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WHO BLEEDS WHEN CHRISTIANS FIGHT? #8
THE TERMINATOR OF TRUTH
If you’re not entirely sure what happens to the soul when a person dies, what should the church do about that? Should someone come over to your house and straighten you out? Let’s say you’re confused about the timing of last-day events and the “secret rapture” and the millennium. You’ve read — or tried to read, anyway — a couple of books on those subjects, and you recently saw a television preacher who outlined the views of his denomination . . . but you still have questions. And again I ask: should your church send The Enforcer after you?
One of the biggest media successes in memory happened during the recent Super Bowl between Tampa Bay and the Oakland Raiders. Millions of Americans were tuned in, of course, and many of them were more interested in the TV competition for “Best Commercial.” And the favorite of many fans was a spot from Reebok featuring a actor named Lester Speight. Six foot seven, 330 pounds, and this football player, wearing #56, was hired by some nameless company to enforce the code. If you were using your company laptop to play solitaire, BOOM! Terry Tate, the Office Linebacker, flattened you with a tackle. If you didn’t get back from lunch in exactly 30 minutes, BOOM! Terry came flying through the air, ready to clothesline you into submission. If your fax didn’t have a cover sheet on it, #56 would tear down the hallway, jump across the line of scrimmage, and BOOM! “How many times do I have to tell you!” BOOM! And for 60 bone-crunching seconds, #56 was just hurtling across your screen, with agonizing “thumps” as he tackled the poor people who made little mistakes here and there.
Well, Reebok really scored a touchdown with the ad, and some viewers were searching the Internet afterward, wondering: “Who is this guy . . . and can I hire him to enforce discipline at my company?” Or church, some pastors must be wondering. A Micky Pant, Reebok’s chief marketing officer, let it be known that Mr. Speight’s tackles were absolutely real. “He hit me so hard I was bleeding,” he confessed.
The marvelous magazine for pastors, Leadership, apparently found a relative of Cousin Lester’s, and in a Dennis Fletcher cartoon an enormous drill instructor-type of guy, butch haircut, square chin, no-nonsense clip-on tie, has a fragile Christian by the neck, lifting him two feet off the ground while other believers tremble and quake in the background. And the Terminator — I mean, Sunday School teacher — is bellowing at the guy:
“Sixty-ONE?! Sixty-ONE?! What do you mean, there’s sixty-ONE books in the Bible?! Drop and give me twenty!”
And the caption reads: “It quickly became clear that retired General George ‘No Surrender’ Summers was the wrong choice to teach the new members class.”
Well, friend, all of this is fun-and-games . . . until it actually happens to you. Have you ever been tackled over truth? Forced to run 50 laps because of your faith? If you’re listening in your car right now, and YOU erroneously think there are just 61 books in the Bible instead of 66 — which every good Christian in the world obviously knows . . . I mean, come ON, people — should I radio ahead and have the CHP (that’s the Christian Highway Patrol) pull you over at the next intersection and beat the heresy out of you?
It appears that in the early Christian church, both Larry Speight and General George might have been regular attendees along with Paul, Silas, Barnabas, and Timothy. Because people were fighting about doctrine then too. But as we study what Paul writes about “The Enforcer” and people who try to bludgeon others into their way of believing, we do find that the football field does have two end zones to it. Here’s Titus chapter three:
“But avoid . . . quarrels about the law, because these are unprofitable and useless. Warn a divisive person once, and then warn him a second time. After that, have nothing to do with him. You may be sure that such a man is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned.”
So division over Bible teachings is a dangerous and wrong thing to indulge in. If someone is endlessly tackling the saints in the foyer of the church, or coming to prayer meeting wearing a helmet, Paul seems to be suggesting that they be cut from the team.
But let’s hear essentially the same warning, now from the epistle of First Timothy. Notice the lead-in this time:
“If anyone teaches false doctrine and does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching, he is conceited and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions and constant friction between men of corrupt mind.”
On the one hand, Paul appears to be telling us that fighting about church teachings is a bad thing. On the other hand, adhering to FALSE teachings, and body-checking people from that side of the field . . . for sure is wrong. So truth is important — but controversy over truth is to be avoided. But how can we know if we are defending truth? After all, everybody is convinced that the way they see things IS truth, the whole truth, and nothing but. Otherwise we’d change our views. So it seems to ring a bit hollow when Paul tells us: “Don’t fight about what truth is. And I know — so I’ll tell you what truth is.”
Let me ask you this: are there truths that are necessary? From a Christian perspective? And the answer is yes. Paul plainly tells us that the doctrine of the Resurrection is absolutely vital. We must have it. The entire fabric of the faith disintegrates if we don’t believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ on Sunday morning, and also in the resurrection of God’s redeemed saints at the end of the age. Christian everywhere do — and must — believe in the atoning blood of Jesus, in the doctrine of grace, in the sovereignty of God, in the reality that Jesus is THE way to salvation.
How, then, should we handle disagreements and discussions over these things? Well, First Peter gives us a few words about it:
“Live in harmony; be sympathetic; love as brothers. be compassionate; humble.”
And yet, as Paul indicates, there are some core doctrines that must be defended. There are some pillars where, if a dissenter wants to endlessly argue against the Body of Christ, he or she eventually needs to be escorted from the Super Bowl gridiron. “Warn him once, warn him twice,” Paul advises, and then that’s it.
There was an editorial of some controversy in my own denomination’s paper not so long ago, entitled “The Pythagoras Factor — Again,” by Clifford Goldstein. And he makes the observation that rank-and-file believers of a church have a right to expect that the pastors and the college professors in that church system hold to and support the core pillars of the faith. True, there must be academic freedom; there must be scholastic inquiry and spiritual humility as the quest for biblical knowledge continues. But it’s inappropriate, Goldstein writes, for a fictional dad named “George” to send his kid off to this Christian college, pay x dollars in tuition, and then later discover that teachers at the school, who inwardly don’t hold to the teachings of the denomination, have quietly subverted the educational process.
It’s a difficult issue, and there’s no wonder the Christian faith has now had 2,000 years with more tackles than touchdowns. In the preface to his classic book, Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis conceded that he tried to write only about the “really important” elements of the faith, and immediately acknowledged that the question of “what is really important” was one of the main things people don’t agree on.
Much later, in an essay entitled Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism, he writes, almost with some anger, about priests and preachers who continue to wear the robe, who continue to draw a paycheck from the diocese, but who no longer believe the core tenets of Christianity.
“Once the layman was anxious to hide the fact,” he writes, “that he believed so much less than the Vicar: he now tends to hide the fact that he believes so much more.” And what a line this is: “Missionary to the priests of one’s own church is an embarrassing role.”
Well, friend, what does it mean for you and me, the people in the pew, the faithful friends in our radio circle? I think it means just this: a gentle AND inquiring spirit. We need both. Passion and patience. Obviously, you wouldn’t spend 15 minutes of your Wednesday here with us if you weren’t trying to seek new light. I appreciate that so much; we all do. What a wonderful thing to be in the Word, to read the great books of the faith, to feed at the fountain of collective Christian wisdom.
But then when we go out onto the playing field, let’s remember that we’re not playing tackle football. I can guarantee you I’ve said some things here on this program that you probably didn’t agree with. If you did agree, you’d be sitting next to me in church every single week already. So we have this dialogue. Please don’t come here to Simi Valley and tackle me. Instead, pray for me and write to me and send along a gentle but forthright e-mail with your thoughts. And when you share with your neighbor what God impresses you is important, don’t wear shoulder pads. Maybe try some knee pads instead.
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