Editorial: On Being Biblical
by Herb Drake

Copyright (c) 1997, Herb Drake.

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An Anabaptist being drowned
in the Limmat River.

The massacre of Huguenots on
St. Barthomomew's Day, 1572.

A recent correspondence between the author and a well known Christian ministry makes a revealing case study.

One clear biblical theme that passes through both the Old and New Testaments and on into contemporary history is the tendency of "establishment" religion, those that seek a way to find comfort in the World while attempting to accommodate God with a pious but weak faith, to persecute those who truly love God and try to listen to his Word. We saw it in the abuse of the prophets and in the stoning of Stephen. We saw it again with the Anabaptist reformers, who died in great numbers at the hands of both Catholic and Protestant magistrates. Then we saw it in the destruction of the French Huguenots. In just about every case, those being persecuted took the Bible so seriously that they would have been delighted to give up their radical beliefs if only their accusers could demonstrate their "errors" from the scriptures. Yet it was always easier to simply stone (Stephen), drown (the Anabaptists), or massacre (the Huguenots) than to sit down over the Bible and reason together.

Indeed, the Christian life would be so much easier if only we were not called to be a people of the Book. It is certainly popular in Christian circles to quote the Bible--but the issue is how one goes about this. The theologian, when citing a verse, intends to direct the reader to that part of the Bible so that the reader might actually look up the text, in its context, and find support for an idea. Those that misuse the Bible, on the other hand, cite a verse because it contains a sentence or sentence fragment that seems to support their point, with no regard whatsoever to its context. A favorite example is 1 Cor. 14:34-35, "women should be silent ...," which is commonly used by some to rule out the participation of women in the church. But the context here actually puts the verse in quotation marks, it being the policy of a writer with whom Paul completely disagrees--as his response (1 Cor. 14:36) clearly indicates.

Being a house church theologian in particular can be a very frustrating existence, as those who refuse to consider our point of view tend to be unwilling to base their views on what the scriptures actually say. Instead, they tend to reduce the Bible to a compendium of stock verses ripped out context so they can be thrown around as cheap shots in superficial, hit-and-run attempts to dismiss objections and to impress the saints.

On the very first week that HCC went on the web, I became engaged in an e-mail discussion with a woman who found the theology presented on this site offensive. When I asked her to articulate those features of house church theology that she found objectionable, she listed a few--but her reasons were never based on the Bible, a book she trusted her teachers to read for her rather than to actually be biblically competent herself, so she was reduced to such arguments as "we've always done it that way."

But this issue really came home to me over the past few months, and involves one of the well known Ministries that has a regular appearance on Christian Radio and sends newsletters out to thousands of supporters every month. I had been growing more and more irritated at the approach that ministry seemed always to take on the moral decline of our society--advocating Christian activism with such tactics as the hiring of Washington lobbiests, the exhorting of individual Christians to write letters to their congressional representatives, and so forth. (It would be beside the point to identify the particular ministry; besides, they do many things right that deserve our support.) For me, the straw that broke the camel's back was their preparation of an excellent and enlightening presentation of the persecuted church in various parts of the world which they managed to ruin by adding a plea for a political response. I decided to write that ministry a letter in an attempt to call them into conformity with the scriptures.

April 22, 1997
Dear _____:
My wife usually grabs your monthly letter before I do. Her reaction this time was, "Honey, the ____ letter is about the persecuted church this month." My reply was, "It's about time." The letter resembles the monthly prayer letter I've been getting from ________________ for many years.
I am grateful that you have used [your ministry] to make believers in America more aware of the suffering church. But there is a difference in your approach, and I must say I think ______'s is more biblical.
Now I'm not going to tell you that what you are doing is wrong. I hope your efforts do some good. But I do want to ask you to consider another point of view that might be a bit closer to biblical theology. It is summed up best in the way you closed your letter, "Their fate is in our hands." No, ... Their fate is in God's hands.
The approach of your monthly letter too often seems to be this: the job of the Christian is
  1. to make life better for Christians, and,
  2. to make life better for the world.
This is a post-millennial view that is hardly biblical. You are saying we can make America a righteous country through apologetics, activism, and political action. It is better to see the job of the church as providing a suffering and serving witness to the world. To be, as Hauerwas and Willimon put it in their excellent book of that title, "Resident Aliens" (a term they borrowed, no doubt, from the ancient "Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus," which I heartily recommend to you--it may be found in Vol. 1 of The Ante-Nicene Fathers).
These brothers and sisters in the suffering church are ten times the Christians that we are in the USA. They meet in underground house churches and witness the gentleness of Christ in the world. They are like the first century disciples who "rejoiced that they were considered worthy to suffer dishonor for the sake of the name" (Acts 5:41). Their pastors are thrown in prison, are released after a few years, and go back to witnessing for Christ as if nothing had happened. They live the Sermon on the Mount. Through their suffering, Christ's witness grows; nothing can stop it.
We, on the other hand, live in our comfortable homes, go to our comfortable churches, preach from our comfortable pulpits and radio studios, hire lobbyists, and write letters to the saints. This is a human gospel. Ultimately, it will fail.
The real reason we need to be concerned with these suffering Christians is that they can help us much more than we can help them. They can teach us how to conduct ourselves when the time comes when each "Christian" in our country has to make that fateful decision of Rev. 13:5-10--to choose an above ground apostate church or an underground, faithful church--to choose death or life, beast or Lamb. They can show us how to be an underground network that places faithfulness to its Lord above success in the world. They are the church at Smyrna, to whom Jesus said, "I know your afflictions and your poverty--yet you are rich" (Rev. 2:9); we are the church at Laodicea, to whom he said "You say 'I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.' But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked" (Rev. 3:17).
"How dare you say that above ground churches are apostate," you say. No, that is not what I'm saying. Not yet, in any case. Yet I've heard you complain on your own radio program, "Where is the church?" on this or that problem. I'll tell you where the church is. Consider the young pastor with a seminary degree under his belt and who gets his first church. He quickly learns that he'd better moderate his theology if he wants to keep his job. Gradually, in this way, the Culture--not the King--sets the ethics of the above ground church.
I truly rejoice when [your ministry] has an occasional success on the home schooling front, the abortion front, or whatever. But these actions, however successful, do not really bring the world much closer to the Kingdom of God. One lesson that we need to draw from Rom. 8:28 is that just possibly God might be leading the church in the USA into the path of suffering for its own good and because he loves sinners and tax collectors. When that time comes, we will "cry out to the LORD." But if we are obedient to our Lord, we will carry on in the underground. I can understand how Christians may not look forward to this with joy, but we need to consider the blessings nevertheless--just look at the explosive growth of the suffering church in the PRC! And look at how God used the pagan Cyrus to facilitate the Second Exodus, even calling him "his shepherd" (Isa. 44:28) and his "anointed" (Isa. 45:1). God may be using President Clinton and the ACLU as "Cyrus" in our country.
In His Service,
 
(Rev.) Herb Drake
House Church Central

I received a very polite letter back, thanking me for expressing my views. Then a number of biblical citations that were offered as a defense of their present course (Jude 3, Jer. 48:10, Mt. 5:13-14, Jn. 9:4, Lk. 10:20, Phil. 2:15-17). In fact, any course of action that did not manifest their brand of political activism--of which these biblical references were offered for support--was deemed to be "complacency, resignation, and apathy."

I felt that this was a very constructive response, as it showed a willingness to discuss the issue over the open Bible. Encouraged, I wrote a second letter in which I challenged the validity of some of their biblical quotations on the grounds of context. That letter follows:

May 15, 1997

Dear _____:

I very much appreciate the fact that you ... took the time to respond to my letter of April 22 on May 6. I know how busy you all are, and your policy to take letters such as mine seriously is a strong point in your ministry. But I didn't want to leave our correspondence without commenting on the scriptures that you raised. As a serious student of the Word of Truth, it grieves me when the Bible is misunderstood by those who use it regularly in a public ministry.

My letter attempted to bring attention to fact that believers in our country may very well be going into a time of persecution as the "above ground" churches gradually become apostate. I illustrated the method by which this process is being accomplished, and I am quite sure that ____ is himself distressed at the progress this program has already made. A very large number of "Christians" in our country go to "churches" where Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims are invited to preach periodically; where abortion on demand is staunchly defended; where "tolerance" is preached as the greatest good. I also questioned whether the best response to this American "civic religion" is through the political system.

Your response was Jude 3--that you see yourselves as "contending for the faith." But with just whom was Jude telling his readers to contend? [Are you] interpreting that passage as license to engage in a war with the culture, using the culture's own political system for the battleground? But Jude is concerned with those within the church that have perverted the gospel. Since my letter was concerned with the apostate church--indeed, it is I that was "contesting for the faith" by writing my letter--my "wake up call."

You next cited the cleansing of the Temple. Did Jesus tell his disciples to cleanse temples? The cleansing of the Temple is a very narrow narrative intended to make a simple point: The priestly powers of Jesus' day were perverting God's temple for their own personal gain. It was completely fitting that the Son of God would have God's proxy to cleanse the temple--even for Jesus to put on righteous anger--but Jesus never told his disciples to regard his action against the temple as an example for their own behavior. In fact, in the Sermon on the Mount, he advised his followers that anger was the same sin as murder. The stance of the Christian in the face of powers of the world is above all to be a gentle witness. Even when confronted with direct persecution (Mt. 5:38-48), disciples are to risk further harm to themselves in order to be a redemptive witness to the one who is backhanding them (v. 39), suing them (v. 40), or requisitioning their labor (v. 42). That is why I recommended the "Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus" for your consideration--Christians are described in that very ancient document as being resident aliens in the country of their birth. Golly, I wish the American believer could evoke the kind of description that we find there:

But, inhabiting Greek as well as barbarian cities, according as to the lot of each of them has determined, and following the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking method of life. They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers...

This ancient document says what being the "the salt of the earth" and "the light of the world" really means. Too often, by "contending for the faith" your way, we simply become indistinguishable from our opponents, using the same methods in the same, godless system.

Your letter went on to describe any alternative to [your] present ministry ... as necessarily being "complacency, resignation, or apathy." No Christian who lives the life depicted in the Sermon on the Mount can ever be described with those words. That sermon describes the living of the Christian Life as a radical appropriation of the fact that believers are no longer citizens of their country of birth, but citizens of the kingdom of God. The martyrs understood this well, as did the later Anabaptists, Baptists, and others who were part of the radical reformation and whose confessions citing that sermon so well documented their faith.

My final comment concerns your perceived objective, to oppose those who wish "...to destroy everything that has made America great." So a good part of American's "greatness" is that American was once more "Christian" than it is now and needs a heavier does of "Christianity" to be restored? This sounds very much like a plea to restore Constantinian Christianity--the "Christendom" idea of a monolithic church-state union that demands that all its citizens be Christians and insists that they all act like Christians. No. Constantinian Christianity is a great evil. What America needs is more Christians, not more "Christianity"--we don't accomplish that with political action. That is accomplished by a suffering, serving witness to the world that God loves.

So I echo with you Jeremiah 48:10, John 9:4, and Phil. 2:15. But the question is not whether we are to be serious and active our faith, the question is how we are to be serious and active in our faith. On the one hand we use the systems of the world to make our faith the object of a political contest. Or we can live the "Christian life"--which is by far the more difficult just as it is also by far more joyful.

I view [your ministry] as a "rear guard" action. Christendom is in retreat, and we need a rear guard to give us time to regroup and reorganize. But [your ministry] could be doing more--it could be equipping and training the saints to withstand the onslaught. The "contending" they need to focus on--along with Jude 3--is Rev. 13:5-10, "This calls for patient endurance and faithfulness on the part of the saints."

In His Service,  

 

(Rev.) Herb Drake
House Church Central

I received a response to this second letter on June 20. This letter was short, and politely presented the following:
  1. You have strong opinions. So does _____, and they differ from yours.
  2. Therefore, it would be pointless to continue the discussion.

Now here is the issue that concerns me--an issue that has nothing whatever to do with the merits of my case vs. that of the well known ministry in question. Rather it concerns the overall outline of the discussion.

You might say that Stephen was stoned again, 20th century style.

The only conclusion that I can offer about this kind of "Christianity" is that it really is no more than political philosophy, the Bible reduced to a quiver from which arrows may be randomly drawn in order to give the sound of "Christian" authenticity to whatever point that one wishes to make. There is a complete unwillingness to actually listen to what the inspired text is trying to say or to sit down and reason together with an openness that one or both points of view might very well be wrong.

House church theology is like that. It is radical because it goes to the roots--the Word of Truth. It convicts the mainstream churches of being more World than Spirit, and that is a charge they do not take lightly. Yet the manner that our oppenents use Scripture to defend their positions and methods absolutely convicts them. This is the stuff that enraged Søren Kierkegaard in his day, and the masses loved to read his pointed--but very biblical--essays against the establishment church. The trouble is that Kierkegaard also had a positive message about what the Christian life should be, and I am not at all sure that part of his message was heard nearly as well.

Should it happen that someone finds anything in the House Church Central ministry to be in error, and took the time to give me good reason to go back and revise my thinking, I would hope that I would take that discussion very seriously and continue it as long is it remained biblical and did not reach the point of impasse. Why? Because I admit that I might be wrong and, should that be the case, I would like somebody to point out where I misread my Bible. This, for me, is the sort of thing that Paul intended when he said that we each needed to "continue to work out our salvation with fear and trembling" (Phil 2:12). None of us will ever get our theology completely right on this side of the parousia, but we cannot be casual about it and we will be held responsible for what we believe and teach others (Jas. 3:1). This means that we need to stay in the Word and constantly check our doctrines and teachings against what we find there. Again, Paul: "Test everything. Hold on to the good. Avoid every kind of evil" (1 Thess. 5:21).

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