Christian Unity

I recently discovered the site of Peace On Earth Ministries (POEM). From their Purpose statement on the web site:

To challenge those who share the same religious heritage in the Restoration Movement to recognize one another as brothers and sisters in Christ, and to reach out to all who believe in Christ through the Word (John 17:20).

It is always encouraging to find someone else singing from the same sheet of music!

In particular I want to recommend an article titled Dear Lord, Give Us a Vision Greater Than Our Division (PDF). This was a presentation made at the National Missionary Convention on November 17, 2006 by Victor Knowles.

Thanks to an alert reader named “hawk” for pointing me to an excellent article in the restoration archives by W Carl Ketcherside. The title of the article is The Death of a Dream. It comes from the 1972 edition of Ketcherside’s journal, The Mission Messenger. (I’ve posted about Ketcherside previously.) In The Death of a Dream, Ketcherside compares Thomas Campbell’s Declaration and Address to a masterpiece painting by Raphael, which was hidden from Napoleon’s armies by painting an unremarkable picture over the original. Subsequently the masterpiece was forgotten, until the inferior painting started to peel away with age.

Like Raphael’s painting, the original aim of the Declaration and Address has been forgotten for over a century. Rather than unifying all Christians on the scriptures, the Restoration Movement has become a spectacle of division. But now there is evidence that the inferior painting of sectarianism is beginning to crack and peel away.

Ketcherside goes on to summarize the Declaration and Address (I wrote a previous blog series on the thirteen propositions here) He focuses on the aspect of the propositions addressing inferences and human opinions, and the need for a kind of unity that accepts diversity on such matters.

Then he describes an event in which Thomas Campbell publicly extended fellowship to a man with whom he disagreed on significant doctrinal points. Despite the controversy that this prompted, Campbell said:

Brother Raines has been with me during the last several months and we have fully unbosomed ourselves to each other. He is philosophically a Restorationist and I am a Calvinist, but notwithstanding this difference of opinion between us, I would put my right hand into the fire and have it burned off, before I would hold up my hands against him. And from all I know of Brother Raines, if I were Paul, I would have him in preference to any young man of my acquaintance, to be my Timothy.

Thomas Campbell found it in his heart to embrace a man as a brother despite differing doctrinal understandings. In the 20th century, the Restoration Movement lost sight of the kind of unity that leaves room for differing opinions. The movement has fully abandoned this biblical principle (Rom 14:1) Ketcherside laments how far the Restoration Movement has fallen:

We are divided over missionary societies, instrumental music, centralized control, colleges, orphan homes, national radio and television programs, the right to own television sets, leavened bread, unleavened bread, the manner of breaking the bread, fermented wine, individual cups, Bible classes, uninspired literature, evangelists, the hiring of ministers, the pastor system, marriage of divorced persons, speaking in tongues, divine healing, foot-washing, the hour of meeting to eat the Lord’s Supper, and a host of other things. And every division has been brought about by someone esteeming an opinion of greater value than the blood of Christ. Those who stand together one week and sing “Blest Be the Tie that Binds,” sever it the following week over some trivial concept.

Then Ketcherside pledges to work for unity with diversity:

I will cross over every barrier, break through every wall, and ignore every fence which men have erected in Christ Jesus my Lord. I will labor with all of my brethren who permit me to do so, and love those who will not. My only creed is Christ, and while I respect every rock of truth scattered over God’s revelational landscape, I will build upon none of them. My hope of heaven depends not so much upon propagating a party to defend a truth as it does in personally casting myself in absolute dependence upon him who is the truth. And while every truth is precious to me, and will be included as discovered in my rock garden for meditation and enjoyment, I will plant my trust only upon him whom God planted his community, the Rock of Ages! For other foundation can no man lay!
…

This means that every child of God is my brother. And I have no half-brothers or step-brothers in the Lord. I accept you where you are and as you are. I accept you as God accepted me, in my weakness, frailty and failures. If you are good enough to be his son or daughter you are not too bad to be my brother or sister. And I receive you, and receive you now. We can stop this silly march into oblivion. We can halt the cancerous growth of division which is slowly consuming the body. We do not need to wait until we have debated every action of every faction. We can be one in Christ Jesus now! All we need to do is to extend the hand of fellowship in spite of differences, as did the brethren in Lexington, almost a century-and-a-half ago, and we can walk out of this hall tonight blessed as peacemakers and deserving to be called the children of God.

I have brethren who, in good conscience, can accompany their praise service to God, with instruments of music; I have brethren whose consciences will not allow them to do so. I have brethren who give money to support Herald of Truth and never look at it; I have brethren who refuse to support it and never miss seeing it. I have brethren who teach in Sunday Schools with classes for all ages, and others who gather in undivided assemblies to study the sacred pages. I have brethren who remember the shedding of the blood while drinking from individual cups; I have brethren who pass one container to the body of saints. They are all my brethren. I love them all.

Encouraging evidence is appearing that this kind of unity is once again on the minds of Christians. The recent decision at Richland Hills is one illustration. May the dream of unity be reborn, and become reality throughout all of the Lord’s churches!

Editing (again…) to update the links to the three messages….

I want to recommend Rick Atchley’s recent three sermon series explaining the Richland Hills church’s decision to add a Saturday evening instrumental worship service. He has done a superb job of saying some things that have needed to be said in churches of Christ for over a hundred years. Thanks to Brett for providing the link to these sermons (though I know and respect that Brett does not agree with Rick’s message).

I am wrestling with whether or not to post articles about these three messages. Maybe I should leave it alone. I doubt I can add much to improve what Rick has said. I do want to call for those on both sides of the issue to accept one another without passing judgment on this or any other disputable matter.

I confess to feeling a little weird this time of year.

Santa Claus? Reindeer? Manger? Hannukah? What is this time of year, anyway?

Thirty years ago when I was baptized into Christ, I recall wondering how I would deal with the dilemma of Christmas. Would I teach my children about Santa Claus? You know, the fat old man who sees you when you’re sleeping, knows when you’re awake, and knows if you’ve been bad or good? He says he’ll only give presents to the good children, but we all know that practically everyone gets gifts from Santa (unless they are a victim of poverty…). He says he holds to a standard but really it doesn’t matter so much. When our children grow up, and realize Santa was a myth, do they transfer that permissiveness to their concept of God? Or do they consider the myth of Santa, and conclude that God too is a myth? Or do they just wonder whether Mom and Dad can be trusted to tell them the truth?

I decided that I either had to leave Santa out of Christmas, or treat it as a secular holiday. I did not think I could do both. (Rom 14:5-6). Over the years I have not been completely consistent with my initial reasoning. We tried not to lie to our children about Santa but we did permit them to believe what they picked up from the culture around us. And of course the gifts were always there by the fireplace or tree on Christmas morning. It was fun but I felt weird about it.

As for Hannukah, I really didn’t think much about it. I understood it to be a non-Biblical holiday celebrated by modern Jews since they couldn’t celebrate Jesus’ birth. Recently I learned more about the holiday from Bobby Valentine’s blog post on the subject. Hannukah is the Hebrew word for dedication. It is the same festival mentioned in John 10:22 as the Feast of Dedication. Interestingly, John mentions it as he might mention any other festival, without any indication that it was not a proper festival. John’s readers would have been familiar with the events of the Macabees (recorded in the Old Testament Apocrypha) which led to the institution of the festival. Neither John nor Jesus gave us any indication that they rejected the validity of the festival. Although there were no prophets when it was instituted, and no command from God to do so, it seems that Jesus accepted the festival as a way of honoring God for delivering his people.

Maybe I should view Christmas in the same way. That does not answer the question about Santa, but it does help me feel better about the spiritual aspects of the holiday. Hey, maybe I should celebrate Hannukah as well. Jesus and his disciples apparently did so.

This past weekend I gave away my oldest daughter. (Don’t worry, the Dad is doing just fine!) Weddings are really cool times. This one was particularly so because it was my daughter, and because it brought together dearly loved people from all the different time periods in our lives. It seems that this only happens at weddings and funerals. Of those two, a wedding is a much more delightful event!

My new son-in-law is of Korean descent, which made the event even more amazing. There were quite a few of his relatives who came all the way from South Korea to attend the wedding! I’m sure his family had a wonderful reunion just as the bride’s family did. My side of the family had our family Christmas get-together after the wedding, and enjoyed a great time together.

Blogging has taken a back seat for the past week, but I have some ideas for articles and plan to pick up the pace again during the Christmas holidays.

Thanks to Phil Spadaro at the Restoration Unity blog for pointing out some interesting poll results published by the Christian Chronicle, an international newspaper of the Churches of Christ. In a recent article they listed the ten most-voted polls for 2006. Three of the top four were related to unity:

• Do you support fellowship between a cappella Churches of Christ and instrumental Christian Churches?
  
• What is your position on instrumental music in worship?
  
• How interested are you in 2006 talks between churches of Christ & instrumental Christian Churches?
  

Opinions among those responding are quite divided on these topics. Therefore it is crucial that the two sides proceed wisely. Human nature wants to quarrel and “win” by bringing everyone over to “our side”. Unfortunately that is extremely unlikely to succeed. Instead, the biblical approach is to accept one another without passing judgment on disputable matters, and to avoid putting a stumbling block in anyone’s way. The non-instrumental brethren need to accept their instrumental brethren without passing judgment over instruments. And the instrumental group need to lay down the instruments whenever their non-instrumental brothers and sisters are present, to avoid being the cause of conflict and sin. However important the issue of instruments may be, it cannot compare to the importance of loving all who have been adopted as sons by God.

Friday night I watched the ABC special titled North Korea: Inside the Shadows . This was the story of Diane Sawyer’s visit to North Korea. It is not often that an American reporter is permitted to enter that country with a camera crew to produce a documentary. The visitors were carefully managed by “minders” or “handlers” who controlled what they were allowed to see and to film. Even so, the story that was shown was of an other-worldly cult nation in which the government controls every aspect of life and indoctrinates the people with the government-approved point of view on virtually every topic (even including government sanctioned hair styles!)

The most interesting thing about the show to me was the state of Christianity in North Korea. There is a government-sanctioned church. The pastor of one congregation was interviewed briefly. He sang a short bit of Jesus Loves Me in Korean. The show left the impression that the people are free to practice Christianity in North Korea.

Other sources suggest otherwise. For example, the World Net Daily recently reported:

There are estimates of tens thousands of Christians detained in prison camps [in North Korea] just for their faith. Sometimes entire families are imprisoned because of a statement from just one member, reports said.

Roli knows the risks are high: four of her Christian friends so far have been executed because of their witness. She was arrested herself, and has spent time in those prison camps.

When we think of the kind of persecution faced by believers in North Korea today, it puts into perspective the petty things about which we tend to quarrel, in our world of religious freedom. I doubt the North Korean Christians are very concerned about the instrumental music debate, or the number of cups to be used in communion. I doubt they are quarrelling among themselves about such doctrinal controversies. Their energies must be focused on the real enemy.

There is an interesting post and discussion at Preacher Mike’s blog about recent developments regarding instrumental music in churches of Christ. Check it out!