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Faith Busters or Faith Builders
By Brian
Knowles
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The purpose of this column is to stimulate its readers to
think outside of the box, to shift paradigms, and to
entertain new possibilities. It is not to denigrate or
discourage faith. I believe deeply in the principle that
truth, if indeed it is such, will set us free and not
bring us into bondage (cf. John 8:32).
In what, or whom, do we place faith? What is truth and
what is freedom? These are crucial questions.
If we place faith in human leaders, we will be let down.
As Jeremiah the prophet wrote: "Cursed is the one
who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his
strength" (Jeremiah 17:5). All of us have feet of
clay. Sooner or later, all of us fail, sin, err, and fall
short of the divine standard. As they say, "We all
make mistrakes." Problem is, in authoritarian
religious systems, all depends upon the glorious human
leader, who perpetuates the self-serving mystique that he
is indispensable to, or central to, God's Plan. I don't
know what psychologists call this now, but they used to
call it a "Messiah complex."
No human being is infallible, indispensable, or immortal.
Sooner or later even the most charismatic and domineering
of leaders dies. Before they do, they make mistakes,
errors in judgment, and they reveal their humanity. If
you place faith in human leaders, even popes and
ministers, you'll be disappointed. I don't know of any
who understands the Bible perfectly or comprehensively. I
don't know of any minister who lives a perfect, exemplary
life. Whom do you know who walks fully in the Spirit and
displays a Christ-like demeanor on all occasions? I've
never met such a person. All of the Christians I know,
ministers included, are imperfect "works in
progress," myself included.
The Authoritarian Trap
Authoritarian religion is a deadly trap. It weakens its
adherents. It renders them dependent upon flawed and
imperfect human leadership. It robs them of autonomy and
freedom of choice. It seeks to control behavior and to
rein in its followers to the point of perfect conformity
to a corporate standard. It is yellow pencil religion.
If you find yourself caught in one of the authoritarian
manifestations of the churches of God, you owe it to
yourself to escape and learn to "work out your own
salvation with fear and trembling." The more
dependent you have been, the more frightening and
challenging will be the journey. You will have to learn
to replace the fear of man with an autonomous fear of
God. This is a major, and most significant, step. Never
underestimate the importance of it! It will require
lowering your expectations of man, and raising them of
God.
Many authoritarian Christians, once they escape the grip
of an autocratic leadership, find themselves adrift,
unable to think clearly about anything, confused and
disoriented. They are used to being told what to do. They
have had faith and confidence in men, rather than in God.
Consequently, they have in place no critical thinking
skills. They are accustomed to complying with a group
standard arbitrarily imposed by leadership. Consequently,
they find that they have no moral compass of their own.
The journey to faith in God is a frightening one. Yet,
Jeremiah also wrote: "But blessed is the man who
trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him. He will
be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its
roots by the stream" (Jeremiah 17:7-8).
If we can learn to have faith in God rather than in man,
we will have made a giant spiritual leap forward. God,
not human leadership, is the proper object of faith (Mark
11:22).
Human Leadership in Perspective
This is not to say that we should disrespect human
leadership. Paul wrote, "Follow me as I follow
Christ" (1 Corinthians 11:1). The operative term
here is "as." We should follow human leaders to
the degree that they live exemplary lives and teach
authentic, Christian truth. Yet no man should be the
object of faith. That is reserved for God alone.
Building the faith of God's people in God ought to be one
of the premier tasks of true ministers of God. The
purpose of the various ministerial roles is "...to
prepare God's people for works of service, so that the
body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity
in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and
become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the
fullness of Christ" (Ephesians 4:12-13). Ministers
should be faith-builders, not faith-busters. We should be
building up the Body, imparting knowledge, and fostering
spiritual maturity in the Church. This is a weighty
responsibility. We cannot afford to be cavalier about it.
A true servant of God is more interested in building
people's relationship with God than with himself. He
points them God-ward, not self-ward. He does what he can
to encourage God, not man, to be the object of the
Christian's faith.
Real Christianity must be portable. It cannot depend upon
one's association with a particular denomination, pastor
or congregation. These configurations are all temporary.
God alone is permanent, unchanging and omnipresent. Who
you are when you think no one is watching is who you
really are. We are most "real" when we are
alone with God. Our relationship with Him must be
one-on-one. It must carry us through any form of
isolation from our human support system.
If we find ourselves alone in a hospital room, at the
mercy of a medical bureaucracy and a gaggle of
domineering know-it-all nurses and doctors who couldn't
care less about our wishes, it is our faith in God that
can pull us through.
If we wind up in prison, as have many Christians down
through the centuries, we must rely on the Lord to
support us. We have heard the testimony of Chinese
Christians who have suffered enormously in Chinese
prisons for their faith. Some have died in those prisons.
As Paul wrote, "Whether we live or whether we die,
we are the Lord's" (Romans 14:8). We were
"bought with a price" (1 Corinthians 6:20), and
the Lord will not discard what He has purchased with his
own shed blood (Romans 1:6). The writer of Hebrews
captures this thought in Hebrews 13:5-6: "Keep your
lives free from the love of money and be content with
what you have, because God has said, 'Never will I leave
you; never will I forsake you,' so we may say with
confidence, 'The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid,
what can man do to me?'"Peter taught, "We must
obey God rather than men!" (Acts 5:29).
Jesus instructed us: "Do not be afraid of those who
kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid
of the One who can destroy both soul and body in
hell" (Matthew 10:28).
If, when we age, we find ourselves "warehoused"
in a costly nursing home staffed by abusive attendants
who barely speak English, we can trust in the Lord to get
us through the ordeal. Though our families may abandon us
to the mercy of strangers, God will not be a stranger to
us if we place faith in Him.
No matter what dire straights we find ourselves in, Jesus
says to his people, "I am with you always, to the
very end of the age" (Matthew 28:20b). We can count
on the Lord, but not on man. In the world of man, life is
cheap and getting cheaper. As we age, we are
progressively devalued by society, by our families, and
by the institutions around which society is built. At
some point, we become downright invisible - yet we will
always be both precious and visible to God.
Even when we find ourselves helpless, or at the mercy of
men, or inconvenienced relatives, as was Terri Schiavo,
God is with us for we are precious to Him. He will not
allow us to slip through the cracks. Sometimes the Lord
allows men to have their way with us because he has
better things in mind: "The righteous perish, and no
one ponders it in his heart; devout men are taken away,
and no one understands that the righteous are taken away
to be spared from evil. Those who walk uprightly shall
enter into peace; they find rest as they lie in
death" (Isaiah 57:1-2).
Dante's Inferno Writ Large?
There is much evil in our world. In some situations it
may be better to be dead than alive in such a world.
Surely the cries of a world in pain rise to the ears of
God, and not without result. The world is an increasingly
dangerous place, especially for Christians. For millions,
life is a living hell that looks like a painting by
Hieronymus Bosch or a scene out of Dante's Inferno. Yet
it is a world of our own devising. Society's holocausts
are the result of evil men and women doing evil things.
Life, as it unfolds, is largely cause and effect. Man,
cut off from his Creator, can create only hells, infernos
and holocausts. The prophet Isaiah wrote of ancient
Israel: "...your iniquities have separated you from
your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so
that he will not hear...The way of peace they do not
know; there is no justice in their paths..."(Isaiah
59:2, 8). The prophet's words ring true today do they
not?
The word "peace" here is shalom. It means
"completeness, soundness, welfare, peace."
Without God, and without Jesus, God's Anointed One, the
world is unsound, incomplete, filled with wars and
terrors, pain and unbearable suffering. We can thank
human leadership, which has provided opportunity for the
devil, for the state of the world and of the Church.
The World to Come
In the world to come, we will have occasion to thank God
and His Messiah for the "restitution of all
things" (Acts 3:21). God has a plan of redemption
for planet Earth. All that the first Adam has undone, the
second Adam will restore.
No matter the chaos that surrounds us, there is only one
conclusion for the true Christian: "Have faith in
God" (Mark 11:22). When all of the world's systems
collapse around us, God will remain solid, immovable
—"eternal in the heavens." The Lord is the
Rock of our salvation. He alone can be counted on in a
pinch. God's
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TSS
May
- June 2005 The Sabbath Sentinel
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