December 11, 2014
Devaluing Others
A friend introduced me to a Christian
web site that offers information on church issues and asks readers to
comment and share their experience. Almost on a daily basis surveys, updates
and discussion issues arrive by email. I’m starting to see a pattern where pastors
and staff are chiming in, but lay people are less forthcoming. There have been
a couple of times I went to the trouble of composing comments, but then I didn’t
send them. I suppose past experiences of sharing my opinions with church leadership
only to have them discounted or marginalized is in the back of my mind. I think I need to put myself in Timothy’s
place and take Paul’s message to heart, “Don’t let anyone look down on you
because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life,
in love, in faith and in purity” (1 Tim 4:12 NIV).
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----I love this direction given to the young elder. As different as Paul was from Peter, they still operated on the same wavelength, “So I exhort the elders among you…tend the flock of God that is your charge…not as domineering over [them], but being examples to [them].” (I Pet 5:1-3) This has got to be particularly difficult for “elders” to do today, being picked from the influential and successful, both of which, in our world, require predominance over competition and interjection of their own ideas as sole paths to accomplishment. We live in a world of push, so we get leaders of push. And, even though the world may praise leading, the only leading it allows is in the direction its social powers push. This is just a thing of group psychology.
-----But, reading the Scriptures carefully with a heart craving godly knowledge, one comes away with a particularly strong impression that growing in the Lord has at least something important to do with overcoming common psychological tendencies. The spiritually mature elders, as Paul described them to Timothy and Titus, if you think carefully about what it takes to exude those character traits he lists, have obviously overcome the more basic of their own problematic tendencies. So their behavior is much better in certain ways. And honor for others replacing tendencies of self assertion finds ways to express the loving behaviors of the new life in subtle, yet impressively exemplary conduct.
-----However, it can’t be forgotten that most people do not busy themselves with the studies it takes to shape sound and beneficial conclusions in place of emotive opinions. The accuracy of that idea is somewhat displayed in all of the hackles it raises, plus the multitudinous variety of ideas expressed regardless of the impossibility of two opposites both being true in the same sense at the same time. Most dialogue today being merely of emotive opinions is confirmed in how even a little study dispels vast varieties of it.
-----Some opinions, being particularly dangerous to the wondrous peculiarities of the new life, should have been carefully guarded against in the church. They would be less dangerous if their toxicity to new life attitudes was fatal rather than just distorting. But they distort attitudes in the church which leads to distorted behaviors. Since humans are moved more by example than persuasion, warped behaviors go viral, and so their attitudes follow.
-----Even the non-domineering elder must step forward with what he knows in direct controversion to corrosive opinions. And lip service only being paid to freedoms of expression makes it very difficult for the godly elder to speak conclusions to controvert opinions. Yet, he must defeat boldly bad opinions surfing into the church on waves of the masses. For, after all, the core of the new life is not as much about freedom to express opinions without controversy as it is about the freedom of truth to reshape attitudes.
-----It is the elder whose attitudes are being thusly reshaped who needs to interject into the mix of detrimental opining. He does this out of heart and love for those who can be ruined by these mental viruses rather than any sort of self achievement. “With his mouth the godless man would destroy his neighbor, but by knowledge the righteous are delivered.” (Prov 11:9)
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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