A DEFLATED EGO!

A sister who has been reading the history of the Restoration Movement sends this amusing comment:

I must confess I was most ignorant concerning the beginnings of the group with which I am affiliated, except I thought it was started in 30 A.D. Imagine my great surprise to learn we really came by way of the Baptists and Presbyterians!

It is a jolt-and some of my brethren refuse to believe it. It is amazing how much I have learned since I thought I already had all the answers. What a blow to my ego!

While she is poking fun at herself (a sign of good emotional health, by the way, to be able to do that), she is partly serious. Being the well-read person that she is, she is well aware that the congregation of Christ became a reality sometime around 30 A.D. It is what we might call “the fallacy of the loyal church” that the good sister is trying to overcome. While Christ’s church does indeed go back 1900 years into history, it is rather presumptuous for anyone group within Christendom to lay claim to being that one and only church. It is especially hazardous when that group itself is divided several ways, each claiming to be the loyal church.

One does not have to read far in the history of our Movement before he realizes that those things that are unique about the Church of Christ go no further back into history than the middle of the last century. The name that we use, exclusive to all others, doesn’t even go back as far as the beginnings of the Restoration Movement. We were called Disciples, Reformers, and Christians back in those days, not to mention Campbellites, while the name “Church of Christ” was at first almost never used. A congregation among us now that would try to use anything else would not only be a rarity, but would also be held in suspicion.

So it is with such novel ideas as “the plan of salvation” with its four clearly defined steps; our use of Acts 20:7 to make the Supper a must for every Sunday and only Sunday; our use of 1 Cor. 16:2 to make a collection of money not only “an item of worship,” but a matter of law for every Sunday morning service. Added to these marks of distinction is our strange notion that the fellowship of the saints is contingent upon unanimity of interpretation of a large body of doctrines, whether it be the use of instrumental music, the rule of elders, or the millennium.

One might trace a few of these odd interpretations back into history for two or three generations, but the effort to establish them as primitive or apostolic is indeed futile. What is different about the Church of Christ does not much belong to history. We continue to create new patterns of practice, however gradual and subtle, while insisting all along that we are apostolic in every detail. No one seems to question things like two services on, Sunday, which comes close to being two congregations in one, and a second serving of the Supper at night, at which time only a few partake. We may assume they are apostolic since we practice them, and thus go deep into history.

Other things might well be considered both historical and apostolic (other religious groups seem to think so), which we neatly and summarily dismiss for one reason or another: the holy kiss, foot washing, the anointing of oil, solo singing, tongues, and ministering elders (who did not hire evangelists to do it for them). Hardly anyone makes more of congregational singing than we do, or who does more of it, and yet the Bible that does refer to solo singing does, not once allude to mass singing. I recall asking a New Testament scholar at Harvard if he could find evidence of mass singing in a congregation in New Testament times. He acknowledged that it could not be found in the New Testament itself, but pointed to Suetonius, a pagan source, as an indication that it might have been practiced (“They sing hymns to one Chrestus who was crucified”).

I am only saying that we have allowed ourselves to become an oddity, a people who will not dare allow someone to sing a solo during worship, for which we have Biblical precedence, and insist that the singing must be in mass, for which we have no clear precedence. And yet we draw the line of fellowship on our brothers who assume the same liberty we do in having congregational singing, but who also take the liberty to play a piano along with it. We say one is scriptural and the other isn’t. The truth is that neither is scriptural!

This history bit is in the same category. We suppose that if we are the true people of God that we must be able to identify ourselves in every detail with primitive Christianity. Any admission that we as a distinct religious body began only about the time of Alexander Campbell would be devastating to our religion. And we see that such a revelation injured the ego of the sister who wrote the letter above. We are known for the courage of our convictions. When we become known for the courage to examine our convictions, our egos will be less vulnerable to stark reality.

Are we really so deceived on this score that we would expect an encyclopedia, if it were really truthful, to include the Churches of Christ in its treatment of Christianity, while excluding all other churches as sects?

It should be enough if we could think of ourselves as a people even better as a Movement within the ecclesia of God, with some ideas to contribute for the improvement of Christianity. To equate ourselves with Christianity, while consigning all others to second-class citizenship in God’s kingdom at best, is sheer folly. It is reasonable and proper, however, for us as a distinct people to be at work within the congregation of Christ at large, laboring for deeper spirituality, a greater sense of brotherhood, and a restoration of unity of all believers. And of course for better insights into the teachings of the New Covenant scriptures. There is much that we can contribute to Christendom, or at least share in contributing.

And that this particular effort with its distinct emphases should date back no further than the 1800’s is perfectly in order. Let us think of ourselves as raised up by God at a particular moment in the church’s history to do a work that no one else may do. We can have a high and holy mission without claiming to be the only grandchildren that the apostles have!

We might be able to look at it that way and still keep our egos in tact. —the Editor

Paul advised the Corinthians to contribute on the first day regularly, but there the phrase implies that each is to lay it aside at home. —Crozier Theological Review, Vol. 21, p. 248

The question of bread for myself is a material question, but the question of bread for my neighbors, for everybody, is a spiritual and a religious question. —Nicholas Berdyaev