Faith, religion, control, power, money

There is ample evidence throughout history that when you have people with strong faith under the influence of people with control you get a combustible mix. The men who flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were not driven by cold calculations or profit motives. They were driven by faith. A false faith to be sure but a faith nonetheless. The Nazi guards who callously murdered Jews by the millions were men of faith, faith in a Fuhrer and in a nation that went beyond mere patriotism into a quasi-religious fervor. Even the Christian faith is susceptible to the temptations of power when intermixed with the world and with money. Callous rulers long ago figured out that people could be manipulated with religion and they have exploited this tendency ever since by co-opting churches and faith movements. What else explains doctrinal differences like baptism turning into Christians being burned at the stake by the state with the tacit or overt approval of other Christians?

The only remedy for the tendency to abuse faith is to keep oneself unstained from the world and what the world cherishes. So much mischief in the church and the world is attributable to the love of money and power. Being entangled with authority, power, money, control creates temptations to abuse that are unhealthy and unnecessary. The focal point of the church is the exact opposite of what the world considers important and the encroachment of the world is at the heart of almost every problem we have in the church. What the world reviles, Christ loves. What Christ hates, the world embraces. As I have said over and over, mixing the world into the church doesn’t improve the world; instead it infects and weakens the church. The church should go to the world with the message of Christ, not invite the world into the church to define what is important. Nowhere is this truer than with money which is the source of some of the worst behavior by Christians within the church.

Faith is the most powerful human attribute and the one that is perhaps the most apt for misuse. Everyone has faith although not many people have that faith directed at the proper recipient. Little wonder that Jesus emphasized service, humility, sacrifice, meekness and powerlessness in His ministry. The opposite is also true. Jesus condemned in the harshest terms expressions of religion especially when that religion was coupled with power. Paul faced down the powerful of his day and cherished caring for the poor with the fruit of his labor (Acts 20: 33-35). Similarly James wrote that pure religion is caring for widows and orphans as well as keeping oneself unstained from the world (James 1: 27). That is rarely how religion is manifested. The history of mankind is replete with abuses of power in the name of religion and the name of Christ has all too often been linked with these abuses in spite of what He taught.

We live today with the vestiges of the worst abuser of the power of religion, Roman Catholicism. The structures put in place by Rome still manifest themselves in so many ways and places in the evangelical church. Not merely in “mainline”, “high church” denominations but also in Baptist groups, Reformed churches and even in independent non-denominational churches. When you step back from all of the details of Roman Catholicism that we get caught up in like Mariolatry and the Mass and the celibate priesthood and look at what the overall picture is, you will see that it is a picture of control. Rome controlled and still controls people by controlling their access to God. Want forgiveness for your sins? You need a Roman priest to hear your confession. Do you desire communion with Christ? You have to come and partake of the Eucharist under the authority of the Roman priesthood. Want your kids to go to heaven? They must be baptized into the Roman church by a Roman priest. Everything about Rome from birth (baptism) to death (Last Rites) is controlled and dispensed by the church organization in a top-down hierarchy. That control wielded by Rome ruled not just the church but also the state for centuries in Europe and around the world in an unholy alliance. In spite of this, even those who wave the banner of Reformation and decry Rome and her theology in the strongest possible terms still cling stubbornly, almost desperately, to the very structures that enabled Roman doctrinal abuses to gain traction and become so powerful. A church that does not focus on the power and authority of the priesthood class is not going to develop doctrines like transubstantiation.

All of the above is why I get so nervous when people start describing the church in terms of authority, submission and discipline. It is also why I spend so much time raising questions about the church and poking at sacred cows. It is common to hear people say that we need to submit to the authority of a local church but what about the local church submitting to each other? The gathering of the church was not designed as a means to control people so that they act like Christians, it is a place for Christians to come together to break bread, to live in community, to love and be loved by one another, to exhort, to be equipped for the work of ministry, to encourage and when needed rebuke one another. Visions of the church that focus on authority and hierarchy are in vogue and defenders of that vision are myriad. Discipline and leadership are certainly an aspect of the church but they ought not be seen as the focus of the church. We have an unhealthy preoccupation with authority in the church that can easily tip over into control and power and that is at the very heart of the sort of religion that Jesus hates. If the first attribute you think of when you think about the church is its authority over people, your image of the church is not based in Scripture.

The church of Jesus Christ has its genesis in the submission of Christ to the cross, of Him condescending to take on a tabernacle of flesh, of emptying Himself for the sake of poor, miserable sinners. It has for its example the God of the universe washing the feet of His disciples, of a King with no place to lay His head, of God coming in the flesh as a helpless infant born of a peasant. We as His people exhibit strength in our weakness, claim foolishness as our source of wisdom and find our greatest power in powerlessness. The greatest among us are not the scholars or the mighty orators but instead are the servants (Matthew 20:25-28). Everything about the church of Christ and the Gospel of Christ is counter-intuitive to the world and its love of control. There is no place for those who seek control or hunger for power in His church.