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The
Call to Spiritual Freedom
Texas
Baptists find themselves in a battle to keep from being dragged
back into an Old Testament legalism that has resurfaced in Fundamentalist
creedalism. Is
this fight anything new? NO! It has been around since the First
Century. Paul's letter to the Galatian Christians addressed this
challenge to spiritual freedom. The
Christian faith was at a crossroads when Paul wrote the Epistle
to the Galatians. Did it continue to flourish in the freedom Christ
gave or did it sink back into the slavery of Fundamentalist legalism? According to Galatians 5:1-2, freedom is the reason Christ has set us free. We do not work ourselves into spiritual freedom. Our
responsibility is to protect and maintain our spiritual freedom.
Paul says we must stand firm and not let ourselves be burdened
again by a yoke of slavery. Baptists did not invent this idea
of spiritual freedom, but throughout their history they have fought
to protect it. For
Paul and the First Century Christians, the snare that tried to
enslave them was a Fundamentalist legalism whose sign was circumcision,
a forced outward conformity. The First Century trap of circumcision
and legalism has become the 21st Century trap of creedalism. Creedalism
21st Century Trap Paul
says in no uncertain terms in verse 2 that if you let Fundamentalist
legalism trap you, Christ is of no value to you. Say no to legalistic
creedalism and yes to Christ! John
Leland, 18th Century Virginia Baptist preacher, said, "One
must not surrender to man what should be kept sacred to God."
Fundamentalist creedalism is an attempt to get us to surrender
our God-given spiritual freedom in Christ. Leon
McBeth, writing in the Baptist Witness Across The Centuries,
"Creeds are the uninspired, fallible systems of man masquerading
as the final measure of faith. Creeds tend to alienate people
from each other and ultimately from God himself." Some
say that we have always had confessions of faith. Again McBeth
says, "The difference between a confession and a creed is
this:
(emphasis by Lineberger) One should not surrender to man what should be kept sacred to God! We
have come to a time in which telling the truth, acting honestly
and treating people decently have been sacrificed. They do it
in the name of the bottom line-religious control and conformity
through a creedalistic loyalty oath. We
have come to a time for Christians identifying with the BGCT,
to articulate who we want to be. We must use our creative ability
to invest that vision with meaning and commit ourselves to making
choices that will get us there. Changing
the course of the BGCT is like changing the course of a large
ship. We need to turn the rudder to change course. The past momentum
of the ship makes the turn a gradual process. We will change by
choosing to set the rudder on a new course and maintaining its
position. Questions are always in change. David
McNally, writing in Even Eagles Need a Push, "The
eagle gently coaxed her offspring toward the edge of the nest.
Her heart quivered with conflicting emotions as she felt their
resistance to her persistent nudging. 'Why does the thrill of
soaring begin with the fear of falling?' she thought. "As
in the tradition of the species, her nest was located high on
the shelf of a sheer rock face. Below there was nothing but air
to support the wings of each child. 'Is it possible that this
time it will not work?' she thought. Despite her fears, the eagle
knew it was time. Her parental mission was all but complete. There
remained one final task, the push. "The
eagle drew courage from an innate wisdom. Until her child discovered
their wings, there was no purpose for their lives. Until they
learned how to soar, they would fail to understand the privilege
it was to have been born an eagle. The push was the greatest gift
she had to offer. It was her supreme act of love. And so one by
one she pushed them, and they flew!" We
may look back someday and see that the greatest gift Fundamental
creedalism has given us is a push! Now it is up to us to fly!
It is our responsibility to protect our freedom in Christ! How
do we do this? I want to borrow three phrases from John Chaffee's
The Thinker's Way. To protect our freedom we must: think
critically, live creatively and choose freely. 1.
To protect our freedom in Christ we must think The
word critical comes from the Greek word for "critic,"
which means to question, to make sense of, or to analyze. Jesus
expected critical thinking. Men's questions do not threaten God. A
Fundamentalist creedalist does not want a person to think, to
question, to make sense of or to analyze. We are simply to sign
a loyalty oath. They have the questions and the answers. Our role
is to learn them, not to ask questions of our own. For
our creedalistic SBC leaders, thinking is dangerous. I, however,
want to say that thinking is not dangerous. Non-thinking is dangerous.
It endangers our ability to become the people we have the potential
to be. Do
we want schools where students can ask questions but professors
cannot give honest or thoughtful answers? Do we want schools where
an ecclesiastical cap is on what one can learn? Do we want churches
where people are afraid to dream? When
a self-appointed ecclesiastical hierarchy, a 21st Century Sanhedrin,
tells us that all power and authority in life belong only to men,
based on Ephesians 5:22-33, ask them about Ephesians 5:21, which
commands the Christian couple to submit to one another out of
reverence for Christ or mutual submission. When
a self-appointed ecclesiastical hierarchy tells you that a Sanhedrin
will determine if you believe the right things about the Bible
based upon their creed, remind them that Romans 14:12 says that
each of us will give an account of himself to God. John
Leland said the rights of conscience were inalienable, for "every
man must give an account of himself to God, and therefore every
man ought to be at liberty to serve God in a way that he can best
reconcile to his conscience." When
a self-appointed ecclesiastical hierarchy asks you to give sacrificially
to missions offerings, ask them why they invest almost $500 million
mission dollars in banks rather than in people. Remind them that
when they reorganized the SBC agencies in 1995, they said it was
to give missions more money. Ask
them why the International Mission Board budget went up 18.2 percent,
the North American Mission Board budget went up 11.8 percent,
while the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission budget has gone
up 78.35 percent and the SBC Executive Committee budget has gone
up 32.96 percent. When
a self-appointed ecclesiastical hierarchy tells you that Neo-orthodox
people misled Herschel Hobbs, one of Southern Baptists greatest
scholars, when he helped construct the 1963 Baptist Faith and
Message, ask them if we are to believe the words of Morris Chapman
and Jimmy Draper, carried on the back of the Baptist Faith and
Message book in 1998. (See page 10 for quotes) Henry
Ward Beecher said that after Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation
Proclamation, freeing the slaves, the slaves asked first for candles.
The slave masters allowed no light in the slave quarters for fear
they might read, learn and question their own slavery. For the
slaves, freedom and light went hand in hand! It is time for Texas
Baptist's to think critically! 2.
To protect our freedom in Christ, we must live The
novelist Dostoyevsky observed, "Taking a new step, uttering
a new word, is what people fear most." Yet, taking new steps,
uttering new words will be the only way for us to become what
God wants us to be. Christianity
was a new step and a new word in the First Century. Jesus spoke
of God's grace as new wine they could not contain in old wineskins.
His major obstacles to this new freedom were the creedal Fundamentalist.
They remained His enemy until they could put Him on the cross.
When they put Him on the cross, they thought they were doing God
a favor. The
idea of gifts of the Spirit in the New Testament is a witness
to God's creativity in His people's lives. The gender of the individual
does not limit the Spirit's gifting. If God has gifted you, you
have a moral responsibility to fulfill that gift as best you can.
No convention leader gifted you. No convention leader can take
away your gift. No convention leader called you. Jesus did. The
greatest ideas we have today came because people were willing
to live creatively. While the price of creativity may sometimes
be high, the debilitating cost of conformity is always higher!
Creativity helps us overcome the coercion of conformity. When
people impose rigid limitations or fixed boundaries, creativity
cannot exist. There are guidelines but not unbreakable rules. Religious
leaders have been reluctant to change because of vested interests.
In 1543, the Polish astronomer, Nicolaus Copernicus, published
a book arguing that the sun, not the earth was the center of the
solar system. This ran counter to the theological beliefs of the
time, and he paid with his life for this heresy. Sixty-eight
years later, the Italian physicist and astronomer, Galileo also
challenged church leaders by championing Copernicus'
views. He was summoned to Rome, where he was interrogated before
the Inquisition and forced to publicly renounce his beliefs. When
I visited the Soviet Union in 1982, to preach, deadening conformity
struck me. Every airline was Aeroflot. Every automobile looked
alike. It was deadening. People who fight against creativity will
always be there. Do
we really want to achieve genuine fulfillment or are we willing
to settle for superficial contentment? It is time for Texas Baptists
to live creatively! 3. To protect our freedom, we must choose freely! The
most important power our SBC leaders have over us is the power
to make us think we have only one choice. That, however, is not
God's way. God has created us as free moral agents. He gave us
the free will to love and follow Him. He also made us free to
reject Him and go our own way. Texas
Baptists have many choices for accomplishing the Great Commission.
We have the resources to reach not only Texas, but to network
with like-minded Christians to reach the whole world for Christ. Real
freedom consists of making thoughtful choices from among available
options. We can have choices reflecting our true desires and deepest
values. Resisting pressure to surrender our autonomy to external
pressures or internal forces is our God-given right. Our choices
may be painful, but it is the sort of pain that leads to growth.
When the pain of same becomes greater than the pain of change,
we will change! The
pain for traditional Baptists has lasted 21 years. We need a change.
We can choose to educate rather than indoctrinate. We can choose
to network with like-minded Christians in friendly cooperation
rather than be bound to denominational leaders who limit what
we can do by an oath of loyalty. We
can choose to work with honest people. We can choose to work with
people who respect differences. We can choose to run the race
marked out for us rather than waste our money and our energies
on frivolous controversies. We can choose to be anchored in Texas
and reach the world! Let
us protect our spiritual freedom by thinking critically, living
creatively and choosing freely. We must have no reserve, no retreat,
no regret! |
