Dead Man Blogging

Genesis 19:9 “… Furthermore, they said, ‘This one came in as an alien, and already he is acting like a judge; now we will treat you worse than them.’”

The New Testament tells us that Lot was a righteous man who was tormented by the evil he saw in Sodom (2 Peter 2:7-8). But reading the account in Genesis also shows us that righteous Lot was seriously compromised by his time in Sodom.

We infer that Lot was a leader in Sodom because he was sitting in the gate (Genesis 19:1) and was apparently fairly prominent. His time in Sodom had seriously corrupted him and his whole family. He offered his own daughters to the mob outside his house to “do to them whatever you like”. (Genesis 19:8) He betrothed his own daughters to wicked men of Sodom, who refused to leave (Genesis 19:14). Lot and his family were reluctant to leave Sodom and the angels had to drag them out (Genesis 19:16). Even then, Lot would only flee as far as Zoar (Genesis 19:17-22). Lot’s wife looked back and became a pillar of salt (Genesis 19:26). His own daughters committed incest with him (Genesis 19:32), and Lot allowed himself to become so drunk that he didn’t even know it (Genesis 19:33).

But despite Lot’s compromise, and his level of prominence in Sodom, what did the men of Sodom say? “Just who do you think you are, Mr. Holier-Than-Thou? What a self-righteous sanctimonious jerk! How judgmental!”

I brought this up in last night’s Bible study when we were talking about how to relate to lost people we know. One of the questions was what you would do if your lost friend confided in you that s/he was in one of many dark and evil lifestyle choices sins. We all expressed how you’d have to handle it delicately, because on the one hand you don’t want to convey even a little bit that you condone their sin - and you wouldn’t be much of a friend if you basically lied to them and pretended it wasn’t a big deal. But on the other hand, you don’t want to “run them off” by sounding sanctimonious or being too harsh.

It does not matter how much you try to engage and relate to people. You can even compromise for miles and miles. Lot didn’t even say “Look, you are all going to hell.” All he did was refuse to cooperate in their sinful plans. Just like Lot, at some point you are going to have to take at least a minimal stand for righteousness. And, like the men of Sodom did, you’re going to be criticized for it and denounced as a sanctimonious self-righteous judgmental bigot. It’s a catch-22.

Of course, this isn’t an excuse for actually _being_ self-righteous and sanctimonious. Nobody benefits from that, and it’s an ungodly attitude. But this example should tell us first not to be discouraged and frustrated when it happens, and secondly not to compromise in order to prevent it, because that’s not going to work either. If you’re going to _ever_ take any sort of stand for right and wrong, somebody is going to call you self-righteous and judgmental for it. We should be as kind and gentle as we can without compromising or condoning sin, but we should also realize that sometimes people are going to react badly.

One of the topics I’m preparing for my Sunday School class deals with the purity and unity of the church.

The Biblical ideal is found in 1 Corithians 1:10

Now I exhort you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all agree and that there be no divisions among you, *but* that you be made complete in the same mind and in the same judgment.

Paul is not pleading for “unity, not uniformity”. He contrasts “divisions” and bing of the “same mind” and “same judgment”. His ideal is not for us to “agree to disagree”. He wants us to be of the same mind and judgment, with no divisions.

Unfortunately, we won’t live up to this ideal. There are four reasons I can think of.

First, there are false teachers among us - wolves in sheep’s clothing. Scripture warns a lot about false teachers.

Second, there are false Christians among us - goats among the sheep. These people are spiritually dead and unable to comprehend spiritual things, so they will cause the church to go astray. They’ll be particuarly susceptible to false teachings, as they won’t have the Spirit of God using the Word of God to correct them.

Third, some genuine Christians are going to be teaching and believing wrong things for whatever personal reason. Maybe they just don’t get the “warm fuzzies” from a doctrine, so they reject it.

And finally, sometimes good, God fearing men and women are just going to have different understandings of Scripture and the teaching of the Holy Spirit.

Just because we won’t live up to the ideal of complete agreement doesn’t mean we can’t work at it. False teachers have to be exposed, rebuked, and cut off. False Christians must be exposed and converted or removed. Christians who refuse to believe the clear teachings of Scripture need to be discipled. And we can have friendly debate with those who just honestly disagree, keeping in mind that we are all friends. We might have to divide to some extent, just out of practical considerations. But just because we don’t go to church together doesn’t mean we are divided.

But the logical question comes up, how do you know when to separate? What issues are worth separating over?

The traditional approach to answering this question goes into detail about “major doctrines” and “minor doctrines” and how you know which is which. And I am honestly attracted to that approach. I like rules. I’m a programmer. Rules are my life! I like unamibuous requirements documents. I wrote a Monopoly game once and found multiple scenarios where the rules didn’t specify what was supposed to happen. I like rules.

But scripture gives us no such rules, so we must not make them up. Reading 1 Corinthians shows just how messed up that church was. The churches addressed in the first few chapters of Revelation had serious problems. Yet there is no warning to the other churches “Stay away from those heretical Corinthians”. Separation was only called for in cases of extreme sin (1 Corinthians 5) and serious doctrinal problems (Galatians 1, 1 John 4).

Again, I really wish we got a comprehensive set of rules instead. That way I could say “See, you violated Section 3, Subsection 7, paragraph 8, line 2. Heretic.” and divide. But we don’t get that.

Jesus said that you’d know people by their fruit. A bad tree bears bad fruit. And I think that principle is at work here. A false teacher isn’t going to stop with a minor heresy. A Christian who refuses to believe uncomfortable things won’t limit himself to questions of soteriology or church order. A legalistic Christian isn’t going to stop with “Thou shalt not watch movies containing noodity”. These ungodly attitudes will manifest themselves in other ways. The false teacher will wind up denying things that will make it obvious that they are heretics. The Christian who only wants to believe in nice things will wind up as a universalist. The Pharisaical Christian will turn the gospel of grace into one of works. The bad tree will blossom and bear lots of bad fruit.

If a genuine Christian who loves God looks honestly at the Bible and comes to a different conclusion than me, I should not want to separate from him (unless it’s something that just makes it impractical for us to “do church” together, in which case we separate as friends.) It’s only when the differences of doctrine and practice stem from ungodliness, that I should separate.

1 John says that the differences between the children of God and the children of Satan will be obvious. I think this is applicable when it comes to false teachings and beliefs. It will become obvious.

So I believe when it comes to separation, if you’re unsure, don’t separate. Hang in there. If the other party is ungodly, their errors will just grow and grow, to the point that you’ll know for sure what to do. On the other hand, if it was just an honest difference of opinion, you’ll see the fruit of the Spirit and the errors will not grow. And in that case, you wouldn’t want to separate.

It’s true that we have to fight where the battle is, and right now the battle is over gay marriage. But as Donald Sensing points out, we lost this battle forty years ago. With that in mind, here are the elements we’d need to have in a bill or amendment for it to really be a defense of marriage:

* Elimination of no-fault divorce laws.
* Provide for divorce in a very few cases - adultery, abandonment, physical abuse, etc.
* If a divorce was justified, the offending party gets precisely nothing. No money, no custody, no visitation, nothing at all.
* The offending party pays alimony / child support based on the size of the family. Each member of the family gets one part of the offender’s income. So if you had a family of 4 (husband, wife, 2 kids) and abandoned them, you get 3/4th of your income taken for child support and alimony.
* The offending party would be legally unable to remarry, except to the original spouse.
* Violating your marriage vows seriously enough to warrant a divorce would also become part of the public record and would legally have to affect your credit rating, etc.
* Pre- and extra-marital sex would be a crime at least as serious as DWI.
* Forbid any distinction between a husband and wife when it comes to credit rating, finances, medical information, and so on.
* Defines marriage as the lifelong union of one man and one woman.

_That_ would be a DOMA I would get fired up about. My “Defense of Family Act” is even better.

Something stood out from my scripture reading last night.

1 John 4:5-6
5 They are from the world; therefore they speak as from the world, and the world listens to them. 6 We are from God; he who knows God listens to us; he who is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

1 John 5:19
We know that we are of God, and that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.

It really breaks down this simply. World and God. Good and evil. God and Satan. Truth and error. From God and not from God. Children of God, or children of the devil. Light and darkness. Right and wrong, good and bad, black and white.

One day I will learn to not be so easily provoked. Until then…

Mac Swift seriously claims “the practice of cell groups as used in churches is actually a satanic invention used to fracture the unity of the church and destroy its prayer foundation. Infiltrators who do the bidding of evil come into these churches and establish a honourable reputation for themselves, working their way up into a position of leadership where they can promote (with almost unanimous success) certain doctrines of devils that can ruin a church spiritually. One of these tactics is the introduction of the cell group.”

Acts 2:46 Day by day continuing with one mind in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart (NASB)

Acts clearly sets out a Biblical example for a church gathering together both in a large setting and in small settings. In today’s church, these small gatherings sometimes take the form of small groups or cell groups.

I did not grow up in churches that had cell groups, but now I am at one. And I have come to love and value them. I wouldn’t trade my cell group for much of anything, and all the members are mad at our leader (the pastor) - including his own wife - because he insists we will soon have to disband to help start new groups to accomodate the new members in our church. (We’re not really mad at him, we just don’t want to disband.)

There are six couples, including us, in our group. We’ve had a little bit of “turnover” in our group with a few folks moving away, or swtiching to a group where they felt they “fit” better. But we’re going on 1 1/2 years now with basically the same group we started with.

Here are some of the benefits I’ve seen from this group.

When we first came to this church about 2 1/2 years ago, I knew exactly one person in the church, and he was only an acquaintance. Now I have 10 people minimum that I would call friends. Not best friends; we don’t “hang out” together or stuff like that. These guys are mostly older than me and have their own extensive circles of friends. But these people are my friends. This group helped me through that really awkward time of “breaking in” to a new church, which we all know is hard.

Lest you think I’m just particularly freakish in this area, it’s also the case with pretty much everyone in our group. They are all very socially well-connected and very friendly. But they found it hard to break in to the existing friendships at the church. This indicates a problem with the church body, sure. But cell groups are, at a minimum, a “workaround”.

I used to think people in churches were just snobbish and cliquish, but I don’t think it’s the case. I think they are just _normal_. And normal people gravitate towards people they already know. It’s _difficult_ to introduce yourself to a stranger and maintain a conversation - even if they are a visitor to your church. It’s just a hard thing to do. One great thing about cell groups is they put you with some people who you are _supposed_ to be friends with.

Cell groups also provde accountability. They help me be consistent in prayer, Bible study, scripture memory, and so on. Now, our group is actually not too good at that, but other groups are. Small discipleship groups are good too.

But even more than that, this group is going to keep me from going seriously astray. If I were to abandon my wife, I know that I’d have a group of pretty big guys showing up on my doorstep the next day. And they’d be there to do more than share a couple of verses with me and pray for me.

That’s a bit of hyperbole there. I know that if I were to start sliding into - or even just towards - gross sin and rebellion, this group would exercise some appropriate, Biblical discipline to try to bring me back into line.

Our group also meets each other’s practical needs. We take meals to each other when needed (childbirth, illness, and so on). Our group was phenomenal when my wife had to go on bedrest during her pregnancy. I’ve had several offers of help from the guys in my group for some minor remodelling work I’m doing at home. We take care of each other. We provide spiritual, emotional, and practical support for one another.

I haven’t even got to things like studying the Bible together. These are just the benefits from the increased community that a small group provides. Since our church is an equipping church, we actually get a lot of meat on Sundays. So in my mind, the community aspect is the more important.

Our groups do provide the ability to get into a bit deeper study of some things, since we can have more closely guided and in-depth discussions than in a larger gathering. But really, I think that’s secondary.

The church leadership has no way of knowing what is being taught or being done in each cell group, and it effectively places Christians under the fractured leadership of the cell group rather than the church as a whole.

If that’s true, it’s simply a sign of poor church leadership. Let me share the way these groups work at our church: The elders put together a 2 year plan for small groups that consists of some required material and some “elective” material. Each group is supposed to move through this material within two years. Once you pass the 2 year mark, your group becomes an “impact” group and you corporately select some type of ministry to do - within the body, or outside of it. You also continue to meet for fellowship and study. You’re pretty much self-directed at that point, but the elders insist that you submit new material to them for approval prior to studying it.

If the church leadership is actively leading the small group leaders, and if they give sufficient direction for cell groups, and if they are careful in who leads a group, it’s just silly to suggest that the body is going to be fractured and the elders will lose any semblance of control over what’s being taught.

Mac also claims that large churches “make it virtually impossible to establish what Scripture states is paramount, a personable bond between the church shepherds and their flock”.

There are two contentions here - first that “a personable bond between the church shepherds and their flock” is scripturally paramount, and second that this is “virtually impossible” in large churches.

Let’s look to scripture to see what it says.

Acts 2:41 So then, those who had received his word were baptized; and that day there were added about three thousand souls.

Wow. 3,000 members. This is certainly not a small church. And it was a growing church. Who led this church? You had 12 apostles, and maybe a few elders although that’s just speculation. What does that work out to be, a minimal ratio of 1:200 or so?

I’m not sure it’s possible to establish a personable relationship with a ratio of 1:200. Our church runs about 300, and I know that not all the elders know all the people on a first-name basis. I guess those apostles just missed the paramount importance of actually knowing each and every member.

So how did the apostles handle this mega-church? Acts 2:46: “breaking bread from house to house”.

Mac says “I am now convinced that those churches who effectively operate as ‘cell churches’ have been compromised by Satan, the angel of light.” It’s amazing to me that Satan so quickly infiltrated and corrupted the first Christian church.