This is part
2 of my discussion on Religious Concepts. The last discussion ended on How It Began: Building Religious Concepts
From Scripture I will move onto Worshiping
Doctrine.
Worshiping Doctrine
One
important product of Christian religious Concepts is Doctrine, essentially a
set of ideas and themes drawn from a Concept, and woven together to assert a
specific philosophical tenet that generally was often not explicitly present in
the scriptural text, but was imputed from it by linking several verses and
ideas found there. Some are fairly straightforward and provoke little
controversy, while others continue to be contested.
Some of
these Doctrines are labeled heresies, usually because they tended to divide the
Church into factions, or because they contained elements that appeared to
misrepresent God, or contradicted the dominant Doctrines of the period.
There is an
old saying: “History is written by the victors.” This helps in understanding
why we believe what we believe today in the Church, at least in terms of
Doctrine.
The problem
begins to unveil itself here: Once a Doctrine gains sufficient prominence, it
tends to draw not just advocates, but worshipers. Instead of worshiping God
alone, we worship Doctrines about God, and promote and defend them
passionately. They are easier to understand and control than a Being Who is
Holy, Wholly Other, Omnipotent and Omniscient.
Even if I
believe God loves me, and desires loving relationship with me, His power and otherness frighten me—as they should.
Doctrine
doesn’t scare me. As with wealth, fame, success, and possessions, I want to
hold on to my doctrine and defend it. And like wealth, fame, success, and
possessions, I can and do make an idol of it.
We die for
and kill for idols all the time. Humans always have. We still do. Whether
“honor” or position, fame or religion, nationalism or race, gender or beauty,
we tend to idolize what we want or
want to keep, and we fight for it, often regardless of the harm we do to other
people or to our world.
We make
idols and fight to defend them. We justify such battles with self-righteous
explanations, and we labor to get others to bend to our will or submit to our
vision. Such idolatry is not unique to Christians, or even to religion, but it
is common to our humanity. This is why Scripture is so compelling, and why we
must listen again to God’s first commandment:
You must not have any other god but me. You must not make for
yourself an idol of any kind, or an image of anything in the heavens or on the
earth or in the sea. You must not bow down to them or worship them, for I, the
LORD your God, am a jealous God who will not tolerate your affection for any
other gods. (Deuteronomy
5:7-9)
In the event
that anyone thinks this passage is simply about tribal gods made of stone or
wood, and not about idols like pride or
fame or property or wealth—or idols of Doctrine, Ritual, even
Hermeneutics—just read the Bible. It is replete with such idols and
exhortations against them. We began all of those kinds of idolatry right at the
beginning, and they were well-known to God and to the ancient authors of
Scripture. We were warned early!
Our idolatry
of Concept—especially the part called Doctrine and supposedly all about God and
holy behavior—leads us to attack, disfellowship, injure and hate others who
cling to different Doctrines, or to none.
Even if
their Doctrines are wrong, we conduct our debates as if we are exempt from God’s commandments
about loving neighbors and even enemies. We attack and belittle others. We
treat them with condescension and sarcasm, full of ourselves and with
self-righteousness. At our worst, we murder our opponents en masse. The
partisanship for and the idolatry of our Doctrine wounds the heart of God. Our
actions are wrong—even if our
Doctrines are right.
The problem
is rooted in our focus on Doctrines, and debate about them, rather than on loving relationship with God and neighbor.
If we want
evidence that the Church has forgotten what Jesus taught, we need only consider
the state of the Church—disputing not over how better to live as Jesus called
us to live, or about love of God and each other, but over Concepts: doctrine, worship, authority, liturgy, baptism,
gender, Communion, translation, hermeneutics, tradition, tongues, evolution,
end-times, titles, music, rapture and the internal structure of God. And a
thousand thousand more. We have collapsed into a heap of warring factions, followers
of this Concept fighting followers of that
Concept. We are obsessed.
The problem
is that our foundation is not God, not even Scripture. It is instead
Philosophy, and its Concepts.
We are not
doing what Jesus told us to do.
We love
Concepts and fight about them in the “Lectures About God” lecture halls. We
avoid the door labeled “God.”
Even now,
seeing this achingly clearly perhaps for the first time, we will likely return
to our fights, and we will find other things to do. We will justify our sin as
a defense of God.
Here is an
example of the concepts we fight about and how the problem manifests:
Baptism
Baptism with
water in Scripture is a physical action with spiritual meaning. It signifies
initiation and acceptance by God, was and is used by Jews to signify repentance
and purity (both literally and figuratively), and occurs in the New Testament
with John baptizing both repentant Jews, and Jesus. Later Jesus instructs His
disciples to take the Good News to all nations and baptize them “in the name of
the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” (Matthew 28:19) We later read of the disciples doing
just this.
There are no rules given in Scripture
regarding who can do baptism or receive it, although many rules have been formulated based upon
various verses referring to baptism, as well as upon varying Concepts of God and the Church.
Nowhere in
Scripture will you find a formula for only an adult making a specific and
individual profession of faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and then
being fully immersed in water, with certain unfailing words, in order to be
baptized and become a member of the church. But today you will find certain
sects of Christians who will insist that certain specific rituals and practices
about this are necessary, or not, to the true faith.
• Some
will baptize infants unfailingly, and adults only if they had not been baptized
as infants. These sects will not re-baptize an adult if he or she was baptized
as an infant, believing baptism can only happen once, though they normatively
require someone baptized as a child to go through “confirmation” when they reach
the age of reason, and then profess
their faith in Jesus.
•
Others
refuse to baptize infants, insisting that only an adult can make a true
profession of faith, and only after this
can baptism occur. If an adult was baptized as an infant, it is considered no
baptism at all, and re-baptizing is required
(though of course it isn’t considered “re-” because the first baptism isn’t
acknowledged).
• Some
sprinkle or pour water for baptism; others call this “Satan’s counterfeit” and
require full immersion.
• Some
denominations recognize baptisms done by some other denominations. Others
consider them meaningless, and insist on baptizing anyone joining their church
from outside the denomination.
• Some
ritually baptize ancestors who died outside of their denomination, and even
outside of the faith.
• Some
churches will allow followers of Jesus to receive Communion in their church
only if they have been baptized. Others will allow anyone professing faith to
receive Communion. Still others will allow anyone who desires it to receive
Communion. Some will allow only members of their denomination, and who have
been baptized in their denomination, to receive Communion in their church.
• And
some believe, as in the story I told back in Chapter 3, that unless you have
been baptized in their single local church, you are still lost in your sins.
Every one of
these positions on baptism is argued voluminously by countless authors over
many centuries, and those who disagree with any of these positions have either
fled or been forced out of their churches. Although today these debates consist, at best, of lengthy analysis and
argument, and at worst of ad hominem
accusations, sarcasm and disfellowship, over the centuries thousands of people
were literally tortured and killed for choosing one side or another
in this disagreement.
It was and
still is a scandal.
Every one of
these rituals and practices (as well as the Doctrines and Canons that accompany
them) came from a religious Concept, drawn from pieces of Scripture and tradition,
and reasoned out in a thoroughly analytical Greek way, and then used as a plumb
line by which to judge the faith and worthiness of individuals and other
Concepts.
Religious
Concepts of Jesus range from believing He is actually literally also Father God
and Holy Spirit (manifesting Himself as each as needed), to three Persons in
One God, to belief that He was a liberal political activist (not divine at all)
railroaded to death by conservative enemies. All of these, and thousands of others, are the excuse for bitter dispute,
division, divorce, disfellowship, and with many, even torture and killing.
What in
heaven does this have to do with loving God and neighbor?
It is
attention to things, not God or people. Even if we are thoroughly convinced
that our Concept is superior to the other Concepts, how sad it must make the
heart of God to see us viciously attack and separate from each other for the
defense of our favorites.
We elevate
things above people. Even though our “things” are built with religious words,
and are partly derived from Scripture, they are still Concepts, not God and not
human beings! Jesus did not set aside
the Law and the Prophets, but He did insist they hang upon, and are subservient
to, love of God and neighbor.
We fabricate
religious Concepts, worship them, and we hurt actual people while defending them. We fail to preserve the
love of God and neighbor.
Do our
Concepts outrank love of God and neighbor? Sadly, the answer is yes. No
excuses. It is what we have come to. God forgive us. What shall we do?
In Christ,
Pastor
George
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