How to decide on matters that are secondary (or less!)

What to do when the bible is silent, by Don Carson: Man o man, what a sermon! I had heard a summary previously but had never listened through it. 

Thanks very much Mikey for pointing me to it as I keep thinking through NT baptism and and the practice of infant baptism!

It got talked about a lot for its references to 'centre bounded unity'. But there's lots more in here we need to hear, I reckon. I listened to it twice through and almost wanted to go again.

I’d like to thoroughly recommend, to everyone, to listen or re-listen (!) to this sermon.

One warning - it's over an hour long: Bring the pot of coffee!

I was really helped by the following points:

“…

• We first need to ask, whenever the bible is ‘relatively’ silent on a matter: What is the theology which the bible itself attaches to that subject?
• Nothing exempts you from your obligation to do the exegesis yourself - When discerning what is theologically attached to a subject to which the bible is relatively silent; the first thing we need to do is study scripture for ourselves, not read the debates, the arguments and our favourite authors (Obvious, but not always done)
• The pragmatics of ministry require decisions and the chances of what side you will come down on with debatable issues will inevitably be affected in large part by what Biblical College you studied at.
• Eventually all graduates will need to make up their minds but on some doctrines it is ok to agree with ‘varying’ or ‘differing’ degrees of tenacity.
• Most decisions in these disputable areas have both good and bad defences; not all those defences on the same side of the matter as you will be without embarrassment
• Most decisions have entailments down the road – part of thinking things through is to project into the future what will be the implications for your future, the church’s future, successive generations, by making this decision on this matter?
• Most decisions are grounded in reading a variety of biblical texts a certain way and part of humility is to recognise there are other ways – and your ways are rarely without dispute. (Most decision turn in part on where we lay the maximum emphasis, or on our own personalities, or where we see the priorities for us and our context in the present; so our decisions are not infallible and we need to have humility)
• Some decisions turn on competing values and that means being forced to hierarchicalise those values. E.g. if our priority is evangelistic outreach we may be more flexible on some ecclesiological ideals. Some of our disputes turn on competing and complementary values from scripture.
• Be very suspicious of guru solutions. Nobody has all the truth. If you latch on to one school of thought, you rob the church of other complementary truths. Deal with principle, deal with text, deal with theological reflection, but be careful of accepting/following the school of ‘calvin’ or ‘Reformed theology’ or ‘Piper’ or ‘Driscol’ – this is worldly wisdom.
• Try to think strategically in thinking through unforeseen consequences – what is likely to be the implication of this decision? The danger of unforseen consequences is huge. You are never dealing with today alone. Whatever you do today will get magnified in your subsequent generations. Somewhere along the line your congregation will be accepting the social structure you’ve introduced but have forgotten the reasons why, and eventually after them, your children’s children will deny the basis for which you introduced it, but still uphold the practice!! You need to keep working out how you can keep the main thing the main thing.
• Centre bounded unity is the way to go (Versus boundary bounded unity). We need to define ourselves at the centre, not at the boundaries. You make sure all your leaders are on board with the strong and well defined centre, and you discipline in relation to agreement with the centre. Otherwise you drift around with rules and legalism about the boundaries and there is always pressure to include more and more by extending the boundary out further and further. We need to maintain the centre and define ourselves by the theology that is tight and based on genuine exposition.
• Ask God for wisdom; Christ himself offers it to us and God loves to give it - Sometimes it’s better to slow down and ask God to spare us from our own follies so that we might be wise as well as bold in the proclamation of the truth.…” 
  
  
  To listen click here:
  http://genevapush.com/resources/when_the_bible_is_silent

Raising the tone of our conversation

The Posting Policy of The Geneva Push website is so good I'm posting about it. I actually found these guidelines assuring as I read through their challenge to self-control on the web and their requirement to maintaining a high-level 'tone' in all conversation on their site.

It begins:

"The Internet is a brilliant place to witness people behaving badly. The belief that the web is somehow unreal has encouraged unbelievable behaviour. It is a sad fact that even believers have been known to express themselves in a particular way online that would be considered sinful in any other context. As a Christian network, The Geneva Push encourages its members to speak the truth, but to do so in love."

In general this is a rebuke much needed by our generation I think. It is commonplace today to be exposed, even regretably involved, in the fierce fighting of Christian argumentativeness, even amongst reformed Evangelical circles (such as the long comment threads recently on The Briefing).

Ironically, we children of the reformation show off our 'maturity' by pulling apart one another in critique and debate, often beginning with theology but ending in personal conflict and even fall out. Are we using our knowledge to love or to pull down?

Sadly, in a world of speed limits and regulation, guidelines are needed because we as people need to be told how to behave; by nature we are creatures that fail to govern ourselves internally and automatically. We need external controls to impose standards upon us; we need to be lead by God's Spirit.

Offline we are generally more careful to show self-control because our cultural etiquette, which itself is an external force providing norms of acceptance, provides us our much needed help in governing our behaviour.

But in the last decade or so, blogs and Facebook have of course allowed a new space in our lives where we can find it so easy to forget to apply these norms and in this sense forget 'ourselves'. Like failing to think about the risks of entering into a friendly game of gambling, we can leave ourselves open to losing many of our usual restraints. We can so easily become lazy, and ultimately careless, because without these automatic rules for engagement, we have no necessary commitment to a certain standard of communication that will likely be appreciated by all parties involved in our conversations.

Ironically these are often the most public of spaces where we can do the most damage to our community, to our churches.

So it's probably fair to say that in recent times Facebook (and the like) have become not only a force for much good, but now also one of the most significant forces for bad within our community life. Just as for Businesses and other organisations more generally, the effect of Facebook upon the dynamics of our community life have surely emerged as one of the greatest challenges now for church leaders.

Perhaps we need to follow the lead of The Geneva Push; perhaps we need our leaders to give us policies to help us govern our use of social media as members -- not necessarily as prescriptive regulations, but as guiding principles that would help us to think through and apply the gospel of grace, the command to love, and the call to growth in maturity within the context of our online community relationships.

Argumentativeness

Argumentativeness is ungodliness.

I am very opinionated; I'll be the first to concede that. But what's worse, I always speak as if "I am right", even when I don't actually have this conviction in a particular conversation. It's actually only the beginning of my problems. Then there is the tone of my voice; I always sound deadly serious, even when I'm trying to be light or humorous. And then there is my track record; I know I'm cantankerous because I've been told all my life by everybody that I actually make a point of disagreeing with people I disagree with. Am I the only one with this problem?

Phillip Jensen in this great Interview talks about his argumentativeness and what he learned about it over the years:

"As a young man I enjoyed a fight too much. I grew up in a family of brothers. We fought a lot, and I grew up through debating and arguing, and I liked a good argument. A very kind senior academic came and talked to me years ago, and pointed out that when the Bible urges us to “flee the passions of youth”, it’s not talking about sex. It’s talking about argumentativeness, if you look at the context (in 2 Tim 2). The Lord’s servant must not be argumentative, but teach patiently and pray that God may change your heart. So as a young man, my own personality and argumentativeness was too strong. So that was a lesson to learn."

(The Mistakes of Phillip Jensen, The Briefing, Matthias Media, 12 March 2012)

Like Jensen, I was brought up in the rings of the debating team, and baptised in a household of brothers and boxing gloves.

So what do we do about it?

Part of the challenge is that the same Scriptures that talk about guarding against error and fighting for the truth, also instruct us to keep ourselves from unprofitable arguments and descending into fights about points of secondary importance.

One thing I've been trying to do over the last few years: Only disagree with somebody when either,

(1) it is a matter of life and death (this is body, soul or spirit of course), or
(2) they are inviting or would welcome your 'argument' because they are already or would actually wrestle with the issue themselves when you raise your concerns with them.

Is this too simplistic?

Either it's so important that damaging the relationship pales into mere insignificance in comparison to the significance of the issue in your view; or you know directly or indirectly that the person is going to actually thank you for telling them the truth about what you believe about the issue, regardless of whether they agree with you, because they are genuinely open to changing their minds.

Of course (2) is effected by 'how' you tell them in the first place. And (2) implies that a person who wants to argue about it only because they are 'open' in the sense that they want to talk about it to exploit the debate as a platform for promoting their views, that person is not at all in this category. Anyone who argues with these people opens up everyone concerned to divisive and unprofitable arguments that only spread ungodliness.

Even though I've got an immensely long way to go in this area, one thing at least I can see now after years of debating and disagreements, there is nothing more embarrassing than a Christian who wants to take up every fight over every issue with anybody who manifests a distinctively different opinion about an issue than themselves. It goes without saying that I'm forever embarrassed about my track record in this regard.

Whether it's parenting, or 6-day creationism, or baptism or Israel's future--as Christians we should not be arguing about these things.

I've talked previously about Christians arguing about schooling. I've also discussed creationism. I'm not saying don't talk about your views; but what I am saying is that whenever you find yourself disagreeing with another over them, stop it there: we shouldn't argue over these disagreements, but maintain our unity by keeping the peace over differing views on disputable matters within the church.

To be clear, I've explained elsewhere that this call to 'peace making' does not apply whenever true and pure Christianity is the subject of threat; by for example questionable 'Christianity', false teaching, and persistently disobedient Christians. The gospel itself, the purity of the church and the health of christians is at risk here; these are examples of where the Bible does call for disunity. In contrast to our response to disagreements over secondary matters, here we should and must divide for the sake of the churches purity. And about these matters we should of course argue; because that's about the life or death of Christians (1). In fact, it's this perspective that shows us why we shouldn't be argumentative about anything else; because we need to save our arguing and fighting for these matters that are of vital importance.

But bare in mind that I've been talking here about arguments in the church. None of this applies to the world. In fact, I don't believe we should ever be arguing with the non-Christian. Even on (1), when it's a matter of life or death -- it's about the gospel we preach -- Jesus commanded that if they don't welcome you or listen to you, turn around and walk away (don't throw your pearls before swine; protest simply with your feet). And about those matters that are to the church itself of primary imporance, about the world Paul says, "in that case you would have to leave the world" (1 Corinthians 5).

Yes we must be outspoken; yes we must denounce the sin of our world. As did John the Baptist, we must put our necks on the line and be unafraid to be hated by the world, because we 'testify to it that what it does is evil'. But we do not fight. We speak, but we do not argue.

It's not only for practical purposes that we shouldn't be arguing with the unbeliever [afterall, we can't expect unbelievers to be doing anything but sinning], but it's also for theological reasons: we are not their judge, but unworthy sinners ourselves. Though we certainly are called to judge one another in the church, we must leave all judgment of the non-Christian to Christ for that Last Day.

So although we are called to argue with our Christian brothers over those things of gospel importance, before the world we mustn't be argumentative at all.

And in the church, over all other issues except for what is related to the fundamental essense of Christianity itself, and is of fundamental importance to the gospel, over all other views and beliefs let's just agree to 'have views', or be quiet.

Discussing our views can be constructive, if it falls into the category of (2). But otherwise it's actually descructive to the church, and brings shame where we are meant to be bringing glory to Christ in the church.

It was to the church in Rome who had not learnt to simply accept one another regardless of the different views of its members about food, drink, the Sabbath, etc., that Paul found it necessary to command:

"Whatever you believe about these things, keep between yourself and God" (Romans 14)

So there's my view of it. But what about you? Do you agree? 

Christians arguing about schooling

My wife and I were grieved this week to read online some Christians we know arguing so divisively about whether homeschooling is a matter of right or wrong. Christian homeschooling for some is based on very strong convictions; in fact, for some, Christian parents who fail to home-educate their children are sinning because they fail to serve God's law in their families (Psalm 1:1-3). On the other side, some who disagree with this premise may feel so strongly opposed to this notion that they risk being just as judgmental on home-schoolers as they attack this biblical basis in justifying their own freedom to not home school.

In these situations, I'm reminded of Paul's approach and caution to the church at Rome when he commanded that divided community to stop condemning one another in areas that involve convictions of faith as we each seek to obey Christ according to our own understanding and conscience.

Romans 14 is the passage I'm referring to, where Paul does concede that even in regard to these issues, it nonetheless is a matter of weaker or stronger faith. If it is a matter of faith that causes the divide, it is even more surpising that Paul commands:

"Accept him whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters (vs. 1) ...
...and everything that does not come from faith is sin." (vs. 23)

Even though an issue may depends on understanding and confidence in God's word, or a love of his law, it does not for that reason mean that the issue is a matter of sinfulness or obedience; for all may be obeying Christ. We cannot for this reason enforce a rule about the issue upon other Christians.

Notice in this passage, what is sinful is not actually related to what we actually do or don't do -- whether we drink or don't drink alcohol, or whether we observe of don't observe the Sabbath (and I'd infer, whether we home school or don't home school).

But what is sinful is to either (or both):

1). Fail to accept other Christians who are acting to obey Christ according to their own understanding and conscience (Rom 14:1, 13, 19)

2). Fail to obey Christ according to our own understanding and conscience because we seek instead acceptance from other Christians (Rom 14:5, 14, 23)

Legalism and Judgmentalism

Much more important in working out what is right or wrong for us to do is why we are doing what we are doing. It's about our motives. Sin is always about the 'heart' of the matter. That's why the Apostles don't prescribe rules about right conduct (moralism), but they command right attitudes of obedience: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

It is legalism to insist that homeschooling is an absolute matter of Christian righteousness for all. But it is also judgmentalism to condemn as moralistic another Christian who believes that their own homeschooling of their children is for them obedience to Christ.

"So whatever you believe about these things keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who does not condemn himself by what he approves." (Rom 14:22)