Tag Archives: unity

People pleasing

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I’m a people pleaser. Much more than I should be. I want everyone to like me. I want everyone to think well of me. Even though I consciously know that’s not possible, I still seek to have the approval of all.

Not that I think offending everyone should be a goal. Nor that insensibility toward the feelings of others is a good thing. Still, I think that too much time spent worrying about what others might think isn’t a good thing.

When differences arise at church, one of the great threats that is always presented is that people will leave. You’re going to offend people with this. People may start leaving.

I’ve come to think that, to some degree, people leaving a congregation is a natural thing. Especially in a town like Abilene, where you have dozens of churches of Christ. And I also think that congregations can be held hostage by a few who wield the threat of an exodus.

When we were in Córdoba, we ran a language institute, an annex of a large binational center. It was a prestigious institute. I’ll never forget something one of my colleagues said once. He said that when people come in complaining about their prices, he pulls out a list of inexpensive language institutes and offers it to them. And he tells them, “If the only factor you are considering is price, you would do well to consider these.”

I don’t have any specific issues in mind, nor am I planning anything controversial. I just got to wondering: how do you decide when to say, “Doggone those torpedoes, full speed ahead!” and when do you say “Unity is the most important thing”? Obviously, our goal is to please God, not to please men. However, we’re also taught to act out of love and to seek peace in the body. When do we decide that something is for the greater good, even when it steps on some people’s toes?

Any suggestions?

Photo by by Petr Kratochvil

Unity, Not Uniformity

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A while back I wrote about the diversity in the church in the first century. I was reading Acts 21 yesterday and was struck again by this story. There’s an idea out there that the early church was fairly Jewish in nature, but that it outgrew that characteristic.

Passages like Acts 21 show that idea to be untrue. Here we are years after Pentecost, years after the “Jerusalem council” of Acts 15, yet James describes the Jerusalem church by saying, “You see, brother, how many thousands of Jews have believed, and all of them are zealous for the law.” (Acts 21:20) Then he says to Paul: “Then everybody will know there is no truth in these reports about you, but that you yourself are living in obedience to the law.” (Acts 21:24)

James not only thinks that many in Jerusalem are living according to the Law, but he feels that Paul is doing so as well. And Paul never corrects him. Instead, Paul agrees to participate in a Jewish vow to show his dedication to the Law.

In the past, I asked one brother on this blog what freedom Paul was talking about in Galatians 5:1 [“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” (Galatians 5:1)] That brother said it was Judaism. That makes no sense, given that the Galatians weren’t Jews before they became Christians. And this incident in Acts 21 happened years after the letter to the Galatians was written.

There’s no doubt about it. The early church was much more tolerant of diversity than the modern church often is. It’s an area we need to grow in.

Focused worship

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[Another old bulletin article… I’ll get back to fresh writing soon…]

I’m not really into poetry. I’m often frustrated by my lack of culture, my lack of appreciation of many of the “finer things.” I don’t particularly care for opera, nor ballet nor classical music. And I don’t read poetry.

When we had to read poetry in school, it was the rare poet who really appealed to me. One that did, however, was Robert Burns. And one of his poems that stands out in my mind is one called “To A Louse,” with the subtitle “On Seeing One on a Lady’s Bonnet at Church.” The poem addresses a louse which is crawling around on the head of a young lady. The real point of the poem, however, is the vanity of the young lady. She, noticing the looks and pointing directed her way, vainly thinks they are admiring her and begins to toss her hair. The last stanza, in modern English (Burns wrote in Scottish), says:

O would some Power the gift to give us
To see ourselves as others see us!
It would from many a blunder free us,
And foolish notion:
What airs in dress and gait would leave us,
And even devotion!

It’s a brilliant thought, and I could certainly do worse than write an article on this idea. Yet my thoughts are turned a different direction. I’m wondering how many of us would play the part of Mr. Burns in that church service, focusing our attention on the young lady in front of us and the people all around us, rather than focusing on the worship we profess to perform. How many times have we come away thinking about Jenny (the name of the girl in the poem) and her louse, rather than our Lord and His sacrifice.

I remember numerous times in Sunday School when, following a prayer, one of the children would announce: “Mrs. Davis, Bradley didn’t have his eyes closed.” This would lead to the inevitable question of course: “How do you know?” It never seemed to dawn on us children that spying on one another during the prayer was worse than not closing your eyes! (And, of course, you couldn’t close your eyes and still spy, so you were guilty of the same offense as the accused).

It’s easy to laugh at such things in children. It’s much harder to laugh at them in adults. In fact, it makes me want to cry from frustration at times.
“He raised his hands!”
“She tapped her foot!”
“He didn’t sing!”
“She sang too loud!”
and the list goes on and on.

It makes me want to reply: “How do you know?” Before you answer, let me help you with the answer: you know because you weren’t focused on God. “Well, she distracted me.” Is that her problem or yours? If you are truly focused, you don’t get distracted that easily.

I can see it in myself. There are many times when I can’t even tell you what the person next to me was doing during the service. Those are the times I was focused on God. There are other times when I’m watching the passing of the communion trays, when I’m seeing if Brother So-and-So is here, when I’m worried about the sound or the air conditioning, and I realize that God does not have my full attention.

Not to criticize Mr. Burns, but I wonder just how concentrated he was in his worship to notice the louse, to follow its movements for several minutes, to notice the reactions of those around him, to watch Jenny toss her hair, etc. If I were in his place at that moment, I would take a moment and apologize to God for my disrespect to him.
Maybe we could rewrite the poem a bit:

O would some Power the gift to give us
To see ourselves, not those around us!

Nothing good is said in the Bible of those who critically observe the worship of others (think Michal and David!). Much good is said of those who strive to worship God in Spirit and in truth.

Don’t let the lice distract you. Fix your eyes on things above. Concentrate on your worship. Because, in the final day, whose worship is God going to ask you about: yours or those around you? Will He praise us for having spotted the errors in those around us or rebuke us for neglecting Him while spying on our brothers? I’d rather not find out.

The crabs and the ants

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In Cuba last week, I shared an old sermon illustration about how to keep crabs in a bucket. They say that if you put one crab in a bucket, you’d better have a good lid, because the crab can easily climb out. If you place two crabs in a bucket, however, there’s no need for a lid. When starts to climb out, the other one will pull him back down.

Contrast that with ants. They will pile themselves one upon the other to allow the colony to reach a higher place. When flooding comes, they roll into a ball, a mass of ants that floats on the water. Some of the ants will drown, but the colony survives.

I know which one I think I should be as a Christian.

The Black List

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He drew a circle that shut me out–
Heretic, a rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!
Edwin Markham

I grow weary of those that would place themselves in the place of God, deciding who is and who isn’t worthy of the name Christian. A few weeks ago on Twitter, someone from the Christian Chronicle dared to quote a preacher who is on the black list for some in the churches of Christ (and you thought Joe McCarthy was dead). Quickly someone wrote to ask why he and his co-workers were so “besotted with progressives.” (Interestingly enough, this person had also been frequently quoted by the man he was criticizing; was he calling himself a progressive?)

It’s not the first time I’ve seen such criticism aimed at the Chronicle, a publication that attempts the difficult task of covering the broadest possible spectrum within churches of Christ (too broad for some, not broad enough for others). It’s always easier to align yourself with one camp or the other than to attempt to maintain journalistic objectivity.

I’m on an e-mail list on Yahoo of preachers from churches of Christ. Every once in a while, someone will write asking for the name of a “sound” congregation in a certain area. I’ve pressed for a definition of that term on a few occasions, but have only been met with embarrassed silence. No one wants to admit to keeping a McCarthy-like black list, but it exists for many.

A few years ago, someone at the church I was working with gave me a copy of a brotherhood publication. This particular issue was about “Change Agents” (this brother had gotten numerous copies for men in the church). One article had a list of “change agent” churches, institutions, publications, etc. At least that brother was bold enough to make his black list public.

Am I guilty of the same? Probably. I do find myself rolling my eyes at times when I see certain publications or institutions mentioned, but I make an effort to read what I can of what they produce. They are right about some things that I’m not. I don’t even know what they are, but I know that it’s true. There is no one that I can’t learn something from.

I grow impatient with those who would divide the Lord’s church. May I never be guilty of such. There are enough powers in this world that are working against God’s kingdom; we don’t need any internal forces doing the same. I’ll close with one of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite preachers of the past:

“I never call Christians or others ‘anti’s,’ ‘digressives, ‘ mossbacks,’ ‘tackies,’ or ‘trash.’ I concede to all, and accord to all, the same sincerity and courtesy I claim for myself, as the Golden Rule demands…” T.B. Larimore