Last Saturday I attended a small church near here at the invitation of its pastor. I was to speak for the main service, and I did. But I ran into trouble right away, with two members acting as if he were highly insulted at my presence.
So as not to waste time talking over religious issues that aren't my point in this article I'll simply refer to generic issues when they deal with matters that only members of our church would understand. The first sign of trouble was when I challenged someone who thought it was important to understand that the second coming wouldn't be right away.
I challenged that statement because I think it's a dangerous frame of mind to get into. I believe the Bible is clear that Jesus will come like a thief and at a time when we DON'T expect him. They immediately tore into the version of the Bible I used (turns out the King James is the only valid English Bible....).
It eventually dawned on my to whom I was speaking. I've mentioned him before in these articles. He's the one that spurred my thinking about the modern clash between pagan America and "Christian" America. He holds that pagan Rome prevented Papal Rome from exerting political power for several years before the former finally fell. (There's a lot more detail about this which I'm leaving out so as not to confuse you.)
I decided discretion was a wise approach, dropped the issue, and let the discussion continue. In fact, since I didn't have a King James Bible on me I asked the pastor to let me borrow a copy and I preached from that rather than from my favorite, the NIV.
But this man and his main disciple didn't appear to like what they were hearing. I didn't think my topic was particularly controversial. I juxtaposed some texts about music and sand to lead into the topic of the New Covenant (see Jeremiah 31:31-33).
After the service and a fellowship meal I agreed to go to my official "chewing out." They explained the things they didn't like. I had to just hold my tongue a lot becuase I didn't want to get into more arguing. (I'm phelgmatic and I shrink from confrontation.)
To get an idea of their mindset let me share some of their complaints. I walked around on the platform, rather than staying behind the pulpit. I mentioned a teacher who has since left our church. I did NOT use him as an authority, rather as part of my personal learning experience. (To be honest I don't think they liked what I had learned.)
I learned while there that this man was traveling the world to convince people that he's right about a particularly minor interpretation of a single word in a prophecy of Daniel. As we continued our discussion, I picked up that I was dealing with people who insisted on a particular version of how humans are saved that has never caught on with our church.
Because it hasn't caught on, they feel that the leadership of the church is in apostasy. A group out west has started a magazine (they did it back in the days when I was still in college, and there I learned how loose they were with truth) called Our Firm Foundation.
One of the reasons I oppose this group is that they have taken it on themselves to criticize the church. They aren't criticizing particular persons or particular actions, they are criticizing its failure to give them and their ideas the recognition they believe they deserve.
Remember that minor prophetic issue I talked about earlier? When I got home I was so upset that I decided to do some research. Our church has an authority figure from our past that we beleive was sent to us by God and who had a message from God for us. Despite her own testimony to the contrary, these people believe her ministry is as important as that of the Bible.
I had learned years ago that this authority figure had said that the particular item this man had made an issue should not be made a point of controversy. So I looked those statements up. I was almost shocked at how clearly they condemned what this man was doing. And yet he seeks to force other people to do what he thinks she requires.
Reading that helped me simmer down after the day's confrontation, as did having a lot of intricate things to do at work the next day. But I'll carry one major impression away from it. And that is how full this man was of himself.
Perhaps the most vivid image I have from that day is when he got up from the table after I was done and said to his follower, "We need to bring Clarence in and talk to him." Clarence was the pastor of that small church.
That struck me as rather arrogant. These men have set themselves up as the guardians of truth in their congregation and are willing to take the pastor to task. The only conclusion I can reach from that is that this man is totally full of himself.
I'm guessing that he may have had good motives when he started. Like Muhammed in the middle ages, he sees Christians doing a poor job of living up to their ideals and decides something needs to be done. And like many religious conservatives he thinks it's appropriate to force people to do right.
This is a particularly powerful human drive. And if, like this man apparently does, you believe behavior alone matters, then it makes sense that if we just make the right laws and enforce them strictly enough the world will be a better place.
Behavior does matter. It's not a good thing when people go around killing each other, sexual infidelity has great destructive power, and we can't have an economy if some people habitually steal rather than earn. But behavior isn't the only thing. And in the religious realm behavior alone is despicable to God.
I find myself succumbing to such feelings from time to time. I remember during the Clinton presidency thinking that we ought to give Saddam Hussein an ultimatum on inspections and, if he didn't meet it, drop a nuke on Baghdad. (Very foolish thing to do, of course.)
But force won't change anyone. If it changes their behavior then we have someone without integrity (because they're not living what they believe), who will revert as soon as social controls lapse even slightly.
More mature persons understand that you have to change the person. In most cases that involves changing the environment they grow up in. So while conservatives condemn the children of single mothers to grow up in poverty, liberals believe we can break the cycle of poverty and sexual promiscuity if we provide a decent living for the children, who had no choice in how their parents behaved.
While conservatives fight the courts trying to push through laws banning abortion, liberals advocate changes that are proven to reduce the number of abortions. While conservatives interpret religious liberty as their liberty to evangelize instead of freedom from coersion, liberals believe faith is a personal matter that can change lives only when it's accepted freely.
And my experience Saturday has led me to conclude even more that most conservatives are conservative because they're selfish. Not selfish as we define it on the playground, but selfish in that they think their view of right and wrong is the only acceptable view. Ultimately they will find none of them agree on absolutely everything.