Necessary Things
(Bible Study - November 2000) While we have been saying throughout the series that the New Covenant functions by faith, not laws, we would not want to imply that this equates to anarchy. Nor do the three "Rs" of legalism -- rules, rituals, and rewards -- entirely lack utility. Contrariwise, we have appropriate uses for all of them. Two spiritual reasons, and at least one practical reason, direct the religious institution known as the Body of Christ to function according to rules. We will also have a few words to say about the use of rules and rewards in personal development, and the importance of ritual in our worship.
Freedom to use rules
Let’s turn our attention to ecclesial and inter-ecclesial operations. An ecclesia
represents both a spiritual and a human organization, and, as such, acquiesces to
spiritual and organizational principles to function properly. Foremost for this discussion
is the principle that allows us even to consider organizational rules as part of our
ecclesial operations. This is our first spiritual reason, and the same Bible principle
that establishes the internal locus of sin also qualifies us to operate in the world of
rules, constitutions, and policies.
This principle, developed at length in article 18, "Clean and Unclean" (Tidings, 6/2000), states that sin does not lie in those things external to us, but rather in the attitudes and values of our hearts. Thus, rules, constitutions, and the like cannot be inherently sinful, nor does using them make one righteous or unrighteous. They only occupy a neutral position, awaiting either our spiritual application or our legalistic abuse. Like anything else, a rule or ritual cannot sin, nor can it be sin. Only the human heart can do these things.
The most important scriptural principle concerning the subject of ecclesial organization tells us that organizational rules or worship rituals have no inherent goodness or badness. Therefore, we have freedom to use them if they further our spiritual goals.
Submission
The second spiritual principle comes from Biblical teachings concerning the
discipleship practice of mutual submission (Eph. 5:21). Paul, in his letter to the
Ephesians, covers many aspects of unity. He addresses unity between God and man, between
Jew and Gentile, between members of the body of Christ, and between husband and wife. Each
of these relationships depends on creating unity and harmony between disparate members.
This is especially true in the ecclesia, a multitudinous arrangement with potential for
either enormous benefit or considerable stress.
A structured ecclesia creates opportunities for the practice of submission. It’s easy to have an "everyone does what’s right in their own eyes" situation when the ecclesia, or any inter-ecclesial structure, has no guidelines. Garbed in gossamer freedom, we find that the structureless organization loses not only its character and boundaries, but it also denies its membership the discipleship of submission for mutual good.
Submission to others’ wills and preferences can occur in any social organization. Personalities, emotions, and lapses in interpersonal communication, however, add complexity to the issue at hand. Submission becomes clouded, and withdrawal often gains ascendancy as an easier solution to what has become an engaged conflict.
However, when we add a formalized, codified policy to guide the organization, we now have an impersonal, impartial arbiter which excludes personality conflicts. One can submit, or one can depart in a cloud of pride and self-righteousness.
Perhaps the written guideline that led to conflict or departure had no utility. Perhaps less-than-spiritual principles led to the formation of the rules in question in the first place. Even better for the practice of submission. When you submit to a good, principled policy, is that really submission? Submitting because you hold the weaker position hardly counts as submission; that’s just common sense. If the policy has good spiritual backing, then what justification have you for opposing it? However, if you submit after demonstrating the spiritual superiority of your position, then that counts for true submission.
I’m above the rules
We also often have to deal with the "rules don’t apply to me"
mindset. Bible school committee members know this one all too well. Who really thinks that
the curfew applies to them? No, it’s for other people, not me. Four hundred people at
a Bible school with rules for the common good, and hardly any think the rules apply to
them. I don’t have to wear my name badge, or be in my room by 11. Twenty minutes for
an exhortation? Maybe the other speakers, not me. I’ve got important things to say.
The rules do apply to you, and to your children. Make sure they know that the rules apply to them also. And make sure they know why they must follow the rules -- to practice submission and set the right example for others -- not to gain admission to the kingdom of God. Your paltry works do not impress God; He’s delighted with your submissive spirit.
So ecclesial rules give us the opportunity for true submission, the kind of unjust, unwarranted, self-crucifying submission that led our Lord to the cross for us. Submission probably ranks as our least favorite lesson in discipleship, and is therefore the one we need the most opportunity to practice.
Group behavior
Now we come to a human reason for the application of rules to our organization, the
issue of group behavior. The simple rule of human behavior is this: in groups, behavior
degrades. People lose their values, sensibility, and priorities. We observe this
phenomenon primarily, but not exclusively, in teens and young adults. Take any ten people,
individually well-bred and thoughtful, and put them together in a group. Behavior
immediately dissipates. Even a strong leader can do little to counter the inevitable decay
of principles within a group.
Thus, you have to deal with the group mentality, not individual mentalities, when creating structures and guidelines for events such as Bible schools and youth weekends. Organizers learn to over-govern and over-regiment, simply because they must. You just can’t expect the crowds to help with any kind of voluntary compliance, let alone spontaneously do what needs to be done.
At home, most people would do something as simple and reasonable as pick up their hymn book off the floor. But look at the room after a session at a gathering or youth weekend -- hardly anyone does, because, well, everybody else’s books are all over the floor, so why should I pick up mine? Likewise with curfews, starting times for meetings, and dozens of other details.
People in groups don’t behave the way they ought. Distractions come easily. We don’t want to appear like we’re the only one so weak as to want to help the organizers by submitting to their agenda. Yet that’s exactly the recipe for a good function: each individual submitting his or her will to the minutiae the organizers have had to place on the event to keep necessary order in a large group of disparate human agendas and preferences.
Any organizer knows that to get results at, say, a level of 50, you have to organize at a level of 100. This isn’t legalistic; it’s just recognizing the inherent difficulties of dealing with group behavior.
Master or servant?
The key issue regarding any set of rules, an ecclesial constitution, the operating
protocols of a gathering, the Bible school bylaws, or any enactment of regulations depends
on how we use them. We can keep one priority in mind: Do we use rules to serve us, or have
we become enslaved to them?
We become slaves to rules when we cannot change them or lift them under special circumstances. When the "letter of the law" eclipses human need, then we know we have reversed our roles, and the rules rule us. No longer are rules our servants to help us learn spiritual thinking; they have taken on their own life and trapped us. Rules must serve, not enslave.
Let’s look at an example. Suppose your ecclesia has a rule that says the arranging board must approve visiting speakers by Friday for Sunday’s meeting. A brother, who happens to have excellent exhortational skills, has a disruption of some business travel plans and ends up unexpectedly at your meeting on Sunday morning with no advance notice. Do you ask him to speak, or defer to your rule? If the rule wins, only because it is the rule, then that rule has enslaved you. If you realize that circumstances warrant a suspension of what otherwise would keep things orderly, then you have realized that rules cannot cover all human expediencies; sometimes we must make an exception. Thus, you suspend the rule and welcome the sudden visitor to speak. You’re not breaking a rule, you are only realizing that the wisdom of establishing the rule simply couldn’t predict all possible circumstances of life, and therefore you suspend the rule for this instance.
Statement of faith
Some people balk at the idea of a statement of faith; they might sophisticatedly tap
their Bible and proclaim, "This is my statement of faith," or declare the
statement of faith a legalist structure. A statement of faith, however, has no inherent
moral value one way or the other – it’s how we use it that makes it good or bad.
Just like rules, a statement of faith can be a servant or a master.
All brothers and sisters -- whether supporters or detractors of the statement of faith -- should recognize its limitations. We often hear the phrase, "It’s just a manmade document." Unlike an ecclesial constitution, however, it is not a manmade document in the same sense. It’s a manmade collection of divine teachings. If it has a limitation, it’s in the selection of articles, not the articles themselves. For instance, the BASF (Birmingham Amended Statement of Faith) fails to mention the fundamental first principle of salvation by grace. It has no definition of faith, and hardly a sufficient statement of salvation by faith. But such limitations do not detract from its utility. As we all know, or ought to know, faith does not come in a statement. Faith comes in a relationship with God, and that’s what God reckons as righteousness.
We don’t use the statement as the basis of our salvation, however, or at least we shouldn’t. We use it as a convenient summary of our beliefs, and as a token of our membership in a cohesive community. Those who adhere to the BASF don’t regard it as a replacement for their personal faith or as a definitive distillation of all necessary and saving truth. Even if it were the perfect distillation, believing it still wouldn’t be the demonstration of faith about which the Bible talks. We do, however, use the BASF as a token to represent our allegiance to a cohesive inter-ecclesial structure known by the biblical concept of "The Body of Christ."
Any worldwide body that espouses a uniform creed probably requires a statement of faith. Of course we could revise and improve ours. Even as it is, it serves its primary purpose of identifying and unifying its adherents. A statement cannot be a legalist structure in itself, though we can use it that way. Ideally, we use it as a servant for our edification, unification, and growth.
Rituals
The New Covenant has a paucity of ritual. We have but two, baptism and the breaking of
bread. The former we do only once, and we have carefully stated our teaching position on
this matter: immersion in water does not save us; faith saves us. Immersion serves as a
public and discrete sign of our faith, a remembrance for reflection, a rite of inclusion
into the family of God, an act of submission to the righteousness of God, and many other
purposes. It does not serve as a law we fulfil for the sake of earning a credit or reward
from God. The proper attitude of baptism includes our inability to make ourselves right
before God except by His grace.
Unlike baptism, the breaking of bread comes on our schedules every week. We will confine our remarks on the breaking of bread service to that which pertain to our theme of the correct use of ritual. God gave us this service to remember; it can aid as a tangible cue, or stimulus to trigger thoughts of penitence, devotion, thankfulness, grace, resolve and commitment. Only to the extent that our minds generate spiritual thinking does this service hold any benefit for us. We do not do it as a command to follow for the sake of earning righteousness. We do not do it as a legalistic duty, such as paying our tithes. We do not do it thinking, "I have faithfully broken bread on the first day of the week, per the Lord’s directive." Any member can break bread; the behavior itself means no more than anyone going under water. Just as we emphasize proper understanding for the efficacy of baptism, we emphasize proper understanding for the breaking of bread. We could perhaps preface all the various thoughts relating to the work of Christ with this paraphrased maxim: The breaking of bread was made for man, not man for the breaking of bread.
Children
Children need rules. We know this both from the Bible (Gal. 3:24 "schoolmaster"
(KJV) = paidagogos, "child trainer"), and from developmental
psychology. Children live in the world of the tangible, not the abstract. Principles
don’t help us until we reach early teenage years, and then we’re so full of
hormones and social influence that we use our newly developed powers of abstract reasoning
only intermittently for another decade. Some time about our early twenties we actually
start to mature.
Children need rules for several reasons. As young children, we don’t know right from wrong. We can’t figure out things like "submission" and "faith." We live in a world of objects and behavior, the same realm as the law. That’s why Paul teaches allegorically in Galatians that law belongs to childhood, just as the law of Moses belonged to Israel’s childhood.
Laws can teach us right behavior, and habituate us to proper conduct. We can, as children, learn to put money regularly into the collection. We don’t learn about faithful generosity until we reach maturity. We have many rules for children to keep them orderly and to teach them -- at a behavioral level -- what’s acceptable and what’s not. Just as the law can only prescribe behavior, not attitude, rules alone cannot make children into adults. Rules can function at the only level children understand, and give them a good start toward understanding God and principles later in life.
Likewise, rewards have a useful place in child development. As adults living by faith, we have decided to forego present reward as a principle of reinforcing right behavior. In fact, the essence of faith precludes reward. Faith deals with delayed gratification -- waiting until later, and hoping that God will recognize our commitment. Those under the law believed God blessed them – materially -- now for following His rules. Those under the mature concept of faith know that they might live their entire lives without any tangible reward or reinforcement, and then die in faith and hope.
Don’t expect this level of abstraction from children. Reward them for their little efforts at doing good.
Rules have a place
Rules (and rituals) have a significant place in our worship and spiritual growth. They
organize human behavior, give us opportunity to practice submission, offer reminders of
the spiritual, and train children in the way of righteousness.
Ecclesial constitutions, the statement of faith, bylaws, and articles of incorporation all have a necessary position. They themselves are neither good nor bad; they’re just external features. How we use them determines their spiritual value. Having freedom in Christ, we are free to make and use rules and guidelines.
The same caveats apply to our own rules as to the law of Moses. We can falsely think that in the keeping of them we create righteousness. We can let them enslave us with their immutability. We can add and clarify and expand them until we have defined everything, in a vain attempt to regulate morality and thought and behavior which only faith and love can properly regulate. We can fall into the trap, like the Pharisees, of actually voiding God’s principles for the sake of keeping our own rules. We can blaspheme the covenant of grace by thinking that in following our rules and believing our creeds we have fulfilled the command to live by faith.
The slide back into legalism comes very easily, and the presence of rules and regulations, necessary as they are in a human organization, presents us with just as much opportunity to regress to legalism as to grow in faith. Rules present us with a challenge; like sin, we master it, or it will master us.
David Levin