(Please pardon the ALLCAPS. I authored this on Facebook, where it’s the easiest form of emphasis.)
Back when I was in the “one true church”, we’d invite a lot of people to church and I’d occasionally run across one who would shun church categorically on account of all the hypocrites in religion. Such a response quite obviously sidesteps the question of what THEY should be doing — which is not to say that it must necessarily be a dodge, or be dishonest, irrational, and irresponsible. But it requires a nuanced and wise response — better than I ever managed to figure out back then.
At the time, I thought I was quite clever to respond along these lines: “Well, if you’re letting those people keep you away from God, you are farther from God than they are.”
But this, too, was a dodge to some degree. Did I deal headlong with the problem of hypocrisy in the churches? No, just as the one invited was not (yet?) dealing headlong with the question of his OWN spirituality. Rather, it was just a semi-clever semantic argument. And in retrospect, I don’t remember that it ever convinced anybody. Indeed, it seems more one of those things more intended to speak to my fellow churchmates, rather than to the one objecting to the hypocrisy. That is, to reassure them that we were in fact doing the right thing.
But WERE we doing the right thing? Well, yes and no. If you were to score us all-around, you’d probably find that we had adopted better doctrine than most churches, were more dedicated and active, took it more personally, were more accountable and more invested in it. I could have easily said to that naysayer, “Oh, you might be right about the churches in general, but you need to see THIS church; it’s different!”
And I’d have been right; it WAS different. But it was also the same. It had its successes, its bright spots, its strengths, its accomplishments. But it also had its weaknesses, too. And we were largely blind to them. To me now, it’s plain as day that one of the huge and glaring problems was that we didn’t faithfully practice the commands in Matthew 18:15-17.
Matthew 18:15 “Now if your brother sins, go and show him his fault just between the two of you; if he listens to you, you have won him over. 16 But if he does not listen to you, take one or two others along, so that on the testimony of two or three witnesses every matter may be confirmed. 17 And if he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, he is to be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”
Many of my churchmates will think I’m crazy about this. “WHAT???,” they would say, “We followed Matthew 18 all the time!!!”
But did they really? Yes, they’d confront each other about sin, but not whenever it happened. There was frequent hesitation to do it, and there was the frequent dodge of saying, “Oh, well, I FORGAVE that sin, so I didn’t have to confront it.” Uh, did Jesus SAY you don’t have to confront it if you forgive it????
(See, all they’re thinking about is their own part in it, and they’re not thinking about what’s best for the one who sinned— that he get help dealing with it properly.)
Yes, we did Matthew 18 more than any OTHER church I’ve ever seen. But never once in 17 years of being there did I ever see an instance of the congregational meeting Jesus called for. Not once. In 17 years.
And I’ve never seen that ANYWHERE. Any. Where.
So, then, we were a partially-restored church at best. But when the subject of hypocrisy arose, we’d take a defensive stand against it, employing some rhetoric like I mentioned above, rather than to take the matter of hypocrisy straight-forwardly. And it makes sense to me now that we did not UNDERSTAND the matter of hypocrisy straight-forwardly back then, for we were caught up in it ourselves, and hadn’t worked our way out of it.
Why couldn’t we see that Matthew 18 was so much about the GOOD of the one who sinned? Why couldn’t we see that it was also about US having the courage to help a brother? Why wouldn’t we see that this is what the Master commanded, and that he did not list the exceptions to the rule that we commonly assumed?
When God told King Saul to completely destroy an enemy and all their flocks, and Saul saved some of the flocks, God confronted him about it, and Saul actually claimed he HAD obeyed. God’s incisive reply was, “What, then, is this bleating of sheep in my ears?”
To God, it was obvious. Not so much to Saul.
And why not? Well, Saul’s problem was that he was not “a man after God’s own heart” like imperfect David was. David would mess up terribly, but he kept coming back to God. Saul, on the other hand, was aloof and dishonest about his sins, even to the point of denying the obvious. That’s quite twisted and self-deceived, and yet here he was, doing it in the name of God himself, as the anointed king of Israel! And that’s pretty messed up.
So, this person I had invited saw a problem with hypocrisy in the churches, and I had seen it, too — except not so much in my own church, and not so much in my own life. The dubious prayer, “I thank you, Lord, that I am not like those sinners over there,” comes to mind.
Of course, what SHOULD have happened is this: I should have looked that person in the eye and said, “You know, hypocrisy is a HUGE problem, germane to us all, and we all stumble in it if we’re going to espouse some certain principle, for we will most likely fall short in it, and have need to keep correcting ourselves until we have mastered the thing. I’m glad you’re concerned about hypocrisy, and the challenge for all of us is to be more concerned about it when WE do it than when others do it.”
But I wasn’t wise enough then to see it that way. Rather, I was contented with my snappy comeback about how “that makes the hypocrites closer to God than you are.”— as if the MAIN thing that is needed here is simply to be a member of a church — as if the church members have pretty much accomplished what REALLY needs accomplishing, merely by virtue of being members, and as if the rest of what is needed is sure to follow.
But it was NOT sure to follow. 17 years, and never once did I see such a meeting as Jesus commanded. Not once. There was a sensibility at work in the church that somehow quietly assumed that we knew better than Jesus on this subject. If such a meeting were really necessary, surely the LEADERS would call it. And they DIDN’T call it, so it must not really be necessary. That’s about as far as the “reasoning” ever needed to go to satisfy us.
But this is what the Lord, Master, Teacher, Creator, and Messiah commanded:
Matthew 18:15 “Now if your brother sins, go and show him his fault just between the two of you; if he listens to you, you have won him over. 16 But if he does not listen to you, take one or two others along, so that on the testimony of two or three witnesses every matter may be confirmed. 17 And if he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, he is to be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”
There are no exceptions stated here. One (pretty bad) book I listened to recently pretended something like this: If the offense is too great to be overlooked in love, then you should….
And NOW it occurs to me that this fine-sounding argument is really quite twisted. Overlooked in LOVE? If “love” would overlook an offense without confronting it, why in the world would the loving Master command the confrontation? Indeed, why did HE confront so much sin and error and ignorance? Was he sinning to do so?
Perish the thought!
He even asked them “are you still so dull?” — and I can’t count the times he confronted ignorance and challenged attitudes and repeated commands. This was not sin; it was his MISSION. He called them to REPENTANCE. He expect them to actually CHANGE their minds and change their actions.
Best I can tell, we were about the best church running. Even so, we stopped half way there. It’s as if our goal had been to worship a Half Jesus, never REALLY listening to the whole of him and his teachings.
And why couldn’t we see this?
Well, there are probably several reasons for this. Pride comes to mind — that and a fair dose of persecution complex, where we assumed that if we were being persecuted we must be in the right — and where we assumed that if we were in the right, we were WHOLLY in the right, and not in need of improvement ourselves.
Indeed, if were HAD realized just how much improvement of which we were in need, wouldn’t we have understand what was REALLY going on in Matthew 18? Wouldn’t we have seen that it was the very practice that could lead us all quickly to maturity in Christ?
But we had found our groove — our comfort zone. We were comfortable being in between the worldlier churches and Jesus, counting ourselves better, yet not being willing to listen actively and meticulously to ALL he commanded. We were comfortable being less comfortable than they were, but not comfortable going all-out to obey Jesus no matter what — and not comfortable THINKING about it, so as to figure this out.
But I see it now.
