Today, it so happens, I went for a long drive with my son. We talked. One of the things that we talked about was a contradiction that he noticed in the local secular high school. There had been a fire call, with firetrucks pulling up, and everyone evacuated, classes distrupted, and even cancelled, and all kinds of talk going on. Someone had let off a smoke bomb in a stairwell. They have video surveilance, but they called for witnesses to come forward anyways. He wanted to know why the authorities would think that students would consent to ratting on their fellow classmates?
So we went into the ideas involved in discipline. I asked if the students were really out for the good of fellow students if they aided and abetted felons, even though these were their friends? Does this help their society in any way? Or are they only trying to preserve their own skins? I asked if the church membership would also have the same social expectation of not ratting on a fellow member, expecially if it was already a social norm?
You see, the problems that I personally face have to do with this. What is ideally preached from the pulpit is not really acceptable behaviour in the social fabric of a church. It may not be Biblically correct to rejoice in your own prowess in getting some truck driver fired for messing up your lawn, but just try to draw the elders' attention to it when they nominate him for the office of elder for the upcoming elections. Wow, you'll get you head taken off for thinking of doing such a socially unacceptable thing. Discipline in our culture is not that easy, not even in the churches.
It is more usual than is comfortable in our time that the elders make a judgment based on their assessment of a person's character without carefully investigating the facts. It is easier to pass off a personality dispute than it is a matter of real discipline. But this puts the elders in a real bind, though they often do not see it. They too often see fit to let alone those whom they should make the object of their oversight, and they step on one of Christ's little ones because he has let his temper go, or because he has argued with a superior. They don't ask why.
What I am saying is that we have let far too much go for us to just suddenly take up the cause for discipline as we always should have. We just can't do that without first setting up goals and standards for social behaviour that is truly for the mutual society of God-fearing people. Not a facade, but a real duty and longing for a society in which we can hope for the mutual edification and fellowship that we need. If we are not even practicing in our churches what we preach, we certainly cannot expect a godless society around us to seek for a social good in a godly way.
My son would be afraid to report it if he had any knowledge of the incident, because he knows that there will be blood to pay. And now he knows also that he can not expect to impove that social expectation if he too is unwilling to work for the social good. If we as churches do not have the fortitude to do what we ought to, not because we want to see our brother in trouble, but because we love him and we long to live trustingly with him, and also see him aspire to and attain to the office of elder with dignity and grace, but rather fain to do our part for him because it will land us in the social disgrace of being the rat, then we are not ready to do what we need to to discipline as we ought.
For all the orthodoxy that we preach, I have yet to see a church in my immediate area that really acts like a church in such matters. It may be that I am being hard on all of us, but I really miss having elders who truly are for the spiritual good of the person, and are willing to do what needs to be done, rather than to try to smooth things over.
Thankfully, there are still good and spiritual elders around. And they are not that far away. But they do have a very hard time of it. For the most part the fact that their own denominations do not always foster the level of orthodox teaching and practice that is required is too much of an impediment to their callings. If the social structure is not there in the main, how can you uphold it in the part? How can a local church maintain a higher expectation than the Presbytery, or the denomination? It is indeed difficult; and we do not appreciate the burden they bear for the sake of our souls. We have to do our part willingly, and sacrificially, just like they are willing to do for us. It is, after all, for all our good to do it. It is not for our good to sit idly by when duty and conscience calls us.
I'm not saying, Kevin, that you are barking up the wrong tree. Indeed, I agree with you. But it is a far bigger thing to accomplish than it seems. I am, in fact, totally in favour of your suggestion. But it is a task that will take far more than just making distinctions between who's in the Covenant and who's not.:hobbyhorse:
