Matthew 18 and How Evangelicals Tear Each Other To Pieces
Wednesday, July 14, 2010 at 12:00AM | by Otter D. James Kennedy is a legend in American Christianity. In a time when pastors had a very short shelf-life, he founded and pastored the (usually) thriving Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church for 47 years until his death in 2007.
There are many good things to say about him. I was no fan: theological differences. But it's tough not to admire a guy who can survive the storms of 47 years as a pastor. Either he exercised unremitting control or he had some rare gift of cultivating love. Can't speak to that. But there's definitely endurance there.
His successor is in the news, a young man called Tullian Tchividijian. Tchividijian has impeccable credentials: he's the grandson of Billy Graham, for what that's worth, and has his books published, and was asked three times to pastor Coral Ridge without even applying. He finally said he'd come if he could merge his own church plant of some five hundred people or so with the declining membership of Coral Ridge. The elders said yes, the two elder-boards were merged, and Tchividijian came to fill the enormous shoes of D. James Kennedy.
Predictably, a strong faction at Coral Ridge opposed the merger (or were offended at some aspect of it, or something) and split off.
I want to say here and now I have no idea about (and no interest in commenting on) what really happened, who was at fault, or what the mechanics of the split were. Family quarrel. For all I know, the New Guy was a tyrant. I have no idea, and I'm not terribly interested.
I'm really interested in the regularity with which this kind of thing happens, though. It fits a profile for Christianity.
To outsiders that might just seem like business as usual: churches arguing over things that ultimately don't matter all that much, little ego-wars, small abuses and huge retributions... who knows.
But most evangelicals and self-described post-evangelicals I know recognize that for the problem that it really is.
See, the claim of Christianity is not that you get out of hell after you die.
It's that you live with God before you die.
And it's that God is love.
Matthew 18:1-9 has this to say (and I choose this passage because the new pastor at Coral Ridge has made some reference to it in his recent writings about the church split... whether he follows it himself is for somebody else to discover):
At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?"
He called a little child and had him stand among them. And he said: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
"And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me. But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.
"Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to sin! Such things must come, but woe to the man through whom they come! If your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of Gehenna.
This passage, typical of most New Testament codes of behavior for disciples of Jesus, demands an attitude that is the reverse of a meritocracy. In it, the believer is enjoined to a kind of self-suspicion, a preference for personal suffering over the suffering of those whom one loves. And the greater one's ambitions to rise in the community, the more one must prefer others. (Notice in passing that "Gehenna," the eternally-burning garbage pit of Jerusalem, is reserved for those members of the community that fail in this regard, not for those outside it. You can't throw away what was never yours. It is Jesus' own who fail him in this regard that face the "eternal fire.")
It's tiresomely commonplace to point out that this is not how Christian churches function. Blame the Constantinian Revolution or the Reformation or human depravity or whatever you like.
But most Christians do recognize, I think, that when churches cannot work out their differences, it reveals something so badly structurally wrong that the rest of us are excused for thinking, "This is bullshit." Not that other organizations don't have such critical differences too: but it reveals Christianity as a place where one works out one's preferences, not where one dwells with God. And the more a man thumps his Bible, insisting that his preferences are not his own but God's, the more clear it becomes that the God of love, the God of preferring the other, the God of Matthew 18, in short the Christian God, is not in residence.
At least not structurally, not in some way that commands a person's allegiance.
Paul goes so far in 1 Corinthians as to suggest that the Corinthian church's inability to resolve its own disputes ("Shouldn't you prefer to be defrauded than to sue a brother in secular courts?") flagrantly contradicts the gospel, and I think he's right.
The web-journal Church Executive interviewed Tchividijian, and while he seems a fairly meek man, I'm struck most by how autobiographical his pastorate is.
He talks about a series of sermons he preached during the breakup of the church as a "functional lifeline" for himself. He folds a discussion of the Coral Ridge division into a book on Colossians.
And I suppose there's nothing wrong with that. Pastors must pastor themselves, or they'll touch nobody.
But this seems to me to point to the enormous challenge that Christians have faced for two thousand years: to bring about a kingdom that is founded on love, commitment, and fidelity to one another, they must prefer one another. And yet to do that places an enormous strain on the ego, the self, the desire that one's life should count for something.
Many Christians find in the desert of isolation and churchlessness a remedy for the enormous failure of the Christian god of love, but cling to the belief that such a god does have enormous power to heal the world's hurts.
I hope they're right, though the irony is pretty strong. The love that can heal the world cannot heal itself.
I wish the rest could see how it seems when their righteousness and truth are nothing more than rubber hoses with which they beat those who threaten them... That's nothing but using the god of love to justify un-love.
If the greatest commandment is to love, then surely, not to love is the greatest sin.
Reader Comments (5)
yes, this, precisely.
Good article. I linked to this article from Internet Monk. I remember reading something about the TT controversy in another blog - Wartburg Watch.
True, that. Too true.
I’m interested in some events of which there is no media record. The church that teetered on the brink of "irreconcilable differences," but rallied and drew together. The one that did split . . . and then, over a course of years, reconciled. The pastor that submitted graciously to the unreasonable demands of the elder board and won them over peacefully. The sex scandal that didn’t happen because the youth leader sidelined himself voluntarily before getting involved with a minor.
The list that tots up the failures of "the church" is long, repulsive, and disheartening. I don’t think it’s trumped up, exaggerated, or overblown. As far as I’m concerned, “the world” is entirely justified in pointing fingers and shaking heads and writing headlines in these cases. I’ve no objections to your take on this, Otter, and appreciate the even-handedness at Riparian Church in general.
But I want to put in a word for the folks in the (real life) examples above, about whom no stories are published. I love ‘em. May their beards grow long and their mugs never empty.
The inimitable Susan:
Interesting point, Susan.
Maybe there needs to be a by-this-you-shall-know-them thread on this blog where people can send in and log their stories of Christians who get it right.
"by-this-you-shall-know-them thread "
I would find such a collection extremely heartening!
(BTW, how do I use that nifty block quote function?)