Romans 8:14
A Christian believes that there are two forces at work on an individual's life - good and evil. He believes that there are only these two at work, no middle ground. No neutral decisions.
Essentially every one of his decisions are made with this at work behind the scenes, in his conscience as it were. If this premise is true, then it also stands to reason that when several Christians assemble and they make a corporate decision they are also affected by this phenomenon. Either their decision is good or their decision is evil.
Most Christians would call for the guidance of the Holy Spirit in their individual and corporate affairs. Alas, Jesus himself said that where "two or three are gathered in my name there am I in the midst".
Is it a safe induction to say that the Holy Spirit is present giving guidance and inspiration to individual and corporate decisions made? Perhaps a distinction should even be made between individual and corporate decisions. Is there some number needed for a quorum? Jesus said two or three.
Is there something wrong with this logic?
posted by Looking Upward @ 4/03/2008 03:33:00 PM
10 comments
10 Comments:
Three posts in three months, and then three posts in three days. I can't keep up!
Do you really think every decision is a matter of good and evil? Just to pick a silly example, do you think that a church's decision to buy light brown or light gray carpet can be evaluated in such terms?
no.
Do you believe there are neutral decisions?
I believe there are morally neutral decisions, yes.
Friend,
There is nothing wrong with your logic. The statement you have made is pure, simple and innocent. However, there IS something wrong with my heart. That is where/when/how it seems your logic disconnects from reality. What tends to happen in/with man is this, we get our guorum together and then think that our deductions have become divine based on our own 'Spiritually guided deducting power'. If you have the Spirit and I have the Spirit and 6300 other people have the Spirit and we all come together to 'counsel' doesn't it reason mathematically that we have 6302X more Spirit than you or I do individually? NO!! 6300X NO!! There is one Spirit!
But something tells me you already know this..............
Brad:
Is 'spirits' involved in morally neutral decisions? Don't those seemingly very insignificant decisions then later have a major bearing on something that transpires? Yes, I realize that that is not true in most cases...
Further, are all decisions (good and evil) not somehow orchestrated by God?
bro_bar:
Yes, I know of what you speak. It is very silly to think that when the Bible says two or three, that we then think that if we multiply attendance it will intensify the work of the Spirit.
My question is:
Does the aforementioned either/or scenario commit the logic fallacy of 'begging the question' or 'false dilemma' or something else, or is it valid logic.
I think that brad begins to clear it up a little when he introduces a third option - neutrality or preferance. Does the Holy Spirit need to get involved in whether the carpet is brown or gray?
I guess the parts I'm missing in your logic is these:
How does it follow that if a person asks for guidance that they necessarily get it? Don't some ask amiss?
In the sovereignty of God, doesn't it clearly say in Romans that God blinds some so they make bad decisions? Even if you feel that's talking about nations, wouldn't it apply as well to large ethnic groups (which arguably is the biblical nation)?
In regards to a quorum, wouldn't it be safe to say in any group that's too large to know everyone individually that there are some who aren't believers? "There must be heresies". So perhaps that's your quorum (upper limit, actually), although I'm not convinced myself that a smaller group makes all the right decisions.
I don't think the third option is neutrality of choice.
Note that your premise is "several Christians assemble".
If only Christians assemble, they will make decisions within the context of whether they are walking in the Spirit or not.
If two Christians walking in the Spirit disagree on the color of the church carpet, I believe they will still achieve a harmonious decision which is ultimately "right". The color is neither right or wrong: it is the decision, and all that the decision is motivated by, that is relevant here. The color is irrelevant for the true Christian: he can pick any color he wants.
Your premise, however, allows for only two kinds of people: Christians who make good decisions and Christians who make evil decisions.
The "carnal Christian" will, perhaps, influence a decision based on his selfish motives and this could very well lead to a "bad" decision.
But in order to more completely address the question behind your question, there is a third thing that should be considered: the reality that an assembly will likely contain non-Christians.
An assembly's decision will be affected by those Christians who are walking in the Spirit and those who are not. Anyone who knows me, knows that I disdain the oxymoron, "carnal Christian". Nonetheless, some Christians walk in the Spirit and others walk in the flesh (and will be disciplined in due course.) In either case, though, the Christian is no longer blind - and God does not blind those whose eyes He has opened. If we walk in the light as He is in the light, I would expect more "good" decisions than "evil" ones from a group of Christians.
But the third group is your assembly-related problem. The assembly of religious persons has no hope of overwhelmingly "good" decisions when the assembly is (or, worse yet, the elders are) composed of both Christians and non-Christians. This is a matter of unequal yoking. Every example in scripture condemns the "mixed bag". The true Christian will wind up utterly miserable in that environment, and no decision can ultimately be trusted as "good".
The remedy is for true Christians to step up and expunge the evil man from their midst. Or, when that is impossible, the righteous man must come out from among the wicked.
That's pretty cut and dried.
Kick em out or leave yourself.
Where to go pray tell? Don't all large assemblies (Christian) deal with non-Christians masquerading as the real thing?
Maybe I'll just start my own thing...
It is cut and dried, but I don't think I implied a sort of caustic "kick 'em out" approach like the Apostle Paul who suggested that the circumcision group should just go the whole way and emasculate themselves (Gal. 5:12.)
Nobody said it was fun or easy, but neither should these course-corrections necessarily be unloving or reactionary.
This issue certainly wasn't easy or reactionary the three times our family tried (over the course of 20 years) to preserve family ties and denominational links at the expense of our spiritual health. YEARS were wasted, especially for our children. With the exception of a brief span of teaching under Tim, my teenagers could have had a much more healthy spiritual experience in the church body if we would have had the guts to do in 1992 what we are doing now.
The body is the precise analogy, in every respect, that the Bible gives to the Church. So I ask, "What part of a body shouldn't work toward the edification of its body?" Doesn't the body eliminate dead cells? I'm at a loss for an apology if that sounds callous, but that's just the way it is. The body is in agony when it doesn't eliminate its deadness, in which case it will remain in agony until the whole body is dead.
"Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? And what communion hath light with darkness?" (2 Cor. 6:14) That's cut and dried.
No, all large assemblies do not deal with non-Christians masquerading as Christians. But the ones that do deal with them are healthier congregations.
The fact is, one does not struggle with this particular issue (i.e., in a malignant way) in a healthy congregation.
The point is not whether non-Christians will exist in a given church setting. Obviously non-Christians will exist, and Christ was quite clear about letting tares grow with wheat (Matt. 13:27-30.) So it is not our job to maintain a religious sect by weeding out the unbeliever. Yet, Paul made it equally clear that sin cannot be tolerated in the church:
"For what have I to do to judge them also that are without? Do not ye judge them that are within? But them that are without God judgeth. Therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person." (1 Cor. 5:12-13) That's cut and dried, too.
But here's the deal: if the church preaches the Bible, and loves Jesus Christ, and loves each other, then the church will be composed of people who love the Bible, love Jesus Christ and love each other. As MacArthur said about his southern California church (I am paraphrasing from memory), "If they love whom we love, they will feel at home. If they do not love whom we love, they will not feel at home." Churches have compromised their love for the Bible, Jesus and each other by trying to use methodology as the chief means to spirituality. A Christian will starve in that environment.
The person who knows with all his heart that he loves the Bible, loves Jesus Christ, and wants to be in a body of people who show themselves to be Christ's disciples by loving one another -- that man will be miserable when he is surrounded by those who are of the contrary.
Where to go?
I struggled with that question for nearly 20 years. I can honestly say I am at home now, not because we have things the way we want it but because we "gave up" trying to preserve family and denomination (Mark 10:29-30; Luke 14:26.) All we are left now with is the Bible and each other. You've visited us: there's nothing more to us than that. There's no secret genre to understand, and no doctrinal ropes to learn. Where we need to mature spiritually is much more obvious now than when it was masked by churchianity, social activity, programs, etc. So, I think a Christian should go where he is challenged to live a life pleasing to Christ, and is edified toward that goal. Anything that erodes the relationship between a person and Jesus Christ must be eliminated. It's that cut and dried.
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