December 19, 2007
Dilemma
I find I’m in a political quandary. No, it’s not with the 2008 election, but it’s with my church’s election of elders. First let me say that biblically the new candidates are qualified. However, when they were selected as nominees, additional criteria were used. So…do I now base my vote solely on their biblical qualifications, or do I also evaluate the candidates with the additional criteria used in their selection? Maybe it’s self-imposed, but in the past I’ve felt bound by the Scriptural requirements of elders and deacons. I’m now re-thinking that position. It seems to me that whatever standard of measurement is applied (biblical and/or extra-biblical), shouldn’t the same be used by both the selection committee and the voter?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Gail;
-----I think at the heart of your quandary is the need to reassess the Scriptural qualifications for elder. We too often use the Bible like an encyclopedia, or a dictionary, or worse yet, like a book of spells and enchantments. I assure you, it is like none of those. It is more like one giant mural. Everything in it has to do with everything else in it. We can not pluck out of it an element to interpret according to how it arranges with our own thinking. We must continually study and meditate to understand how that element arranges with the rest of what the Bible says, then arranges our thinking accordingly. So let’s peer a bit deeper into the qualifications for eldership.
----The first point of qualification should be as far as we must go, but we won’t end there. Paul charges that the elder must be blameless, or above reproach. Paul uses the Greek term behind this translation two other times in the New Testament. All three times he uses it are here in this letter to Timothy. At I Timothy 5:7, he tells Timothy to “Give the people these instructions, too, so that no one may be open to blame,” after laying out a list of instructions directed toward Timothy beginning at I Tim 4:1, and before proceeding through a list of instructions for the people. His first instruction to Timothy was a warning not to get caught up in ascetical practices and teachings, as if abstinences and myths were of any value. He assured him instead that God created all things, and that all things were good if thanks were given to God for them. I wonder if that might also apply to hymns and other elements of traditional worship? Then, after exhorting Timothy to devotion and instructing him regarding the treatment of older and younger men and widows, he directs him regarding accusations against elders and the public handling of their sins. The list is ended with a charge to keep these instructions without partiality or favoritism. Then again Paul turns Timothy’s attention to those who teach for gain and warns him to be godly and content with what he has, pointing to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching as standards. After contrasting contentment with struggle for riches, Paul tells Timothy to flee from it all and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness, with a charge to keep this command without spot or blame. Paul was obviously using the term “blameless” to reach a deeper level of morals and ethics than was provided by just civil law, which is now the ordinary refinement of the term. Blamelessness clearly carries beyond legal duty. In fact, the entire context of chapters 4, 5, and 6 reaches up to a godliness dipped from the same stream that flows throughout the New Testament. That stream tastes of self-sacrifice and putting others before one’s own self. It sparkles of knowing those around you and who they are and what they need. It is wet with the compassion and ambition to find those needs met in acknowledgment of the interests by which their needs are shaped. If the elder candidate is truly blameless before the Word, his heart will be full of compassion without partiality and favoritism towards only those who think his way, or against others who feel a different way. Is that selflessness the additional criteria?
-----In the meaning of the Greek term translated as “self-controlled” by the NIV are the ideas “of sound mind, sane, in one’s senses…curbing one’s desires and impulses” (Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon). This is another word used in the New Testament exclusively by Paul, and only in I Timothy and Titus referring to elders, deacons, older men, and younger wives. In as much as the term invokes the mind as well as it does behavior, attitudes as well as actions, I can not help but think of Paul’s admonitions to the Romans concerning delicate issues, that each person is to be convinced in his own mind (sound mind, sane, in one‘s senses), but that each was also to keep between themselves and God what they believed (curbing one’s desires and impulses.) The elders are not sheltered from Paul’s commands at Romans 14. Those commands indeed act as restrictions upon the authority given to them by Hebrews 13:17. There is a very real individual element to life in the Lord, and the elder is invoked here to respect it, indeed, to honor it. The eldership is not a position of advantage from which to project one’s own spiritual views and aspirations upon the hearts and minds of the congregation. That is not self control, that is self-ambition and vein conceit.
-----Yet, do you not see projection of personal viewpoints within the additional criteria? I have been through the process of elder selection there. We have both been witness to the “self-control” of the elders there. And I am sure you agree from the things we have experienced that the additional criteria lead the eldership right counter to curbing their own desires.
-----Skipping down the Scriptural list of qualifications to quarrelsome, again you and I have had experience with the “non-quarrelsome” elders. I wrote many letters to them regarding their partial treatment towards many in their flock and against others. So also did many other people. My letters were logical and straight forward. The content of their message was Scriptural, and those Scriptures were referenced and quoted in my letters. Upon a few occasions I talked with the elders and ministers about the feelings, the needs, and the reality of those against whom the leaders showed partiality. But in spite of all the logic and reason I could muster, they only dodged the issues, obfuscated my points, and outright denied the truths to which I referred. With barely refrained hostility, they then would make their case based upon their authority alone. You have a great example of this in ink on paper, as do all the members of that church. They wrote from their quarrelsome nature in a letter that misrepresented Char and I, outright lied about what we had done, and gave the congregation permission to use the same quarrelsome technique of refusing our fellowship. (“…not overbearing…” Titus 1:7) I have been cut off from those men for 18 months now, so I can only presume that the additional criteria have to do with the same points of partiality that existed before. And I can only presume that the old quarrelsome techniques of maintaining their partiality are still encouraged amongst themselves.
-----”Rather, he must be…a lover of good” Titus 1:8 Is this a general statement, or what? Actually, or what. It is a quite specific statement. He must not just give devotion to his own personal points and views about good. He must not be a cherry picker of what good should be promoted in the congregation, and what good is worthy of ignoring. He must love good, all good. It is good to acknowledge and welcome one another, without partiality. If that good were also loved there would not be a little rat-hole of ignored old-timers stuffed away in a back room where nobody can see them or be bothered by their distress. Neither would there be any referring to their distress as immature narcissism. But there would be love for them as well. Because that is good. There would be interest in their interests as well, because that is good. There would also be service in their interests, because that is good. There would be pleasing them for their edification, to build them into the holy temple as well, for that is good. There would be doing good to all men, and especially to those of the household of God. For that is good. And all good is loved. Not just the good designated by the extra criteria of these outstanding examples of love and compassion, these partial elders.
-----Do we need to really continue into a discussion of “upright”? Is it not as specific as “lovers of good”? But do please allow me to quote Micah 6:8. It rather is the Bible in a nutshell. “He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Does this not speak fully about being upright? Is there uprightness in requiring criteria to be met beyond that given in the Word? It is not a humble thing to do. It is not Scriptural in the sight of I Cor 4:6, “Do not go beyond what is written.” It is not justified in the sight of Romans 14. It is not merciful to the hearts that have been broken and pushed into that rat-hole in the back of your church. Neither has anybody else in that church been taught to care for those brethren, out of mercy, or justice, or simple humility. Who is walking with God there? Upright. Yes. Now, there is a qualification to pay attention to!
-----No holy and disciplined holding to the trustworthy message as it has been taught (Titus 1:9) can lead to the continuation of partiality (I Tim 5:21, James 2:9). Adding to the qualifications given by Paul necessarily favors certain men amongst those who fit Paul’s qualifications and disfavors those who do not fit those of the elders. What? Are we going to call that something other than partiality? It is in itself a sin. Did not Paul, who gave the qualification, himself say not to show partiality? Yes, folks, it is favoritism and partiality. It is the same favoritism and partiality that has kept the Lord’s holy temple separated and divided into denominations for two thousand years. It is the same partiality over which God upbraided the priests through His prophet Malachi. “’Because of you I will rebuke your descendants ; I will spread on your faces the offal from your festival sacrifices, and you will be carried off with it. And you will know that I have sent you this admonition so that my covenant with Levi may continue,’ says the LORD Almighty…’For the lips of a priest ought to preserve knowledge, and from his mouth men should seek instruction--because he is the messenger of the LORD Almighty. But you have turned from the way and by your teaching have caused many to stumble; you have violated the covenant with Levi,’ says the LORD Almighty. ‘So I have caused you to be despised and humiliated before all the people, because you have not followed my ways but have shown partiality in matters of the law.’ (Malachi 2:3-4 and 7-9.) The offal of our Christian sacrifices has certainly been spread upon our faces. Many today stick their noses in the air at Jesus Christ because of the stench of that offal. It is the result of all the partiality by which elders, preachers, theologians, and other leaders have partitioned and destroyed the unity of His holy temple by their jealousies. It is the elephant in the living room, the dead body on the wall. Everyone of us, with offal on our faces know about it, but none of us want to see it. We acknowledge it with our minds, but not with our obedience to the Word.
-----So should any of those men chosen by your elders’ special criteria be confirmed? Not according to Scripture. Neither are any of those who are currently elders qualified to continue as elders. For they are the ones invoking the extra criteria, going beyond what is written, practicing favoritism to sort amongst Scripturally qualified men to find only those fitting their own beliefs, beliefs that Paul says to keep between themselves and God. In fact, if that whole congregation were given to careful study of and obedience to Scripture, they would all step forward as witnesses to the sin of partiality that has kept the rat-hole in the back peopled, and to the sin of partiality in the eldership selection which will serve only to keep it further populated. Read James 2:9 again. And there are many witnesses who need to step forward until the sin is confessed by the elders, and until repentance has repaired the damage they have done.
-----Your congregation would serve godliness in that church by marking “no” by every name on those ballots, and by writing the sin of the elders at the bottom. Then maybe love will return to the elders’ eyes. Maybe they will see those people for what they are, the broken and down-trodden. Maybe the leaders will see the rat-hole for what it is - their own favoritism, selfish-ambitions, vein conceits, and demanding of their own ways. For in that room really shines what Jesus came for, the humble and the meek. The smoldering wicks that He would not break, but that partiality would only love to quench. There, in that room, are good candidates for the eldership. Are any of them on the ballot?
Post a Comment