This past weekend was a great discussion for most of us at NETChurch. We’ve been looking at a restructuring of sorts lately. Not necessarily a structuring of the heirarchy of the church, but a re-imaging of what we are designed to be. Now, if you are on the outside looking at this process it looks very strange, un-churchlike, and if you are engrained within the traditional thinking process of churches then it would seem to you that we are going off the deep end and away from God. This could be further from the truth, though. You see, we have been taking steps to get closer to God, to find His true purpose and reason for us as a spiritual community to exist. Our group is launching (not just thinking, but really jumping) outside of the “box” and taking a new step in church life. We are casting aside the ideas of “church” as we see it today, deconstructing our ideas, and purposely looking at Christ as Rabbi so that we can learn the lifestyle that He originally wanted us to pursue. We are walking through these discussions right now and they are quite enlightening, almost invigorating in the way that they affect your everyday thinking. That’s what I see as the most important thing. I want to see what we do on Sunday’s truly become a catalyst for change the rest of our lives.
When you are in the middle of these discussion you never know what will happen or even what will be said. NETChurch has resolved itself to the idea that God will work through those who speak once we get out of the way and let Him. That seems to happen and I believe it to be true. We were having a discussion this past week about Love and Discipline within the church. Can the two coexist? How far should a group go with discipline? How much is our decision and how much is God’s? On top of that, how do we know that we are doing the right thing?
As the conversation went on we were confronted with a series of statements made by one of our own, Brian Hampton, who had been thinking and struggling throughout the discussion. I want you to hear the beauty in the words that he shared with us as he discovered some true insight into the scriptures in front of us.
Consequences Click link or mouse over to listen
After listening to this I was really hit with the realities in front of us. The idea that God has showed us all of this mercy/grace and that we are then called to share the same with those around us was one thing. The idea that what I cultivate in my life is a direct correlation to how God responds or relates to us is another. It takes things to a whole other level if you allow it to.
Here’s why:
Most of the time we think or have thought that God has done things simply because “God is God” and knows more or better than we do. We’ve shunned the idea that how we act influences that relationship. It’s always been that God loves us and will always do the best for us even if we are idiots, essentially seperating ourselves from any responsibility in the relationship. If we do things good then God is proud. If we don’t then He is hurt, but he still loves us so no prob. With that thought we have found alot of different arguments come up from “once saved always saved” to “why should I worry about anything. If God loves me that’s all that matters”. Alot of us have then carried on our lives without thought to consequence simply because we knew that God loved us. Done deal. Don’t worry about it.
Then we start reading scripture in a new light and realize that the way we treat each other shows a direct relation to how we feel and respond to what God has done for us. He has offered us such a tremendous outpouring of mercy, but then we ignore THAT gift and trash those around us because of our own need for power and security. How then should God respond to us? Am I saying that God will trash us if we trash each other? No. I’m not, but I’m not going completely the other way either. I’m saying that we have a little more influence on what happens in our life than we give credit for. God has given us this wonderful free will. He’s allowed us to make choices. What choices, then, affect our lives?
He has asked us to spread a message for Him. A message of love. But spreading it doesn’t actually happen in our words and sermons. Those are cheap. Anyone can buy them and throw them out. Our actions, on the other hand, have weight. They have strength. They are tangible. How do I know that? If I speak loving but stab you in the back then my words mean nothing. They meant nothing to me and they sure mean nothing to you. What I do speaks volumes and I think we’ve lost that. We talk more than we act. Christ acted. He loved. He loved everyone. Why is He worth following? Because I don’t believe that you will ever find a more true and loving example of someone who actually DID what He was called to do. He showed us, as we like to say, “The Way”. Was he necessarily showing us how to get to a future place called Heaven or was he wanting us to start it here? I’m thinking the latter was actually the most important to him. Bringing a new heaven to earth begins with changing the way we live our lives WITH EACH OTHER.
Christianity is not a solo experiment. It is only seen in it’s entirety when we interact with each other. How we do that reflects completely on our relationship with God.
As Ol’ Bill (and the Beatles) said in the comments on my last post “And in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love you make. (or give)”. Truer words have never been spoken.
May the mercy and grace you have recieved become evident immediately through your love for each other. May that love come back to you a thousand times over that you may know the mercy and grace you live under.
Discipline and punishment are often used interchangeably, but they are not the same thing. Josie Swelling
I agree with that statement wholeheartedly. The only problem that we find in today’s church is that we tend to run towards the discipline/punishment answer much too quickly. If something doesn’t line up exactly with how our specific organization thinks or operates we isolate the person or think that we need to stop their actions because it might affect the whole of the organization. I’ve seen this in things as small as two young people innocently living together to save money before marriage to churches ousting members because the church leadership was going a new direction and they felt that some of the people were creating dissention. In most of the situations if you really looked at what was being done and filtered it through Christ’s teachings you would find them to be pretty unGodly acts in the end.
That leads me to the thoughts of “Are we really the ones to be handing out discipline/punishment (whichever direction that goes) in most situations?”. I have found that alot of times we are allowing our concern about our organization to get in the way of true beliefs and teachings of Christ.
discipline in a church setting is one of the least understood things in the Bible in my estimation, and that’s saying a lot. We tend not to understand a good bit of the Bible.
Discipline in society is handled by law enforcement and courts.
Discipline at work is handled by management.
But in church who handles discipline? Do we have a ‘Sargent at Arms’ to throw out those who disagree with the set doctrine? No.
If it is true that we are to be guided by love, how do we reconcile this with discipline?
Unfortunately, most of us grew up in a setting where discipline meant the withholding of love, or at least the showing of love, as a punishment. I remember wishing for a spanking so it would be over and my parents would show me love again.
I have been under ‘church discipoine’ at times past for not agreeing with the political ideas of the ‘church management’, for not keeping silent when they said things that sounded good, but were bad religion, and for pointing out inconsistancies in their doctrine.
It didn’t matter to me and still doesn’t. Why? Because I knew at the time they didn’t love me, I didn’t depend on their loving me, and felt just as good about going somewhere else as I did about staying.
In these circumstances, church discipline did what it was intended (by that church) to do. It got rid of the voice of disagreement, the noise that distracted them from what they liked. Regardless of what the truth was.
That’s not church discipline. The purpose of true church disipline is to return someone to God’s fold when they have chosen to leave through actions that the church cannot be associated with.
However, as I have said before, if you can cut off fellowship with that brother with less pain that cutting off your own arm, then forget it, it won’t work. But if you truly love, and have lived that love, then and only then does church disipline have any chance.
I really don’t care what an ‘acquaintance’ thinks about me. But it is of great importance what my wife thinks. So I will listen to her, and try with all my heart to reconcile our differences. The same should be true with my family at church. If is isn’t, that’s our fault for not being the church we were meant to be all along.
And so, it all comes back to love.
Can we? Do we?
The only thing of real importance in this world and the next is Love.
solong
“Unfortunately, most of us grew up in a setting where discipline meant the withholding of love, or at least the showing of love, as a punishment. I remember wishing for a spanking so it would be over and my parents would show me love again.”
Well said. Our society has changed the concepts so many times and we live in family structures that do not allow us to understand or communicate effectively. Punishment is all we see. Knowing this, then, do we need to re-evaluate how we show love or discipline within the church? How far do we go with “love” itself or are we going far enough? Is discipline as big an issue as we make it or are we just trying to hold onto something that gives US control instead of God?