by Robert M. Smith
Not
long ago, certainly within the last couple of decades, North American
evangelicalism had a most biblically repulsive way of dealing with
various problems. If there was a need for more evangelism in our local
area, throw money at it; if there was a need for more people reaching
out in practical ways to the poor and disenfranchised among us, throw
money at it; if revival was required among God’s people in order to
obtain Christ-like maturity within the body, throw money at it; no
matter what the issue there was one major way of addressing it … respond
like the upper middle-class snobs we are, from our Americanized
Christian penthouses, by shamelessly applying the only thing that
means anything to us: money! Seriously, we did not know any better
because we grew up under the ever watchful eye of this idol. Our parents
were in love with it and they passed it on to us, so that we, in turn,
might indoctrinate our children and theirs after them.
There
was a slight hue and cry against materialism in the 1970’s and the
1980’s as Christians were compelled to think more about the end of the
world. With “1984” approaching and the Hal Lindsey books doing so well,
there was a modest stirring of souls to get ready for Christ’s return.
It’s funny how much fussing and cleaning is done around the house when
we think that company is coming! Thus, for a while there was a slight
interruption – perhaps nothing more than a sabbatical retreat really –
for the god known as money. A little down-time to recuperate
possibly … for once the danger of the real God’s return had passed, with
the demise of the Lindsean/Orwellian theories and the dispelling of Y2K
fears, money-love is back on track, reaching even deeper into
North American evangelicalism than ever before. But although we still
listen and respond to this idol frequently, Christians had concocted
another idol during money’s temporary “brush-off”. This new idol
was designed to simulate true spirituality and “hold the fort”, shall we
say, until things got back to normal in idol-land. It has the appearance
of godliness but there is no power extant. It is a perfect substitute to
true Christianity for it incorporates much of what is good about
Christianity while basically denying one thing only. The trouble of
course is that that “one thing” is absolutely crucial … but, of course,
that is what an idol is all about: it is meant to appear so much like
that which is true – to be so close to the original – without being
true. That new idol is intellectualism … often deemed
Christian intellectualism. This is an issue we discussed in a
previous chapter but we shall haul it out again because of its impact on
the issue in this chapter.
So now, instead of just throwing money at problems and issues, we can
also throw information at them. If I, as a believer, am struggling with
obedience, discipleship, loving the Lord as I ought [Rev 2:4],
worshipping in spirit and truth, or any other of a myriad of deep
spiritual issues, the solution is as easy as tossing mega-doses of
information at them. I don’t need to do battle with spiritual forces
while relying upon the Lord, I just need to be more enlightened
mentally. Why would I go through all the trouble of knowing the
Lord when it is so much easier – and softer on the conscience, I might
add – to know about Him? In our complacency we have settled for
academia. C. S. Lewis saw this as a most hideous place for the
Christian. In his book The Weight of Glory he indicates how unchristian
it really is: “As the author of
the Theologia Germanica says, we may come to love knowledge –
our knowing – more than the thing known: to delight not in the
exercise of our talents but in the fact that they are ours, or even in
the reputation they bring us. Every success in the scholar’s life
increases this danger. If it becomes irresistible, he must give up his
scholarly work. The time for plucking out the right eye has arrived.”[1]
This
sad perspective is now dominating North American evangelicalism and we
are going to be taking a long, hard look at how we got into this game,
and perhaps how to get out of it.
Have
you ever noticed how much of life and how much human effort is focused
upon the job, the social status, the lifestyle, the fame and the
influence of men and women at the top of the economical/corporate/social
food chain? The man or woman at the top is the most important of
all human beings, correct? “VIP” is an anachronism that we have coined
in our era to define the gap between these people and those of us on the
lower rungs of the social ladder. Achieving a certain level of notoriety
among “VIPs” is often done through special knowledge, advantageous
personal characteristics or through precise “contacts” and “connections”
at times, while financial prowess, regardless of how it was obtained,
can be utilized at other times. We must also note that the people at the
secular top are often specific kinds of men with specific kinds
of vocations. Scientists, psychologists, lawyers and politicians are
sought diligently by media for “professional” opinions both in and out
of their fields of expertise. What’s more is the fact that the elevated
public acclaim which comes from medial exposure is, perhaps,
attributable to the mystery surrounding some of these positions in
society. Not comprehending many of the intricacies inherent to those
jobs, the public can continue to be held in awe and their elite status
can be maintained.
The
church, in its early years, had frowned upon such inequity and has, in
these last days, from time to time, suppressed some of the reverence
attributed to scientists, lawyers and doctors through its various stands
on specific issues like evolution, human rights, abortion and corporate
corruption. But it’s funny how, after doing battle for right and just
causes, accommodation, compromise and diplomatic coalitions seem to
creep into our camp. There exists a constant yearning within the modern,
North American church to find peace in this world with all its
adversaries; that somehow the daily spiritual warfare is
counterproductive to the spread of the new gospel; that, perhaps, the
combatants are not that far apart in their true, foundational
perspectives; that resurrecting the old adage of “peace, love and
understanding” – the rallying cry of hippies who have now become leaders
in many churches – is more important than truth, righteousness and the
will of God. Where there once was distinction between the
counter-cultural church and the all-encompassing social mores of the
public at large, there is now a tentative truce amidst all of its
flowery talk and cotton candy expectations. Few stands are being taken
upon Biblical ground because the church of the twenty-first century can
seldom be found there. It is more apt to follow the pattern of this
world than to contradict it; more attuned to the business practices of
major secular corporations than to the spiritual advice of Spirit-led
authors of antiquity; looking more like corporate headquarters and the
local shopping mall than church buildings; as inundated with backroom
politics and financial shenanigans as any other secular syndicate.
We now
have within the church, contrary to the teachings of the Scriptures, the
clarion call for Christians to become elitist, intellectual and “power
brokers” in one form or another. The general consensus is that those in
ecclesiastical leadership roles are to be separated from the rabble by
the greatest of all mortal divisions: education. Indeed “Education,”
writes Muggeridge, “the great mumbo-jumbo and fraud of the age, purports
to equip us to live, and is prescribed as a universal remedy for
everything, from juvenile delinquency to premature senility. For the
most part, it only serves to enlarge stupidity, inflate conceit, enhance
credulity and put those subjected to it, at the mercy of brain-washers
with printing presses, radio and television at their disposal. I have
seen pictures of huge, ungainly, prehistoric monsters who developed such
a weight of protective shell that they sank under its burden and became
extinct. Our civilization likewise is sinking under the burden of its
own wealth, and the necessity to consume it; of its own happiness, and
the necessity to provide and sustain the fantasies which embody it; of
its own security, and the ever more fabulously destructive nuclear
devices considered essential to it. Thus burdened, it, too, may well
soon become extinct. As this fact sinks into the collective
consciousness, the resort to drugs, dreams, fantasies and other escapist
devices, particularly sex, becomes ever more marked.”[2]
Education, thus explored and esteemed beyond its desert, has slithered
its way into the sanctuary to supplant what is really needed in our
churches. As a substitute for holiness, true spirituality and
discipleship, academia has been foisted upon the modern evangelical
church in ways that insure the continued elevation of a neoteric
ecclesiastical aristocracy. To honour and respect those in authority (1
Tim 5:17) is one thing … to isolate, to enshrine and to idolize is quite
another! And in our day, in our churches, we are certainly adhering to
the latter.
The
laity within North American evangelicalism is commonly pictured as
spiritually mediocre and theologically-challenged. To some extent that
is not entirely an erroneous assumption but it is indeed poor rationale
for the establishment of a religious hierarchy amongst us. At the
present time there are “seminaries” punching out clone after religious
clone whose sole priority is to advance the idea that spiritual
awareness is directly proportional to intelligence, to a wealth of
knowledge and to seminarian tutelage. Intellectualism is enshrined
within Christian ranks now … and, like the Pharisees of the past
[Christian intellectualism is the new Phariseism, with all the earmarks
of such: precepts of men, earthly wisdom, exclusive authority, the only
ones who see God, the desire for notoriety, the approval of men, self
exaltation, pride, seeking to communicate above and beyond the people
rather than being understood, making belief a mental exercise rather
than a spiritual one], it was intended to serve a specific purpose but
has risen to the point of domination rather than service.
The
graphic structure of the church is presently pyramidal when it should
actually be, in accordance with Eph 4:11-16, the inverse. The many are
not intended to be the support of the few in the sense that they must
fall all over themselves to exalt any form of superiority found in
leadership. To the contrary, rather, the few in leadership are to edify
the many. Scratching and clawing to the top of the heap, through
financial clout, political maneuverings or educational screening is
anything but Christian! Seeking and vying for the knowledge that divides
and separates fosters an air of incompatibility and haughtiness – the
complete antithesis of counting others better than ourselves (Phil 2:3).
Though presently found in direct opposition to the fellowship of the
saints, those in authority must not consider themselves as being above
learning from those of lower standing within the church. Some of the
greatest lessons of history have been taught by those who had no claim
to an office of any kind: take your Bible and look through the list of
authors and scribes … there are not many kings and dignitaries but there
certainly are many people “of the soil” who penned under the
God-breathed guidance of the Holy Spirit. The very Bible that we study
and supposedly esteem as the authoritative Word of God would have gone
unheeded and would have gone unwritten if our modern day elitism were
prevalent in the testamental eras. The cessation of this improper
polarization within the church is an absolute must for we have come to a
magnificent error of perspective: that true discipular spirituality is
only available and evident in the highly educated, in the very rich, in
the very famous, in the very successful or in the very important people
of our Christian communities. This is a 2,000 year old mindset that we
haven’t dismissed even though we have appropriate lessons within the
Word of God to teach us to do so (Matt 19:23-25; Mk 10:24-26; Lk
18:24-26; Jas 2:1-7). The positional game continues unabated today.
In a
para-church context we should be made aware of an increase in religious
scholars and theologians in our era as well. There is increasing
pressure – both peer pressure and worldly pressure – to develop more and
more philosophical outlooks with a subsequent shying away from biblical
practicality. Contrary to the epistles of the New Testament we have
consistently been moving away from the universality and modesty of faith
in response to the technical demands of our time. The faith of common
people has been deprecated by a spiritual paradigm shift from the state
of simplicity and orthodoxy to a new and elaborate complexity. Men like
Tyndale and Wycliffe were dedicated to the cause of making the Word of
God applicable and available to all men. The new elite, however, appear
to be devoted to a dichotomy that undoes what these spiritual pioneers
had accomplished.
The
basic reasons for this excessive “build up” are fairly simple but seldom
addressed: a tickling of one’s mind … an elevation of one’s own image …
a stroking of the ego … a bottling of the soul. Such things make this
game stylish today. Such things demand that all lessons on life and
faith come from the “top”; no doubt a subliminal reinstatement of a
hierarchy to rival that of the church of Rome. Such things presuppose
that ordinary men cannot be led by God and that if, perchance, that were
to happen, they’d certainly have nothing to truly offer the men at the
top. The death of fellowship and the subsequent death of “the body” is
the only fruit produced by this form of spiritual segregation.
In
contradistinction to our North American concepts of spiritual primacy,
Jesus’ earthly life stands out and stands firm. He had the mind
of a servant, counting others more important than Himself (Phil 2:1-8).
And we are called to have that sort of mind; in fact a true Christian
does have it we are told (1 Cor 2:16). One of the major pitfalls in
possessing and implementing and seeing this in our lives, however, is
our reluctance to surrender our lives and our selves to Christ. The
culture around us is a very self-centered culture and we – contrary to
our bravado about not being “of this world” – all too often succumb to
the same attitude. The result has been that there are more Christian
churches and more Christian leaders, in our day, promoting
spiritual pride, self-esteem, prosperity and every other kind of
narcissism in direct contravention to the very heart of Christ. Allowing
for none of this new gospel, Oswald Chambers pulls no punches
when he reveals the true nature of such biblically-contrary teachings:
“If either my goodness or my badness is based on the disposition of
self-realisation, I am anti-Christ.”[3]
Further to this he adds, “The characteristics of individuality are
independence and self-assertiveness. There is nothing dearer to the
heart of the natural man than independence, and as long as I live in the
outskirts of my prideful independence Jesus Christ is nothing to me.”[4]
Therefore, unless our position within the church and our advanced status
as a learned believer is primarily used for “the body”, in the role of a
servant, it should be placed under the scrutiny of the Word of God for
correction.
Jesus had the ministry of a
servant. His mindset led to an active participation in the lives of
other people (Mk 10:42-45). Note the warning He gives in Mk 10:42-43:
“But Jesus called them to Himself and said to them, “You know that those
who are considered rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their
great ones exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among
you; but whoever desires to become great among you shall be your
servant.” And then He caps His comments by likening His disciples to
Himself: “And whoever of you desires to be first shall be slave of all.
For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to
give His life a ransom for many.” As He is, so they must be … and, so
too, we must be.
Everything Jesus said while He walked
this earth was said under the direction of God the Father (Jn 7:16-18;
Jn 12:49-50; Jn 14:10). Everything Jesus did while He walked this earth
was done under the direction of God the Father (Jn 5:19 & 30; Jn
8:28-29). Jesus deflected all the glory in His life to God the Father (Jn
12:27-28; Jn 13:31-32; Jn 17:1-5) and that is to be our lot as well
(Matt 5:16). When our ministry remains our ministry instead of God’s,
because our own academic standing has gotten in the way, our ministry is
no longer the ministry of a servant [of God].
Neither
persuasive and clever speech [“A clever exposition is never right
because the Spirit of God is not clever. Beware of cleverness, it is the
great cause of hypocrisy in a preacher.”[5]
- Chambers] … nor the luster and refinement of the finest schools of
thought [“The Welsh called it the hwyl when a preacher lost
himself in his sermon and was carried to lofty heights by the Spirit.
Today we have become dignified and precise until it would be unthinkable
for a minister to so forget himself under the sway of divine power. The
result is smooth and polished discourses that please fastidious
churchgoers but bear no resemblance to that liberty that sets a preacher
free. There is only one way to pulpit freedom. The preacher who is
concerned with gaining a reputation, rising in his profession, is always
in bondage. Every great opportunity finds him tense and nervous for fear
that he will not ‘put it over.’ He measures success by audience
response, the compliments of his hearers, his rating among his
contemporaries.
There
is only one way to turn sermons from weights to wings. When the man in
the pulpit rises to that lofty realm where he is fired with a sense of
mission, when he has a burning in his bones, a word from God to give to
men regardless of how they receive it, then he is set free from his
shackles.”[6]
- Havner] … could ever replace the inimitable power of God in the
servant who is given over totally to the Father’s will. Our Lord Jesus
Christ is the supreme example of this: as a Galilean He had no “polish”;
as a carpenter He had no academic rank (Jn 7:15). But there He was,
doing all to the glory of God in Heaven. On the other hand, the
Christian intellectualism of our time has turned into the
personification of the “grasp” that Jesus declined (Phil 2:6).
Jesus had the methods of a
servant. In Jn 13:1-17 Jesus had shown what His ministry was all about
through the purposeful action of washing the feet of His disciples.
Again, He called upon them [and us] to do likewise. His methodology was
not of a supercilious, unearthly nature but rather of the most modest of
earthly positions. He practiced this principle so much that the
religious authorities of that time heaped condemnation upon Him for
stooping so low: “For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they
say, ‘He has a demon.’The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they
say, ‘Look, a glutton and a winebibber, a friend of tax collectors
and sinners!’ But wisdom is justified by her “children.”
(Mt 11:18-19). The Pharisees could not possibly win with these
accusations; they only served as evidence of their own ignorance.
Ironically they did not realize that they were only authenticating and
underscoring Jesus Christ’s mission with comments like that. The
Pharisaical method was that of barring contact with the lowly and by
this approach they were out of touch with daily living. They could not
recognize the presence of God in the seemingly mundane existence of the
commoner and, therefore, became leaders who were set apart from
the people rather than set apart for the people.
The
great fear among all human beings is that of losing control of any given
situation. We establish lines of command and administration virtually
automatically. And although God is indeed a God of “order” (1 Cor 14:40)
the Christian – especially the Christian leader – must realize that the
order He speaks of is His own and not ours. Our rules and our demands
have no place in His sanctuary. No political game and no financial
“takeover” strategy within the church [there is no “wiggle room” here …
“own up to it”! These do indeed take place, and frequently!] can be
anything but contemptuous in His sight. To all the leaders within the
true church everywhere: This is not our “body” and we are not the
“head” of it! When we finally get that straight in our minds and
hearts we will then, for the very first time, appreciate Muggeridge’s
terse rebuttal to us all: “Let us then as Christians rejoice that we see
around us on every hand the decay of the institutions and instruments of
power, see intimations of empires falling to pieces, money in total
disarray, dictators and parliamentarians alike nonplussed by the
confusion and conflicts which encompass them. For it is precisely when
every earthly hope has been explored and found wanting, when every
possibility of help from earthly sources has been sought and is not
forthcoming, when every recourse this world offers, moral as well as
material, has been explored to no effect, when in the shivering cold the
last faggot has been thrown on the fire and in the gathering darkness
every glimmer of light has finally flickered out, it’s then that
Christ’s hand reaches out sure and firm. Then Christ’s words bring their
inexpressible comfort, then His light shines brightest, abolishing the
darkness forever. So, finding in everything only deception and
nothingness, the soul is constrained to have recourse to God Himself and
to rest content with Him.”[7]
Negativity prevails today when elitism
dominates any fellowship of believers. Our system of ostracizing,
compartmentalizing and categorizing individuals by position [or a lack
thereof] follows the pattern set by the Pharisees and the world, not
that which was set by our Lord Jesus Christ. Today we need all spiritual
gifts – all leadership roles – to function under supernatural guidance,
not under or because of super scholastics or super reputations. A simple
look at the factors that were significant to the leaders of the New
Testament era (Paul, Peter, Timothy, Stephen, Silas, Barnabas, Titus)
will show this to be true:
“For you see your calling, brethren, that
not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble,
are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to
shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put
to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world
and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which
are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should
glory in His presence. But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became
for us wisdom from God—and righteousness and sanctification and
redemption—that, as it is written, “He who glories, let him glory in
the Lord.” And I,
brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or
of wisdom declaring to you the testimony of God. For I determined not to
know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I was
with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and
my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in
demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not be
in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.” (1 Cor 1:26-2:5 NKJV)
[1]
C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, HarperCollins Publishers,
Inc.., New York, 2001, Page 57
[2]
Malcolm Muggeridge, Jesus Rediscovered, William Collins Sons
& Co. Ltd., Glasgow, 1969, Page 53
[3]
Oswald Chambers, The Complete Works of Oswald Chambers,
Discovery House Publishers, Grand Rapids, 2000, Page 117
[4]
Oswald Chambers, The
Complete Works of Oswald Chambers, Discovery House Publishers,
Grand Rapids, 2000, Page 96
[5]
Oswald Chambers, The Complete Works of Oswald Chambers,
Discovery House Publishers, Grand Rapids, 2000, Page 398
[6]
Vance Havner, Three-score & ten, Fleming H Revell Co., New
Jersey, 1973, Page 112
[7]
Malcolm Muggeridge, The end of Christendom, W.B. Eerdmans
Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, 1980, Page 56