Restoration Review: Leroy Garrett, Editor

The Word Abused . . .

SOME OF THE LEFT OVER PASSAGES

The series has now gone through twenty installments. Still we did not get through. Counting the suggestions that came in from our readers, we could easily make this series a regular feature for years to come. But there is no need to overdo a bad thing, so commencing with the new year we will be moving in other directions. In closing out, however, we thought it appropriate to share with you some of the left overs. This will be little more than a bare reference to a number of abused scriptures, but this may prove sufficient to call your attention to them so that you can take up where we leave off, untwisting them and disabusing them as you may.

One of those tucked away in my folder in dire need of attention is Rom. 7:16, where “form of doctrine” is made to refer to the steps of salvation, and “obeyed from the heart” is used to teach that a certain level of understanding, especially of baptism for the remission of sins, is necessary. That’s about as much abuse as anyone could expect from a single line of scripture: “You have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you.” The first part of the line shows that the readers had made a sincere response to the gospel, while the second part points to their obedience to “the principles of the Christian gospel,” to use McGarvey’s description. Phillips’ rendition is helpful: “You honestly responded to the impact of Christ’s teaching when you came under its influence.” Schonfield translates it “that model of teaching,” and supplies a footnote to the effect that Paul may refer to a manual of instruction that then circulated. To make “form” refer to faith, repentance and baptism per se and “from the heart” mean a knowledge of the import of baptism is to overwork and abuse a passage. That has to be imposed upon it, not drawn from what is actually said.

I also wanted to show that the case of Nadab and Abihu has come in for some gross maltreatment, for it is used to prove that our family in the Christian Churches, like those two priests, “offer up strange fire before the Lord, which he commanded them not,” when they use instrumental music. I believe one can be non-instrumental music with good cause without resorting to such gymnastics as that. The priests were in obvious rebellion to what was clearly set forth as their responsibility, which was that the fire for offerings was to be taken from the brazen altar in the outer court (Lev. 6:8-13). They “presented before the Lord illicit fire which he had not commanded,” which means they used fire from a different source, in defiance of what God had specified. This is made to suggest that instrumental music is “a strange fire which he commanded not.” The parallel that is claimed here simply will not hold up. It assumes that a certain “kind” of music is authorized which excludes all other kinds, and that God has specifically described that kind, like he did the sacrificial fire. There is no clear-cut reference to congregational singing in scripture, with or without an instrument, like there was for the fire in the temple. If a congregation did not sing at all, it could not be proved that they were doing wrong. The singing called for may well have been private and at home (where most of our folk will allow the instrument!). Besides, all any of us do is to sing, some of us believing we can employ aids and others not. If, when directed to sing spiritual songs, we brayed some nonsense, then a reference to Nadab and Abihu might be in order. This bit about the instrument being “another kind of music” (as if different from what God has specified) is farfetched. And to put our brethren in the same class with Nadab and Abihu because they choose to use an instrument is worse than farfetched.

Also in my file is a tear sheet from one of our papers on What is truth? It reminds one of how terribly we have abused this term, applying it, for the most part, to our particular party slant. You are loyal to “the truth” if you are a capella or-amillennial or non-cooperative — or faithful to what the Christian Church or Church of Christ teaches. There are of course many truths in scripture, and we must be faithful to all of them that we understand. Some of these are obviously more important than others. But “the truth” is something else, and I can’t believe that when Jesus said “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free” that he was referring to all the truths of revelation. He was referring to his own entrance into history and into the lives of his disciples. He and only he is the truth. When one knows that truth, when he knows Jesus, he is free, not until. It doesn’t matter how full his head may be of the many truths of scripture or how faithfully he interprets all the doctrine. If his heart is empty of the truth, which is the Person of Jesus dwelling in our hearts through faith, then all else is vain.

I was hoping to include a lesson on Jesus washing his disciples feet, which is so often abused through sheer neglect of its real significance. We are so eager to show the inapplicability of foot washing for our time that the story is too soon passed by. Our people must be confused by this tack we so often take — “That doesn’t apply to us.” They might start asking about our infallibility or omniscience. How do we know so much as to know just when scripture applies and when it doesn’t? Anyway, I buy the story of Jesus washing feet, and I don’t attempt to explain it away. I only recognize what is obvious, that he is not being crassly literal. We wash feet by helping people and loving them. When Ouida ,and I sit here all day long, wrapping copies of this journal, which is our own little labor of love for your sake, I explain to her that we are washing feet. Some of the responses that we get would suggest that. And it does such ones a lot more good than if we literally bowed before them with a pan of water. But, if and when appropriate, we shall both be pleased to do that too, for your sake and for Jesus’ sake. When Jesus says, “You also ought to wash one another’s feet,” I accept it in humble obedience. But I can see from life’s experiences that its fullfillment is in many ways beyond the literal.

And I would have preferred to have done at least a short piece on “discerning the Body,” as referred to in 1 Cor. 11:29. You notice I capitalized Body, as does the New English, which means that I recognize it as referring to Christ’s body, the church, though I am not suggesting that it must always be so capitalized. But in this passage it differentiates it from the loaf that has been referred to. Paul is not saying that we should keep our minds on the Supper and thus “discern the body,” which I think is to abuse the text. Otherwise “he eats and drinks damnation to himself.” Surely this doesn’t happen to one when he lets his mind wander and he thinks for a moment about how he’s going to make the next rent payment when his mind should be upon the meaning of the Supper. That may be weak and sinful, but that is not what Paul is talking about. The phrase “not discerning the Body” is the careless failure to see the unity of those in Christ and to be content to break bread in an atmosphere of strife and division. And one does drink damnation to himself when his behavior as a factionist stands in judgement against him as he shares in a feast that in its very essence is an expression of the oneness that is in Christ. That makes it a powerful passage, and one that should cause us to stop and think about our divisive ways. When we push from us a brother or sister for whom Christ died because he has veered from our party line or because of the color of his skin, and then sit down to partake of the Supper — “not discerning the Body” — we may be in very serious trouble with the Lord.

“In my Father’s house are many mansions” is a passage that we may be missing by a country mile, but I will only raise the question without attempting to give a full answer, for I am not sure I know. But I question that this is really the funeral message that we make of it. In scripture God’s house is His church, not heaven. The mansions may be the sanctuaries of human hearts, not some kind of apartments in another world. Besides, heaven may eventually be right here on earth! We know, at least, that there will be a new earth for the righteous. If we judge by the context of John 14, Jesus is talking about the Spirit, not heaven. He was offering the disciples immediate assurance and comfort, so that their hearts need not be troubled. He wasn’t preaching their funerals!

This comfort would come from what he was going away to prepare, what he went on to talk about, the coming of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit dwells in each mansion of the heart. The “place” he prepares is life in the Spirit, which is life with him. This interpretation has its difficulties, bu t I think the “orthodox” interpretation has even more. You think about it.

I wanted to do a piece on “Going down front,” which is now so common in our congregations. One may wonder where we ever got such an idea, if not from the old mourner’s bench. What is going on anyway when a brother or sister walks down the aisle, gives a hand to the preacher, and then proceeds to go through a rather well defined procedure? More often than not this is for the confession of sins and contrition, which makes it very similar to the Roman Catholic confessional. We’ve all seen those cubicles when visiting a Roman Church, called confessionals, and we are usually critical of such a practice. The idea of confessing one’s sins to a priest! Why is it all that different when the confession is before several hundred priests? What has happened to the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers? When we sin, we should go to God through our Advocate, Jesus Christ. Why go before a congregation any more than before a priest? I am suspicious that this is a control device invented by our clergy. I was reminded of this recently when one brother, poking fun at the antics of another, said, “Man, acting like that, you’re going to have to go down front!” Going down front, or the threat of it, is our way of keeping folk in line. I hear from time to time of how brethren, in hot water with their congregations, offer to “go down front,” if that will help any. What a mess we have gotten ourselves into in so many ways, this meaningless practice not being the least. It could well serve to displace the real meaning of priesthood and thus do a lot of harm.

I think we abuse the story of Jesus by giving too little attention to the context in which he lived. We abuse the story by modernizing Jesus, conveniently neglecting his Jewishness. We make him white (which I suppose he was, but an Easterner nonetheless and hardly like a modern American or Britisher) and middle class. And he was a Jew! But we make a Gentile out of him, and we kid ourselves into supposing that he would fit right into most any of our congregations should he again walk the earth. It is more like one of my Harvard profs said when I ask him what he thought would happen to Jesus if he should again appear among us. “He would be killed or imprisoned,” he said, When I asked him who would do it, he said it would be the clergy and the churches, just as before. But we don’t think our churches would do anything like that, do we? It is just possible that the greatest abuse of scripture of all is to make our way meticulously through the Bible and completely miss Jesus.

On and on it could go. My readers sent in a number of suggestions that we never got to, such as the use we make of the term evangelist and the way we interpret the prophetic cry “They shall be called by a new name.” What we make heresy to mean and the slant we give to “marry only in the Lord” are also suspect.

People who love the Bible will not intentionally twist and abuse it. We hope that this series has alerted us to some of the dangers we face as we handle the most sacred trust ever vouchsafed to human hands. No surgeon has cause to be any more careful. There is good reason why the scriptures themselves would warn “Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, for you know that we who teach shall be judged with greater strictness” (Jas. 3:1). —the Editor