Attempts at Honesty

Reflections on the interplay of the Bible and Culture

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Beware the Leaven

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In my Bible reading, I read this verse and wanted to dig deeper to understand the meaning of the verse.

Jesus said to them, “Watch and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”

Matthew 16:6, ESV

During my investigation, I found this paragraph which was written by William Campbell in his commentary on Mark 8:15 which is a parallel passage:

“What then is the special point in view in warning against the leaven of these sects? Their two systems were far apart; and yet they were then and have been since, the two chief sources of danger to the Church. Formalism on the one hand, and rationalism on the other, which are but other names for the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees, have in every age been the Church’s insidious enemies; and against these Jesus here raises his voice in warning to his church. The Pharisees added to the divinely appointed ceremonies, till all their religion consisted in a punctillious observance of outward forms. The Sadducees were willingly to admit so much of religious belief and practice as they conceived to be consistent with reason, that is, with the Epicurean philosophy of Greece and Rome which they embraced. The first of these evil influences, formalism, early pervaded the church of Rome, and expelled spirituality from this powerful Christian organization. The latter, rationalism, pervaded the reformed churches of the continent of Europe, and for more than a century spread through them spiritual apathy and death. And the church still has, on the one hand, those who substitute trifling ceremonial observances, or a pompous ritual, for the pure gospel; and on the other hand, those who, refusing the inspired word as their infallible guide, square all religious truth to the deductions, often mere false dogmas, of their own scientific or philosophic research. There is one antidote to both these poisons; it is a faithful adherence to the inspired word of God as the only infallible rule of faith and practice.”

William Campbell (1881)

Campbell’s commentary was published in 1881 but we see the same two errors playing out today.

On the one hand, we have the dead orthodoxy and formalized religion in which I grew up where there is strict adherence to a rigid code of behavior. In this error, as long as the outward regulations are observed, everything is supposed to be okay. There is assumed to be a rule for everything. This is the error of the Pharisees.

The problem is that rules do not generate true spirituality because rule-keeping reduces Christianity to a series of checks-in-boxes. Rule-keeping stifles the relational nature of true Christianity which is summed up in the two great commands to love God and love one’s neighbor.

I have also been in churches that fall into the other error, that of the Sadducees. As Campbell points out above, this is the error of those who question the authority of Scripture and succumb to whatever is the prevailing sentiment of the day.

The error of the Pharisees is easier to diagnose because its rigidity gives it away.

The error of the Sadducees, on the other hand, is a bit more sneaky, in my observance. Many of the “seeker-sensitive” churches fall into this trap.

In an effort to be culturally relevant, the gospel can be watered down or lost completely. It certainly is not popular today to announce in public that all of us are flawed and in need of a savior. It is not popular today to preach that all of our social ills are because all of us are sinful.

Take, for example, the current trend in churches to emphasize what is termed “social justice.”

It’s not that I don’t think that injustice is happening (it is), my problem with much of this teaching is that it implies that there are physical solutions to spiritual problems.

Every time there is an injustice performed it is a violation of the two great commands to love God and love our neighbor. At the root of these violations are selfishness and pride. The only antidote to this is to repent and turn to Christ as the one who can forgive our sin and empower us to live differently. Because we all violate the two great commands, we all need to repent on a moment-by-moment basis.

As Christians, we believe that we need the input of Scripture to reveal the ways we demonstrate a lack of love for God and neighbor. It is not that the seeker-sensitive churches openly deny the authority of Scripture, they relegate that authority as secondary to current cultural norms.

When we imply that one group of people needs repentance more than another group, then we have lost the true gospel. Both the Pharisees and the Sadducees fall into this trap, the trap of thinking that they are superior to those not in their group.

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Love and Fear

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There are times when a verse with which I am very familiar takes on a new meaning, or more accurately, I feel like I understand it on a deeper level. I experienced this with something that the Apostle John wrote in his first epistle.

“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.”

1 John 4:18, ESV

I always understood from this verse is that love is the antidote to fear. That much seems clear from what John writes. But the problem is that I seemingly never practice love to the point where the fear goes away.

The problem is that until now, I haven’t let the very next verse inform me on how the fear goes away. The next verse is:

“We love because he first loved us.”

1 John 4:19, ESV

It is not my ability to love that casts out fear. It is an understanding of who loves me that casts out fear.

When I am fearful, it is because I doubt that God loves me enough to see me through the pain or difficulty. When I am fearful, it is because I doubt the goodness of God.

Full Stop. Let that sink in.

Fear comes because I have not fully acknowledged and acted upon God’s love for me.

How this works itself out in my life is that I avoid pain and withdraw from difficult situations because I don’t think that I will be strong enough to get through it.

The truth is that I am not strong enough. And it is not my ability to love that will cast out fear. It is a right understanding of who God is and how much he loves me that will take away my fear.

“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

Ephesians 2:4–9, ESV

Note that . . . because of the great love with which he loved us, we were made alive.

Before the world was ever created, each of us was loved. He knew us individually and called us by name into his kingdom.

He loves me even when I fail. He loves me even when others hurt me. He loves me no matter what.

Fear comes when I forget this.

An AHA moment

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A few minutes ago I had an “AHA” moment, and it had nothing to do with sparkling water. I literally woke up with a revelatory thought and it has to do with misunderstanding a verse in Ephesians. The verse actually says:

“Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil.”

Ephesians 4:26–27, ESV

But unfortunately, I internalized a twisted version of the command:

“Don’t be angry, lest you sin.”

The only problem with this distortion is that in a fallen, broken world, there is a lot of stuff to be angry about. Even as very young children we encounter things that should make us angry because they are wrong.

Looking back, there were indeed things in my life that I should have been very angry about. With the distortion that I was taught, I learned to suppress the anger rather than express it appropriately.

The effect is that in a situation that should cause anger, rather than stand my ground and challenge the source of anger, I choose to shut down and walk away. In that moment, I function as if I have no right to be angry, even when anger is the appropriate response. Whether I do so physically or not, emotionally, I turn tail and run away.

I am too often Neville Chamberlain when Winston Churchill is required.

The last few months have been revelatory for me and I now have a better understanding of why I gravitated so completely to the distortion of Paul’s command.

I was exposed at an early age to someone who expressed anger in a very inappropriate way. I felt the sting of that anger and had no tools to know how to deal with it. I should have been protected, but I was not.

I play the Neville Chamberlain role because I learned to anticipate the rage and assumed the responsibility to prevent it if I could. I learned to be a people-pleaser, suppressing my own desires in an effort to maintain an illusion of peace. As a young child, that was the only option available to me. But unfortunately, I carried that same people-pleasing tendency well into my adult years where it has not served me well.

People-pleasers may make good employees, but I know from experience that we are relationally challenged. It’s hard to be a full person when you are always worried that you might say or do something that will cause tension. It’s hard to be a full person when you are taking responsibility for things that are outside of your control. It’s overwhelming to do so.

To borrow language from a twelve-step program, I am a recovering people-pleaser and I chose to be different moving forward. I will seek to follow Paul’s actual command and not my distortion of it.

I chose to be angry when it is appropriate to be angry and I also chose to express that anger in a constructive way. I trust that as I read Scripture, pray, and seek counsel, that I will learn new skills to do this.

One last thought. In v. 27, quoted above, Paul lets us know the consequence of not dealing with anger appropriately, it gives the devil a foothold in our lives.

Anger expressed inappropriately, or anger suppressed will lead us away from following the two great commands to love God and love our neighbor.

Out from under the carpet

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One of the things I dislike about the American church is our tendency to sweep issues under the rug.

Rather than deal with problems with honest integrity, we too often hide and cover the problem as if the truth were something that would damage the church.

What is ironic is that this behavior is practiced by those who claim to follow one who declared himself to be THE TRUTH (See John 14:6).

Recently I was invited to a “town hall” meeting for a church that is recovering from changes in its leadership. Those changes resulted from problems in the church that were not handled correctly.

When elders brought problems to the attention of their fellow elders and staff, the pastors rallied a majority of the elders to persecute those who brought up the issues rather than actually deal with those issues. Those who sought to address the situation in a Biblical manor were demonized by the cabal composed of the lead pastor and a few elders who followed him unquestioningly.

Needless to say, the problems that were not immediately addressed, created chaos in the church. One-third of the elder board felt they had to resign because they were not allowed to speak into the situation and were helpless to affect positive change. In the end, one pastor resigned and another was fired.

What frustrates me about the “town hall” meeting is that rather than reaching out to the elders who left because they were treated badly for bringing up the issues, the new leadership is attempting to convince the congregation that they have a plan to move forward. But, that plan does not involve reconciliation with the demonized elders.

Nor does the plan include reaching out to the members who left that church because of how the leaders were treating them.

Rather than apologizing to the wounded members who left, the new leaders seem to be hoping that they will just come back. This is the proverbial sweeping the dirt under the carpet and hoping that no one notices the bump.

Unfortunately, the fired pastor will likely get hired by another church and cause similar destruction because he was not dealt with in a Biblical fashion. The pastor who resigned will likely create the same type of division in his next position. The members who knew and respected the demonized elders will be confused by the lack of transparency in the whole process and those who have not already left the church may consider doing so.

All this because none of the sin and error has been effectively addressed.

What is puzzling is that I cannot see anywhere in Scripture where this tendency to cover up is condoned or encouraged.

We see in the New Testament that the Apostle Paul addressed problems directly and even commanded the Corinthian believers to excommunicate an unrepentant violator of the law. In other canonical letters, Paul named names of those who were causing problems with an indication that people should stay away from them.

Paul taught that error should be corrected through the application of Scripture to every issue. The correction should be done with an appropriate amount of visibility. Public sin should be handled in a public way. False teachers should be renounced and they should have no platform for spreading error.

In my own denomination, every member vows to pursue the “peace and purity of the church”. Purity and peace must be had together.

We cannot have purity if problems are ignored or the one who identifies the problem is demonized. While sweeping it under the carpet may, on the surface, seem like the best path to peace,, without purity, you will likely not have peace in the end.

Any peace worth having must be based on purity. The one who is The Truth won’t have it any other way.

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