Forced Conformity
W. Carl Ketcherside
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"Truth is compared in Scripture to a streaming fountain; if her waters flow not in a perpetual progression, they sicken into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition. A man may be a heretic in the truth; and if he believe things only because his pastor says so, or an assembly so determines, without knowing other reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his heresy."
These are the words of the Puritan poet and pamphleteer, John Milton, whose character was a strange blend of winsomeness and severity. Although he became totally blind at the age of forty-four and continued so for the remaining twenty-two years of his life, he produced some of his finest material during this period of enforced darkness.
He is known chiefly in our day because of his beautiful poetry, but he was a prodigious writer of tracts, and I have read many of them such as How to Rid Ourselves of the Clergy with a great deal of appreciation. He was a firm defender of the right of every man to interpret Scripture according to his own conscience, and some of his statements have made an undeniable contribution to my own thinking, although I am sadly deficient in trying to convey my thoughts in the beautiful language which he employed.
Before I leave Milton, however, for the more prosaic task immediately at hand, let me ask you to consider this other statement which flowed from his sharpened quill. "Is it not possible that she (truth) may have more shapes than one? What else is all that rank of things indifferent, wherein truth may be on this side or on the other without being unlike herself...What great purchase is this Christian liberty which Paul so often boasts of? His doctrine is, that he who eats or eats not, regards a day or regards it not, may do either to the Lord. How many other things might be tolerated in peace and left to conscience, had we but charity, and were it not the chief stronghold of our hypocrisy to be ever judging one another! I fear this iron yoke of outward conformity hath left a slavish print upon our necks."
In the earlier part of this year I made a rather extensive study of religious intolerance and the constant struggle of the mind to be free. I have concluded that there is always a conspiracy to reduce men to serfs to the institution and to manipulate them to the gain and promotion of others. But I have developed a deeper appreciation for those who have fought for the only liberty that is real, the freedom to think, speak and act.
Erasmus of Rotterdam said, "The sum of our religion is peace and unanimity and these can scarcely stand unless we define as little as possible and in many things leave each free to follow his own judgment."
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John Locke wrote, "It becomes all men to maintain peace and the common offices of friendship in a diversity of opinions, since we cannot reasonably expect that anyone should readily and obsequiously quit his own opinion and embrace ours with a blind resignation to an authority which the understanding of man acknowledges not."
Alexander Campbell wrote, "We have been censured long and often for laying too much stress upon the assent of the understanding; but those who have most acrimoniously censured us, have laid much more stress upon the assent of the mind, than we have ever done. We never did, at any time, exclude a 'man from the kingdom of God for a mere imbecility of intellect; or, in other words, because he could not assent to our opinions...We will acknowledge all as christians who acknowledge the gospel facts, and obey Jesus Christ."
And the Holy Spirit prompted Paul to write: "Welcome one whose faith is weak, but not for the purpose of deciding mere matters of opinion...Who are you that you should find fault with the servant of another? Whether he stands or falls is a matter which concerns his own master...As for you and your convictions, keep your personal faith to yourself in the presence of God."
That should be enough to introduce the subject with which I am requested to deal in this issue of our little journal. It may not be generally known, but there is a frantic wave of exclusion now sweeping through Churches of Christ. Elders are jumpy and quick on the trigger. In every section of our land, motivated by reckless attack from the pulpits, brethren are being "cast out of the synagogues" for no other reason than the fact that they dare to think for themselves. And it is observable that those who are driven out are conceded by their persecutors to be pure in morals, holy in life, faithful in attendance, and studious in their habits.
Perhaps this last is the real problem. An elder in Texas said of one brother who was callously thrown out, "He was a good man as long as he stayed with our old-time doctrine. But he wasn't satisfied and he took to reading too many books and papers not written by faithful brethren, and he tried to tell the rest of us we were wrong in some points, when we knew we had the truth all along. So we had to get rid of him before he influenced others into becoming dissatisfied with our way of looking at things."
It is a commentary on the attitude of the elders who discharged this brother because he learned too much, that they also placed him under a social ban and notified all who were under their "jurisdiction" that they must not visit in his home, talk with him by the way, or have anything to do with him, and any violation of this edict or proscription would make them amenable to the discipline of the congregation and liable to the same penalty. It would appear that some of the congregations have been victimized by power-hungry dictatorships which reserve unto themselves the power to save or condemn!
Indeed they are not! Elders are not to be tyrants or despots! They are fallible men, as likely to err in judgment as other men, and more liable to do so if their decisions are warped by a sense of power or pride. The opinions of elders may be just as erroneous as those of others in a congregation, and that is why no opinion can be made a test of fellowship, or of union and communion.
Only infallible men should have any right, or even inclination, to demand that their opinions be adopted by all. Since there are no such men upon earth, uniformity of knowledge and conformity of opinion can never be enforced or im-
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Elders are not political opportunists who can conspire, manipulate and change the rules in the middle of the game, in order to keep the power they may have unjustly seized. In the divine economy no provision is made for government without the consent of the governed. The word rendered office in the King James Version does not refer to an elective position, but to a function or work. "He that desires the office of a bishop desires a good work."
It is a frightful commentary upon how far we have fallen in the Churches of Christ, that men have turned a function into a power structure against which there is no appeal even in cases of flagrant abuse and injustice. In some places preachers and elders meet in closed sessions and clandestinely plot to force the saints to "knuckle under" as the price for remaining in the congregation, and ruthlessly eject men and their families who dare to question if this is faithful adherence to the word of God.
Nothing is more absurd in the light of the new covenant scriptures, than to hound someone out of the congregational association because he can see no wrong in the use of instrumental music as an accompaniment to praise, or because he has reached the conclusion that the millennium will follow the return of Jesus, or because he honestly feels that "the gifts of the Spirit" are available today. Those who elevate such ideas into tests of union or communion and condition their acceptance of brethren upon conformity to their orthodox legislation should be ashamed to live and afraid to die! To wound the consciences of brethren who are in the Lord Jesus and fervently seeking to follow him, is not alone to injure them but the Lord who bought them! Elders and preachers who bind upon those in Christ something more than faith in the Lord Jesus and trust in His wonderful grace, for justification, are the modern Judaizers, the twentieth-century circumcision party. They are our revised version of the "certain of the Pharisees" who have crept in to steal away the liberties of the saints. They walk not according to the truth of the gospel. These are serious charges and I do not make them lightly or flippantly.
I affirm them because I believe that a great principle is at stake. When the divine right of each child of God to approach the scriptures for himself is abridged or denied, then have we blotted out almost half a millennium of Protestant gain and returned to the spirit of the papacy. We have turned our backs upon the ideal of true restoration and restored the spirit which made possible the Inquisition and cast that mighty pall upon the earth which came to be known as "the Dark Ages."
The rational powers of the 'saints will be stultified and their thought processes stifled. If the price of being received is not to think, men who love the social institution above their own integrity will cease to think. Thus the congregation will come to be composed of frightened conformists who trust in the wisdom of men and deny the wisdom of God. Sterility will prevail and moral compromise arise as it already has in many places.
No one can! Are not elders also brethren? Who is going to draw a line on the opinions they hold? Why should a small group of men place an executive ban on the opinions of other saints? Is this not, in effect, imposing their own opinions upon others? If a group of brethren hold an opinion in conflict with the opinion of the elders, why not have the elders surrender their opinion? What is there about being in the presbytery which makes one's opinion infallible and imperative?
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The fact is that God has freed us all from domination by others in the realm of opinion and made our opinions subject only to the bar of personal conscience. We are specifically told that in our reception of others, even those who are weak, we must not engage in disputes over opinions (Romans (14:1). The kingdom of heaven is spacious enough for men to dwell together in spite of differences, so long as they neither despise nor judge one another. Even then, the problem is an attitude toward brethren and not so much one toward things.
The sin is not in having varied opinions, for God receives men in spite of them. The sin comes when we "set at nought a brother" (verse 10). It lies in destroying one for whom Christ died by insistence upon having my own way (verse 15). Obviously someone is mistaken when our views clash, and both may be. But one who is not free to make mistakes is not free at all. It is about time that we assert our right to read and think for ourselves and rise up against the domination of preachers and editors. The slavish worship and adulation heaped upon journals is unworthy of free men and women. Read what you want to but make up your own mind. You are not a door-mat for other men!
Let me come down to a current problem so I may make myself clear. The traditional position of our brethren in the restoration movement has been that "the age of miracles" ended with the work of the special envoys of Christ, and when the last person had died upon whom apostolic hands were laid, the spiritual gifts available to the primitive ekklesia were withdrawn, or simply ceased through attrition.
One of the passages occupying a prominent place in the list of texts summoned to bolster this rationale was 1 Corinthians 13:10. "But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away." The context mentions the unfailing quality of love, as distinguished from prophecy, tongues and knowledge supernaturally given. It was assumed that "that which is perfect" was the completed revelation of God as now contained in the sacred canon of new covenant scriptures. Few, if any, among us questioned this, so it became the accepted, or orthodox way of explaining it. It created no problem because no one even thought of questioning it.
Now, however, it is a horse of a different color, as a man said when he saw his first zebra. As a part of that which the world of religion designates "the charismatic renewal," and which has been a recurrent phenomenon through the centuries, some of our brethren are directly involved. In order to attempt a validation of their experience they have taken a new look at 1 Corinthians 13:10 and decided "that which is perfect" has not yet arrived.
This has obviously set off a few fireworks and in some places the elders, frightened by what has happened, or what may happen, have accused those of their number caught up in the excite-
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The cold fact is that Paul did not identify that which is perfect, and he did not tell us when it was to arrive. If he had done so there would be no real hangup on the matter. We have deduced from our reasoning, that the perfect was the completed revelation as now contained in the sacred scriptures. Others question our interpretation.
That the "teaching" is not as plain as some brethren would like to think was made clear when a publisher among us asked six different brethren to explain what was meant in 1 Corinthians 13:10. All of them were excellent students of the new covenant scriptures in the original Greek language, but they all came up with a different approach, and they did not agree upon the identity of what constituted "that which is perfect." Being such apt students they used terminology in some cases which tended to confuse, but what they said was about as confusing as the way they said it. I think a lot of common folk like myself reached the conclusion that if the "experts" could not agree we would just have to allow for differences from now on!
But both groups among us believe there is a perfected state, and that it either has come or will, and both believe that with its coming the partial will be done away. The reason both believe that is because it has been revealed, and there is not one person among us who denies the revelation of God. Our problem is not with revelation, which is the uncovering of the divine mind. It is with interpretation, which is the application of the human mind in an attempt to understand the revelation. Revelation is what God has said; interpretation is what one thinks God meant by what He said. The first is infallible, the second is not!
No one can believe that which is perfect has come, because God did not say that. He can hold the opinion that it has come. He can say, "As I understand the revelation given in 1 Corinthians 13 that which is perfect refers to the completed canon of the sacred scriptures, and on the basis of my understanding I conclude that prophecies, tongues and supernatural knowledge are no longer available."
One's personal conviction about the matter will be weaker or stronger based upon the mental case he can make for his deduction by his knowledge of and application of other scriptures which he sees as related to the matter. There is always a danger that we may have a bias depending upon our confidence in and advocacy of a certain viewpoint. It is difficult to listen objectively to one whom you have already classified as either a crackpot or a traditional legalist. In the Biblical connotation, the first is despising a brother, and the second is judging a brother. We are specifically forbidden to do either, because either attitude may be followed by setting him at nought.
Someone will certainly say that all of this is good in theory, but just what shall elders do when confronted with a group of saints in the congregation who testify that they have "received the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the gift of tongues"? First of all, they should fervently pray that the Spirit who dwells in all of us will guide them and give them insight in their application of the revealed testimony so none will be lost. They should ask those with whom they differ to meet with them and relate the experiences which are being rumored and they should listen carefully, patiently and earnestly without rude interruption or interjection of argument.
At the close of such a session in which they have eagerly sought to understand, they may well say, "We were anxious to hear from you personally what has transpired in your lives because we are so
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Those who claim that the Spirit has moved into their lives in a new dimension should be anxious to prove it by weighing what is said by those who have their spiritual interests at heart. But what happens, if after the sessions, there is an impasse? The possibility, and even the probability, that this will result must never deter the people of God from talking together about their differences. We must hold ourselves always ready to talk with brethren until we mutually agree that we have exhausted our efforts at agreement. Even then we must not slam the door shut with such force that we cannot open it to future attempts.
If I were an elder I would tell the brethren that they meant more to me than any opinion of mine about the work of the Spirit in individual lives. I would point out what love obligated me to do and what I felt it obligated them to do. Under no circumstances should preachers or elders harangue the brethren from the security of the pulpit in times like these, aggravating situations into an importance they do not deserve.
Of course the brethren who feel they have discovered something precious to themselves must never thrust or push it upon others who do not wish it, or who are not ready for it. If their claims about the Holy Spirit are truly valid they ought to become more understanding, loving and considerate of others. They will not measure the faith of others by their own experiences, nor conclude that God cannot accept others except on their terms. They should not deliberately create emotional reactions by publicly insisting upon testifying. It is certainly not a work of the Spirit to divide brethren over the work of the Spirit. Those who have faith in such matters, should heed the divine injunction, to have it to themselves.
It is a little silly for elders to tell people they cannot meet in their own homes and discuss what they wish. So long as brethren do not make themselves obnoxious by trying to disturb the peace we should not disturb theirs. Elders are not exempt from the admonition to "live peaceably with all men." It is not necessary that those of us who have eaten together at the Lord's Table for years start hating one another because of varied opinions about the present influence of the Holy Spirit. What we should all come to realize is that one's standing is not to be judged by his gifts but by his fruits.
As I read it, the scriptural antidote provided for the problems growing out of the charismata was "the more excellent way." This was the divine option or alternative, intended to quiet the tumult and settle the dust of strife. I fail to read anywhere the instruction to throw out in the cold those who were regarded as "God's problem children." I suspect that banishment of those who differ is a lot easier than loving them. Most of us find it less difficult to love brethren at a distance where they don't "bug" us than when they are up close and do. We put them out of the congregation to "get them out of our hair."
I am fully resolved to make no test of fellowship out of divergent opinions as to the implication of the expression "that which is perfect." I have my own opinion about it, of course, and it is a perfectly good one. I like it better than any other opinion of which I have heard. It is not overly-used because I have not worn it out clobbering other brethren over the head with it. I get it out occasionally and examine it and polish it up, and admire it all to myself. I am not married to it like I am to Nell, so if someone shows up with a better opinion I'll swap mine off or trade it in. I would not do that with my wife. I would no more withdraw from a brother for differing with me than I would exclude everyone who did not drive a blue Ford.
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I got a kick out of talking with an elder in a congregation down in the hills not long ago. We've always liked one another although he thinks I may be a "mite liberal" on the fellowship question. In any event, the teacher of the adult class and his wife "got to monkeyin' around with prayers" as the elder put it, and "babbled something that they thought was tongues." The elder knew that he had to put a stop to it before it spread to "the ignorant members and they got all carried away." "How did you handle it?" I asked. "Well sir, I'll tell you," he replied. "I sent off and ordered that book by James D. Bales in which he lined Pat Boone out. The thing was pretty high priced. I've sold a two-hundred pound hog for less, but not lately, of course! I only read about halfway through it, but that was enough to show me what I had to do. I never did finish the book but I loaned it to this couple that was goin' into orbit. It didn't change 'em none. The wife said it was as dry as cornflakes without milk, and the man said if Brother Bales taught like he wrote that Harding College was a corpse and didn't know it. So I got the other two elders together and we withdrew from them. About a dozen others served notice they were leaving too, so we give them a dose out of the same spoon, and withdrew from them too. They're meetin' in a home and they pretend like they're happy. Things have settled back to normal at church with business as usual."
"Did you read Pat's book along with the one by Brother Bales?" I asked.
"No, I didn't read it. They gave it to me when I handed them the one by Brother Bales, but I just leafed through it and saw that Pat was off and as high as a kite. That's what comes from a Christian messing with that Hollywood crowd. They get used to acting and now they've got Pat acting like a holy-roller."
"Maybe the folk you withdrew from will think through their position, and return," I suggested.
"I doubt it. They said when we put 'em out that they wished it had happened a long time ago. The woman said that she felt like she did when she passed a jail, every time she looked at us. No, I don't think they'll come back, and I hope they don't unless they give up their foolishness. We've never had the Holy Spirit in this congregation and we're not about to have it now. There's nothing that can upset the peace of a place like the Holy Spirit."
For the simple reason that no person can divest himself of an opinion which he honestly holds. It is an intellectual impossibility. If one thinks a thing is true he cannot say he believes it is not, without falsifying. When you study the revelation of God as fully as you can, putting together the scriptures as you are able, and you reach a conclusion which seems to reflect the tenor and meaning of the Bible on a certain subject, that conclusion becomes your conviction.
You cannot deny a conviction, either by your own effort or at the command of another. The fact is that the more you concentrate on an effort to remove it from your consciousness the more sharply will it be etched there. Men have been
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For example, if from your study you conclude that the coming of Jesus will precede the millennium, you cannot make it incredible by denying it is credible, when it was the apparent credibility of it which influenced you to accept it. All of the people on earth who disagree with you cannot drive it from your mind by declaring that it is incredible to them. They may influence you to re-examine it, but they cannot force you to mentally relinquish it until your own thought processes lead you to do so.
Any attempt at unity based upon conformity is doomed to failure. It is simply another way of expressing unity based upon coercion, or by edict of an authoritarian power structure. It is impossible to achieve because there are always honest men who, like God, cannot deny themselves, and who are willing to die rather than betray their true sentiments.
When brethren differ in opinions, God does not demand that they surrender them. He only requires that do not despise or judge those who differ with them. One man believes he may eat all things while another because of conscientious scruples, eats only vegetables. Neither is required to give up his conviction out of respect for the other, because he cannot do so while he is sane and rational and possessed of his mental faculties.
The man who believes he can eat meat is asked only to suspend his practice out of deference for his brother's feelings. A man for whom Christ died is worth more than one's conviction about the right to eat meat or drink wine. He may continue to hold his personal opinion (or faith) and in the absence of offence, he may practice it. The Bible does not say "It is not right to eat flesh or drink wine, or anything by which your brother is made to stumble." Instead, it says "It is right not to do so!"
It is here that brethren often move in and make laws of their own, binding them upon men and even making them tests of fellowship. There is a great difference in saying it is not right to do a thing, and in saying it is right not to do it. At various times in history, professed followers of the Messiah have concluded it was a sin to eat flesh and have "commanded to abstain from meats." At various times they have concluded it was a sin to drink wine as a table beverage, or in strict moderation, but this is a human legislation and not a divine one. Neither is a sin according to the scriptures and no one can prove that they are sins except by wresting the scriptures.
Paul places eating of meat and drinking of wine in the same category, as things not good to do if the doing causes a brother to stumble, be tripped up in his Christian walk, or rendered weak and powerless. The right to do a thing is secondary to a love for brethren. The right not to do certain things to protect a brother's welfare is transcendent over the right to do them to demonstrate my strength of conviction.
I am resolved not to allow my personal conviction about issues and things to sever me from the brethren whom I love. I say this in spite of all the complaints and criticisms of the intellectuals among us. In his book Who Put the Bomb in Father Murphy's Chowder?, Richard Frisbie, writes: "When the intellectuals stop complaining, it is either because a culture has died and there aren't any intellectuals left, or because a police state has locked them all up. In a healthy society, all that diverts them from complaining about affairs generally is the pleasure of complaining about each other." Have at it, brethren, I refuse to be affected or side-tracked!