Labors of Occupation

We Touchstone editors have found ourselves welcome as preachers or teachers at churches and schools representing many “denominations.” One could say the common denominator, what has made us welcome, is a host that is “conservative,” but that would be fairly unilluminating. That we share small-o orthodoxy, or that we all believe the Creed, are somewhat better ways to put it, but the phenomenon is best explained, perhaps, in the observation that we share a faith in whose greater matters we have positive and urgent agreement, which perception forms and tempers our preaching and teaching both within and without the walls of our maternal congregations. What is of the highest concern to us in our own churches is also what we, and those who invite us to speak to them, think is of the highest concern in theirs as well. It has been convenient to call it "mere Christianity.”

Looking back over years of my own teaching and preaching, I find myself not without conviction on controversial matters, issues which divide Christians from one another, but with pressing first concern for fundamental Christianity as understood by all Christians at all times, contrasted to doctrines and practices entertained by my listeners that oppose it. There has been time for little else. There is still no time.

I was a pastor for about four years in a marginally Christian mainline Protestant church. My sermons from those years had little if anything to do with its denominational peculiarities, nor did I expatiate on the truth or untruth of what other churches taught. They had everything to do with teaching its people the content of the New Testament and putting the question time and again as to whether we believed these things or not, whether we rightly called ourselves Christians. This of itself enraged the denominationalists, who got the message quite clearly: if the New Testament was true, they weren’t Christians, since while they, standing in a right line from their denominational ancestors (they wrongly thought), firmly believed in the truth of Whatchamacallism, the things that you’re liable to read in the Bible, they ain’t necessarily so--especially if we don’t like ‘em. Still, that was the main question, and smaller ones, the kind Whatchamacallians liked to hear about, had to give way before it.

The first time I spoke at a Catholic church was at a wedding. One of our boys was marrying a Catholic girl, and the pastor invited me to deliver the homily. The mother of the groom told me afterwards that the priest was smiling and nodding while I gave a simple exposition of New Testament teaching on marriage--which no doubt he had been trying to impress on his people for years. What I saw from the ambo, however, was the stoney faces of people who didn’t like it. They no doubt wanted to think all this stuff was a preoccupation of their Church and its unmarried priests. Along comes a married Protestant minister telling them the very same thing. I would have given them the Protestant version, but time was short, and I had to stick to the main lines.

Now admittedly this is a bit facetious, but only a little bit. The fact is that deeper venture into the doctrines of the Faith, provided one stays very close to the scriptures, avoiding speculation and looking for the common Faith and its teaching, rarely bring one onto disputed ground, and when it does, the dispute can almost always be subordinated in charity--if the will to do so is present--to the common teaching in a way that not only satisfies the conscience, but brings both illumination and fraternal unity to both the speaker and his hearers, properly serving both Truth and Love, and preparing the way for correction and reconciliation. This is an expression of the power of God that we don't have within us otherwise, a strength of humility which can be experienced only in the will to receive and exercise it. It is more usual, and satisfying, to take a draught of party spirit instead, justifying ourselves in the condemnation of our brethren.

To be sure, the disagreements do not go quickly away; neither does the knowledge that no part of Christian doctrine and its practice can be divorced from any other another. What arises, though, in the experience of years, both in myself and many of my fellows, has been what Lewis in Screwtape called a vision of the Church--fearsome to the devils and their kin--spread down through history, terrible as an army with banners, a fundamental unity of Christian doctrine and experience in which all that is distant shall converge and from which all that is erroneous will be cast. At present it is not so, but at present we have also been forced by attacks of the enemy along our main lines (and to anticipate response: yes, the egalitarian heresy is one of these) to join forces in their defense. There hasn't been time to do much else.

Comments

[Mike-2]

Yes, we now have the comradeship of the trenches. I am what you would call an orthodox Roman Catholic and in recent years I have felt some affinity for Evangelicals and even Fundamentalists when they are under some versions of secular attack, usually in media. This in spite of the fact that they may still pine some things that may be offensive to me, beyond just disagreement.

You piece on the Catholic wedding is interesting. I can see many people there wanting to hear you say something else to reinforce to them them the notion that much is up for grabs on some issues.

So what is happening here?

[smh]

What we have here, Mike, is a cautionary tale. A great many people are glad to be Christians as long as it doesn't cost them anything and as long as the Christian God dances to the tunes they pipe--agrees with their idea of what is just, merciful, fair, forgiving, reasonable, and good. They are dismayed and angry when someone speaking from an authority they claim to recognize, but only recall selectively, brings them up short, if only by citing the actual words of that authority.

When this happens the wheels begin to turn. The experienced, conscientious, pastor can almost hear them grinding out in the pews. If he is right, this calls for repentence and amendment of life: that is what the stoney (affronted) faces tell us. But there are many other more comfortable options: the pastor or his church has a "hangup;" he is part of the old clerical conspiracy to keep the people in slavery to his damned theocracy; the annoying passage is disputed by experts or can be interpreted away; the apostle who wrote it had hangups of his own, and this is only his personal opinion. Jesus, who never said anything directly on the subject, would have been much, much nicer.

These transactions are carried on at various levels of sophistication. Some of our work at Touchstone involves dealing with them when put forward by people with Ph.D.s, but they all come from the same place in the soul, the same set of predictable and all-too-human motivations.

[Michael D. Harmon]

If I may be pardoned a military metaphor: When you are under fire, there are basically two options -- hunker down behind as much cover as possible and expose as little of your vulnerable anatomy to enemy fire as you can. Or, aggressively take the battle to the enemy, at the risk of making yourself more of a target. The latter one, however, is the only one that offers any chance of victory.

[Mike-2]

Thanks SMH, and I can understand why you describe this is a "cautionary" tale.

Bless You

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>If I may be pardoned a military metaphor: When you are under fire, there are basically two options -- hunker down behind as much cover as possible and expose as little of your vulnerable anatomy to enemy fire as you can. Or, aggressively take the battle to the enemy, at the risk of making yourself more of a target. The latter one, however, is the only one that offers any chance of victory.<<<

Or you can call in artillery or an air strike, which, granted is letting other people do your fighting for you, but gets the job done very expeditiously.