establishing one faith over another. They wanted to be free to worship, not free from worship.
So, with fundamentalist radical Islam having no interest at all in separation of Church and State, we have to leave them out of this discussion. But among the other faiths, perhaps the reason Christianity is singled out for restraint and abuse and disgust is because, for Christianity, the final bottom line is not, “Well, whatever.” Christianity makes claims of truth that cannot be denied if one is to remain true to the faith.
Maybe this problem is aggravated by the fact that we Christians sometimes present the Gospel of Jesus Christ as a threat or as a self improvement program of some kind. “Believe in Jesus or you are going to Hell!” Or perhaps, “Believe in Jesus Christ and you will be healthy and wealthy and wise the rest of your days.” Well aside from the fact that believing in Jesus with the very selfish intent of avoiding Hell seems to be an un-Christian thing to do, it does not represent a true and full presentation of the Gospel. Nor does the Gospel promise a life of prosperity and good health and happiness. It seems to me that the true presentation of the Christian Gospel, or good news, is that Jesus is God among us, come to show His love for us and to show us the way to have abundant life now. And there is no promise that the descriptor “abundant” rules out suffering and sacrifice. I don’t believe Jesus came saying, “Man, these people are going to Hell if I don’t do something,” or “These folks are poor. We need to show them how to make some money.” I prefer to think he came saying that, rich or poor, we are living selfish lives, wrapped up in meaningless selfish activities and worrying about ourselves primarily and mistreating each other and always trying to pile up wealth and accumulate more toys and looking for satisfaction in all the wrong places and wrong ways etc.
I believe he came saying, “I will show them what I intended life to be. I will show them that if they want to be first, they have to be last and be a servant to all. I will show them that they serve me by serving the least among them. I will show them what it means to have abundant life.”
If we Christians show a little evidence that we have heard that message and realize our shortcomings and are asking forgiveness for them, we will have a much warmer reception from hearers of The Gospel than we will ever get with a self righteous “I found it!” approach. (“I Found It” was the poorly chosen name, in my opinion, of an interdenominational Christian evangelistic campaign in the 1970’s.) Proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus should not include the pronoun “I” except one time followed by the verb “believe.”
After all, that is the pattern established by the original proclaimers, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, who wrote in the third person about what Jesus said and did and not in the first person about what it meant to them. The only first person quote I found in a quick search of those Gospels was this: Luke 1:3-4 “I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed.” So, we 21st century believers should investigate carefully as well so that we can give orderly accounts of the Gospel. I personally have done a good bit of the investigating but am woefully short in the giving of orderly accounts and will be found standing in line asking forgiveness for not having faithfully done so.
Here are links to what some have written sympathetically about Mr. Hume’s statement.
Many Christians are upset over endorsement of homosexual behavior in some Churches. Some of us argue that the problem is that endorsement is a positive judgment that goes beyond (violates) Jesus’ warning against judging, but I suspect it is often just a case of seeing specks in the eyes of neighbors while ignoring the logs in our own eyes. (Matthew 7:1-3)
In the summer of 2009 the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, for example, voted to allow ordination of practicing homosexuals in monogamous relationships and to allow the blessing of such unions. Some see that decision as indecisive since it does not endorse but allows endorsing. Whatever one’s positions on these issues, it is difficult to deny that many churches and church people have, with an unjustified attitude of self righteousness, brought focus and pressure on homosexual behavior, and sometimes even on homosexuality itself, while paying scant attention to explicit teachings of Jesus himself who said nothing at all about either.
For example, Jesus commands us to turn the other cheek, go the extra mile, follow His commandments, feed the hungry and give drink to the thirsty, eat His Body and Blood, follow the two greatest commandments (love God and neighbor), follow the Great Commission (go, make disciples, baptize, and teach), be last of all and be a servant to all. He tells us not to cast stones unless we are without sin, to avoid anger and swearing and to trust in our Heavenly Father and not worry about tomorrow. He teaches us to avoid adultery and lust and divorce and greed. He even tells us we have to die to ourselves and give up everything to follow him and that it is not going to be easy.
Well, when is the last time the Church came down hard on somebody for being greedy or selfish or for getting caught up in adultery or for failing to show up for Holy Communion or for never telling anyone about Jesus or for criticizing and judging others or for not dying to themselves and giving up everything for Jesus.
In Matthew, Jesus tells us that we are made unclean by evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, and slander but doesn’t seem to say that any one of these is any worse than the others and says nothing specifically about homosexual behavior.
And it’s not just Jesus. We find in Leviticus that anyone who curses his mother or father or commits adultery is to be put to death, exactly the same punishment some like to point out was prescribed for two men who lie together. Exodus 35:2 tells us that anybody who does any work on the Sabbath must be put to death! In the past century or so the Church has not been too tough on cursing of parents, working on the Sabbath, or even committing adultery. In spite of the fact that we don’t normally take these prohibitions in Leviticus very seriously, parts of the church have tended to get very stirred up and begin quoting Leviticus in cases involving two men found lying together.
In the first chapter of Romans, St. Paul gives a little overview of human history with a pretty impressive list of sins including failure to glorify God and give thanks to him, sexual impurity, worship of created things rather than the Creator, shameful homosexual lusts, wickedness, evil, greed, depravity, envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice, gossip, slander, insolence, arrogance, boastfulness, disobedience of parents, faithlessness, heartlessness, and ruthlessness. Why do we read this and just see the phrase, “shameful homosexual lusts?” Paul didn’t rank these sins but wrote that everybody knows that all who do such things deserve death but they just keep on doing them and approving of others doing them. Has anything changed?
So, to those of us who would rather not see the churches adopting more liberal stances on homosexual behavior, or anything else for that matter, because we think the job of the Church is forgiveness more than granting of permission, it shouldn’t be difficult to see why homosexual Christians might feel justified in saying, “Hey, we know you think we are wrong, but how about cutting us a little slack. You’ve been cutting yourselves and everybody else but us plenty of slack for centuries.”
In the volunteer work I do with Home Works of America, we involve teens and adults in the repair of homes for low-income elderly homeowners. We close our repair sessions in prayer with the home owner and the volunteers together. We call it a House Blessing, and part of it is the reading of the words of Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6:25-34.
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
Sometimes as we read this aloud in the presence of a mix of prosperous middle class teens and adults and one or more individuals living in poverty, I think, “This is crazy.” I have that thought because the home owner is very often in a bad situation because somebody didn’t give any thought to tomorrow, even about something so simple as fixing a water leak that over time has rotted a bathroom floor, and that many of the volunteers are in very comfortable positions because somebody did give thought to tomorrow with respect to education and savings and investment and other worldly things or even about an other-worldly thing such as Christian education.
In one particular case I was having such thoughts when the reader got to verse 33 which begins with “but” and which seems to be the key point Jesus makes. I thought, “OK, the point is not to completely drop all thinking about and planning for the future. It is to seek God first and be sure that serves as the context for the planning. It’s a matter of priorities.” I’m not saying that is the definitive word of truth here. I’m just saying that is the thought I had.
Later at home I looked at this passage and decided that we err in starting with verse 25 because the first word is “therefore,” which is a clear signal that what follows can be understood only if we know what the “therefore” refers to. In this case, the previous verse is:
No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.
Then we get the “therefore…do not worry” followed by the “but seek first…his righteousness.” I guess Jesus’ point was that if we get our priorities right, the things we seek will be different and we will live lives of peace and joy free from worry about tomorrow. OK, all who have their priorities correctly established according to the words of Jesus, whose birthday we celebrate tomorrow, please stand! The rest of us can then join humbly in the closing prayer we use at the house blessing, the “Our Father,” in which we say: “Forgive us our trespasses.”
I like big Methodist churches. Little Methodist churches can still be a bit provincial and family or founder or “big giver” dominated or bound up in local traditions, but the big ones seem to be the humblest, most service oriented, most welcoming, and least argumentative of the better known Protestant groups still on record as “protesting” the Catholic faith. The Catholics of course claim to be the one true church and seem to me to be the only group with any reasonable basis for such a claim. The Baptists often deny protestant status and sometimes come across as also claiming to be the one true church but, as far as I can see, without any reasonable basis for such a claim.
The Lutherans trace their history back to the 16th century mass departure from Catholicism which I blame more on the Pope of the time than on Luther. Leo X should have assigned Luther to head up a task force to stamp out abusive practices, of which there were plenty, instead of kicking him out of the Church. Many Lutheran Churches have ethnic traditions since they not only departed Catholicism en mass but were often ejected from their homes and regions and emigrated to the new world en mass, leaving all their property and possessions behind. Lutherans sometimes seem to be prouder of being Lutheran than of being Christian. That’s good because pride in surviving persecution may be acceptable while pride in receiving salvation by the grace of God is certainly not. That calls only for thankfulness.
Presbyterians date from the same time as Lutherans, still have some of the predestinarian views of Calvin and Knox, and may seem a bit aloof to those not predestined to be Presbyterians. Episcopalians still suffer from their poorly motivated founding by Henry VIII as well as from recent theological splits over gay issues. Lutherans may be heading the same way after decades of mergers combining as many as sixty separate synods into today’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
The Episcopalians gave birth to the Methodists, and for that we can be grateful. However, at least as far as American Methodists go, formation was not the result of a rancorous split and a mass departure with associated squabbles and residual acrimony. Formation of American Methodists was almost totally positive in nature. John Wesley left the Church of England, came to America, and founded a new church for which he provided an adequate supply of ordained (falsely so according to the folks back home) English-speaking pastors. People with no church and people who were members of other churches came to the Methodist faith but not en mass over theological splits. They came because they were invited, came, liked, and stayed. Methodism in America is an American church.
Baptists stand pretty much alone among major Christian denominations in denying the Sacraments, rejecting the creeds, and insisting on “believers” baptism only. Fortunately, they are good at motivating people to get up out of their pews and take that first step of faith, sometimes more than once, and at teaching believers how to tithe and how to find their way around in the Bible. For those things, we can be thankful. Former Baptists stand out as faithful and disciplined members of many denominations.
There are some very good reasons for the formation of these various Protestant church bodies. The gates of hell have not prevailed against the Church our Lord founded, but sin has crept in from time to time necessitating reforms. However, the Catholic Church has changed over the centuries, and the question now is whether enough problems remain to justify the divisions which currently exist and which result in presentation of a very fuzzy picture of Christianity to the world outside the Christian Church. If not, we (non-Baptist) Protestants might as well repent, recant, and return to the Catholic Church and begin working together to continue its reformation and to present a more unified picture of The Body of Christ to an unbelieving world.
If serious church dividing problems do remain, then my suggestion would be that we all give up our smaller theological points of contention and join together in big Methodist churches. We need to forgive and forget if our founder was excommunicated or our ancestors were cast out of Europe. We need to forgive and forget those who followed Henry VIII and Henry VIII himself for an unbelievable display of arrogance. We need to quit talking about predestination and leave that entirely up to God because there is no point in discussing something about which, we must confess, nothing can be done. Then the Body of Christ would have just three major parts: The Catholic Church with its magisterium and tradition and its rules and regulations and frequent masses, the Methodist Church with its open doors, friendly faces, loose theology, and numerous opportunities for service and worship, and the Baptist Church struggling along without the Sacraments and creeds but doing a fine job of teaching Bible and stewardship. It would be a better world and a better witness for our Lord.
Confession and Background Information: I wrote the first draft of the above on a bulletin while sitting in the back pew of a big downtown Methodist Church December, 2008, listening to the community Messiah sing-along in which my wife was participating. I was Southern Baptist for 32 years, Presbyterian for 16 years, and now have been in Lutheran churches for 19 years. Self identification has shifted over the years from denominational to now saying simply that I am Christian and currently a member of a Lutheran Church. I can’t help wondering what the message is in the fact that the two groups I seem to favor in the essay, Catholic and Methodist, are ones with which I have little firsthand experience, but make what you will of it. I first got interested in Christian unity when we were living in Japan (1992-1995) and seeing how confusing the multiplicity of Christian groups can be to a people who are about 2% Christian. Then, after retirement, I spent three years at Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary where I got my first real doses of Christian theology, Church history, contextual Bible study, and ecumenism and learned something about what separated and still separates us from each other. I trust we will eventually be united, but it may be a while.
