House of Bread

Defending doctrine; ignoring relationships July 21, 2011

Yesterday a friend mentioned that he just finished reading the new book by Rob Bell, Loves Wins: A Book about Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. He commented that while he found much to dispute in Bell’s theology, he thought the widespread evangelical trashing of Bell to be a bit over the top.

I know something about the deep need that arises within some of us to defend sound doctrine in the face of the increasing number of Christian leaders and others who seem willing to embrace the latest theological fad or, worse, outright heresy. I spent a fair amount of my ministry in a mainline denomination doing just this. I wrote letters to denominational leaders and I wrote articles for the denominational publication. I spoke to these matters in various pulpits and engaged in debate with my ministerial peers. I also drafted synodical legislation to support the church’s historic doctrines. And I eventually resigned, partially out of disgust for the drift away from sound doctrine.

 More than a half dozen years later I sometimes wonder why these doctrinal matters were so important to me and what exactly I was trying to protect. I especially think about the cost in broken and terminated relationships.

So where do relationships figure in the grand scheme of things? How important are they and what is their relationship to preserving or affirming sound doctrine? Being part of a small house church has unquestionably forced these questions on me. What has emerged is the conviction that relationships are a lot more important to me than they used to be. In a house church setting, numbers alone help focus the mind: Lose just one couple and you’ve lost one-third of your members!

My ministry in a prison setting has also helped focus me in this direction. I have seen some of the inmates break off relationships with other inmates because of petty doctrinal differences. (“Petty,” of course, is in the eye of the beholder, and I readily acknowledge that).

Added to these two experiences, I was also quite profoundly challenged by the 14th and 15th chapters of Romans, where Paul provides strong counsel on how believers ought to handle their differences. I wrote a number of blog posts about this earlier.

Tonight, our team is going into the prison to lead a study and discussion of the “one-anothers” of the New Testament. I’ve listed about 35 such references on three sheets of paper. Looking over them again I could not escape the fact that Jesus and his apostolic church-planters cared a great deal about promoting strong and good relationships within the community of believers. This concern is a clearly identifiable thread in the fabric of New Testament teaching. No, I think it is more than a thread: It is the stitching that holds together the many panels of the New Testament quilt.

It is now astonishing to me how little I have cared for this vital stitching over the years of my ministry. I am deeply grateful for a few dear brothers who have shown me by their own prizing of a relationship with me just how important the one-anothers really are.

One thing is certainly inescapable: the three dozen or so one-anothering verses are presented as imperatively strongly as any other teaching in the New Testament. What causes some of us to overlook them?