Monday, October 22, 2012

Voting for President and voting on church membership have equal Biblical support

Twitter is great for some things but it also allows us to send out brief thoughts that often are just bad theology. Case in point. I love Dr. Russell Moore, especially for his tireless advocacy for adoption, but this is just an awful tweet.


While Russell Moore is a dean at Southern Seminary, a well respected speaker and author and a leader for the church around the world and I am a nobody with a blog in Indiana we do share something in common: neither of us has a vote in who to "receive as church members".

The Bible tells us to "be subject to the governing authorities" but nothing about choosing those authorities. The Bible tells us to love one another but nothing about picking and choosing which we will accept as brothers and sisters. The cavalier way we make such bold statement about "church membership" and other pragmatic traditions of man and grant them the authority of Scripture is deeply troubling.

When someone votes on whether to accept a Christian as a member of the "their church" or to allow them to partake of the Lord's Supper or whether or not they should be baptized, that person deigns to step into God's place and dictate terms to Him. Jesus often chooses the unlovely, the sick, the outcast as His disciples and as one of those I am eternally grateful that He chose me. With that in mind I don't get a say in who to accept as a member of His church.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

You say the Lord's Supper is just having a meal with other family. So when your children and other children are all participating in this meal are you not giving communion to unconverted children? How Is this any different than paedo Communion?

Arthur Sido said...

That questio presumes a couple of things. First that the Lord's Supper is "communion" that is blessed and distributed by clergy. Second there is no indication that when the church came together for a meal (ex. 1 Cor 11) that children were excluded from the meal. Your question only makes sense if you assume the traditional model of "communion" rather than what I am arguing which is that the church shared meals together and presumably children would be present and would be fed.