The Ripple Effect

One afternoon when I was 14 or 15, my father and I down in a bottom of a large hole in the side yard digging a septic tank. We were digging with a trowel and a pair of pruning shears, because the ground was so laced with tough, springy ivy roots that you couldn’t use a shovel, you had to scrape each one clean and then cut through it. It was very hard work, dirty, boring, and hot. And for reasons I cannot now remember I asked my father when the split in the Christian church had occurred.

He started with Peter and Paul and hadn’t even made it to the Reformation when mother called us in for dinner. In case none of you have noticed, I take after my father. Be careful what you ask me, you might want to bring a lunch in case I get carried away.

Because I had only been asking about Catholics and Protestants.

What I didn’t know was that the followers of Jesus have been arguing for two thousand years about what it takes to be a Christian. Even our own denomination has split and reunited so many times that our family tree looks more like Bre’r Rabbit’s briar patch than a decent, orderly Presbyterian sort of history should.

And many people think this is a bad thing. Many people think that all these controversies and splits and schisms and so on are a sign of poor spiritual health and a disgrace to the Gospel. Some people - the kind that Parker Williamson, the editor of the conservative Presbyterian newspaper The Layman - calls institutional loyalists, fear that controversy will damage the organization. That’s characteristic of a lot of Presbyterians; it’s easy to let issues of polity - that is, how we govern ourselves - take precedence over theology, that is what we believe.

As a matter of fact, that particular difference in approaches to controversy showed up at a meeting I was in a couple of months ago, the special one called t,o debate Amendment A. For those of you who don’t follow denominational in-fighting with sports-fan-like zeal, Amendment A is the attempt to remove the part of our constitution which requires fidelity in marriage and chastity in singleness. Anyway, we broke into small groups for discussion prior to the vote. In my group, some people were more concerned with whether keeping those restrictions would reduce the pool of people whom they could get to serve on committees. I pointed out that getting people to serve on committees wasn’t - or at least shouldn’t be - a central goal of the church, but that knowing what we believe and standing up for it was. This position was not universally popular.

There’s been an awful lot of fairly heated argument about this issue, and I’m sorry to say it’s not over yet. And some people are sick to death of it and talk about leaving the denomination, of splitting off to become another, purer kind of Presbyterian, like the PCA, the EPC, the OPC, or who knows how many other sets of initials. The only thing Presbyterians have more of than initials is committees. But I’m getting off the main point.

I think heated discussion is a good thing. I don’t actually enjoy it, I ‘m a people-pleaser and a placator by both training and temperament, and I’d rather have everyone agree - at least as long as they agree with me, of course - but I think the time to start to worry is when people stop caring enough about their beliefs to make a stand for them. It’s important enough to me to keep the dialogue going that I actually volunteered to serve on the Presbytery’s Church and Society Committee. Most of the members of that committee think that people who belong to Presbyterians Pro-Life have horns, hooves and a tail. So there I am at the table every month, quaking in my boots for fear someone’s going to accuse me of homophobia or something, speaking my piece on behalf of traditional Biblical standards of morality.

But you know, I’d rather be there fighting over things that matter than hiding out with people who think just like me and having nothing more important to argue about than what color the choir robes should be. Controversy is healthy.

At least, up until the shooting starts. God forbid we should go back to the days of the Crusades, or to the religious wars and persecutions that accompanied the Reformation.

But it’s out of controversy that growth comes. If we never offend anyone with our beliefs, we are probably guilty of watering them down to avoid conflict. I’m not pointing fingers here, I’m often just as guilty of ducking confrontation as anyone. But if we’re passionate enough about following Jesus Christ to actually obey his commandments, we’re going to run right into some very strong opposition - even within the church itself.