Tenchi
Member
Hebrews 5:11-14
11 Concerning him we have much to say, and it is
hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.
12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have
need again for someone to teach you the elementary
principles of the oracles of God, and you
have come to need milk and not solid food.
13 For everyone who partakes only of milk is not
accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant.
14 But solid food is for the mature, who because of
practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.
In the secular culture of North America today, the individual has been made the apogee of human existence, the Final Arbiter of Truth, their feelings and preferences dictating reality. In this position of supremacy, the individual must be guarded from all challenge, and criticism, and uncomfortable feeling. The individual must feel "safe" at all times, which has come to mean that they should be free of guilt or shame, free of any sense of inferiority, free of any awareness of the foolishness or perversity of their conduct, free of the restrictive, exclusivistic bonds of objective Truth and Reality. Any grievance the individual may adopt, any feelings of oppression and marginalization they decide to take up must be recognized and attended to with great seriousness and sensitivity by everyone else. And woe betide those who don't go along with this bizarre and exceedingly childish nonsense! With all the energy and upset of a three-year-old whose will has been thwarted, the individuals who've embraced this kind of individual-is-king thinking rage and sputter and, with wild abandon, fling about pejorative labels and epithets, growing violent whenever possible.11 Concerning him we have much to say, and it is
hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.
12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have
need again for someone to teach you the elementary
principles of the oracles of God, and you
have come to need milk and not solid food.
13 For everyone who partakes only of milk is not
accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant.
14 But solid food is for the mature, who because of
practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.
This current of mad, infantile subjectivity, swirling constantly around the Church has inevitably seeped into it, manifesting in an increasing intolerance among professing Christians of the biblical teachings concerning spiritual maturity and immaturity, the objective and authoritative nature of divine Truth, the homogenizing effect of the Holy Spirit who unites believers in Christ and in common pursuit of God's will rather than their own. As this intolerance expands and deepens - in my experience, anyway - there are Christians who simply will not abide the notion that some in the Church are immature spiritually, biblically-ignorant, and deficient in their experience of communion with God. And the fact that many - perhaps, now, a majority - in the Church in North America are not truly born-again children of God must never be suggested.
I had a stark and startling example of this sort of "we're all equal" thinking a few years ago when I was approached by a newcomer to my church and asked to do some one-on-one discipling of him. When we sat together for our first session of discipleship discussion, this fellow declared that we would actually teach one another and that I should expect there would be much I would learn from him in the process of my discipling him. Since this fellow had been a believer for only a little over a year, his statement came as something as a surprise to me. I asked him on what matters concerning spiritual truth and life he thought he could instruct me. He replied that he wasn't sure on the specifics but felt certain that there would be instances where he could illuminate me to spiritual truth.
Though I had been walking with God for fifty years and this fellow for only a couple of years, this difference seemed to have little bearing on the expectations of this man. We were fundamentally equal, he believed, despite the enormous disparity of time, knowledge and experience with God that existed between the two of us. I asked him why, if we were essentially equal in regards to our spiritual condition, that he would seek me out for discipling. He admitted that my discipling him would be unnecessary if he was, in fact, my equal in spiritual experience and knowledge. Even then, he was uncomfortable with the idea that there was an inevitable superior-inferior state-of-affairs in our discipleship circumstance. So, I asked him to explain to me the basics of the Gospel which, since he was a Christian, he should have been able to do readily. After all, how else but by a knowledge of the Gospel could he be a Christian?
"Jesus died on the cross for my sins," he said.
"Yes, he did" I responded, "How do you know that?"
"Well, the Bible says so," he replied.
"Right. Where does it say so?"
"I...don't know, exactly, but it does."
"Okay," I said, "Why did Jesus have to die for your sins?"
"I'm not sure, really."
"All right. How did Jesus dying on a cross atone for your sins?"
Discomfort etched on his features, the man confessed, "I don't know."
I didn't press this fellow further but went on to point out how basic to Christianity the Gospel was and then answered my own questions, quoting from memory several Bible passages, without reference to notes or texts explaining how they answered each of my questions. When I finished, I asked the would-be disciplee if he could see better why the learning dynamic would be very much in one direction. Grudgingly, he acknowledged that he could.
I refer to this experience in demonstration of how reluctant to admit to these sorts of differences those in the Church have become. Like the World, professing Christians have taken up the view that the individual is King and must be treated as such. There must not be, then, anything that confronts the Christian, or criticizes them, that shows them to be ignorant, or immature or, worst of all, points at their sin. Certainly, they must never be made to feel in any way less-than the next Christian.
One of the consequences of this is a deep and angry unteachableness by the spiritually-immature that keeps them perennially ignorant about their faith and how to walk properly with God. The thought of admitting to an inferior knowledge and experience of God and His Truth is abhorrent to the spiritually-immature who've adopted the World's worship of the individual. Under the influence of the poison of this wordly doctrine, all must be equal even when it is painfully and destructively evident that they aren't. And so, these unteachable and thus persistently spiritually-juvenile people often embark on religious self-instruction that, more often than not, produces seriously-mistaken notions concerning Christian doctrine and practice. Horribly, the same prideful and rebellious spirit (fed by the individual-is-King philosophy) that causes them to refuse instruction prompts them, after the manner of a deadly virus, also to reproduce their error in others!
Another consequence of the individual-is-King philosophy, is that the life-saving, objective and authoritative truth of God's word is subjectivized, made a mere reflection of the thinking and preferences of the reader. The Bible is made servant to the whims of the individual reader rather than the reader yielding to the divine authority and interrogation of the Bible. As a result, the divine Author of Scripture is not revealed in it; He is entirely obscured by the host of interpretive "mirrors" that the self-centered, individual-is-King reader imposes on God's word. And so, in God's place, the image of the self-focused reader rises up instead, a false "god" stroking their pride, applauding their sin, and leading them straight into the jaws of the "roaring lion who prowls about seeking whom he may devour" (1 Peter 5:8).
One final and devastating consequence of Christians coming together on the basis of their own individual interests, beliefs and abilities, tribalizing in ever-finer degree within the Church, is that no truly Christ-centered, God-honoring unity can be established. The practice of the Church pandering to the distinctives of the individual, proliferating "tribes" within itself according to these distinctives, is destined to eventually fracture the Church to the point of dissolution.
Christ is the Center, the Hub, around which the Church is to revolve and find it's focus and purpose (John 14:6; John 11:28-30; Romans 8:29; Philippians 3:7-14). The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ (Romans 8:9), his life and work, is the "glue" of Christian fellowship (1 Corinthians 12; Ephesians 4:4; 1 John 3:24; 4:13), not the believer's "life status," their personal interests and abilities, their political position, their gender, their age, or their cultural heritage. God's will and way, His Truth expressed in His word, is the common ground on which believers are to stand in their religious belief and practice (2 Timothy 3:16-17; 1 Peter 2:2; Matthew 4:4; Psalms 119:105).
There is nothing of Christ, of God, of the Spirit in the worldly, individual-is-King philosophy that has so fiercely gripped North American society. This philosophy will bring the Church crashing down if it's not soon abandoned for a properly biblical pursuit of God. Are you opposing this philosophy or promoting in your church? Are you an immature believer, spitting and fuming when a more mature believer points out that you are? Are you a believer demanding that your church twist and contort into the shape you desire, that accommodates your preferences, personality and philosophy? Are you a Christian who treats your church like a product to be consumed, that ought to pander to your perceived needs, and sensitivities, and weaknesses? If you are, you aid the Enemy, acting as one his agents of "leaven" within the Church (1 Corinthians 5:6; Galatians 5:9). I urge you to stop and take up God conception of the Church given to you in His word and so edify it.