WARNING: THIS POST MAY RAISE SOME TROUBLING THOUGHTS
Here’s what might seem like an easy question, yet it may get harder the more we look into it:
Does God run your church?
I do not presume that my audience will necessarily answer one way or the other. Some might be inclined to say “yes”, some “no”, and some will want to know “in what way do you mean?”
So let’s break it down from the absurd to the more practical. Let me open with just two questions, designed to be a bit absurd, but with a useful point to make:
- Does God keep an office at your church building, where he sits each week planning and administrating church affairs? Or,
- Is there a visible Jacob’s Ladder of angels coming and going between God in heaven, and your church leaders on Earth―by which God exercises influence over everything that goes on at your church by way of angelic messages?
I doubt so far that anyone has answered “yes” to either of these questions. (If you have, I would really like to talk with you!) Even so, I would think that many people will think of God running their church as a thing that can happen without either of these two items going on.
But here’s where it gets harder to nail down just what we mean, if it’s not as obvious as something like #1 or #2 above. Many may well believe that God is running their churches, as we can witness when they respond to the following question:
Does God appoint the leaders?
Many would readily say, “yes”. But things get fuzzier when we ask how he does it. Obviously, most aren’t going to think that God calls a church meeting, to which he steps in from his office down the hall and officiates a ceremony in which he personally names the new leader(s). So, then, how does he do it?
And this is where we get to the idea that God must somehow be guiding the convictions of the decision makers―whether that be a nominating committee, or the elders, or whatever other deliberative body exists in the church, or whether it be the body of members themselves, if they have voting rights.
But we’re already on uncomfortable turf here, for the original idea that “God appoints the leaders” now has to give at least some latitude to the idea that humans are somehow involved in this appointment process. So it’s not quite as simple as it sounds when we say, “God appoints the leaders.” Is it?
And if humans are involved at all, doesn’t it reasonably raise the question of whether human error is a possibility? Indeed, it’s hard to imagine a congregation in which a leadership selection was never second-guessed after the fact―when it became obvious that the new leader wasn’t a good choice. But if we admit that human error can be involved, then doesn’t this mess with that clean and simple idea that “God appoints the leaders?” Doesn’t that rattle our security? Doesn’t that challenge the big picture of how we’d like to think it all works?
If we’re going to stick with that idea, then don’t we have to come up with all manner of twists in how we explain what’s happening?
I think I’ve seen this done before. I’ve heard explanations after the fact, such as this: “Well, God gave us the kind of leader he knew we needed for a time.” And upon further questioning, answers like this would come out: “God gave us Brother Jerry in order to humble us.” Or perhaps, “…to test us for a time.” Such ideas, of course, are offered without much at all in the way of evidence or biblical support. Rather, it’s just conjecture. Not only did God not say why he selected Brother Jerry to be the leader, he didn’t even say that he selected Brother Jerry, either! Both are speculation. Both are without proof. Shall we now presume to speak on God’s behalf? Are we now commissioned prophets?
But for many, it’s a foregone conclusion that God picks the leaders”.. They are non-negotiable beliefs, upon which a great amount of church tradition is built―along with a fair amount of personal emotional security. To some, the idea that God is not behind such things is as hard to fathom as is the idea that God doesn’t even exist.
Would it be so bad?
But let’s consider this for a moment: Would it be so bad if a group of believers wanted to get together in a fellowship, and did not think that God was running their fellowship? Would it be OK if they did not think that God was picking the sermons, and who would preach them, and if he was not “putting words on Brother Tommy’s heart as he comes forward to preach today”? Would it be OK if the Christians in such a fellowship didn’t consider themselves as having been commissioned by God to do it, or appointed or ordained by God to do it?
Would that be OK?
Would it be OK if they had decided to do it, simply thinking it a good thing to do, and not seeing any need to tell everybody that they were official representatives of God in doing it?
Just imagine a fellowship like that, where there was no guile about it being mere a human organization―where there was not drive to puff it up tin something more than it is―where they simply described it as a group of people who are simply trying to do their human best. Imagine a group that did not think God was necessarily behind every little thing that happens, and that didn’t have to appeal to such an idea in order to bolster the authority of the group leaders.
Would this be OK?
Or are we undivorceably married to the idea that there must be an official, God-commissioned, God-authorized church, and God must be running it in fine detail?
Well, this question will surely divide people, with some having no problem with the nation, while others thinking it’s one of the most heretical things they’re ever heard!
The Grand Assumption
Many make an assumption that goes something like this: “Since we see God working out certain things for the church in the New Testament, he must be still doing this today for our own church.”
But at the risk if embarrassing you, I’ll ask you this: Can you show me a passage of scripture that guarantees that what Jesus was doing around the Meditarreanean Sea nearly 2,000 years ago, he is still going to be doing in America in 2023?
Of course, you can’t. So it’s an assumption, right? You can’t prove it, but you choose to keep assuming it. And if you’re like many, it just feels like the faithful assumption to make―sort of like those faithful Japanese soldiers who were stranded on their tiny islands after World War II was over, and how they continued on for decades, faithfully defending their islands, operating simply on the “last standing orders”.
But does it not become reasonable at some point to wonder why no resupply ships have come, or no new orders or fresh troops have ever showed up? I could see thinking such questions faithless, had that soldier been on his island only a week―and maybe even at a year. But at ten years? Fifty years? Or suppose we’re at a hundred years and counting, and the original soldier is long-since dead, and those carrying on those last standing orders are the family he formed when he married a local island girl after he was deployed here?
At this point, it has become a way of life for them to assume that they are still doing the work of the Emperor. And if you ask them whether the Emperor is still running their island, they will adamantly tell you “Yes!”, not even knowing that the Emperor himself has long-since died.
Am I suggesting that God is dead? No! But I am suggesting that it might not have been his plan to continue perpetually in doing all those special things he was doing for the First-Century congregations. The idea that he would continue is an assumption. And what promise is there in the scriptures that gives us good reason to keep believing it against the evidence that things have gotten pretty messy in the churches, and that they resemble the original First-Century church less and less as the decades go by?
If church today is in business-as-usual mode, continued over from the First Century, where are the apostles that Jesus appointed over the church? (Most believe there are no apostles today.) And where are the prophecies and miracles that were so prevalent then? (Most believe the frequency has diminished substantially, if they stil exist at all.)
But what if?
What if it were not God’s plan to establish a perpetual organization on Planet Earth, that he would micromanage for as long as the Earth would last, and in all its various locations? What if, rather, what we see today is a bunch of human believers doing what seems good to them, while mistakenly thinking (most of them) that God himself is running it?
Almost any institution would be tempted somewhat to overplay the idea that God is running things. And why? Well, it tends to give the decisions of the institution an air of authority, does it not? Doesn’t it tend to draw some of the heat off the backs of the leaders, for the decisions they make, if they tell you that God is behind it? Wouldn’t it be tempting to cheat, and to tell the congregation that none other than God himself had led you to make such and such decision?
Or, on the other hand…
Or on the other hand, let’s suppose I’m wrong, and that God is definitely running things today in the churches. How can we explain God’s management when things go wrong at church?
This is a very legitimate question, and some many well want me to shut up about it. But the simple logic says that if God is in charge, then he’s responsible for what goes on. If he’s in charge, he’s responsible for the outcomes. And that means he’s responsible for it when your teacher teaches some false doctrine, or when the preacher has an inappropriate relationship with one of the members. Right?
And this brings us back to that awkward middle ground of having to explain things. On the one hand, we may want the simplicity of “God is in charge”, yet we have terrible trouble explaining just how that works. And this may well bring to mind the troubles we have when reading about certain Bible characters, such as King David, for example. Many have puzzled over his egregious sins. And had David been leading a church instead of the kingdom of Israel, those in his circle might have had similar struggles.
But it seems that in David’s case, the people understand that David’s sins were just that: David’s sins. It doesn’t seem that they were going around like many of us do today in the churches, trying to shut down the criticisms of the sinful acts of the leaders, and defending it somehow in the name of the institution.
David did indeed have a commission from God to be the King of Israel. Even so, he frequently went off the reservation, so to speak, in his moral behaviors. And everyone understood that God was mad at him for it when he did.
Am I just crazy, or is that particular part of it missing from many churches today?
Another difference between David and our situation is that God did in fact tell him from time to time to do this or that. But who among us today has such a relationship with God? Who is privy to such directives?
Well, again, that question’s just going to be a divisive one, for many will be quite willing to believe, even against the evidence, that their leaders do have that sort of interaction from God. They want to believe it. And it galls them to think that their leader is nothing more than a human-appointed leader, doing what he wants to do.
Have we become idolators?
What if we have become idolators in the face of the one and only true God? What if instead of God and his rich story dealing with humankind, we wanted something more? What if we really wanted “the church” as an official rallying point for our devotion? What if we were willing to make an idol of it in various ways, and “serving” church rather than God in some instances? And what if we were to rely on church more than on God himself? What if we were to rely on “camp” more than on truth itself?
A people like that would have a hard time letting go of their church idols, and just concentrating on the truth of scripture and on righteous living. They would want more. They would want something more satisfying. And if my calculations are correct, they would be dissatisfied with living like Jesus, and would want instead some sort of official institution by which to “make a name for themselves”. (Think “Tower of Babel” here.) They would find it boring to spread out and multiple and be holy people, and would rather gather up into bunches, where there is safety in numbers (they think). They would not be content to be in family groups, but would want something bigger. And if a town had a few such groups, some among them would be driving for a merger, so as to be bigger and bigger.
And this would provide considerable opportunity for pride to take hold. Pride in the name, in the size, in the power, in the influence, and so forth. And many would feel right at home there, who would feel quite lost alternately, in a simple fellowship like the one I’m proposing―where no one presumes a commission from God, or an official institution.
Two Alternatives
And I suppose that by now, I have successfully painted the two alternatives differently enough from one another as to be dividing substantially among my readers, as it regards who favors which idea. And I predict that most are going to tend to prefer the “official” institution idea, while only a few would be drawn toward the other.
Is that not what we see on the streets? Are there not a hundred or more formal church institutions to every informal fellowship?
But preferences aside, let us not miss the fact that those hundred are not unified in belief and practice. And if they’re from God, why wouldn’t they go?
If all but one of them are wrong, what easy-to-swallow ways is there to explain this, except to argue that they aren’t Christians at all? And if that’s the case, then we have humans in an human institution, but thinking they’re’ in a God-run institution. And if so many are messed up in this way, by what miracle have the people at your church escaped the same pitfall?
It doesn’t add up.
I just don’t think it adds up. If God’s behind all this, and the official acts of the churches are indeed acts of God, then why isn’t it all more righteous, organized, consistent, scriptural, reasonable, and similar to the teaching and practice of the original First-Century church?
I think that this is a question that deserves and honest, rational, and responsible answer. And to date, I have not heard one―though I have met many who wish I’d shut up so that they can get back to church business as usual.
