REMOVING THE RUBBISH

Thanks to Mayor Lindsey and Governor Rockefeller, and especially the 10,000 members of the striking Sanitationmen’s Association in New York, the nation has been made aware of the problem of garbage. Thousands of tons of garbage piled up all over New York during the 9-day strike, causing fire and epidemic hazards. Even out in the streets one was not safe from rats. The city was soon up in arms: the rubbish must go!

That this had its political overtones is apparent enough, involving as it did both the governor and the mayor. Some news media viewed the garbage in terms of national political implications. A headline in The National Observer read: “How Trash Dispute Affects Rockefeller Image.”

As important as such implications may be, it reminded me of the more general problem of rubbish in such areas as religion and education. In the streets of a great city the presence of garbage is much more evident than that which piles up in our minds, but it is surely no more real and no less hazardous to one’s welfare. It would be in order, therefore, for a number of us who are acquainted with conditions in school and church, not to mention the more intimate confines of our own minds, to rise up and cry: the rubbish must go!

In his book Experiments in Living, Prof. MacBeath of Belfast, Ireland, had something to say about rubbish in a statement on moral philosophy: “Character is improved and moral goodness realized by doing whatever is right in the circumstances, whether it be the humblest domestic duty or ruling an empire, whether it be removing the rubbish that disfigures a street or the rubbish that lies in the way to knowledge.”

Since much of my life is centered in the university classroom, I am keenly aware of the rubbish that has a way of piling up in the educative process, obstructing the way to zestful learning. Part of this is what I call “Preoccupation with peripheral concerns,” whether it be clubs, fraternities and sororities, parties, “professional” athletics, or what have you. A student who is always on the run in the periphery is likely to miss the real stuff of education. So with the faculty. If it is kept preoccupied with all sorts of meetings, it has little time to read, think, and teach. Such rubbish must be removed from our campuses. One of the great dangers modern education faces is uninspiring teachers, and teachers who haven’t time ro teach can hardly be inspiring. Bel Kaufman’s Up the Down Staircase is a hilarious testimonial to all the rubbish that is in a teacher’s way, especially at the high school level.

Equally serious is the inertia of the typical classroom situation that allows for so little critical thinking. We do not necessarily educate young people by lecturing to them. We must cause them to think. A lot of data can pass from a teacher’s lecture notes to the student’s writing pad and back to the teacher again in an exam without any important thinking ever taking place. Something is wrong when education is boring. A lot of rubbish needs to be removed.

As important as it is to clear the rubbish cluttering up education, it is even more imperative that God’s people become sanitation workers who will clean up the mess that impedes the function of the colony of heaven.

This was the problem in rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. Neh. 4:10 reads: “There is much rubbish; we are not able to work on the wall.” It seems that the work of restoration necessitates the removal of a lot of rubbish. This is especially the case in reference to a restoration of the bond of union between brothers who have been long divided, for there is much that encrustates the simple truth that makes men one.

Let us look at some of the more damaging rubbish heaps that have piled up in the brotherhood through the years, causing new divisions among us or preserving old ones.

1. Sectarian interpretation of scripture

What rubbish this has become! Even while we claim to be unsectarian we are the most sectarian in the way we often handle the Bible, even to the point of using the scriptures to justify maltreatment of a brother. We make 2 John 9-10 mean that if a brother differs with us on the millennium or the use of an organ that he has departed from the doctrine of Christ and is therefore beyond the reaches of fellowship. “If anyone does not bring this doctrine. . . “ is applied to virtually every opinion among us when the context makes it clear that such interpretations are impossible. These are party interpretations that must, like rubbish, be cleaned away.

2. The “Loyal Church” Fallacy

Our perpetual habit of division stems from this, for each party among us justifies its existence on the ground that it is loyal, having separated itself from “brothers in error.” All of us are brothers in error, and no one faction can claim to be loyal. The sinful world and the sectarian spirit have effected us all. Security cannot be found by joining the right institution that teaches the right doctrines, but by a personal relationship with the Christ. All who sustain that union with Christ are brothers together, even when the group with which they are identified is less than what it ought to be, which is true of them all.

3. The Church with the Right Name

The community of God as revealed in scripture has no name or names. Any group, therefore, that makes an issue of “the right name”, or that wears a name so as to make it its own property, is only piling up trash. If a group distinguishes itself by adopting the name “Church of God,” which is of course a scriptural term, it is only being sectarian, for it is defining itself in such a way as to imply that others are not churches of God. So with our denominating ourselves “Church of Christ.” If we really wish to be scriptural, we will recognize no name or names at all. We will simply be God’s people, and will freely use all the descriptions that are proper for His community. We will thus remove a barrier.

4. The “Book, Chapter, and Verse” Kind of Thinking

There is of course nothing wrong in citing book, chapter and verse, but at the same time there is nothing especially efficacious about it. One can line up passages a mile long, and roll off all sorts of references of where to find what (which is mostly ignored anyhow), and yet be doing very little real teaching. We need to interpret the Word, and not simply string out passages like sausages. In most cases the boring ordeal of listening to a “book, chapter and verse” kind of presentation is so much rubbish. Let us take a portion of scripture or an idea and study it in depth, showing the relevance it has to the now of our lives.

5. The Failure to Make Important Distinctions

We fail to distinguish between the community of God and the Restoration Movement, and what evils this has brought our way! The Restoration Movement is not the church, not does it represent a restoration of the church. It is rather a movement within the church (which has been all along and has never ceased to be since the apostles) to restore to the church certain deficiencies—brotherhood being one of them. We also fail to distinguish between gospel and doctrine, an error that has strewn a lot of garbage, for it has confused our concept of ministry.

6. The Pattern Fallacy

This is perhaps the most threatening pile of rubbish of all, for it continues to give us problems in long division. It is the idea that there is a blueprint kind of pattern for the work, worship and organization of the church, and, yes, even the name. So each one interprets “the pattern” by his own liking, and if others do not conform, they are rejected as unsound for not “taking the Book for what it says.” The truth is that the scriptures do not speak, and it was never intended that they should speak, regarding the detailed structure of the Lord’s congregation. We are slow to see that the primitive community had “the pattern” long before there was a New Testament for them, and that pattern was Christ. The scriptures are indeed a norm for our experiences in Christ, but patternism is divisive garbage that must go.

7. Stress on the Superficial

Whether this takes the form of institutions, church edifices, large numbers, “image” consciousness, professionalism in the pulpit, we are doing much that suggests we are missing the point of Christianity—and that is to be conformed to the likeness of Christ. We are preoccupied with all sorts of building programs, and you will notice that our most spiritual people (such as our youth that are going inner-city, Faith Corps, etc.) simply are not interested in our real estate projects. Some have given their lives to the erection of a “Madison Avenue” type edifice in New York. Others, with different concerns, have gone to the slums of Harlem to witness for Christ in the streets, and they could not care less for our impressive buildings.

Prepare your own list of garbage heaps in our thinking and practice. This list is fragmentary and incomplete, but it points to matters that should concern us. “There is much rubbish; we are not able to work on the wall” Away with the rubbish!—the Editor