CRITICISM WHICH SAVES
HARRY MOORE

Criticism, like surgery, is always painful, sometimes dangerous, but often necessary. We are hearing some pointed criticisms of our attitudes in the Church of Christ, and most of these criticisms are arising from our own people. One says that we emphasize the wrong things: the formal and institutional rather than the personal. Another says we are legalistic: we treat Christianity as a system of works, whereby a person achieves his salvation. Another says we do wrong to draw factional lines over such things as the use of mechanical instruments of music in public worship. And still others say that we are too intolerant, that we oversimplify complex issues, that we are self-righteous.

These criticisms are widespread and insistent and we aren’t sure how we should regard them. Sometimes they seem irreverent, when they so boldly attack established beliefs and attitudes. Sometimes they seem an annoying hindrance to the growth of the church. Other times these criticisms seem anarchic; so much talk about “legalism” and intolerance may lead, we think, to a no-man’s land where no certain guiding truth can be found. But then there are times when the criticism seems both valid and necessary, like a stirring breeze in a parched land. It may seem like thunder and lightning, but it brings purging and refreshing showers. The church is somehow more vital, more relevant, more Christian for the criticism.

Those who criticize must be sure that their criticisms have positive goals, and are not merely negative. Those who are criticized must realize that criticism is needed and that it can be ultimately wholesome.

The Church of Christ is made up of human beings, and for all our noble aims we are not perfect either in knowledge or in practice. It is no more irreverent against the Head of the church to criticize its members than it is irreverent against the Creator of the human body to give a dose of penicillin or to remove an inflamed appendix.

And in the Church of Christ today we do have some infections and some malignancies. In the matter of values, for example, we have allowed an overemphasis on formal congregational practice, as men have always unduly stressed the outward and public expressions of religion. In our efforts to restore the apostolic order described in the New Testament, we have become too absorbed with determining with exactness what that order is. We have rallied sects around specific congregational policies—on music, on mission work, on order in public assemblies. We have categorized brethren and congregations according to their position on certain issues. We have predicted salvation on being right about what constitutes the apostolic order of the church.

Our wrong here is not in respecting the New Testament scriptures or in trying to be guided by them in congregational practice, for we are generally agreed that in some way the scriptures afford precedents and guidelines for Christians in all ages. The wrong is in subordinating one’s loyalty to Jesus Christ to one’s allegiance to the “right” order of things, which is like eating the shucks and burying the corn. Christ is the Savior: His death and His resurrection are central. This is the Good’

News. To trust Christ as Savior and to commit everything to Him is the essence of being a Christian. This personal faith opens the gateway to rich spiritual gifts. It prompts repentance and gives baptism its meaning as a Christ-centered expression of trust and commitment. It opens one’s life to the working of God’s Spirit, and hence to peace, hope, joy, and power to overcome sin. This personal faith in Christ must be the center from which other matters—such as how to observe the Lord’s supper or do mission work—take their relevance and importance. Our overemphasis on “issues” has made us spirited partisans, but it has often left us cold and fearful Christians. We must give thought to what being a Christian really means, to what the real issues are. The issues must be seen in the total Christian perspective.

But there is another angle from which we are open to criticism: not only in what we emphasize, but also in how we emphasize it. In our zeal to promote a respect for the scriptures—a worthy aim—we have made salvation a system of works rather than personal faith in Jesus Christ; whereas Paul showed plainly that he sought not a righteousness achieved by works, but “that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith” (Phil. 3:9) . We have approached the New Testament more or less as a legal document containing a more or less abstract, absolute, and detailed plan for the organization and work of the church; we have failed to see it as an inspired record of concrete, specific, Spirit-guided communities meeting specific concrete circumstances with principles which have timeless relevance for churches in all ages, though not always in clear-cut ways. And we have made salvation to depend on our discovering and applying this plan of church order; in fact, we have denied that without all the details of the plan a group can have the “identity” of a church of Christ at all.

Hence, we are rightly criticized as being overly legalistic. Our neat formulas for “the plan of salvation” and for “the worship,” where the scriptures have no such formulas, reflect our legal bent. Our talk of the church as a structure we build rather than a family we are born into further reflects it. And our insecurity about our own salvation plainly—and tragically—reflects it. We do well to teach a close adherence to the apostolic order, and we do well to emphasize the need for obedience to God’s will; but it is wrong to say that only those who reproduce the apostolic order will be saved. We must approach God more as a child and less as a client. Our assemblies should be more like the family circle and less like the courtroom.

While criticism is needed among us, it can be given wrongly. A careless surgeon can destroy the life he seeks to save. Simple protest may be negative, impulsive, vaguely defined, and even selfish. Criticism that saves must be positive. Our talk about legalism, for example, can be meaningless cant—a false badge of maturity and progressiveness—if behind it is not the thought-out alternative to legalism. Or worse still, a purely negative protest against legalism can become a protest against all authority, even God’s. It can lead the undiscriminating to believe that obeying God is not, after all, very important. The Spirit-guided life is not more convenient—but rather more self-involving, more God-trusting, more Christ-glorifying, and more richly rewarding—than the life of law and works. Our protest of overemphasizing “issues” can lead to a neglect of the issues. In our criticism of intolerance we can drift into that broad sea of relativism where the only significant truth is that there is no significant truth. Somehow we must foster respect for what the scriptures say as well as tolerance toward a brother who differs from us in how the scriptures apply.

Our objection to factionalism must be followed by an affirmation of congregational independence in which every brother respects his own conscience. To cease to label brethren as heretics does not mean that we join them in all they practice; it does mean that we love and respect—and receive—them as brethren.

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Harry Moore grew up in the non-class Church of Christ wing, and remains there, working with his home congregation in Alexander City, Ala., near the high school where he teaches. He is a graduate student in English at Auburn. He did one year of advanced study at Rice.

Beware the man who knows the answer before he understands the question.—C. M, Manasco