It's a great video in a lot of ways. I resonate with his call to get back to the person of Jesus and to strip away the establishment, get rid of "religious professionals," follow Christ, love people, and die to self. Peaches.
However.....his voice echoes the many Christians in the Western Church right now who are disenchanted with the institution...and are walking away from the church disillusioned, burned out, and frustrated.
Oh man. I feel that!
From the religious right claiming a corner on all things moral, to plenty in the American Church parading patriotism hand-in-hand with theological orthodoxy, to different churches overemphasizing certain political hot points (abortion, illegal immigration, gay marriage) to the neglect of others (caring for the poor, living generously, combating sickness and poverty), to the Rob Bell and universalism fiasco, to the mind-numbing amassing of denominations behind certain theological giants while greatly demonizing others, to some denominations neglecting church history/the liturgical calendar/pursuit of intellectual faith altogether, to other denominations overemphasizing education/intellectualism but neglecting religious affections/faith, to disgusting scandal after scandal...
Guh. Who WOULDN'T want to pack up their stuff and poop on the floor and leave?
Not that our deep discontent is that surprising...Matt Carter, pastor of the Austin Stone church in Austin, Texas, talks about how we as a culture have
~a serious problem with commitment
~a serious problem with authority
So aside from the fact that we are already predispositioned to these issues straight out the womb (Psalm 51:5), we have our socio/historic location working against us, as well.
I've felt the pull to disassociate completely from the local church more times than I've ever admitted to anybody. Fortunately (and unfortunately?), it's not that simple.
Two realities hit me pretty hard.
1. It's an issue of Biblical obedience.
Isolation is our default and our demise.
Our hearts are hopelessly wicked and deceitful. Jer 17:9
Spur each other on to love and good deeds.
(how?) Do not forsake meeting together. Heb 10:24-25
We need people to bump up against to be more like Christ.
Iron sharpens iron. Pro 27:17
We expose sin in each other and call each other to repentance. Matt 18:15-20
We need others to keep watch over our souls. (this is big)
Obey your leaders and submit to them,
for they are keeping watch over your soul. Hebrews 13:17
Let's be honest with ourselves...the Epistles are fraught with Paul addressing, setting up, rebuking, or praising organized local churches.
(He was often frustrated with them, as well! We're in good company.)
I think this merits more digging into for a sec.
Why would I need someone to keep watch over my soul?
As Matt Carter of the Austin Stone church puts it:
"Scripture is teaching YOU--Christian--you have an enemy.
And he is smarter than you, he is stronger than you, he is wiser than you, he is more determined than you, and he has one desire for your life and that is to TAKE YOU OUT."
According to Scripture, Satan is not in hell. He's here. Now. (1 Peter 5:8, Ephesians 6:12)
We can't afford to be naive, family. We are at war.
He canNOT take away your place in Jesus--that's the beauty of the gospel (John 10:28 "No one can snatch them out of My hand).
But he CAN attack every other area of your life. Your intellect. Your interests. Your hobbies. Your marriage. Your kids. Your health. Your vocation. Your emotions. Your friendships. Your purity.
We need a place of protection. A place for someone to keep watch over our souls.
Don't believe me?
I Corinthians 5:1-5 (This is huge, y'all!)
In this passage, Paul is instructing the church to remove a sexually immoral, unrepentant believer from the fellowship and to "give him over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord."
I believe this means that there is protection from the enemy afforded in the gathering of believers and submission to church authority. The enemy, it appears, has much greater access to this individual than if he were within the fellowship.
So...it seems from what we've just read that it's pretty clear...
We have to do some pretty lethal jacking with Scripture to justify leaving the local church.
Now, if we want to have a discussion about the inerrancy and infallibility of the Bible, we can have that discussion.
Because that's a discussion we MUST have if we're going to disassociate from the local church in the name of...piety? Enlightenment? "Real" Christianity? Badassery?
So to recap #1: obedience. sanctification. protection.
2. It's the Father's very heart.
This one really gets me.
See, active participation in a local body is not just a mandate. It's not arbitrary.
It's visionary.
Ephesians 4:2-7--"...with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit--just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call--one Lord, one faith, one baptism...but grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift.
We cannot say we love Jesus if we do not love what He loves. He loves the Church deeply and intimately based on nothing other than the fact that He is good and loves us when we're not.
This isn't doctrine. This is Gospel.
He is faithful to His bride in spite of the fact that she isn't always (or often) faithful to Him. This above all, I think, supercedes any reason we could muster to think we're above actively engaging in a local body.
Ephesians 5:25-30..."...Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor... For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.
Looking into my own heart about it, walking away from the local church isn't just an act of Biblical disobedience for a believer...it's also an act of glaring arrogance.
To behave like I'm not in a war, to overestimate my own ability to stand against the enemy alone, to think much of myself in my pious isolation and well-reasoned enlightenment that I could somehow outsmart or outscheme the most serious and formidable enemy I could imagine OR wade through and successfully discern pursuing Christ on my own...is not to take God at His word that I am constantly as a sheep to be slaughtered.
Here's some more reality. God called us out of darkness and separation into fellowship with Him for a specific purpose in His story, and as His child you were created with a specific role to play in His body. No one else was meant to do it, and no one else can. (I Cor. 12)
Does this mean we resign ourselves to our despondence and succumb to the homogenizing effects of the ills of American evangelicalism? Absolutely not. Paul (and plenty of Church fathers and church participants over time--do some homework!) were constantly brawling with the local church, calling her to excellence and repentance. Admonishing them to care for widows, orphans, and the poor. Challenging them to steward their money well. Exhorting them to love better. But they did it as participants.
Part of loving someone (in this case, the Bride of Christ) is accepting their brokenness and flaws while acknowledging your own brokenness and flaws and walking toward excellence with them. We do it with our friends and families everyday.
And this is, most certainly, our family. Our big, crazy, broken, marvelous family whose sanctification is being worked out by a perfect and loving Husband.
Three quotes on this by my favorite author, then I'm done. Promise.
C.S. Lewis writes about his own gradual understanding of Christ's vision for the church in God in the Dock:
When I first became a Christian...I thought that I could do it on my own, by retiring to my rooms and reading theology, and I wouldn't go to the churches...But as I went on I saw the great merit of it. I came up against different people of quite different outlooks and different education, and then gradually my conceit just began peeling off. I realized that the hymns (which were just sixth-rate music) were, nevertheless, being sung with devotion and benefit by an old saint in elastic-side boots in the opposite pew, and then you realize that you aren't fit to clean those boots. It gets you out of your solitary conceit.
I adore how he puts it in Mere Christianity:
It is at her centre, where her truest children dwell, that each communion is really closest to every other in spirit, if not doctrine. And this suggests at the centre of each there is something, or a Someone, who against all divergences of belief, all differences of temperament, all memories of mutual persecution, speaks with the same voice.
And then here in Letters of C.S. Lewis:
For the Church is not a human society of people united by their natural affinities, but the Body of Christ, in which all members, however different, (and He rejoices in their differences and by no means wishes to iron them out), must share the common life, complementing and helping one another precisely by their differences.
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