Internal Medicine.

[Disclaimer: For some reason, this was an incredibly difficult and touchy post to write. I ask that the reader would keep this in mind, and would understand that nothing in this post is said lightly or flippantly, so as to offend. That is never my intention.]

My last post was written from the perspective of my personal interactions with others. As I said, Christians as individuals have a responsibility to treat all people, regardless of culture, politics, sexual identity, or lifestyle pattern, with dignity, respect, and love. This is how we are to be known to the world. This is true.

But things become a little more complicated when you expand this concept to how the church should operate. This is not to say that the church should not treat all people with dignity, respect, and love; of course, it should, all the time and every time. No, I’m talking about the internal operation of the church.

See, we were really talking about three different scenarios, instead of two: how the individual Christian interacts with the non-believer; how the Church body interacts with the non-believer who is outside of the body; and how the Church interacts with a member of its own body. Here’s where the breakdown in the argument happens, I think.

From this point on, then, I’ll be speaking specifically about the relationship between these professing Christians and the local church.

A point was raised that I think should be examined more closely. Specifically, what the role of the Church is, in regard to the lifestyle choices of its members. This is where things take a bit of a turn. This subject, most often referred to as "church discipline," is one that is a little foreign to me, coming from a religious denomination where it is rarely and inconsistently practiced. But I will quickly try to explain my understanding of how it *should* work, based on what I read in Paul's letters to the early churches.

One role of the church is to provide community. Paul has a lot to say about community. One of the characteristics of the church community he describes is interpersonal accountability. In Galatians, he talks about restoring a fellow believer who was caught in sin. To me, this implies two things right away: that other believers were involved in the confrontation, and that there was repentance on the "caught" believer's part. Elsewhere, Paul talks about unrepentant believers being expelled from the community for continuing to sin proudly, after being lovingly but directly confronted.

Essentially, Paul talks about how each member is responsible to the other members of this community of faith. In Ephesians (5:3-4), Paul says that there should not be even a hint of sexual immorality, because it’s inappropriate for “God’s people.” Collective.

Notice that Paul also stresses that this accountability is only concerning the community of believers called the church. In the Corinthians passage, he explains that he's not talking about people outside the church.

This idea of each person being involved in the other people’s business sounds offensive to modern ears. The knee-jerk reaction to this is, “You have no right to tell me what to do! You’re not God!” No. But the New Testament teaches that we are to encourage each other to righteousness.

Our ingrained individualism (and I’m speaking primarily of Western Christians) balks at the ideas of being accountable to anyone else. “A person’s beliefs, behaviors, and practices are a private thing.” Well, yes and no.

Think back to Paul’s often-used metaphor for the church as a living body. When one part of the body is injured, the other parts register the hurt. When one part of the body is sick or infected, the others become ill or suffer. When one part of the body is unable to function in the way it should, the other parts suffer.

As a member of the body of Christ, you are connected to the other members of the body. When you suffer, they suffer. When you rejoice, they rejoice. This may seem a little too simple, but there is more going on than we often believe or acknowledge. Each believer has a spiritual gift that they have been given for the betterment of the body as a whole. When one person is not fulfilling their function, the rest of the group suffers.

So we come to the area of sin. Notice that Paul doesn’t seem to be talking about incidental sins, because we all sin occasionally—some more than others. *Hand raised.* What he’s referring to here are habitual sins, lifestyle sins. And not the sins we confess, but the sins we don’t think we need to confess. The defiant deeds that we justify as being okay, usually by attacking our church’s “wrong interpretation” of the Bible. These are the things that affect our ability to function in the Body.

So, here’s where the rubber meets the road, as it were. If we conduct church the way that the Apostle Paul indicates in the New Testament, then sometimes we are forced to confront other believers in the body, in love and respect and for the purpose of encouragement and restoration, about choices and habits that we understand are biblically wrong.

This is an alarming thought to many believers, especially believers who have been burned by backbiting and cruelty from other Christians. And I acknowledge that this concept can easily be abused by hypocritical and malicious people in the church (“Gasp! You mean people in the church can be bad?” Yes, Virginia, it’s been known to happen.) But going on how I read the Bible, that’s how the church is supposed to be set up—not as an authority structure, like people confessing to priests, nor as a religious police state, which would thrive on punishment and vendetta, but as a family, where brothers and sisters would call their loved ones out when they’re making mistakes that could have hurtful consequences.

“Supposed to” work that way, I repeat. So why doesn’t it?

It’s abused. People, being people, misuse this idea of loving confrontation as a way of hurting their fellow believers, of tearing them down to make themselves feel better. This is where the “fundie” accusations have merit, because those believers with the most (small-c, non-political) conservative approach to faith are often most likely to use it as a weapon. It’s a sad fact, but fact it is. And this is totally, utterly wrong. It is sin.

It’s uncomfortable. Another problem is that the church has shied away from the idea of “discipline” because they don’t see confrontation as being part of love. This is bad parenting, as well as bad theology. If your child has a habit of running into the street without looking, you don’t wait until an opportune time when the child asks you about your opinion on the subject, before voicing your views. You run after the child, grab them by the arm and pull them back, and tell them (sometimes forcefully) that it’s dangerous to do that. You don’t do this to hurt them, or to stunt their individuality. You do it to protect them, because you love them. If my little sister were about to do something stupid and/or dangerous, I would certainly grab her, pull her away, and maybe yell at her a little, to get my point across. Not because I don’t love her or want to hurt or shame her, but because I love her enough to hurt her feelings in order to keep her safe. The church has lost the stomach for hurting people’s feelings for their own good. Maybe it’s because we don’t often enough see sin as the deadly, oncoming car that it is.

It goes both ways. See, here’s the kicker. It seems like few people actively support the idea of church discipline, because then they’d have to submit to it. And no one wants that. It goes against our individualism. We on the Protestant side of things like to trumpet our “priesthood of the believer” tune, as a way of saying that “we don’t answer to anyone.” Here’s my thinking: the person who says “I answer to God” yet disobeys what God says in His word, isn’t answering to God.

I’m going to stop for a second and say, I’m not just talking about one type of sin, or one red-button issue. I know it’s easy to hear it that way, but I’m talking to myself here. I’m talking about the whole list.

At the risk of rambling any more, I’m gonna close with this.

Here’s what I believe about church: A church is a body of believers united by a common, basic core of beliefs about God, Jesus, the Bible, and the acting out of the Christian faith. In some faith backgrounds, this is called a “creed.” Some flavors of Protestant Christianity get a little freaked out when that word is used, but I’ve come to the conclusion that a creed can be a very useful thing, when properly focused on Christ.

[And I’ll go ahead and disclaimer this, too: creeds should have nothing to do with politics. Ever. EVER. These statements of faith should be about actual faith, not the poisonous merging of faith and political dogma or agenda. Such things are just as deadly poison as false teaching and bad doctrine.]

If you encounter a church that has a firm teaching about a particular moral or lifestyle issue, based on their understanding of the Bible, and you are openly and vocally opposed to this teaching and act accordingly, you shouldn’t expect that to be overlooked by the church leadership. And this could be about ANY sin issue, not just the “hot-button” ones. But you can and should expect to be questioned on this issue, if the church leadership is doing their job. If you insist that your stance on this issue is none of their business, or that they're wrongly interpreting Scripture, I also think you should expect them to have second thoughts about your status as a member of their church body. This doesn’t let them off the hook on the “respect, dignity, and love” requirements—not at all. But they have the right to be firm about what they believe is objectively right and wrong, just as you do.

This isn’t because Christians want everyone to be the same, as much as it may be interpreted that way. And it doesn’t mean that you can never have a good relationship with people from that faith community. And it certainly doesn’t shut the doors of all Christian churches against you. It just means you need to find another church whose core beliefs match yours.

It’s like playing a game of kickball. You invite other people to play with you, but you find that one player is convinced that a “pitch” that bounces three times means that they automatically go to first base, and another thinks that the bases should be run clockwise instead of counter-clockwise, and another thinks that they should get six strikes instead of three. If you tried to accommodate all of these variations, the game would devolve into chaos. So what do you do? You say, “Here are the rules for the game we’re playing.” If other players don’t want to accept these rules, there are other groups playing the game a little differently. But you want the group you’re playing with to have a unified understanding of how the game works.

[And I’m not even going to touch the issue of whose set of rules are the “right” ones, primarily because it would be impossible to argue one set of “rules” over another—not because there isn’t an objective right and wrong in many cases, but because not many people believe there is, or they do and are convinced theirs is it. So why bother.]

This is a horribly simplistic and problematic example, and I’m sure you can easily poke holes through it. But I hope you are hearing what I’m trying to say here. There has to be some common ground, when it comes to the beliefs of a church community. Otherwise, why not have a church made up of a handful of “Christians” who don’t believe Jesus was divine, and another handful of believers who don’t think that God is all-knowing or all-powerful, and another handful that deny that some people don’t go to heaven. How can you teach the Bible and the workings of the faith, as best as you understand them, to people who don’t share the same common starting point and foundation? How can that body function as a whole, when so many of the parts are working contrary to each other?

And I know there are professing believers--good, loving, wonderful people--who believe these things (some who even read this page). That’s why I chose those examples. And these are “big-doctrine” examples, but the smaller things are still important. But you get what I’m saying. (I hope.)

The Church needs to take these things seriously, because God takes these things seriously. We can’t just turn away when our brothers and sisters take dangerous steps toward these types of deeply rooted sins, because of the danger of it not only hurting them but spreading to others. We need to strive to extend the truth to these believers, so that we may have a chance to help rescue them from harm.

I’m struggling even now to express myself about this issue. It’s not easy, because there’s so much emotion involved. But I think it does boil down to objective right and wrong. I believe in it. I believe the Bible clearly expresses that certain things—doctrines and beliefs and practices and lifestyle choices--are black and white, in terms of sin.

And if I were the pastor of a church body, I would have to say to prospective members or current members who are involved in divisive and fellowship-destroying activities, “This is what we as a community of believers profess to believe about these specific social/doctrinal/relational issues. We’re not going to back down from this, because we believe, based on our best understanding of the Bible, that this is true and right. If you believe differently, then please know that we love you, respect you, and want the best for you. But we cannot tolerate what we believe is wrong, because that will poison this community. If you want to (continue to) be part of it, which we would welcome, something needs to change.” I would try to say this with as much humility, gentleness, and respect as possible. But I can’t just back down because I don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings.

In the story of the almost-stoning of an adulterous woman, much attention is paid to Jesus’ admonition to the self-righteous that the sinless man should be the first to throw stones. Attention is also paid to Jesus’ statement that he didn’t condemn the woman. But so often, we miss his last words to her in this passage. He says, “Neither do I condemn you. Go and leave your life of sin.” Jesus doesn’t excuse or gloss over the fact that the woman had sinned. He addresses it directly, calling it what it is. Yet He does so without belittling or attacking the woman. With love, he accepted her as a person, and then simply told her to change. When we talk about the issue of church discipline, this is our example. Love, encourage, and tell the truth--"sin is sin. Don’t do it."

The point of this is love. And love means telling the truth. And sometimes love means boldly and compassionately rebuking. Because the point of such rebuke should never punishment or marginalization or making someone feel less-than. The point is encouragement of each believer to fully realize who they are in Christ, and to spur each other on to a stronger and truer faith.