Response Thinks First, Reaction Doesn't

"Between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose." 
From the book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Checking Ourselves in Our Responses

A quote especially relevant for today:

"Unless our responses are placed under the Lord's authority and directed by counsel from His Word, we leave ourselves vulnerable to extensive damage." Charles Stanley

The Risk of Small Group Manipulation

Dallas Roark, expounding on Dietrich Bonhoeffer's view of confession as that which is to be made to God, writes:

"If there is to be confession, let it be before God. This may serve as a needed corrective to the bent toward spiritual stripteases that occur in sensitivity groups and related psychologically oriented movements in evangelical Christianity." Dallas Roark

I find this quote to speak directly to the small group movement in churches, religious youth groups and on Christian college and seminary campuses where the coaxing and forcing of a person into a posture of "vulnerability" for the sole purpose of outing their secret struggle with a particular sin has become a litmus test for whether or not one is "all in" for Jesus and the "community of believers."

I once was manipulated into this sort of "confession" in the months leading up to a mission trip I was to participate in with the church I attended at the time.

The assistant pastor, who would lead the mission trip, held numerous "get real with each other" sessions in the months leading up to the trip, causing me to question if helping to build a church in Mexico, or these "tell-all" gatherings, was what I had signed up for. Had I known I was going to be required to spill my guts with total strangers as a way to "bond before going to Mexico" I would never have signed up.

In another instance, a youth at a Christian summer camp admitted to me that they actually made "bad" stuff up so as to measure up to other "authentically" sharing and confessing Christians during campfire devotionals.

While the Bible does say to confess our sins one to another, this is not in the context of rote, find-something-to-confess-for-Thursday-night-small-group, or to look more impressively spiritual to one's Christian brothers and sisters.

I point this out because the teaching that we must "love-on each other and live in community via frequent heart-to-hearts" is human ego at work. It is promoted by "leaders" and fellow congregants who are often on a power trip, are extroverted, or have an intense need for human and worldly affirmation because they've never done the personal internal work of gaining affirmation from God.

Ironically, this forced closeness simply cannot sustain itself, and those who finally get it, get out, while those who want to continue to "pour into" folks carry on with new recruits.

Not all small groups can be defined this way, but far too many can.

And to a new Christian, like myself at one time, this "stepping out of one's comfort zone" and into "authenticity" is believed to be what one is supposed to do "in order to be a Christian."

But this joined-at-the-hip mentality is only one person's or group's take on what Christian community might look like. It is not written in stone, and so if it doesn't feel right to us, then for us, it isn't right. 

There is no "one way" to "do" Christian community.

In discernment we must take note of who it is that is asking--or pressuring us--to act, speak or believe in a certain way, and test their requests and motivations against Scripture and our own inner warning system called the conscience, which God alone can either confirm or convict within us.



copyright Barb Harwood

One More Word About Baptism

A few days ago I posted some thoughts on baptism. I did not address the when or where or how of baptism. But Dietrich Bonhoeffer scholar Dallas Roark, whose comments I have been posting the last few days, reveals that Bonhoeffer blamed a cheap grace mentality, when it exists, largely on infant baptism:

“The cheap grace mentality that Bonhoeffer censored came in part from the long-held practice of baptizing infants. Infant baptism became a cultural rather than a religious event which glossed over personal faith and commitment. Religion that begins in the unconsciousness of infancy often remains unconscious.” Dallas Roark

This was true for me in my own infant baptism, and for many that I know personally who were also baptized at birth. 

I thought, growing up and as a young adult, that I was “good to go” simply because of my infant baptism. The Bible was not read or promoted in my household or in the church in which I was baptized. For my family and me, baby baptism was indeed cultural tradition, not commitment to Christ and His discipleship. 

At age 38, when I first discovered Jesus, after years of church attendance at what I describe as liberal-political churches, I did not know the first thing about Christ, the Bible or God. It was at this point that my eyes were opened as to how I had been misled by my infant baptism, and it quickly became meaningless. 

Copyright Barb Harwood

Discipleship: the Discernment of Christ Imparted

Continuing with the theme of discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer scholar Dallas Roark summarizes Bonhoeffer's take on the transformation of natural man/woman into a disciple of Christ:

"In discipleship 'men become individuals.' 
Before this they stood under the facade of responsibilities, duties, and relationships to the world. But the call of Christ demands a break with the world as well as with the past. Christ's call places a barrier between man and the world. Man must forsake the world, but in doing so he learns that he never really knew the world. In Christ he finds a new relationship possible between himself and God, between himself and man, between himself and reality. All relationships now are to be mediated through Christ. Being in Christ, it becomes possible to see how isolated man is from man. It is impossible to know another person directly. Because Christ now stands between man and neighbor, the shortest and most direct way to the neighbor is through Christ." 
Dallas Roark

"This type of individuality is harder, for it is easier to return to the way of direct relationships with people and forfeit our discipleship in Christ." 
Dallas Roark

Faith Without Corporate Church Structure

As those who regularly, physically attend church in a corporate church building have, in recent months, no longer been able to maintain that routine, this quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer scholar Dallas M. Roark might be a good way to pause and consider the actual role we assign to church in our Christian walk. 

In summarizing Bonhoeffer's thoughts, Roark writes:

"A doctrinal system, a church structure, and other substitutes for the Living Christ render discipleship irrelevant." Dallas Roark

Lest we think of discipleship in terms of applying to someone else, I take the above quote to point directly to each and every Christian, including church leaders. 

Discipleship is something that all Christians, as disciples of Christ, participate in on an on-going basis, and the Discipler is Christ. 

The minute a person or group attempts to intervene, co-oopt, downplay or remove that truth, is the minute corporate church reveals itself as being more about anything and everything else than about Jesus.

copyright Barb Harwood

Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Being Alone and Yet in the Faith

"Blessed is he who is alone in the strength of the fellowship and blessed is he who keeps the fellowship in the strength of aloneness." 
Dietrich Bonhoeffer