We Need Each Other More Than We Think (Part 2)
If our job as leaders is to be shepherds of the flock, how has disfellowshipping come to be something that some folks seem to relish? Why is it something some of us seem to like? I could understand it if Jesus had called us as leaders to be prison guards; our sole job as protectors would be to keep a sharp separation between the “good guys” and the “bad guys.” But shepherds have a multifaceted job, right? Shepherding does involve protecting the flock, but there’s more to it than just that. So why are things the way they are?
I think there are multiple reasons—besides the obvious fact that sometimes we can just be mean. First, on occasion we move too quickly to disfellowshipping. We sometimes neglect Jesus’s preliminary steps in Matthew 18 and/or the heart and intention of 1 Corinthians 5, as discussed in the prior post. If the problem is in our local church, we may not want to have the initial conversation for any number of reasons. If the problem is in another church or across the country, we may not feel that we have any relationship out of which to have the conversation. And so we go straight to the extreme option: we amputate the diseased limb in an effort to save the body.
Second, if we’re being honest, we can be a bit vindictive. Even though we read in Scripture that it is God’s job to avenge, sometimes we want to add a little bit of our own “sauce.” Sadly, sometimes our desire to be right is stronger than our desire for the other person to be saved, and maybe we just don’t want to do the hard work to make that happen. It can be easier or more pleasant to enjoy our rightness, to feel righteous in condemning another, or to be thought of as a good leader because we’re creating an “us and them” mentality among our people.
Third—and this is one that I think we can work on most directly and immediately—we have thought that our primary job is to be heresy detectors. We have developed and employed a very sensitive “false teaching radar,” and as soon as we have seen an enemy on that radar somewhere, we have been quick to blame, to accuse, and to exclude. Why is that?
Well, just speaking from within the Churches of Christ, we have a strong historical reason. Our fellowship moved pretty quickly from thinking that “restoring the New Testament church” was a good idea to thinking it was the best idea, to thinking it was the right idea, to thinking it was the only right idea… and as a result, any dissenters were wrong. We got very confident very quickly in our “rightness,” and so we felt confident in our ability to detect “wrongness.”
But for all Christians, there are also biblical reasons for this phenomenon—some New Testament texts can be read to encourage heresy detection! For example, in 2 Peter 3:17, we are told that we should be on our guard against heresies and errors. That makes sense, of course. But if we read it in concert with something like Titus 1:10-13, where Paul tells Titus that rebellious people “should be silenced” (NIV) and rebuked sharply, then it begins to sound much more like a power move. Being “on guard” is defensive; silencing and rebuking people means going on offense. Unfortunately, this has often been our understanding and method of “contending for the faith” (Jude 3).
But I think what we’ve missed is that some matters of church life and spirituality aren’t a matter of right and wrong. To be certain, some matters are quite clear, but it’s not as common as we think. In some cases, we’re dealing with a continuum that might include a wide range of possible answers, like conversations about appropriate clothing in church. In other cases, there’s ambiguity as to which position might be right, like what the “most biblical” or “most Christian” stance might be on a controverted social or political issue. And in other cases, there are just legitimate differences of opinion based on multiple texts of Scripture, as in the case of the place of women in church leadership. Our fellowship hasn’t dealt well with ambiguity, with a continuum, or with “agreeing to disagree,” has it? We’ve tended to move very quickly to a binary position, and in a binary, someone is always wrong!
Here’s one last reason I think this has happened. This thought doesn’t come from research into our early documents to examine the language used there, but rather from my experiences in hearing people talk in this way. I think that we have often viewed the church as a place of purity. The church is pure, and thus it is a place and a group that we must protect from and cleanse of any impurity. I have long thought that this reminds me of Leviticus 11-15, where God gives the people of Israel means by which to deal with ritual impurity. This was an important section of the Torah, and the witness of the Gospels shows that it was clearly operative for many centuries. Think of the many times that the Jewish leaders condemned Jesus for breaking purity regulations!
But in our group, we haven’t really spent a lot of time with the Old Testament law, and so I doubt we are influenced directly by Leviticus. We haven’t even spent a great deal of time in the Gospels, either! Instead, we’ve loved Acts and the letters quite a bit, and I think that it’s more likely that passages from the letters have been operative for us in this way. Consider these texts from the Pastoral Epistles:
1 Timothy 5:22: “Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands, and do not share in the sins of others. Keep yourself pure.”
2 Timothy 2:20-22: “In a large house there are articles not only of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay; some are for special purposes and some for common use. Those who cleanse themselves from the latter will be instruments for special purposes, made holy, useful to the Master and prepared to do any good work. Flee the evil desires of youth and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.”
Titus 1:15-16: “To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure. In fact, both their minds and consciences are corrupted. They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him. They are detestable, disobedient and unfit for doing anything good.”
If we hear God calling us to be pure, and if, as in that last text, purity of mind is contrasted with corrupt minds and consciences, then it makes sense that we would be concerned about the effects of bad thinking and bad ethics. We wouldn’t want a pure church to be sullied by the impurity of wrong thinking. As a result, thinking rightly has become very closely tied up with the idea of the purity of the church, and so when we have detected wrong thinking, we’ve circled the wagons, gotten out our knives, and moved into damage-control mode… and we’ve often accomplished it by disfellowshipping.
In the final post in this series, we’ll think about how we can move forward, including pursuing some ways of “protecting the flock” that aren’t so divisive. I hope you’ll stick around!
