Theological Risks

Obedience is the organ of spiritual knowledge.
Frederick Robertson1

The most important risks are theological. Almost every pastor will at some time take a risk because of an issue of theology. One pastor reported the following account:

“A pregnant girl and her boyfriend wanted me to marry them. She didn’t attend church regularly, although she was a member. I had baptized her several years previously, and that was her rationale for wanting me to marry them: ‘I was baptized here, and I’d like to be married here.’

“When I talked with them about their relationship and lifestyle, neither of them considered God an important influence. I told them that with that attitude I couldn’t do the ceremony.

“Usually when I face a risky decision, I consult the elders. In this case, though, I felt I couldn’t because the young woman’s situation was not common knowledge. These situations put a pastor in a tough position. You have private knowledge, make a decision based on that knowledge, and then people criticize your decision without knowing all the facts. That’s when you find out your true mettle: are you willing to do what must be done to maintain the theological integrity of the church?”

In our survey of local-church leaders, we learned that on the average, pastors make one or two significant theological stands per year (see Chart 1). Issues run the gamut from questions about the deity of Christ to the mission of the church.

One pastor remembers a conflict with the treasurer and two other people who wished to do away with the missions program: “To cut out mission work is to cut the life line of the church. Matthew 28:18-20 clearly teaches this. When I fought the move to end mission involvement, those who disagreed tried to get me to vacate the pulpit. Eventually this small faction left the church. We are now doing well again.”

When a stand is taken on such an important issue, the results again and again prove the wisdom of the confrontation. This pastor saw positive results:

“The renewed commitment to missions brought the body of Christ together. The people in the congregation respect me as their leader more, and I sense they are deeper spiritually.”

Church leaders, regardless of polity and theology, become dead serious about core beliefs — serious enough not to allow for compromise. For some, the extent of those core beliefs is broad, for others, more narrow. But all have theological standards. When those standards are challenged, leaders face some of the most difficult times in their ministries. Sometimes the resulting disagreement ends amicably. If both sides evidence spiritual maturity, discussion can take place. Then, if a resolution cannot be worked out, a peaceful parting of the ways is possible.

At other times, however, theological disagreements severely damage or divide congregations. The authority of Scripture, gifts of the Spirit, euthanasia, and abortion are a few examples.

The Bible chronicles many instances of spiritual warriors who have gone to battle for the integrity of the gospel. When Paul realized Peter was requiring Gentile Christians to follow Jewish customs, he confronted him and pointed out that Gentile sinners are not “justified by observing the law but by faith in Jesus Christ” (Gal. 2:11ff.). In modern terms this is analogous to a missionary pointing out his denominational superior’s misunderstanding of theology. It is not always good for advancement, but when a legitimate point of theology is at stake, the risk must be taken.

Needless to say, not every issue warrants this kind of do-or-die action. One pastor put it this way: “When you really come down to it, many of our decisions are based not on the theological correctness of the situation but on what our people will respond to. Is that always wrong? Not when you’re making a decision like, ‘Should we hold our annual skating party at the Skateaway or the Skate & Dolly?’ It’s wrong when a theological tenet is at stake. In the first case, the good of the many supercedes the preference of the few. In the second case, correct theology supercedes even the wish of the majority.”

Great caution must be taken in identifying a conflict as theological. Many nontheological disagreements get labeled as theological: whether to use plastic or glass Communion cups, the brand of the Communion bread, the presence of altar flowers. Each can be falsely billed as an intricate and essential point of theology.

Our survey results revealed that pastors who reported making more than the average two theological decisions per year did so at great danger. There is a direct correlation between pastors who make more than two “theological” decisions per year and those who are forced to leave their church (see Chart 2). Finding a point of theology hidden under every altar-flower discussion can be hazardous to pastoral and church health.

Why are many nontheological matters branded as theological? Some pastors use theological discussion to avoid the hard work of negotiating tough institutional and interpersonal conflicts. It is easier to pronounce an issue “answered” by an obscure point of theology than to moderate a turf battle between the Sunday school superintendent and the girls’ club director.

Some issues, though, can honestly be classified several ways. Take the issue of drinking alcoholic beverages. One pastor described this as the toughest decision he had made in ministry, but he classified it as an institutional issue, not a theological one. “I had to reaffirm the stance of our movement that church leaders, but not necessarily church members, practice total abstinence from alcoholic beverages. This has always been our denominational position, but in the local churches some leaders were involved in drinking. The denominational line had to be drawn.”

Another pastor, however, defended the same issue in theological terms: “I felt the Bible condoned the use of alcohol in moderation, but my church felt total abstinence was God honoring and biblically based. As a result I was not accepted as the pastor. I was told that even if I personally abstained but taught that moderation was permissible, I could not be recommended to any church in my denomination.”

Issues have varying degrees of theological impact. The important principle, however, is that not all disputes are theologically based. Our survey respondents said only one-third of the difficult decisions they make in a year concern theological issues.

Identifying that one-third, however, is key. The following three questions help determine whether a situation is truly theological:

1. Does this situation threaten a core belief of our church? Or is it a peripheral issue that allows for some difference of position?

2. If left unaddressed, will theological precedent be established that could lead to long-term weakening of our commitment? Or is it simply a reflection of some spiritual immaturity that time and love will remedy?

3. Is the issue purely one of theology? Or is theology being used to camouflage a nontheological problem?

The Principle: The Law of Right and Wrong

Once identified, theological issues call for vigorous action. Left unattended, they can destroy a church by snapping its unifying thread.

Theological risks are taken according to the “law of right and wrong.” The objective — theological purity — admits no compromise. Resolution need not be blunt or hasty, but the risk to achieve the right must be taken regardless.

Following the law of right and wrong is not a simple matter, however. The decision, the goal, may be clear, but how to achieve that goal with the fewest casualties may not be as obvious. One pastor recalls: “I made a decision, based on my understanding of 1 Timothy 3, that prospective officers must be men who had not been divorced. Several nominees were disqualified because they did not meet this standard. As a result, they and their friends and families grew hostile. A few who were disqualified could not be reconciled, and hostility hardened against me. Looking back I would not have changed the standards for officers; I still believe they were biblical. But I would have handled the disqualifications in a more personal, loving manner.”

Occasionally the theological issue itself needs to be redefined by an overriding principle of love. One pastor remembered a particularly difficult problem: “I was asked to baptize a young adult who was extremely afraid of water. So intense was the phobia that the young man couldn’t even take a shower; he had to take sponge baths. Our church practices baptism by immersion. This candidate wanted me to perform the baptism in our church. But because of his fear of water, the only way to do it was by sprinkling. The church board and I struggled with many questions about doing a baptism by sprinkling, considering the theological beliefs of our denomination. For a time the church board was split. Finally we voted to sprinkle the young man in a private service.”

The law of right and wrong needs to be followed, not harshly, but in accord with God’s law of love.

The Motivation: Christian Obedience

Obedience cannot be understood without understanding the standard by which it is measured. For Christian obedience, the standard is not first of all a list of ethical or moral laws (though those have their place). The standard is God’s will for us. Christian obedience asks us to do what God says even though it may be something we would never have thought of doing.

Jean-Pierre de Caussade said in The Sacrament of the Present Moment: “All saints become saints by fulfilling those duties themselves to which they have been called. It is not by the things they do, their nature, or particular qualities that holiness must be judged. It is obeying those orders which sanctify souls and enlightens, purifies and humbles them.”2

The call to obedience, paradoxically, is the most important principle we live by but also one of the most restricted.

It is the most important because all the ultimate questions of life and faith are answered by the criterion of obedience. Is this something God wants us to do? Is this part of God’s plan for our church? Deuteronomy 11:26-28 summarizes the principle: “Obey and you will be blessed. Disobey and you will be cursed.”

Yet the nature of obedience, when dealing with the ultimate, also restricts it. Ultimate principles can be applied only to ultimate questions. For questions of less-than-ultimate value, obedience as practiced by less-than-perfect human beings in a less-than-perfect world can be inappropriate, even dangerous. On many issues we simply don’t have direct commands from God to obey and are left to sanctified common sense. The great temptation is to obey human ideas, mistaking them for God’s.

The danger of disobedience to God’s clear commands, of course, is rebellion and spiritual death. But we often overzealously try to apply the principle of obedience to problems that are not ultimate or theological in nature. Strange things happen when we confuse institutional, interpersonal, and personal situations with theological ones and apply the motivation of obedience to them all.

When we confuse theological problems with institutional ones. Acts 5:29 tells us we’re “to obey God rather than men.” But obedience can become a gun in the hands of the authoritarian figure. Demanding blind obedience to human ideas, leaders, and institutions can lead to fanaticism and cultism.

Needless to say, there is an appropriate “obedience” toward authorities or church leaders. However, it shouldn’t be confused with the kind of obedience we express toward God. Since in local church decision-making situations it’s important to distinguish between the obedience we show to God and the appropriate respect due to our human leaders, perhaps commitment is a better word than obedience to describe what we’re after in institutional issues. This idea will be developed in the next chapter.

Blind obedience to human institutions inevitably weakens the institution. If church harmony is built on the principle of obedience to a constitution, then any crisis that arises becomes an institution-threatening situation. Christian obedience was not intended as a handy fire extinguisher for disagreement in the church. As we shall see in chapter 6, there is a better principle for solving institutional problems.

When we confuse theological problems with interpersonal ones. Indiscriminate use of obedience in interpersonal situations can lead to inhumanity. Psychologist Stanley Milgram illustrated this in a classic series of experiments done in the early 1960s. Volunteers from all walks of life participated in a study described to them as an experiment in memory and learning. They were asked to administer electric shocks to people during the experiment. Over 60 percent of the people pressed the electric shock button and continued to do so even when they heard shouts of pain from the victims. The volunteers were prompted by psychologists in white lab coats who said, “The experiment requires that you continue.”3

Where mere obedience is used as the criterion for determining interpersonal relationships, varying levels of inhumanity result. The church is not exempt from this danger. We are called to reprove our brothers and sisters to keep our doctrine and beliefs pure, but we are also called to do so in love and forgiveness. As soon as we begin to see ourselves (rather than God) as the repository of all theological truth, we lose sight of our own fallibility, and arrogance and ruthlessness, in the name of God’s work, can result.

Are We Capable of Discernment?

How difficult is it to apply the principle of obedience to our relationship with God, and fashion a more realistic principle in our other relationships? Perhaps not as difficult as we may think.

Psychologists David Bock and Neil Warren did a study aimed at determining the link between religious belief and interpersonal relationships. By using a belief scale, they identified three different groups of people: nonreligious, moderately religious, and very religious. They then ran those three different groups through an experiment similar to Milgram’s.

The experimenters expected to find that the very religious, because of their extreme sense of obedience to God and theological principles, would also exhibit a high degree of obedience to the authoritative experimenters — the doctors and psychologists. They discovered the opposite. The moderately religious and nonreligious were far more eager to administer shocks to the experimental subjects.

Bock and Warren concluded that men and women who are undecided about basic religious issues are less able to be decisive when confronted by an ethical dilemma. They tend to forfeit their choice to any convenient authority figure. On the other hand, those who adopt definite religious stances (including obedience to God) are more able to act in accordance with ethical values of love and justice.4

A commitment to obey God alone does not inhibit a person’s ability to distinguish between the various kinds of risks. In fact, it may very well give more clarity of insight.

Conclusion

What does this mean in the local church? It means that if we intend to decide a question on the basis of obedience to the theological canons of right and wrong, we need to be sure we’re dealing with a theological question. Answers to the question of what is theological will vary from person to person (even though we agree there are “irreducible minimums”). But the decision is an all-important one, because our survey clearly showed the more things a pastor identifies as theological, the more risk he or she incurs. The decision determines the approach we take, and wise discernment can prevent costly mistakes.

Quoted in James Hastings, Great Prayer (New York: Scribner and Sons, Inc., 1915), 16.

Jean-Pierre de Caussade, The Sacrament of the Present Moment (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1982), 57.

Stanley Milgram, “The Perils of Obedience,” Harper’s (December 1973): 62-77. See also, Sarah McCarthy, “Why Johnny Can’t Disobey,” The Humanist (September/October 1979): 30-34.

David C. Bock and Neil Clark Warren, “Religious Belief as a Factor in Obedience to Destructive Commands,” Review of Religious Research (Spring 1972): 185-190.