Matters of Conscience

The faith that you have, keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who has no reason to pass judgment on himself for what he approves. -- Romans 14:2

 A brief riff on yesterday's post:

This is the American verse in Romans 14, which is the probably the American chapter of Romans, which may be the most American book of the Bible.  We belong to different denominations and hold different views on church authority, on communion, on all kinds of things.  People have killed other people over transubstantiation.  I believe what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11:29, For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself, but I would not say that means exactly the same thing to me that it means to the average devout Catholic.  That would be a matter of faith that I have between myself and God. 

Being in one accord doesn't require that we have exactly the same understanding of everything.  The error of most varieties of ecumenicism is that they end up saying our matters of faith do not matter when they matter very much, just not in the horizontal.  What matters in the arms of the Cross is how we treat one another.  We ought always to humble ourselves and give preference to the wants and needs of others.   

As long as a person who claims to be a believer is not actually doing anything to bring shame to the Name of Christ, it is not our concern.  Certainly when someone is living and acting in a way that everybody knows is wrong -- like the man in Corinth who was sleeping with his mother, or a woman who cheats on her husband, or a man who gets drunk and beats his wife or causes a car wreck, a thief, a liar, a glutton, or a gossip -- we should call them out.  If they claim to be in Christ while living in open, obvious contradiction to Him, we should have nothing to do with them and not allow them into our communion until they repent and step away from their egregious sin.

Otherwise, I believe what I believe.  I may think someone is wrong about some point of doctrine, and I will hold to my belief, but I will let God deal with both me and my brother.  We could both be wrong.  Or both right.

One

I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. – John 17:20-23

One.  It seems the world is a long way from being one, and the Church, if anything, even further from it.  The world unites from time to time in their hatred of Christ and Christians.  Christians seem ever divided and fragmented and confused.  Yet this is the prayer Jesus, as our Great High Priest, offered on the night of His betrayal, hours before He went to the Cross to redeem all of humankind.  Is it possible that it will not be answered?

Do you know why it became a joke that, to one racial or ethnic group, the members of another group “all look alike”?  The distinctive features and skin tones peculiar to a given group tend to be the first features noted by “outsiders".  Meanwhile a redhead, seeing another redhead, immediately notices what makes the individual distinctive.

So it is with churches and denominations.  While doubters and unbelievers may offer the many-religions argument against the existence of God or the claims of a given religion, that tends to be less about denominations within Christianity than about the disagreements between Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, etc.  Christians tend to be blamed for the faults and failures of any group claiming to be Christian, as if there is no difference between the annoying Saturday morning proselytizing of Jehovah’s Witnesses and the ancient rites, icons, and rituals of the Orthodox.  It doesn’t matter that Jimmy Swaggert was not Catholic or that a pedophile priest was not Assembly of God, they were both Christians. 

Those outside the Body of Christ see Christians while those of us in a particular communion often emphasize the differences in our forms and beliefs and practices.  Some of us make more of the minor disagreements than necessary.  Christians will get into arguments over Matthew 24 or when the book of Revelation was written or what Jesus meant by “this generation,” though we all agree that Jesus said that.

Bob often uses the image of a cone to illustrate how we relate to God.  It will work for illustrating, as well, the relationship of various valid revelations and traditions to one another and to the Divine.  When Lewis wrote Mere Christianity, he compared becoming a Christian to entering the hall or main room of a great house.  Denominations are then the various rooms off the corridor where one may find fellowship, refreshment, sustenance and comfort.  If one comes into Christianity in general, that makes sense. 

What, though, if we come in via a particular sect or through something that may not be considered part of the traditional revelation of Christianity?  Our entry in that case is more like entering one of the rooms from an outside door – or climbing in through the window.  We find ourselves in a communion that seems to be separated and at odds with other communions.  Here is where the metaphor of the cone is instructive.  Someone from a primitive, snake-handling denomination back in the hills would seem very distant from the altars, saints, and processions of a Catholic Latin Mass.  Indeed they are, as far as the externals are concerned.  Yet there is a core set of beliefs about the divinity of Christ, His death, burial, and resurrection where these two diverse forms converge in substance.  The snake-handler might doubt the Immaculate Conception to which the priest adheres even as the priest might question the validity of picking up a copperhead, but both will agree on the essential nature of the Virgin Birth. 

Our differences are in where we enter out on the edge of the circle that forms the base of the cone.  The closer we get to God, and the higher we are raised in our vertical relationship to Him, the smaller our disparities become.  It’s a long way around the mountain unless you are standing on the summit. 

Before being too critical of the path others take, it’s good to remember that the pinnacle and the base are one.  Like a spotlight, the revelation of Christ spreads and widens to illuminate a great circle.  Perhaps there is something right in the middle, where we all need to meet.  Perhaps, soon, we will.