I’ve decided I’m not going to add new posts to Religo for a while. I’ve said basically what I wanted to say and I’ve started praying as per prayer challenge previously mentioned.
Any new ideas or articles I think I’ll put into one document and make it available later down the line. If you’re interested or want a copy of previous articles you can make requests privately via WordPress (it’s quick to start an account if you need to). Thanks.
Psalm 37:5-6
The prayer challenge mentioned in the previous post was sent to several people as a kind of FYI -my apologies for those who felt it wasn’t relevant to them. Anyway, it’s more about a challenge of faith and prayer rather than just arguing doctrine and church practice.
I found the notebook, but under the weather again… DOH! Hopefully will publish a new post soon…
I’ve been a bit sick the last few days, and out of the loop regarding post-ICOC religious world… I have some more ideas written down in a notebook, but somehow lost it. Once I find it I’ll get back to some posts…
Also, I’m on twitter now: www.twitter.com/donakrv, which I’m mainly using to keep people updated with my music and cartoons on Struggling Muso and Munhwa Experience.
I’m learning more and more it’s all down to faith. I know everyone says it’s about ‘faith’, but what does this mean? For me, in context of my situation having come from the International Churches of Christ, faith means several things.
It means persevering despite what’s happened in the past. It means continuing to investigate the bible, and not just go with the flow of whatever church culture you happen to be immersed in. It means searching for wisdom and knowing why you believe what you believe.
Faith also means using the wisdom from the bible to defend yourself against manipulation and guilt trips of a dodgy church. It means having the fortitude and wisdom to know when to support certain leaders and when to avoid or oppose certain leaders.
This is the kind of faith developed over time, because you learn that some leaders in the religious world have no scruples and will take advantage of the naive and vulnerable. You need faith to guard against abuse and seek ways to minimise it for future generations of believers.
Faith helps you be grounded in the gospel of Christ and the word rather than the institution, which allows you to contribute spiritually to the institution and hold it accountable where necessary.
One of the fundamental contradictions in many religions is that they preach humility and integrity on the one hand, but when their organizations experience exponential growth the leaders are inclined to the temptation of pride and glory. Furthermore, while the rhetoric of the religious group focuses on the teachings of its religion, the reality can be a tendency for competitiveness, political games and maneuvering. This becomes apparent when the privileges and advantages of being in the top leadership motivate unscrupulous players who are more interested in power than in really promoting the religion with integrity.
This definitely became an issue with the ICOC and I believe it’s still a factor today in some congregations. The discipling system allows greater control by leaders and causes members to be further open to abuse and exploitation whether it be financial, emotional, psychological or otherwise. When people began to see inequality between lower members and some leaders in the ICOC in 2003 many became disillusioned and left, but some churches still seem to have a desire to bring back the burdens of pre-2003.
This is why I’ve titled this post and the last one ‘Riding the Beast’. These idealistic movements begin with freshness and inspiration, and it attracts a lot of people, but they also attract people who seek to take advantage of the movement when there’s so much to be gained by advancing your own position. You have to look below the surface of rhetoric and see people’s motives. You have to read between the lines. You also have to detect techniques of manipulation, veiled coercion and threats and pressures to cause members to be over-dependent on the organization.
This is unacceptable for generally decent religion. I’m talking about Christianity, but also any religion that supports universal principles of love, integrity, honesty, righteousness, hard-work, humility and peace, etc. An example passage is Galatians 5.22-24. Spiritual guidance is supposed to empower us spiritually, not enslave us to an organization. The organization is supposed to aid and help us in our spiritual quest, not use us for the purposes of a few at the top. It’s suppose to increase our knowledge and wisdom in the face of life’s difficulties, not restrain us psychologically under the whims and desires of an elite theocracy or clergy-clique.
I believe the aim of Paul the Apostle was to guide recent Christians of his day into greater spiritual growth and wisdom. His focus was on accountability we will have before God, and therefore to help us take responsibility for ourselves as we grow in Christ. But he knew all the pitfalls of religion, and one was the dangers of followers being led astray and exploited, as is seen in 2 Corinthians 11:19-21:
(New International Version) 19You gladly put up with fools since you are so wise! 20In fact, you even put up with anyone who enslaves you or exploits you or takes advantage of you or pushes himself forward or slaps you in the face. 21To my shame I admit that we were too weak for that!
I saw an interesting documentary the other day on Islam, and one of the Muslims being interviewed claimed that for hundreds of years there was no clergy in Islam, meaning that no leaders of the religion were paid for their religious work, they all had secular jobs. The interviewee made the point that because of this there was no motive for leaders to exploit followers, they had no vested interest in establishing a religious bureaucracy.
At any rate, I feel that as Christians in the modern world, we have more at our disposal to educate ourselves, and should strive to maintain enough wisdom, flexible and independence, that we know when to support a church and know when to walk away. Never let a church culture, movement or organization give you the impression that it is essential to your salvation. It’s not. It’s the gospel that’s essential to your salvation.
Spiritually churches come and go. They can be righteous in one point of time, but if you know your New Testament well, they can go sour, become seduced by money, devour themselves internally by deceit, envy and competitiveness, water down the gospel and New Testament teachings or just grow complacent. It’s up to all members, not just leadership, to help each other stay on the narrow path.
But if corrupt leaders get in power, it’s time to leave or go into hiding, because not only will they strive to play the system, they will secretly strive to gather supporters who are just as deceitful and corrupt as they are, because that’s how they gain security, and they’ll strive to isolate, slander and provoke anyone who would dare stand up to them or threaten to expose them. At this ponit the key is to have faith in God.
That’s an interesting statement, from Luke 17:20-21. I never heard it preached much while I was in the ICOC (International Churches of Christ), but I did hear :”the Kingdom of heaven is advancing forcefully, and forceful men take hold of it” a thousand times. In fact it was virtually beaten over our heads…
Perhaps leaders were afraid that people may interpret the ‘within you’ as too ‘new agy’. Within the ICOC culture people forever warned not to ‘follow your heart’, after all the heart is ‘deceitful above all things’…Talking about the kingdom being ‘within you’ might give people the impression they don’t need the ICOC franchise as long as you have God’s spirit in your heart.
So then, why does Jesus say such a statement? He even says that people won’t say ‘here it is’ or ‘there it is’. This was something I asked myself when I read it whilst in the ICOC. But having gone through and come out of the ICOC, this makes more sense to me now.
One of the problems with the ICOC culture was a tendency to make things clear cut, or ‘black and white’. You either were a Christian, or not. You were either saved, or not. And you were either in the kingdom of God -a church which followed correct doctrine etc etc, or out. And through this ‘black and white’ reasoning we rationalised what the Kingdom of God should be defined as, and believed that all other churches couldn’t really be in the Kingdom because they didn’t follow out ‘biblical’ definitions.
Once we had the ‘Kingdom of God’ defined -repentence, baptism, one-on-one discipling, tithing, World Sectors and centralised leadership etc.. it was easy just to pretty much define the Kingdom of God in modern times as the ICOC -”God’s modern-day movement”.
But I believe, as with other things, we got ahead of ourselves. We went beyond what was written. We made dangerous assumptions, and that is, perhaps, why it’s prudent not say ‘this is the Kingdom of God’ or ‘that is the Kingdom of God’. You can keep all the ‘externalities’. You can say the right things, show up to all services, meetings, groups and events, you recite all the right scriptures, and define all the right doctrines, but that doesn’t mean you’re God’s kingdom, because God cuts through to the heart.
Our human definitions to the boundaries of God’s kingdom ultimately mean nothing, because the bible warns that even from within a congregation a corrupt leader can rise up to lead people astray -and they can still be under the umbrella of the organisation which you assume is so faithful.
Therefore, the kingdom of God can’t be seen so obviously, and it exists because a group of people have the right heart before God. There did seem to be two interpretations: one was that it ‘exists within you’ as in ‘in your hearts’, and the other was ‘among you’, as in existing within a bunch of Christians. Perhaps it’s similar to the concept as ‘where two or more are gathered in my name I am there also.’
It’s harder to make definitions of what is the kingdom of God in the present situation of post-2003 churches related to the ICOC -whether it’s ex-ICOC, ICOC cooperative, SODM or ‘mainline’ churches of Christ. I’ve made certain decisions from what I’ve witnessed, and the first is to oppose churches that employ one-on-one discipling. I also believe that members of congregations should be wiser and shrewder in regards to leadership in their church, and be prepared, if compelled by conscience, to leave a congregation and search others.
The good news is no leader can coerce or bully you into staying by claiming his church is ‘in the kingdom of God’ and another church is not included. The kingdom exists in your heart when you have a relationship with God and choose to support a fellowship that has the same mindset.
In the early days of the ICOC (1992-3) I found many of the sermons and lessons inspirational and I think there were many who had wisdom. But over time, due to the intense pressure to baptise and grow and the insular nature of the ICOC often one found the message being somewhat rehashed and you’d hear a lot of the same things said, albeit in slightly different ways or with different anecdotes.
And over time it became exhausting. Special service followed conference followed bigger special service and guest speaker, as if to continually try to kick-start a dying motor, (because from around 1995 to 2003 the church I was part of never managed to get back up to the 700 member it had enjoyed previously and constantly floundered around 400-500). Leaders were often replaced and foreign church leaders brought in and on every major service there was fierce preaching of “radical change” intermittently filled in with exhortations to not “plateau out” and be in fear of becoming critical, luke-warm and falling away.
This took it’s toll. If you’re constantly told to “radically change”, then by implication it must mean there’s something inherently wrong with you. And since the church was never growing, this reinforced the feeling of being in the “dog house”. Furthermore, the calling to “radically change” often just meant more feats of evangelism as we were desperate to make the church grow again. And the more we tried, the more we got frustrated. It really became a vicious circle. Even if there were more baptisms, that just meant eventually there were more “fall aways”. It was ridiculous when I think about it.
There were some good teachings -because we did read an awful lot of the bible, and if there was one good thing about the ICOC, it emphasised one’s own relationship with God with daily bible-study and prayer. Not to say other churches don’t, as I think many do, but the ICOC often lead the way in this, if it didn’t get too legalistic. And with that comes character change, the importance of dealing with sin, confessing, repenting but using God’s grace and not one’s own strength.
To be taught that was refreshing. You were more likely to be taught that from an elder, or a teacher, who didn’t have some guy higher up the ladder breathing down their neck on ABC stats (Attendance, Baptisms, Contribution). And you were more apt to hear good teachings from a regular guy leading the communion.
But the hype-services really came to be not much more than a circus act in an effort to boost attendance. That’s how I feel, looking back on it. But at the time you kind of had to get yourself into the frenzy during the great inspirational service by the guest speaker, and then spend hours at the venue after the message in fellowship telling people how “impacted” and “convicted” you were, and how it’s “changed your life”.
Is it really logical that every month or so you’re life is going to “radically” change? After a great inspirational sermon, a closing speaker would get up and say “we’re so inspired, but are you going to be different on Monday morning back at work, or are you going to be the same?” After being exhorted like that several times a year, you either have to be honest to yourself, and say “it’s not conceivable that I radically change every two months”.
Character change takes time, and if you have “radical” expectations to “radically” change you’re going to be faced with some choices after a while: keep coming and existing as a member who feels constantly in the doghouse, give up and walk away (which many did -from the ICOC, not necessarily Christianity) or put on your great big happy face and fake it. That means learning all the right religo-speak, which one can pick up before too long.
In my experience there was only one radically change: my repentance before baptism, which included changing bad habits, swearing, excessive drinking etc etc. It was radical, and it was refreshing and I believe it was not by my own strength, and I think that is the power of Christianity. From then on it’s a walk with God, it’s persevering, slow character change, many mess-ups along the way, confronting your own weaknesses but understanding God’s grace more. The main thing is to remain honest: honest to God, honest with yourself, and with others and I suspect it’s easy to lose that honesty and remain religious. That’s “pharisism”, because they became concerned with the “outer cup” and neglected the “inner cup”.
Ultimately your own Christian life is down to you. Who knows which church or city you’ll be in ten years down the line, or even if your current church will exist. Who knows then who will really care if you’re changing or spiritual, apart from you and, of course, God.
I’ll return after the Christmas break with posts that follow “About Persuasion”
I’m just updating my blogs in terms of links, layout and copyright. You’ll see I’ve licenced the blog and comic strips under a Creative Commons licence which allows people to copy and distribute it for non-commercial purposes and without making changes to it unless by getting permission from the author.
