I believe there is a common fallacy that says that a traditional Christian faith is automatically an unexamined faith, that those Christians who hold to traditional Christian doctrines are merely “closed minded.” If they were more open minded then they would realize how silly they are. Don’t get me wrong, there are certainly a good number of closed minded Christians out there but I promise you that it isn’t just conservative Christians who are the closed minded ones. I’ve met just as many liberals who are just as closed minded as those closed minded conservatives I've met. Both sides seem quite willing to eat whatever they are spoon fed by those authors and speakers with whom they agree or with whom they want to be associated. But I think it is a very important point to make that just because someone’s faith holds to the traditional “orthodox” doctrines, many of which are summarized in the Apostles’ Creed, does not mean their faith is unexamined or that they are closed minded. More than once I have heard folks within the Presbyterian Church (USA) say of people who believe in traditional ways that they “just aren’t willing to think for themselves.” One time a colleague in ministry spoke of someone who believes in a traditional kind of way as someone “whose theology is immature.”
Looking back on my seminary experience, I really do feel that those who held firmly to a traditional faith instead of espousing every critical opinion were treated as being unwilling to think for themselves and theologically immature. Although I never would have treated someone like that any differently, I must admit that during seminary and in my first few years in the parish that I was caught hook, line, and sinker by thinking that it was important for me to be viewed as theologically sophisticated than to be faithful to the Gospel. I’d given in to the idea that this theological sophistication can come only through skepticism, or what academicians call approaching everything with a “hermeneutic of suspicion.” Pretty much every Biblical commentary I owned was filled with skeptical comments about the Scriptures. Many of the theological books I read were “way out in left field.” I was looking for a new way of being a Christian that wouldn’t require me to believe so much stuff that is, frankly, kind of hard to believe sometimes. Interestingly enough, however, after spending six years or so reading only the skeptical viewpoint I realized that it had just as many holes in it as a non-skeptical viewpoint and it really seemed to me that a lot of the authors really just wanted to be seen as smart and innovative, rather than faithful. So after spending six years in deep study on the matter (I continue to study it now) and earning a Master of Divinity degree which (in my opinion) is in many ways built upon this hermeneutic of suspicion I ended up back where I started before I went to seminary—with a “regular ole” traditional Christian faith, although it has now been quite thoroughly examined and continues to be examined.
In G.K. Chesterton’s classic book Orthodoxy he uses a wonderful metaphor to describe how he ended up believing in the Christian faith in a very traditional way. He says it is like a man who sets sail from England in search of a wonderful new land that will be much better than England. He sails all the way around the world and lands on a beach, discovering the most wonderful place he could have ever imagined. Finally, he has found the place he’s been looking for! But, then, as he talks to the locals he finds out that he has, indeed, landed back in England where he began. G.K. Chesterton says that he went out looking for a better faith than is taught in the traditional doctrines of the church. When he finally came to find the form of faith that made the most sense to him and seemed to have the strongest case for truth he realized that he’d landed back where he started—orthodoxy, which C.S. Lewis called mere Christianity and N.T. Wright calls “simply Christian.”
I know a great many colleagues in ministry who seem to grade their own sermons based upon how provocative they are. I had a friend once who went out to preach at a little country church where I’d done quite a bit of preaching. After he preached there I received phone calls from congregation members asking that he never be sent out there again. When I asked him about it he said that they must just be “too small town, too closed minded” to be able to handle what he was preaching. He then offered me the opportunity to read his sermon so I could see how backwards these people really are, although I knew these people quite well and they were not backwards—they were just traditional. He offered the opportunity to read the sermon to another of our colleagues in the ministry. The other colleague said it was just fine and that he shouldn’t put too much stock in what the congregation said. After all, you can’t please everybody. I had to disagree, however. When I read it, it seemed to have two major issues. The first issue was that it wasn’t a sermon at all. It was more like a cross between a research paper and an opinion column. It did not fulfill any of the six great ends of the church, especially the one that has to do with proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ for the salvation of humankind. Secondly, it wasn’t really based upon the Scriptures. It was all about how Mary Magdalene got the short end of the stick by the early church and that her voice had been silenced and how if we read some of the “gospels” that were left out of the Bible that we’d see that she was much more important than the Bible says. He had an opinion about Mary Magdalene and he thought that sharing that opinion amounted to preaching. I was completely honest with him and I told him that I felt he misused the pulpit and that that congregation was not backwards at all but expected him, in his sermon, to proclaim the gospel to them. That’s why they showed up at worship, not to hear his speculations.
The Apostle Paul dealt with this in 1 Corinthians 2, where he writes, “And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.” Matthew Henry, in words of commentary on the role of apostles (and later ministers) writes, “[Apostles] were ministers, not masters. They were servants of Christ, and no more. They had no authority to propagate their own fancies, but to spread Christian faith.” I heard a preacher use a good illustration for this not too long ago. He asked, “What do you want the mail carrier to do? What would you think if the mail carrier stood outside your mailbox and wrote all the letters himself/herself and then put them in your mailbox? If he/she did that you wouldn’t be very happy about it because that isn’t the mail carrier’s job. The mail carrier is entrusted with someone’s else’s message for you. Ministers are like mail carriers, the preacher said. “It’s not our own mail we’re delivering. It’s God’s mail for the people. That’s what we’re called to do. We are called as ministers only insofar as we give God’s message to God’s people. It’s not just for whatever we want to talk about as if we are somehow the point.”
Very often I have heard my colleagues in ministry use (I believe they misuse) the phrase “the Church reformed and always reforming” to justify rejection of what I’ve been calling a traditional Christian faith. That’s not the whole phrase, however. The entire phrase is, “The Church reformed and always reforming according to the Word of God.” That limits the kind of reformation that can take place. Reformation can only be allowed to happen so that we will be brought more in line with the Scriptures, not less so. The PC(USA) Study Catechism does a great job of summarizing this in questions and answers 58 and 59. 58 asks, “Isn’t preaching also the Word of God?” The first part of the answer is, “Yes. Preaching and other forms of Christian witness are also God’s Word when they are faithful to the witness of Holy Scripture.” 59 then asks, “Does the Holy Spirit ever speak apart from God’s Word in its written and proclaimed forms?” Here’s the answer: “Since the Spirit is not given to the church without the Word, true proclamation depends on Scripture. Since the Word cannot be grasped without the Spirit, true interpretation depends on prayer. However, as the wind blows where it will, so may the Spirit speak or work in people’s lives in unexpected or indirect ways, yet always according to the Word, never contradicting or diluting it.”
So all that was really just to make this point: just because someone has a traditional Christian faith that may not fit the bill of being a 21st Century postmodern skeptical and nontraditional way of believing in and practicing the Christian faith this does not mean that they (or I, since I put myself in this category) are closed minded, unwilling to think for themselves, theologically immature, or that they have not thoroughly examined their faith. They might have just set out from a traditional Christian faith, sailed around the world and visited all the provocative and skeptical islands along the way, and then ended up back where they began, but this time seeing it not as a place they need to leave, but as a place that is home, the very place where they belong.
Grace and Peace,
Pastor Everett
