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THE VIEW FROM THE SIDELINES

I'm reluctant to break a cardinal broadcasting rule here at the Voice of Prophecy, but today I'm going to repeat a little humor anecdote that we already used just two days ago. If you were with us on Monday, you remember how Mark Twain once spun a story about putting a dog and a cat together in a cage. Well, did they kill each other? No, actually, they got along surprisingly well. So, getting a bit bolder, Mr. Samuel Clemens added to the mix a bird, a pig, and a goat. Now it was kind of crowded in there, but after a few minor adjustments all five of these creatures were living in spiritual harmony. And now comes the punch line:

"Then he put in a Baptist, Presbyterian, and Catholic; soon there was not a living thing left."

Of course, this story segued very nicely into our topic for this week: THE FUN OF FILIBUSTERING. For 2,000 years now Christians have been fighting with other Christians, sometimes about the smallest points of doctrine. Hair-splitting, they call it sometimes, and the people of the kingdom do it about as well as anyone. But all through First and Second Timothy we find repeated warnings about the dangers of endless debate, especially over trivia or debatable points. Of course, that's why we debate points — because they're debatable! But notice God's counsel to us through Paul:

"Warn them [God's people] against quarreling about words." "Unimportant things," says the Living Bible. "It is of no value," Paul writes, "and only ruins those who listen."

Here's the point. When we scream at each other at 140 decibels, on these wheel-spinning, never-to-be-resolved issues, not only do we accomplish no good between the two of us, but how about those within earshot? "It only ruins those who listen," Paul says. The Message paraphrase says this: "It just wears EVERYONE out."
In the familiar King James, verse 14 reads this way:

"Of these things put them in remembrance, charging them before the Lord that they strive not about words to no profit, BUT TO THE SUBVERTING OF THE HEARERS."

The Greek word logomache , which is translated here, "strive not about words," also means "to fight word battles." That's interesting, isn't it? And then we get the word "subverting," as in "the subverting of the hearers," from katastreph , which literally gives us the word "catastrophe." Which leads to this observation from one Christian commentary volume:

"To magnify nonessentials and trivia is to steal valuable time from important matters and to confuse and upset the common man."

But now, why did we backtrack 48 hours and repeat that Mark Twain joke about the animals all locked up with each other, and then the three denominational debaters? Today let's think about that doctrinal argument from the point of the view of the cat and the dog and the bird, pig, and goat in the cage. They're getting along pretty good, considering they're of very different species and speak different languages. And then come these three men of the cloth, with their charts and their evangelistic handbills and their three different interpretations of the prophecies of Daniel. These three Christians can't agree among themselves whether speaking in tongues is right or wrong and if it's really true that a believer is "(quote) once saved, always saved," or if the sacrament of the Lord's Supper should be celebrated once a week or once a year. And the five peace-loving animals in the cage look on in both bemusement and amazement as the temperature in the cage keeps getting hotter and hotter.

Do you recall, maybe, a famous indictment coming right from the lips of Jesus to the Pharisees, where He accuses them of straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel? The famous "Woe unto you" statement? Notice this very current rendition:

"You keep meticulous account books," Jesus scolds them, "tithing on every nickel and dime you get, but on the meat of God's Law, things like fairness and compassion and commitment — the absolute basics! — you carelessly take it or leave it. Careful bookkeeping is commendable, but the basics are required." Now catch this next sentence, which is hardly King James, but very much to the point of our discussion today. Verse 24: "Do you have any idea how SILLY you look, writing a life story that's wrong from start to finish, nitpicking over commas and semicolons?"

You know, friend, as we hum "Onward, Christian Soldiers" and pick up our weapons, marching as to war, it's probably wise to consider how our verbal battles appear to those on the sidelines. To the unsaved — the dog, cat, bird, pig, and goat. In an unentered mission land, when Christians from five denominations land on the beach, move in and set up five churches on five street corners, what impression is made if the loudest noises come, not from singing and praying and preaching, but from arguing — internecine warfare? Troops firing on their own?

This isn't to say that when a Methodist missionary and a Seventh-day Adventist missionary venture into the dark corners, that they're going to agree on all points. Methodist preachers are out there to make Methodist Christians of those they reach for God. But is there unity or division here? Cheerful discussions or rising anger? Cooperation or an ugly kind of competition? The same thing is true right here on these radio airwaves. What spirit do you, the listener, sense between this program, the Voice of Prophecy, and the one that comes on next? Is there a lot of logomache and katastreph , or do you sense that fellow Christian broadcasters are lifting each other up, praying for one another as they pray for you too?

I mentioned the other day the difficulty C. S. Lewis, the Oxford scholar, had in writing even the introduction to his book, MERE Christianity. What points should he get into? What were the broad themes? And what were the disputable things he should leave alone? Was there ANYTHING the whole Body of Christ could agree upon? He shared two helpful guidelines. Here they are:

"The questions which divide Christians from one another," he says, "often involve points of high Theology or even of ecclesiastical history which ought never to be treated except by real experts."

That's one reason why you very rarely hear that kind of discussion during these 15 minutes of time we have together. We're not in that camp, and probably you aren't either. But now, what he says next is very profound.

"Secondly, I think we must admit," he writes, "that the discussion of these disputed points has no tendency at all to bring an outsider into the Christian fold. So long as we write and talk about them we are much more likely to deter him from entering ANY Christian communion than to draw him into our own."

Don't you think that's true? When a non-believer sees those five churches with their endless arguments and debates about whether there should be two hymns or just one, or what the seven trumpets in Revelation represent, he or she is likely to turn away from the entire battleground. And then Dr. Lewis adds this final safeguard:

"Our divisions should never be discussed except in the presence of those who have already come to believe that there is one God and that Jesus Christ is His only Son."

In other words, if you're a Christian believer and I'm one too, then fine. We might sit down and have a rousing 90-minute debate about exactly what happens to the human soul when a person dies. At the end, if we still disagree, we pray together, put a bookmark in our Bibles, and decide to pick it up again next week. Or we might not . . . because we're so happy working together taking groceries to a widow and her orphan kids. Or because we're so busy kneeling together at the base of a mountain called Calvary. But we don't let it become a catastrophe or an ongoing, never-ending, fruitless argument that divides us from each other.

In his book Christianity in Crisis, Hank Hanegraaff quotes St. Augustine with this memorable guideline for all believers:

"In essentials, unity; in nonessentials, liberty; and in all things, charity."

And then Hanegraaff, who goes on to say some very pointed things in defense of what he believes are indeed the "essentials," the pillars of pure Christian faith, adds this:

"While we may vigorously debate secondary matters within the faith, we must never divide over them."

You know, friend, all through the Bible there's an expression known as the "latter rain." The final rain which the farmer needs in order to have a bountiful harvest. Christians everywhere believe that in these last days the Holy Spirit is going to move in a very special way to give the church power to really witness for Christ just before He comes. With that in mind, as we think about the effects of arguing and debating, especially over the small and unresolvable points, I appreciate so much how author Marvin Moore, in his book, The Crisis of the End Time, challenges Christians and denominations and especially individual churches here and there and everywhere:

"A requirement for the Holy Spirit to come on us as a church is unity," he writes. "It will be impossible for us to receive the latter rain and proclaim the final warning to the world if we are still quarreling among ourselves the way so many of us do now." He then lists some painfully specific examples that I and many other have, to our shame, experienced firsthand. "Local congregations," he adds, "are sometimes torn apart by internal strife. All such congregations must settle those differences, or as a congregation they will be passed by when the latter rain begins to fall."

Those are serious words, aren't they? Serious for me here at this microphone. Friend, maybe it's time for all of us to do two big things. One, lower our voices. Two, move closer and closer to each other as we squeeze in at the foot of the old rugged cross.