BETRAYAL OF A HERITAGE

In this the 200th anniversary year of the birth of our nation we are especially conscious of heritage and destiny. As a people we are looking back to see where we have been in hopes of better understanding where we are going, or should be going. Heritage and destiny are thus closely related. We can hardly be “people in the NOW,” building a better tomorrow if we have no understanding of the past, especially in terms of what our forebears have bequeathed to us. This is what heritage means — inheritance, things both physical and spiritual, cultural and ideological, that have been handed down to us by those of past generations.

In a general way this applies to everything from our physical bodies and personal characteristics to our family life, jobs, schools, churches, science, industry, political order — the whole bit of what might be called our culture, with its music and art, its sports and its literature. Such a heritage is for the most part inescapable. You are stuck with red hair or green eyes, and there’s not much you can do about it — especially the eyes! You are also dropped down into a world of computers, TV, assassinations, Walter Cronkite, and the Dallas Cowboys. Had you been born in ancient Rome or even in early America the story for you would have been entirely different. But that’s what heritage is all about. We are what we are; and we have what we have. But that is also the point. So often we do not realize just who we are, nor do we understand what we have.

We may be like the dilettante who proudly boasted of the rich library he had inherited from his scholarly grandfather, though he lacked the depth to realize what he had. “These are my books,” he would remind every visitor to his home, pointing to the splendid volumes gracing the walls, though he never really studied them. They were his and yet they weren’t. A heritage can be betrayed by being unworthy of it.

One of the first lessons to learn about any inheritance is that we accept it for what it is, warts and all, or we disassociate ourselves from it altogether. We cannot lay claim to the assets without accepting responsibility for the liabilities. If Aunt Emma bequeaths you a farm down in the Rio Grande valley where all the luscious fruit grows, you can’t take the farm without the mortgage that may yet be against it. You might have trouble with the probate judge if you said, “Oh, yes, indeed, I’ll take the farm, but not the debts against it.” He’d have you know that they go together. You take them both or leave them both.

One assignment I had in my visit to Taiwan a few years ago was to share my American heritage with a group of educators in exile from mainland China. I could tell them about Washington and Jefferson and Lincoln, about our industrial production and our free educational system; but I also had to deal with their questions about American slavery, as well as some of the “liabilities” then in the world press: race riots in Washington, bombing of churches in Birmingham, and the killing of civil right workers in Mississippi.

It is equally true. of a religious heritage. A Mormon may point with pride to the Tabernacle Choir as it wings its way over TV, but he must also realize that the antics of prophet Joseph Smith are also part of the package, in which he cannot so easily be proud, if he knows the story. Our own Church of Christ history is upwards of a century old now, and as part of the larger Restoration Movement it is even older. In that history there are many things for which we can be thankful, while other things are not so good. But we have to accept it all as the product of our people, preserving what we believe to be right and helping to correct what we believe to be wrong. This makes us faithful heirs. We betray our heritage to do otherwise. So long as our people preach the gospel and minister to human suffering, we can join in the effort and praise God for it. But when we play the party game and divide into a dozen or more warring sects, while telling the world that we are the New Testament church, we should face up to the shame of our inconsistency and work for a change. Dirt in history is like dirt in a room: it has a way of hanging around even when swept under a rug!

A review of some of the ideas and principles that gave birth to the Restoration Movement in this country, back to which Churches of Christ trace their beginning, will reveal that something has gone wrong. When we take an honest look at the facts, we may have to conclude that we’ve been had. Somebody has betrayed a glorious concept and a lot of us have been ripped off. A heritage betrayed! Let’s take a look.

1. We began as a unity movement.

Both words are very important.. Our pioneers launched a movement within the church for the purpose of correcting deficiencies and continuing the great work of reformation that began with Martin Luther. They had no illusions about restoring the church itself, for they realized that the community of believers has always been in this world, ever since Jesus promised that it would: “Upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hades will not prevail against it.” The Body of Christ will always be, until Jesus comes to claim his own! Alexander Campbell realized this, and so he did not suppose that the church had disappeared into the wilderness and that it was his task to bring it back into history. The church was out there, but it was splintered into sects, its institutions of the Lord’s supper and baptism were in disarray, its scriptures were displaced by the creeds of men, and its fellowship was determined by sectarian loyalties. So, a movement was launched to take up where the reformers of past generations had left off, and to make the church what God wants it to be. Their mission, therefore, was not to restore the church, for the church already existed, but to restore to the church what they believed to be its rightful character. They were renovators, not innovators.

Our pioneers, drawing upon the resources of their own heritage, came to see the essential unity of the Body of Christ and the horrid evil of division. Thomas Campbell penned these nobel words at the outset of the movement: “The Church of Christ upon earth is essentially, intentionally, and constitutionally one.” If it is God’s church, it has to be one! And yet he saw sectism everywhere, and he himself was a victim of its oppressive character. He saw brother exclude brother over different interpretations of scripture, causing him to write in his Declaration and Address: “No man can be judged for his brother, so no man can judge for his brother … Therefore, no man has a right to judge his brother, except in so far as he manifestly violates the express letter of the law.”

Fed up as he was with all the hullabaloo of sectarian bigotry, Thomas Campbell wrote: “Tired and sick of the bitter jarrings and janglings of a party spirit, we would desire to be at rest, and we would give rest to our brethren throughout all the churches.”

Our Movement was then and should be now a movement “to unite the Christians in all the sects.” We betray our heritage if we exchange this plea for a demand for conformity. The Churches of Christ cannot presume to have recovered all of God’s truth for His church. We cannot suppose that we are the right church to the exclusion of all others. It is our role, as disciples of Jesus, to be a movement for unity and peace, of love and fellowship, among the divided church, seeking “to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

If our message to the Christian world is that all other religious groups must surrender whatever they are and become precisely what we are, then it will fall upon resentful ears, as it should. But if our plea is as the apostle Peter’s, “Come to Jesus, to that living stone, rejected by men but in God’s sight precious,” and recognize that as our goal, sharing Jesus and finding unity in a common desire to be more and more like him, then the world will take us seriously. We have much to offer other believers, for our heritage has enriched our potential. This can be done only as we learn to criticize ourselves and come to accept our own imperfections, thus cooperating with our neighbors in a common search for more and more truth.

Yes, we began as a unity movement, and yet our people have been among the most sectarian, factious, and divisive in the history of Christianity, so that even in this peaceful city there are six or eight different kinds of Churches of Christ and Christian Churches, hardly any of whom will recognize the others as within the fellowship of Christ. It is imperative that we in our generation reverse this betrayal of our original purpose and once again be emissaries of peace and love in a tragically divided religious world.

2. At first we said, “We are Christians only, but not Christians only, but not the only Christians.”

This was the way our pioneers put it, and this was the way our people believed during our early history. We told the world that we did not want to be any kind of hyphenated Christian. whether Methodist-Christian, Baptist-Christian or whatever, but Christians only, for we believed that this was according to the scriptures.

Most everyone will concede this to be a reasonable and peaceful plea: Christians only. But we have betrayed this impressive motto by claiming that we are the only Christians. The difference is staggering. No one can criticize us for believing that we are right, and believing it adamantly. But we do make ourselves vulnerable when we believe ourselves to be right and everybody else wrong.

It frees us from a sectarian concept to realize that wherever God has a child we have a brother or sister, wherever that child may be. Surely we have blood brothers and sisters out there in the larger religious world, people who have been redeemed by the blood of Christ just as we have. They are not our brothers and sisters because they are Methodists or Baptists or Pentecostals or whatever, but because they are “in Christ” just as we are, having believed and obeyed the same gospel we have.

Recently a professor friend of mine in Denton was telling me of his association with some Catholics who have really become turned on as to what the Holy Spirit can do in their lives. My friend talked with one of them in particular, sharing with him what it means to be immersed into Christ. It is a touching story of how he finally immersed this believing “Catholic” into Christ. Now that man continues within the context of his own Roman Catholic Church, and my friend does not believe that it necessarily follows that he has to leave where he is and come over and join us, unless he himself concludes that this is what he should do. He has joined Christ in baptism, and has consequently become a brother to all of us who are in Jesus, and that’s what counts.

No church today is so true to the scriptural norms that it can demand that all God’s children be within its fold. We must realize that the Church of God on earth is fragmented and largely decadent. In our efforts to unite and revive it, each concerned one must labor where he believes the Lord wants him, and leave it to God to put it all together according to his own purpose, which He is going to do anyway.

But it greatly troubles some of our people forme to talk this way. The way you have it, they say, we’ll be fellowshipping brothers in error. Brothers in error! Now, really, do you suppose we have any other kind?

3. At the outset we said, “In matters of faith, unity; in matters of opinion, liberty; in all things, love.”

This principle did not originate with our pioneers, but should be credited to one Rupert Meldenius, a 17th century reformer. But they sharpened it and applied it to their restoration efforts. To them it meant that unity is possible if we make nothing the basis of fellowship that God has not made a condition for salvation. “In matters of faith, unity.” We can be united only on the ground of what is clearly and distinctly set forth in scripture, not upon our opinions or private interpretations.

Thomas Campbell saw at the very beginning the cause of division: “The bitter root of almost all our divisions, namely, the imposing of our private opinions upon each other as articles of faith or duty, introducing them into the public profession and practice of the Church, and acting upon them as if they were the express law of Christ, by judging and rejecting our brethren that differ from us in those things.”

Perhaps you have noticed that we nearly always divide over what the Bible says nothing about in the first place, whether Sunday Schools, missionary societies, communion cups, or instrumental music. When we are tempted to impose our views on these things upon our brothers, demanding that they practice it our way, we would do well to read Thomas Campbell still further: “Nothing ought to be inculcated upon Christians as articles of faith, nor required of them as terms of communion, but what is expressly taught and enjoined upon them in the, word of God.”

Even if we think we know we are right in a given position, we cannot insist that our brother see it our way, until he himself comes to see it as something clearly enjoined in the scriptures. Notice how beautifully Thomas Campbell puts it: “Although inferences and deductions from Scripture premises, when fairly inferred, may be truly called the doctrine of God’s holy word, yet are they not formally binding upon the consciences of Christians farther than they perceive the connection, and evidently see that they are so … No such deductions can be made terms of communion, but do properly belong to the after and progressive edification of the Church.”

How that liberates us! And it makes it possible for us to respond to Jesus’ prayer for the oneness of all his disciples: “Father, may they be one …” If we have to see eye-to-eye on all these private interpretations before that prayer can be answered, then we will never in this world be a united people. hi matters of faith, unity. That is, in matters clearly revealed as God’s unquestionable will for us. This is why our pioneers measured brotherhood in terms of the gospel itself: one Lord,

one faith, one baptism.

In matters of opinion, liberty. We all profess to subscribe to that, but few of us really practice it. The problem is that what is a matter of faith to one is a matter of opinion to another, and vice-versa. This is where our heritage helps us: our pioneers insisted that unless something is clearly and distinctly set forth in scripture it is a matter of opinion, however important it may be to us, and cannot be imposed upon another.

This means, then, that we can have some churches that support Herald of Truth and some that do not, some that are premillennial in their interpretation of prophecy and some that are not, some that use instrumental music and some that do not, some that have the Sunday School system and some that do not, some that are more pentecostal or charismatic in their view of the Holy Spirit and some that are less so and still be one together in the Body of Christ in that we are united on the essentials — the one Lord, the one faith, the one baptism.

In all things, love. This is the great dynamic that really makes us one in Christ. By its very nature love heals what is diseased and unites what is divided. As Paul puts it: “Above all things put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony”. (Col. 3:14) Phillips has it read that love is “the golden chain of all the virtues.”

This is our heritage. Let’s portray it rather than betray it! — Presented to Park Row Church of Christ, Arlington, Tx., Jan. 11, 1976, by the editor.