The Bed of Procrustes

W. Carl Ketcherside

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     Procrustes was the ancient champion of enforced conformity. In Greek antiquity he was a legendary highwayman who lived in Attica. He had an iron bed which he regarded as the standard of length. Because it just fit him, he concluded that every one should fit it. He stopped every traveler and tied him to the bed. If the person happened to be too short, Procrustes stretched him until he attained the correct length; if he happened to be too long, his legs were cut off until he met the proper requirement. Thus was everyone made identical in size.

      The iron bed on the highway of Attica has been supplanted by one on "the highway of holiness." It operates now in the field of religion, rather than in the physical realm. It is used to measure spiritual attainment, and is the test of partisan fellowship. Every faction has its own bed, and all who would sojourn among them must be expanded or contracted, distended or diminished, enlarged or compressed, according to the unwritten creed which forms the bond of union for the particular group. Each of these claims to be the one holy, apostolic, and catholic church of God on earth, a contention they make in common with the Roman Church. Yet each has a different criterion of "faithfulness" or "loyalty" than all the others, and "the root of bitterness" in each case is the standard around which the partisans rally.

     It is a figment of imagination that we must all think alike on every point of interpretation, or that we must be united in all our opinions and differences, before we can be one in Christ. Our minds differ even as do our faces. We can no more all think alike than we can all look alike. No two of us have identical abilities, capabilities, or responsibilities. Any system of religion based upon uniformity of knowledge, or conformity in opinion, at any given time, is doomed to division and failure. It is a humanly devised, not a divine system. The very ones who demand absolute agreement in order to fellowship disagree with each other. There are no two people in the church of God today, or in any faction which arrogantly assumes it is the church, who see everything exactly alike, so if fellowship is conditioned upon agreement or endorsement, there will be no fellowship. Recognition of this very thing causes each party to settle on some point of doctrine, and arbitrarily demand conformity on that particular. It is as if these modern Procrusteans have agreed to accept all whose noses measure exactly three inches in length, regardless of their many deviations otherwise.

     Take eight members of the same family, and feed them upon exactly the same food, and there will be variations among them. One will be fair, another dark; one light, another heavy; one short, another tall. What produces these variations? It cannot be their parentage for all have the same father and mother. It cannot be their diet, for all eat the same thing. In the physical realm we are not worried about such differences. We regard them as natural and normal. We would think it odd if we could not tell the eight apart. In spite of their differences in appearance all have much in common. They are all part of one family. We would not think of dispossessing one who had a physical defect.

     The same God who made our bodies created our intellects. His revelation constantly emphasizes we are not alike. This is the very essence of the parable of the sower, of the talents, and of the pounds. We not only have "gifts differing" but we have mental capacities differing as well. We have the same spiritual father and mother, we feed upon the same spiritual food, but we do not all think alike. The inner man has its individuality the same as the outer man. We are not an indeterminate, indistinguishable mass in the spirit. If men thought alike in all matters there would be no inventions, industries, discoveries, progress, development, or even life. Why do we think it a matter of worry and concern when

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God's children do not all agree in opinion? Why must we devise Procrustean beds to elongate or abbreviate them to conform to our partisan norms? This is the basis of all sectism! Much of our present predicament stems from ignorance of the real teaching of God's word. It is thought that fellowship and unity are contingent upon perfect knowledge and conformity of thought. Nothing could be farther from the truth. We are in fellowship with God, but surely we do not know as much as God knows, nor are our lives as perfect as His existence. If God deigns to fellowship us in our imperfections and shortcomings, who are we to set up a different standard for our fellows? Are we not like the unjust debtor who, having been forgiven so great an amount, try to throttle one of our fellowservants and make him pay us a negligible amount?

     But does not the apostle command that we "all speak the same thing"? Certainly he does. But an examination of the context will show that he was dealing with the schisms in Corinth. One was saying, "I am of Paul"; another, "I am of Apollo?'; another, "I am of Cephas"; another, "I am of Christ." That is what they were saying. Paul told them to speak the same thing, that is, to stop their party cries. He did not mean for them to parrot the same words! They were not all to be like the tape recordings which start when you dial the wrong number on your telephone. Men are not recorded robots. The only way all could speak the same thing about all things at the same time, would be for all to know all things about the same things at the same time. Not even the preachers who postulate fellowship on absolute conformity will affirm that such is now the case, for they are constantly traveling about trying to teach all about some things, and they know there will always be some who will not know all things--including themselves!

     God has not established the divine fellowship on the basis of the amount of acquired knowledge of his revelation, nor upon reasoning, opinion, or interpretation, but upon faith. This is the majesty and glory of the Christian system. It takes sinful men who need a Saviour and brings them into proper relationship with God in spite of varied degrees of knowledge, divergencies of opinion or interpretation, or vagaries of reason. It employs none of these as the foundation of the Christian hope. It substitutes facts for opinions, and demands faith in the testimony of credible witnesses as to these facts. And because there are many frail, ignorant helpless victims of sin, denied the opportunities for intellectual training, but still loved by God, He conditions His requirements to their state. He makes salvation and entrance into fellowship contingent upon the belief of just one fact, validated by obedience to just one act. Faith and obedience! These are the requirements in all ages. And because of the simplicity of the Christian system, the most erudite philosopher must enter the fellowship on the same basis as the jungle pygmy.

     Every sincere believer in the fact that Jesus of Nazareth is God's Messiah and Son, who is immersed in water upon the basis of that faith, is God's child, and my brother. He is in my fellowship, because fellowship is the state or condition into which we are introduced by the new birth. There are variations among God's children as there are among mine. We should cease to regard such as abnormal. A person is not necessarily a freak because he does not look like me; and by the same token he is not a freak if he does not think as I do on all things.

     Wherein we differ, let us reason together as brethren, not cleave the skulls of each other as enemies. Unity of opinion is a goal to strive for, not an essential to fellowship. We come into fellowship first and then study to see things alike; we dare not reverse the divine process and insist that we all see everything alike before we can come into fellowship! If we come closer to each other it will only be because of a mutual regard for Jesus as a perfect model for us all. We will gain nothing by setting up our iron bedsteads on the highway.