I absolutely love Tent Pegs. It is one of my favorite blogs on the subject of church, spirituality, and the Bible. Patrick Meade is a fantastic speaker amongst the Church of Christ whom I have heard a couple of times and I highly recommend you add his blog to your feeds.
He is currently doing a Q & A series. Questions you'd ask God...what will you ask God when you get to heaven?
In a question raised by one of his readers regarding Romans 14 and 15 and "disputable matters"...Patrick brings up an example from a past experience of his...
Questioner: you are right. Romans 14 and 15 apply in all situations. An "opening prayer" or a "closing prayer" are ideas not found in scripture. Let me give you an example of how warped this "worship service" idea makes everything else. We did a three year study at Rochester on the role of women. I was proud of our elders as they brought in experts in language, scripture, history, linguistics, etc. and read many books along with memorizing tons of scripture. The short version is that we believe women are allowed to do much, much more than our tradition has usually allowed them to do so we presented that to our congregation.
Predictably, many rejoiced and almost as many were upset. Some left us but others stayed and gently remind us to move slowly so that we don’t leave them and others behind. One lady was anything but gentle. She called me and reamed me out over the phone. Her language was… uh… spicy and she didn’t take a breath for the first five minutes or so. I held the phone away from my ear and waited my turn. Her treatise was that we had gone liberal and were Bible-trashers for letting women speak "in the church."
I asked… "Then why are you calling me? Aren’t YOU in the church? If you believe women are to keep silent in the church, why are you calling me and correcting me; in fact, usurping my authority?" She replied — very loudly — "I’m not in the church right now!"
Ooooooo. That, my friend, is a tragic misunderstanding of what it means to be in the church!
OK, I don't want to end up quoting his whole post (but more is to come) but Patrick is handling Romans 14-15 very well. I've studied this section a lot myself. It has some tough phrases to wrestle with, even excluding the part dealt with above.
I can relate. I once saw somebody wearing a shirt that said "Don't go to church" along the front.
"What!?" I couldn't believe it. Why would somebody (especially someone like this, a good Christian person) wear a shirt like that? As I was getting steamed i watched the person continue walking. I then noticed the back of the shirt finished the phrase with "be the church".
Oh, yeah...uh...I knew that. Don't GO to church, BE the church.
Over the past 50 years or so we have caused a lot of harm by using the phrases such as "Are we going to church" or "let's go to church" or "hey, mom, when is church".
In the Bible, church is not an event. It is the bride of Christ. Why would Christ marry an event? I fear that because language such as "going to church" has been used so much that it has completely altered our understanding of what church really is, thus causing difficulties of interpretation in passages such as Rom 14-15.
For the Christian, there is no difference between public and private ethics, attitudes, or conduct. We are to be Christian 24/7. Let me make the other side angry here and state, once again, that I do not think "everything we do is worship." Nope. When I mow the lawn, I am not worshiping. You might very well be but I hate outdoor chores. I am more likely to be quoting Emily Dickinson or Edgar Allen Poe than I am singing "Blue Skies and Rainbows" as I slog around the backyard with my portable grass mauling, global warming machine.
But when I mow the lawn, I had better belong to Jesus and be available for him. And when I worship with my brothers and sisters I am there to worship God and help them. I am not allowed to let anything come from my mouth towards them unless it builds them up. I cannot speak to them of disputable matters much less enter into debate with them. Raise hands or not. Clap or not. Sway or not. I couldn’t care less. What I care about is that we are together as we worship our Lord. THAT is beautiful.
Patrick's blog is a blessing to me. Thank you, Patrick. and no, i didn't quote his ENTIRE post...
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2 comments:
Those are some very good thoughts, and very progressive, too. I do wonder about his statement:
"I cannot speak to them of disputable matters much less enter into debate with them."
I can see why that would be unproductive in the context of worship, but does he mean that in general or only in that context? Probably in that context, but that thought crossed my mind.
I stumbled onto Mead's personal blog (just patrickmead.net) a day or two ago through multiple other links, and I can't say that he and I agree on much else beyond these and other thoughts on Christianity itself.
One particular quote I found interesting from a post about the Benazir Bhutto assassination:
"Only prayer, strong foreign policy, and the threat of massive force from sane nations can corral evil."
I'm sure that was God's plan from the beginning: prayer, strong foreign policy, and the threat of massive force.
I don't mean to hijack your post to discuss Mead's politics, though. These thoughts are right on, as best I can tell.
Yeah, I agree. He has some very thought provoking ideas. I don't think he's right on a lot of them, but the fact that they are just thought provoking makes them...uh...thought provoking.
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