Statement of Conviction

W. Carl Ketcherside

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     Few of us take the pains to study the origins of our cherished convictions; indeed, we have a natural repugnance to so doing. We like to continue to believe what we have been accustomed to accept as true, and the resentment aroused when doubt is cast upon any of our assumptions leads us to seek every manner of excuse for clinging to them. The result is that most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing what we already have.--James Harvey Robinson in "The Mind in the Making."      It is a little bit strange how one can get caught up in the realm of controversy when he really doesn't want to be. As long as you pretend to love all of your brothers, without really loving any of them, or even yourself, you are fairly safe. You come under some fire, of course, but a life of loveless mediocrity does not attract too much flak. Preachers are not generally opposed to mediocrity. They feel comfortable around it. It is only unreserved love which men cannot stand. Such love is vulnerable because it is unlimited like the love of God. And, like all true love, it seeks for demonstration. It is active and outgoing. It cannot be stifled, sublimated or suppressed. It can only be nailed to a cross.

     I have some well-intentioned advisers who are always suggesting to me to "let up on fellowship" and to write about other things for awhile. They would like for me to edit a safe, innocuous journal, until the furor subsides and the attacks dwindle away. "You have so much else to share," they flatteringly say, "and you could meet with brethren who are not under suspicion or attack, and have a quiet existence until the sun sets." These are nice people and they have my interest at heart. I love them as much as I deplore their advice.

     What they overlook is that I am not so much concerned about sharing thoughts, ideas, or concepts, as I am interested in sharing life. I am not projecting a philosophy. I am following a Savior. And he left where he was and entered a world of agony and sin, to touch people, to mingle with the crowd, and to commend his love toward them all. I can't stop writing about fellowship. I can't quit talking about brotherhood. Since the love of God was poured out in my heart, and rivers of living water began to flow, I can't dam up the channel. I'd break out in a dozen places. Anyway, I am on a float trip with God and not engaged in an engineering project to control the flow. I am not the least interested in playing it safe to please a party. I am only interested in risking everything to please my Lord.

     The day that I learned that the fellowship of the Spirit is actually the sharing of eternal life, the life of God, I really became a new creation. God had received me, welcomed me and loved me ever since I was born from above, but

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I didn't know what it was all about. I thought eternal life was like an old line insurance policy which you had to die to collect. And then I learned that if you have the Son, you have eternal life--now! That put it all together!

     John said, "This life was made visible; we have seen it and bear our testimony we here declare to you the eternal life which dwelt with the Father and was made visible to us. What we have seen and heard we declare to you, so that you and we together may share in a common life, that life which we share with the Father and his Son Jesus Christ." The expression "share in a common life" is a translation of koinonia. That's the word translated "fellowship." So fellowship is sharing the life of God. That is what I am called to do. "It is God himself who called you to share in the life of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord; and God keeps faith" (1 Corinthians 1:9). Praise His name!

     No man has power to extend to me a share in eternal life, and no man has the power to withdraw it. When you look at the fellowship of the Spirit as God looks at it, it is downright silly for puny and ignorant men to talk about "withdrawing fellowship" from other brethren, the sons and daughters of the Lord almighty, who loves them and cherishes them as His own. Of course men can put you out of their synagogues and Jesus said they would (John 16:2). But anything fleshly and imperfect men can put you out of, you are as well off out of it as you would be in it. Being in it will not save your soul and being out of it will not damn you. All it will do is to free you from tyranny!

     While our precious Lord was on earth, "Many even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees, they did not confess it, lest they should be put out of the synagogues: for they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God" (John 12:42,43). We have many yet who are scared silly by the Pharisees. Of all my faults and sins, and I have a lot of them, that is not one. Perfect love has cast out fear just as He said it would. I am not going to be bought off or frightened off. And I am not going to give up or quit. I shall remain in Christ if every synagogue on earth slams its massive door in my face. But men cannot put you out of the fellowship when around you and beneath you are the everlasting arms!

     I get scores of letters from heartbroken brothers and sisters who tell me they have been "withdrawn from". Pompous men, filled with pride of office have issued dogmatic decrees. They must deny the premillennial coming of the Lord. They must cease to talk about the present-day work of the Holy Spirit. They must quit holding prayer meetings in their homes unless an elder is present. They must publicly admit that they think instrumental music in connection with the praise of God is a sin. They must ask forgiveness for meeting with a congregation of saints where the brethren study the word of God in Bible classes.

     When these consecrated ones could not stifle their consciences and lie about their feelings, they were "cashiered out" of the congregation and drummed out of the regiment. If they had been willing to lie they could have stayed in. They should dry their tears, cease to tremble and begin to praise God. They should shout for sheer joy. "Oh the bliss that is yours when men shall persecute you and revile you and say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake." What men do to you will not have one thing to do with the fellowship of the Spirit. The Spirit is not led by men, but men need to be led by the Spirit.

     Imagine the callous indifference involved in trying to dissolve the blood-purchased, heaven-cemented ties of brotherhood over some of the inane, piddling and petty issues which have fragmented and fractured us. Shall we cut off an organ of the body trying to cure a flea bite? Shall we bomb God's great heritage into oblivion because of a molehill in the front yard? What kind of fraternity is it which requires a man to lie about his convictions to remain a part of it? What manner of brotherhood

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is it which demands that one sublimate and crucify his honest opinions to prove that he is "faithful"? Did Jesus pay the cruel price to form a faction of men and women who spend their lives playing tiddley-winks with pawns of trivia?

     Fellowship is a beautiful, inspiring and exhilarating word. It speaks of everlasting arms around us and beneath us, of riding upon eagles' wings and basking in the sunlight of a love so great that it soars above human understanding. It is Jesus bending down to find a lost sheep and laying it upon his shoulder. It is a Father folding us to his bosom and soothing a broken heart. It is not arguing, striving, or debating over the merits of this or that thing as if the kingdom of heaven depended upon every person in the whole wide earth seeing it exactly as I do and agreeing with me in every minute particular.

     Once I knew no better than to think that our feeble attainments constituted the divine criterion by which to measure everyone else. I mistook a life of stale conformity for the glorious communion of the Spirit. How wrong I was! How mistaken! How fallacious were the applications I made of the heaven given scriptures as I quoted them to justify our divisions when they were penned to promote that unity planned by the Father. My shame for such abuse is equalled only by the praise for Him who delivered me from feeling a need to try and vindicate a narrow traditional factional course.

     I am constantly assailed now by questions in journals and queries in letters asking me if the divine-human relationship is all there is to fellowship. They want to know if there are not aspects of it which relate to association with brethren and engaging with them in their various enterprises. Of course there are, but all of them are within the bounds, and grow out of the relationship I sustain to Jesus. It is precisely because I am in the Father that I have brothers in the Lord. It is because I am in the fellowship with Christ that I am an organ among other organs constituting the one body. Brotherhood results from a common Fatherhood, fellowship is the sharing of a common Sonship.

     Statements like that upset some of the brethren who are editors of partisan journalistic mouthpieces among us. One of them, who edits a pretty prominent paper in Texas occasionally takes a sly little dig at my reasoning, so he can prove to the segment for which he carries the torch that he is still "loyal" and not becoming infected with the "Ketcherside view." I feel a deep sense of compassion for men like this. I know how they feel. Once I was just as sectarian in attitude as they are now.

     It is unscrupulous to quote passages regulating my relationship to a world of pagans and aliens and apply them to my relationship to redeemed and reconciled saints. It is unfair to God's word given to urge the saints to separate from an idolatrous culture and use it to encourage brethren to separate from one another. Talk about "respect for the authority of God's word"! Brethren who thus twist and wrest the scriptures ought to be afraid to meet God in the last day. Separation of God's family from the world is commanded, division among brethren is condemned. Not even an oracle from Arkansas can change that!

     But having said this we must realize that there will always be differences of opinion, understanding and interpretation among brethren who think. Sincere men who love God will not see everything alike. They never have done so. They never will do so, and to demand that as a basis for fellowship is but to kindle the flames of schism and throw more fuel on the fires of division. Such a course will not produce better Christians. It will only make bigger hypocrites.

     But can men endorse actions in others against which their consciences revolt? Of course not! Can they participate in actions which their hearts cannot condone? Certainly not! It would be absurd to request them to do so! But the fact they cannot participate in some practices with brethren does not mean they cannot participate in any. In a physical family,

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if one brother smokes cigarettes, another brother who is deeply opposed to smoking cannot engage in it with him. He cannot purchase cigarettes for his brother nor light them for him. But that does not mean they cannot paint the house together, or eat at the same table. They are still brothers, even though there is something in which they cannot mutually engage. One is a brother who smokes, one is a brother who does not, but they do not need to divide the family into two parties which will not speak to one another, or go to visit the father together.

     In the family of God, if one cannot contribute to a television program sponsored by certain brethren, he can withhold his support from the program, but he cannot scripturally withhold his company from the brethren. The fact that he cannot support the television project does not mean he cannot join with the brethren in prayer, study of the word, inner-city or foreign mission endeavors. We should certainly work together up to the point of division and not shiver the trunk of the tree because the limbs grow in different directions. It is both childish and unscriptural to deny brotherhood because we differ on what brethren may do in Christ Jesus. It is a sin against God to divide over the method of support for propagandizing the gospel or caring for the needy. If one cannot conscientiously support a method he ought not, but to divide into warring and hostile parties is sinful and shameful. It is just as sinful to be frightened into endorsing, maintaining and perpetuating such schisms.

     It is wrong to pay lipservice to brotherhood and fellowship, and to pretend we are all brethren and then treat one another as half-brothers, outcasts, or step-brothers. The fact is that some among us treat pagans with greater politeness than they do brethren who differ with them and are too honest to deny it or pretend that they do not. This whole "withdrawal bit" which has become an inglorious obsession with some "Churches of Christ" and is enshrined as a part of Church of Christism is a work of the flesh. It is simply the party spirit or factionalism dressed up in the stolen livery from the wardrobe of God and passed off as a manifestation of loyalty. Nothing can be more disloyal to God than driving out and spiritually murdering His other children!

     Those who are high on "the authority of God's word" need to tell us on what ground they ignore the plain teaching of the scriptures on loving and receiving the brethren, in order to hound them out over matters which the scriptures do not even mention. Is the silence of God to be interpreted so as to countermand the revelation of God? What about the scores of passages about loving the brethren, living in peace, and welcoming one another as God welcomes us? Can these be ruthlessly tossed into our institutional garbage cans as having no meaning, value, or authority?

     It seems imperative at the close of the year that I state again my personal position. I do so in full view of the fact that I must meet my Lord face to face and answer for every word. I welcome as my brother in Christ every sincere believer in Jesus Christ who has been immersed on the basis of that faith. I am in the fellowship with all such. I share with them the common life of the indwelling Spirit of my God. I make nothing a test of fellowship which God has not made a condition of salvation. Any person who is good enough to be received by the Father is not too bad for me to welcome. My creed is Christ! If one is related

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to Christ through the Spirit I am related to him as a brother. The umbrella of God's love is great enough to overshadow brethren of diverse opinions and views. That is what mercy is all about. It is what grace really accomplishes. I am not in perfect agreement with any other human being under that umbrella. I cannot share with any one of them in all he thinks, does, or says. I am committed to discussing with every one of them our differences as long as I live, but I will do so as a brother in the one body and not as a representative of another faction. I no longer represent any faction or sect among us!

     So I shall receive all of the saints while I do not condone fully what any of them think or practice. I shall receive them as God received me, not because of how much I knew but because of Him in whom I had come to trust. I am justified by faith and not by a superior knowledge. The grace of God can save an Igorot as well as an intellectual. In my own imperfection I dare not demand perfection of God's other children. But agape is love for those you cannot like and my love reaches out to embrace all of God's children in their frailty and failures. It reaches out to them wherever they are, just as He reaches out to them the same way.

     I eagerly pray that you will overcome the sectarian bias and the provincial prejudice which keeps you aloof from the family of the Father, the whole family, and not just those who live within your little compound. Tear down the fences men have erected. Break down the bars of tradition. Let love reign and rule and conquer, and you will be a peacemaker and be called a child of God!