I’ve found my old notes on this subject, and uploaded them

right here.

Two churches I have been involved with have gone through a crisis, and a third is headed for the same crisis as I write this. The crisis unfolds thus: the leadership of a church becomes too overbearing, making judgements and decisions about various aspects of the members’ lives, and criticizing them harshly if they don’t fall in line. People get upset and leave, membership declines, the church gets a bad name and finally the leadership decides to repent. But the way they repent doesn’t make the church stronger. They decide the problem was that they were too harsh, and decide to be much less harsh and controlling. What’s left of the church settles down into a demoralized mediocrity, where leaders are afraid to lead. I see signs that they are gradually getting fed up with the state of affairs, and I am concerned the cycle will repeat itself.

I think the leaders have misdiagnosed the cause of the crisis, and this is why their solution is so unsatisfactory. It does no good to try to repent if you have misidentified your sin. From my own experience, the harshness was never the real problem. The harshness was only a symptom of a deeper problem.

There is an appropriate time for harshness. Scripture and real life make this clear. Serious sin must be dealt with seriously. Sometimes it is the leaders that are in sin. In the Bible, when this happens, God sends prophets to rebuke the leaders harshly. If leaders think that rebuking is something only leaders do, and that only followers are subject to, that’s another symptom of the real problem. The real problem is arrogance.

There are many different kinds of pride. The most dangerous kind is when someone has authority, and that authority goes to his head. He starts to think that he knows better than everybody else what is best for them, and that he is never wrong. He loses sight of his own limitations. This is arrogance.

When an arrogant man starts to get criticism, he doesn’t like it, so he attacks the messenger. Sometimes he does this pre-emptively. Always, he does it swiftly, and harshly. He’s trying to protect himself from criticism, at the expense of the critic. Paul confronted this. “Have I become your enemy by telling you the truth?” he wrote.

When the church falls apart, and the leaders finally try to repent, they decide that the problem was that they were too harsh. It’s true that they abused harshness, but that doesn’t mean harshness is bad, or even that it’s the problem. The real problem was their own pride. They lost sight of their own limitations. This problem remains, uncorrected, not even addressed. They still give bad guidance. All that’s changed is now they do it sheepishly, as if they have to apologize for leading, when they should apologize for misleading.

I propose a new method of repentance for churches who are facing this crisis, or who have faced it and dealt with it badly. I propose that all who presume to lead make a point of knowing what they are talking about. If you don’t know what you are talking about, then keep your mouth shut. Jesus was very harsh sometimes, but he always made a point of knowing what he was talking about.

There are two parts to knowing what you are talking about as a spiritual leader. The first is knowing scripture thoroughly. The second is knowing the subject matter to which the scripture is being applied. I’ve known pastors that were deficient in both these areas, but the most common failing is the lack of domain specific knowledge. It seems most ministers lack the life experience to understand real world problems. They get raised in nice Christian families, they go to seminary school, they graduate and go into the ministry, they marry young, because that’s what’s expected of them. This life trajectory cuts them off from many of the experiences that other people have. It makes empathy impossible. How can someone who has never had a regular job advise you on problems at work? How can someone who has never been a single adult guide you on dating? How can someone who came from a good family tell you how to deal with bad parents? They haven’t been there, and they don’t know how it works. There may be a scripture that tells you exactly what to do, but you’ll have a better chance of stumbling across it yourself than of this guy pointing it out to you. Even if he knows of the scripture, it won’t occur to him to apply it in the given situation. He won’t make the connection.

The twelve that Jesus chose were unschooled, ordinary men. They had never been to seminary, but they had had real jobs. Paul had a religious education, and enough humility to acknowledge its limitations. He had a lot to unlearn before he could be effective, but he unlearned it. The apostles were a diverse enough group that, taken together, they could relate to all sorts of people, but there was only room for one seminary student in the bunch.

I’ll take the wounds of a friend over the kindly advice of an incompetent. If you know what you are talking about, you can be as blunt as you like with me, but if you don’t know what you are talking about, I really don’t care how nice and polite you are. You’re just another opinionated ignoramus to me. It’s the quality of the content that matters. Style is secondary. Know what you are talking about.

Several Christians who hold a favorable opinion of a certain elected official have taken those of us who disagree to task for disagreeing. One even went so far as to say I’m not behaving as a proper disciple if I don’t keep my ‘negativity’ to myself.

All of them, without exception, use the same scripture, and only one scripture. This one:

Romans 13:4 – The authorities are God’s servants, sent for your good. But if you are doing wrong, of course you should be afraid, for they have the power to punish you. They are God’s servants, sent for the very purpose of punishing those who do what is wrong.

It’s almost as if they don’t know there are other Bible verses. Well, there are. 31,102 of them. I’ll get to a few of them in a moment. But first, a question. How exactly does this verse mean that we’re supposed to keep our mouths shut? I just don’t see the logic here. Are they insinuating that those who criticise are disobedient? What kind of thinking is that?

Okay. Next, there’s another passage that makes the REAL principle behind that Romans quote a little clearer. Look in I Samuel 8. It goes on at length about the evils of big government. Here’s the money quote:

1 Samuel 8:18 – And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the LORD will not hear you in that day.

Yes, rulers are God’s way of punishing the wicked. But who are the wicked? Those who oppose the ruler? Not necessarily. At least sometimes, it’s the people who support the ruler who are the ones to be punished.

So, do believers have the right to criticise the government? They have more than just the right. In some cases, they have the obligation. There were countless prophets who were commanded by God to condemn rulers publicly. Elijah, Hosea, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and so on. Here’s a brief passage that sums up the principle:

Ezekiel 33:1-6

1 Again the word of the Lord came to me, saying, 2 “Son of man, speak to the children of your people, and say to them: ‘When I bring the sword upon a land, and the people of the land take a man from their territory and make him their watchman, 3 when he sees the sword coming upon the land, if he blows the trumpet and warns the people, 4 then whoever hears the sound of the trumpet and does not take warning, if the sword comes and takes him away, his blood shall be on his own head. 5 He heard the sound of the trumpet, but did not take warning; his blood shall be upon himself. But he who takes warning will save his life. 6 But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet, and the people are not warned, and the sword comes and takes any person from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood I will require at the watchman’s hand.’

The passage then goes on to draw an analogy between a watchman and the prophet who warns against political and/or societal evil. This particular prophet harshly criticized kings and tribal elders. He also condemned those who followed these leaders.

In summary, we do not have an obligation to keep our mouths shut. We may not even have the right to keep them shut. Those who tell us to be quiet are the ones who are out of line.

Now, about this notion that there is something unchristian about negativity. Jesus himself was extremely harsh in many of his words. Let’s face it. “Woe to you Pharisees and Sadducees, you hypocrites!” is not a very nice thing to say, especially in public. Is there anything in the Bible to say we should not say things people disagree with because it will hurt their feelings? Paul says in I Corinthians 8 and in Romans 14 to be mindful of the weak consciences of immature believers, who are confused in their understanding regarding authority and freedom. I don’t think we can stretch this far enough to cover the case at hand. Sooner or later, the immature need to grow up. We shouldn’t go out of our way to hurt their sensibilities, of course. But we can’t go to the other extreme of pussyfooting around their wounded pride. How then can we help them grow?

We bear with the failings of the weak, but not to the point of effectively putting them in charge. Just because they want to be arbiters of truth doesn’t mean they ought to be. Everything’s a disputable matter to someone, somewhere. This does not excuse the watchman from his duty. If you don’t care for the watchman’s warning, that’s your concern, not his. If you disagree with the watchman’s assertions, you are free to ignore him and take your chances. He won’t punish you. That’s not part of his job. But he won’t shut up, either.

The one who angrily told me to stop being negative, I had to rebuke her firmly. I would have preferred to be more gentle, but Jesus wasn’t gentle in these cases. I would have preferred to handle it privately, but that was already a foregone conclusion. She had made her demand publicly, together with the bogus exegesis. It was the twisted theology I couldn’t let stand, because that’s a danger to others.

As for her political opinions, she can have them. I wasn’t the one calling for silencing of dissent. Also, she questioned my spirituality over a political issue, but that isn’t what bothers me. What bothers me was she got the Bible wrong. She mixed religion and politics, and she got at least one of them wrong.

He who has ears to hear, let him hear. Everyone else, go your merry way. Peace.