Certainly Not

As a bit of an introduction, I have to poke a jab at DeJon who will likely gloat over finally getting me to write regularly for DH. I was requested by Al and DeJon, while I was in Iraq, to write the religious column. For numerous reasons, including the fact that the site (and all blogs) was restricted for us military types, I declined. As I read Sandi’s first post and saw some email traffic about her reservations, and I have similar ones of my own. It is not easy to write under your own name and put your thoughts out there every week for others to criticize—especially when it involves either politics or religion. People are very passionate about their beliefs on these subjects, stemming in part from the fact that they are deeply held and usually very important. They define and shape who we are as people, maybe even in some ways more than our occupations—unless we happen to work in politics or religion. I do have a concern that comments on my column (which I’m hoping will top Al’s 98 :) at some point) could get ugly and mean spirited. I have been thinking and reading and struggling with why this has happened in our group of believers we call Churches of Christ. Not that ours is the only group in which this has happened, but it certainly is a dominant part of our history. For a church started on the principal of unity, we have certainly had much division. As one who has grown up in the Churches of Christ, I must admit that I have had times when I wondered if it is worth staying. Yet I am still committed to the Churches of Christ if for no other reason than that we are truly a movement that emphasizes the importance of the Bible and I believe that if we will let it guide us, there is still hope. We also have enough freedom to be those who think for ourselves and that is extremely important in my opinion.

For introductions, yes I am a military chaplain, but what I say here does not in any way reflect the views of our armed services (there’s my disclaimer). I am also an ACU graduate, and I hope you don’t hold that against me either. My views do not reflect ACU’s opinion on anything either, though my graduate Bible education there has deeply influenced my belief system.

Having said that, let me start my weekly column by reflecting a bit about the struggle with why our movement is so divisive. Two books have influenced my thinking about this most recently, one by a person I hold in high esteem, Jack Reese, called The Body Broken: Embracing the Peace of Christ in a Fragmented Church. The other book, which I will actually quote here, is called Struggling with Scripture. It is co-authored by a scholar whose opinions have had a lasting effect on me, Walter Brueggemann, along with William C. Placher and Brian K. Blount.

Jack Reese pointed out in one of his chapters (sorry I don’t own the book but borrowed a friend’s copy and read it) our problem with our own certainty in our biblical interpretations. It is thinking and reflecting on that problem that really convinced me that he has hit the target dead on when it comes to why we are so divisive. You see, if we believe that any wandering idioteis (pronounced: I-DEE-OH-TAYS) can understand the Bible easily and would come to the same conclusions as us if s/he were just honest with Scripture, we develop a sort of certainty and trust that our own interpretation is correct. We think that anyone should believe as we do, they just need to stop succumbing to their own prejudices and preconceptions about various issues like baptism, Lord’s Supper, instrumental music, you name it, and we’d all be unified in identical beliefs. Sure we might not put it that way, but isn’t that what we think?

The logic goes this way: The Bible is easy to understand. Since it is easy to understand, everyone who picks it up should easily be able to come to the same conclusions (i.e. OUR conclusions). Since they have not, either they are do not value Scripture as a guide to their own beliefs, or they let their preconceptions get in the way so much that they cannot see the clear, plain meaning of Scripture as we do. If they would get over this, we could all be united. So it is our goal either to educate them on the clear, plain meaning of Scripture, or just go on to someone else who is not so obstinate. (I realize I am oversimplifying and generalizing this, but to make a point.)

Our certainty is in the fact that we believe we have restored the New Testament church in both belief and practice so that everyone who values the Bible and the faith of the first Christians should see everything the way we do. The problem is that it has not worked. Two or more well-intentioned, sincere Christians DO NOT come to the same conclusions when looking at the same text. But our sense of certainty does not allow for this. Someone must be right and the other person must be wrong. If you are wrong, you are not as sincere a Christian as I am and must repent of your error. And if you are wrong about one thing, there might be many more things about which you are wrong. Maybe your salvation is even at stake because you misunderstand something. So we developed a system of belief that centered on the five-step process by which one becomes saved and the way that saved person must practice worship (once again I am oversimplifying). After all, the only way to worship God properly is the way the New Testament church worshiped. (Sorry about the sarcasm, but that’s how we were taught, wasn’t it [for those who grew up in Churches of Christ]?) Being right became more important than showing the love of Christ. Our slogan at the beginning of our movement, “In essentials unity; in nonessentials liberty; in all things charity,” became warped. We categorized everything as essential and left no room for either liberty or charity.

There are several places where I believe we have gone wrong, and here is where I will pick up some quotes from the book, Struggling with Scripture.

First, as Brueggemann states, “There is no interpretation of Scripture (or interpretation of anything else, for that matter) that is unaffected by the passions, convictions, and perceptions of the interpreter.” (p. 20) Our perceptions of the clear, plain meaning of Scripture and of the need for restoration of the 1^st-century church (as if that church itself were uniform—more fodder for a different article) were part of the historical milieu out of which we began. Yet one of our core beliefs was that we are the restored church of the first century and so we became historyless. There are still many churches that will etch on part of their buildings “founded in 33 A.D.” We were above critique as THE New Testament church restored, all the while happy with the delusion that we were free from preconception, prejudice, passion or conviction.

Second, there is a fundamental misconception that the Bible is easy to understand. Once again, as Brueggemann says (p. 13), “The Bible…is not self-evident and self-interpreting….Rather, the Bible requires and insists upon human interpretation that is inescapably subjective, necessarily provisional, and, as you are living witnesses, inevitably disputatious.” The fact that stems out of this is that, as Brueggemann also says (p. 13), “Nobody makes the final read; nobody’s read is final or inerrant, precisely because the Key Character in the book who creates, redeems, and consummates is always beyond us in holy hiddenness.” From my time of study at ACU and elsewhere, I have seen this to be true.

If you have been following with these two ideas, that blows our sense of certainty out of the water and leads us to a sense of humility before the text, not a sense of arrogance. We will start to move away from the idolatry of holding our own interpretation of the text up as the text itself, what Bruggemann calls ideology. He says (p. 20), “Ideology is the self-deceiving practice of taking a part for the whole, of taking “my truth” for the truth, of running truth through a prism of the particular and palming off the particular as a universal.” If we then lose the sense of arrogance, perhaps there will be more room for the charity and liberty that was a foundational part of our beginnings as a church. This is my hope.

Sorry for all the quotes, but it seemed like a way to communicate more clearly this time. Tell me what you think.