In defense of denominations

As previously noted, God knew full well that denominations would arise, just as he knew a monarchy would arise. I'm going to sketch an argument for denominations.

To begin with, the monarchy wasn't the problem; the motivation was. It's always bad when someone depends on someone or something other than God, and that's how the Israelite monarchy began. What about denominations?

Have you noticed that in 1 Cor 1:12, Paul mentions factions--early denominations--with disquiet and even disgust, but one of the groups claims to follow Christ? It's obvious that someone following Paul, Apollos, or Cephas (Peter) has a problem, but apparently so did the "Christ-followers." Why?

While following Paul is here a bad sign, Paul himself urged others to follow his example (1 Cor 11:1, Php 3:17). The difference is that it's good to follow the example of godly people, but it's bad to follow just one person and ignore all others. This is why the "Christ-followers" were a problem: just as the Paul-followers ignored Apollos and Peter, the "Christ-followers" would have ignored any merely human teacher, including Paul. But Christ sent Paul--and Apollos, Peter, and many others. Ignoring the ones Christ sent meant ignoring Christ. But following Christ in the right way, in humility, means following the ones he has sent as well.

The danger in movements and denominations comes when they have our devotion. Are you a Christian first or a member of your denomination? If your denomination comes first, it has become an idol. Also, you are probably rejecting out of hand some people God has sent to teach you, simply because they aren't from the right group. That's one of the main reasons the Jewish religious establishment rejected Jesus!

The proper use of denominations involves humbly following God's path for you without rejecting others, and in part this means knowing why denominations exist.

Paul told the Corinthians that different groups had to exist among them to show who God approved (1 Cor 11:19). I think we've misunderstood this. He isn't saying that the idea is to find the one group that is completely correct: given human sinfulness, there won't be one. Even if there were for a brief moment, human perversity would misdirect it--and a good thing, too, or we'd begin to worship and rely on it, not God.

This is what Paul was talking about: Christianity involves living out God's love in community, and nothing shows God's love more powerfully than getting along with people when you disagree with them. The existence of different groups should be an opportunity to love fellow Christians who are unlike us. If we do so, well and good; if not, it's really our fault, not the fault of the other groups.

And there will be different groups because we are individually different. Some denominations emphasize quiet contemplation, others loud, energetic worship. Some emphasize individual responsibility, others corporate worship. And so on. Just as no one has all the spiritual gifts, so no one lives out all these facets of the faith in perfect balance. In a given congregation, this leads to the "many parts, one body" phenomenon: no one has to do everything; we each do what we were called to do. And denominationally, there is no one perfect group; each has its own strengths and weaknesses, its own place in the Body. The trick is to carry out your function without demeaning the others. As long as we do that, denominations will be a blessing, not a curse.

Christianity and "Religion" 2

I think we'll all agree that no one has ever successfully thrown a surprise party for God. He knows the end from the beginning, so of course he knew about denominations and religious wars before the Incarnation. Perhaps he thought it was worth it.

So in answer to the question, Did Jesus come to found the religion called Christianity? I would ask in turn, Did God bring Israel out of Egypt to found a monarchy? From Deut 17:14-20 we know he was aware they would choose a king eventually, but when they actually got around to it (1 Sam 8:5ff), God wasn't pleased. Now, a lot of that had to do with motives--they wanted to depend on a human leader for military victory, not God. But if you look at the history of Israelite kings, they were generally not good. Hardly any in the eventual northern kingdom were godly at all, and few of the kings of Judah were more than nominally devout. Yet God knew there would be a monarchy, and he did chose David's line for the Messiah: it wasn't all bad.

So did God bring Israel out of Egypt to found a monarchy? No--at least, that wasn't the main idea. Was the monarchy an entirely bad, human-devised idea? No--God allowed it; it was the motivation that was the issue, and God brought good out of it, including the Messianic line.

I consider the cases analogous: God did not set out to establish a religion or a monarchy, but he didn't set out not to establish one. They were acceptable and inevitable consequences of what he was out to do.

You may agree that, given sinful human nature, they were inevitable, but acceptable? I'll try to demonstrate that next.

Christianity and "Religion" 1

I don't know why Christmas brings out certain types of trolls--and if this isn't a troll, it's a line typical of trolls. I normally just reject their comments, but this one is common enough, I thought I might as well deal with it in a post. Basically, did Jesus come to "found a religion called Christianity"?

First, there's the matter of "religion." I suspect this is the sort of person who considers "religion" essentially evil. It isn't. Simply put, "religion" involves man's beliefs about and interactions with some greater (usually divine) reality. Even atheists are often religious: they are devoted to their belief in a zero-god.

"Religion" is also a system explaining these interactions, and a term for outward manifestations of them, as in James 1:26-27. Note that these verses don't treat religion as evil. I could bring up several other passages that treat the topic neutrally or positively, but then I'd feel obligated to invoke Greek, and it would probably get tedious.

Did Jesus come to found a belief system? Not as such; he came to get rid of our sins and destroy the works of the Devil (1 John 3:5, 10). But events (e.g., the Incarnation, Crucifixion, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ) entail certain beliefs about them. How can you claim to follow Jesus and deny any of these events? Furthermore, he left us teachings on a number of topics, as well as commandments to follow. And these beliefs, teachings, and commandments constitute a "religion" called Christianity.

Now, the focus is Christ. Mere assent to a group of beliefs is worthless: the demons know such things too (James 2:19). But faith requires content: it is not enough to say, "I believe!" What do you believe? You have faith in Jesus? Which Jesus? Jesus the Great Teacher and All-Around Nice Guy who didn't literally rise from the dead? Try again.

In my next post, I'll examine something similar to the founding of a "religion" that God did anyway.

The Jewish Girl

Our final Andersen story for the moment is "The Jewish Girl." It demonstrates another area where modern Christian writing tends to fall short: We either ignore crucial differences ("Everyone gets to Heaven somehow, because God's such a nice guy.") or overemphasize them ("You don't agree with my ideas? Are you sure you're a Christian?"). We need balance.

From time to time there's heated discussion about the place of Jews in God's Kingdom. Strangely, there's not as much discussion about the place of Gentiles there. The answer is the same: if you acknowledge Jesus as fully God and fully man, the sinless son of a virgin, the one who died in our place, and if you trust him for salvation and yield to him as Lord, you're saved. Ethnicity doesn't matter. If you don't accept him, even if you say he was a great teacher, but certainly not God, you're outside the Kingdom, and again ethnicity doesn't matter. And there are people who are moving graudally into full belief. God knows where they are.

What we believe does matter. I exchanged a-mails with someone who mentioned an episode of X-Men where they ran into Dracula. Nightcrawler, a devout Christian, could turn the vampire with a cross, when Wolverine could not. But Kitty Pryde's Jewish faith also turned the vampire.

I replied that this was the old idea of faith in faith: a sufficiently convinced atheist could have done the same thing, or a Satanist. For non-Messianic Jews believe that Jesus was just a man, not God in human form. So while Jews and Christians worship the same God in one sense, in another they don't: the God of the various Jewish creeds did not incarnate, and Jesus is not in any sense God. Historic Christianity says otherwise. A dividing point came. Until then, their God was the same; now he isn't. From a Christian standpoint, Kitty believed in a non-existent god; from a Jewish standpoint, Nightcrawler did. They could not both be right: either Jesus was God or he wasn't, and the cultural context did not allow for a fuzzy pantheistic response.

Do we have the guts to pick a side? It doesn't mean berating those on the other side, just acknowledging the difference and its importance.