“I can feel you reaching,
Pushing through the ceiling.
’Til the final healing,
I’m looking for you …
I am restless, looking for
you.”
Switchfoot,
‘Restless’, Vice Verses (2011)
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| A church ceiling. I have no idea whether the theological stances of the church in question may plausibly be described as evangelical, though. |
If you would be so kind as to
indulge me, O Willing and Generous Reader, I’d like to spend a substantial
proportion of this post testing out a bit of a theory I have going about the
nature of teaching in evangelical churches. Specifically, I’m thinking of
churches known and celebrated for having ‘good teaching’ – in other words, the apparent
best thing on the market with regard to that particular concern (leaving aside
other issues like music and service style and community feel and so forth) –
but I’d be happy to bring in perspectives from other kinds of congregations as
well. Might I ask whether you recognise any of the sentiments and arguments I
have attempted to delineate below?
- Assertion that parables are not allegories, and so
not everything in them has to stand for something;
- Focus on language and imagery and ‘the picture
the Bible is painting here’, namely its emotive connotations, rather than what
the words actually say and mean to be true;
- Glossing over of verses that sit at odds with the
proposed interpretation, or sometimes downright removal of them from the cited
passage;
- Assumptions that some phrase in the text
obviously doesn’t literally mean what it says, because that would just be
unrealistic;
- Acknowledgements of – almost apologies for – how terribly
strange and difficult a particular passage is to our modern western ears, that
take up nearly as great a proportion of the sermon as the actual exegetical
content;
- Drawing of distance between us now and the early
church, such that the passage is understood to mean something very different
for us than it did for them;
- Recognition that Christians have different views
about how the passage is to be interpreted, followed by the suggestion that it
doesn’t really matter to which of those possible interpretations one subscribes;
- Use of the doctrine of the sufficiency of scripture
to argue that correct interpretation of some aspect of its contents isn’t that big of a deal (because if
we needed to know, the Bible would tell us nice and unambiguously);
- A lack of space made in the normal running of the
church for discussing what we might call hardcore theology – an assumption that
if you want to wrestle through a slightly complex theological issue, you’d
better speak to the pastor/vicar/minister/whatever else your church calls that
guy;
- Or finally, my special favourite – dodging of
difficult or controversial questions about specific details of the passage at
hand by insisting that the really important thing to get out it is some
extraordinarily basic doctrine like ‘God keeps his promises’ or ‘God is in
charge’.
I’m sure there are more to be
thought of, but at any rate, if a substantial number of these characteristics
are familiar to you from contexts in which you regularly receive Christian
teaching, then might I suggest to you that you may be living under something I
like to call the Evangelical Ceiling?
The Evangelical Ceiling is the
point beyond which teaching in evangelical churches does not venture; so far
but no further. I said above that I was thinking specifically of churches well known
for their ‘good teaching’, and I hasten to make clear that I’m not meaning to denigrate
their reputation as undeserved. To talk of so far but no further is not to
belittle the importance of the ‘so far’. Indeed, when I rocked up at university
as a theologically imbecilic little fresher, three years of Sunday sermons and
midweek student Bible studies at a church like that were exactly the
crash-course in scriptural literacy I needed. It was in that context that I learned
to value the scriptures, and I owe more than I can say to the brothers and
sisters who made that happen. The ironic thing is that it was then that same
high regard for scripture that left me dissatisfied with the approach of the
context in which I had been taught it. For those three years, I grew. I really
grew. But I think three years of regular teaching is probably about as long as
it takes to grow up as far as the Evangelical Ceiling.
You bump up against the
Evangelical Ceiling every time you hear a sermon and realise that, aside from
perhaps a couple of minor asides, there was nothing in it that you didn’t
already know. You confront it every time you wonder why the preacher is taking
so long to make a really obvious point, or why he’s bothering to provide so
much contextual information when said contextual information amounts to nothing
more than basic Bible knowledge. You’re knocking against it every time someone
explains the key thrust of a particular passage to you and you think, yes, but
God could have conveyed that message in any of a thousand million ways; will
nobody help me see why he chose this one? You’re aware of it every time you
feel as if you’re covering the same ground over and over again, and yet you’re
so certain there’s so much more to understand. You hit the Evangelical Ceiling,
my friend, every time you’re desperately craving something solid to eat and
they just keep giving you milk.
 |
| Milk. Obviously the passage is talking about human breastmilk, but I'm not exactly falling over myself to provide an image along those lines. |
I mean, milk’s great and all,
if you’re the theological equivalent of a babe in arms, and it’s right and good
and praiseworthy that the Church should be providing it for those who need it –
but unless something is going very wrong with a new convert’s walk with God,
she shouldn’t stay in the stage of needing milk for particularly long. Nor is
it just some minor shame or mildly unfortunate issue if she does: it is nothing
less than a question of her very salvation. Seriously, check out this chunk of
the letter to the Hebrews:
About which, the message to
say to you (is) much, and hard to explain, since you have become sluggish in
your hearing; for, though you ought to be teachers by this time, you have a
need of someone teaching you the elements of the beginning of the oracles of
God again, and you have become in need of milk, not solid food. For everyone
partaking of milk is unfamiliar with the word of righteousness, because he is
an infant: solid food belongs to the mature, to those who, through habit, have
faculties trained for the distinction of good and bad. Therefore, having left
the beginning of the word of Christ behind, let us move towards maturity, not
laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and faith in God,
teaching of baptisms and laying on of hands, of resurrection from the dead and
judgement of the age. And this we shall do, if indeed God permits. For (it is)
impossible, (regarding) those once having been enlightened, and having tasted
the heavenly gift, and having become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and having
tasted the beautiful word of God and the powers of the coming age, and having
fallen away, to renew (them) again to repentance – re-crucifying for themselves
the Son of God, and making a spectacle (of him). For earth which has drunk the
rain often coming on it, and bears a crop fit for those on whose account it is
even farmed, has a share in blessing from God; but (land) bringing forth
thistles and thorns (is) unsatisfactory and nearly a curse, the end of which
(is) for burning.
People get very het up about
that bit about it being impossible to call the formerly enlightened to
repentance, but I think the point is really something like this: if you’ve
already repented, and seen the truth of the gospel, and received the Holy
Spirit, and so forth, then you can’t go back to the beginning and cover the
same ground again. To do so is to re-crucify Christ and to defame him. The
author of the letter (and I have to say, I’m getting some serious Paul vibes
with the milk-versus-solid-food metaphor) is really quite miffed with his
addressees for their failure to have moved on from the elements of the
beginning of the oracles (or ‘sayings’) of God. Notice how he defines these
beginnings: repentance from dead works, faith in God, baptism, laying on of
hands (presumably as indicating the receipt of spiritual gifts and
commissioning for ministry, so that’s setting the bar for the basics pretty
high compared to much of the modern church), resurrection from the dead,
judgement of the world. These are the fundamentals of doctrine and practice
which we are to grasp and then build on. Understand that it is on them that we’re
to build – any apparent growth isn’t really growth if it’s on a foundation
other than Christ, as per 1 Corinthians 3, or severed from Christ the true
vine, as per John 15 – but we are not to lay them over and over again. It is
impossible for someone who’s already well into the milk stage to go back and
start from square one with repentance and faith, because the posture of repentance
and faith, by its very nature, demands growth. Refusal to grow is a sign
of not having really repented and believed in the first place. The ground, furthermore,
is cultivated for the sake of others – and here we hit the point I was making
last post: if the body builds itself up, then we all need to be striving
to grow in order to help others grow too. Elsewhere in scripture – I think of
Isaiah 55:10-11 – God characterises his words as rain, which doesn’t fall
without achieving his purposes. I think we can take the image in the same sense
here, given that it’s the exercise of higher giftings, namely giftings that
involve preaching God’s word in one way or another, that is supposed to cause
us to grow (for more on this metaphor, take a look also at Deuteronomy 32,
zooming in on verse 2). But if we won’t grow, if we’ll stay in the milk stage,
if we won’t reach the point of being able to teach others, then we’re
unproductive ground. And unproductive ground does not get a happy ending.
Do you see how serious a
problem this is? Adelphoi, for your own sake I beg of you, if the normal
activity of your church does not cause the word to be preached to you in a way
that builds on the foundations you already have, instead of re-laying them,
then you need to find other contexts in which it is. By that I don’t
mean that you need to up sticks and go church shopping; I mean that you need to
meet with other believers who will help you to grow past where you already are –
past the Evangelical Ceiling, or any other ceiling that circumstance has
imposed upon your faith – in whatever fashion proves feasible.
Maybe you thought my list of
symptoms of the Evangelical Ceiling above was little more than a catalogue of
pet peeves. Aside from the fact that, if that were the criterion, the list
would be far, far longer, I really do think they’re more than that. What I
think they have in common is that they’re ways in which we’re holding ourselves
back from a proper solid-food diet and keeping ourselves as children in the faith;
they’re habits of engagement with scripture whereby we prevent it from achieving
the full extent of its work in causing us to better know and serve our God. These
things do more than merely irritate me; they make me afraid for us. When we
tell mature fellow-believers that the finer details of the passage at hand don’t
much matter, because the really important thing to get out of it is
such-and-such an incredibly basic doctrine, are we not re-laying a foundation
of the beginning of the word of Christ, in precisely the way Hebrews tells us not
to?
Still, the very next bit of
that Hebrews passage reads, But we are convinced, about you guys, (of)
things better and holding salvation, even if we speak like this. And I am convinced,
about us, of things better and holding salvation, even if I speak like this. Drink
the rain of others’ ministry in the word, bear a crop of your own ministry, and
be assured that you shall have your blessing from God.
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