As our friend sat down to start the meeting, the other pastor said, "Tell me, when you baptise people what do you say?". Taken aback, he said, "umm, I baptise you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen...".
"I thought so.", said the other guy, "You see, that's a big problem and why I don't think we'll be able to work together. You can't baptise in the name of anyone but Jesus."
I have my own theology of baptism, of course, but that's not the point. And I don't know who is right, and that's not the point either. The point is that a potentially powerful community initiative stalled because of a difference of theology. Sometimes we fail so bad even Jesus facepalms.
The thing is, as a Church we've been doing this for 2000 years. Right back at the start of it all, 50 years after Jesus's death, Peter and the early believers held a council in Jerusalem (cunningly called the Council Of Jerusalem, if you're enthusiastic and want to google it) to decide whether Christians were bound by Mosaic Law or not (it was decided that some things could be dropped which is why, dear male Christian reader, you most likely avoided a certain operation when you were 8 days old).
Now I am being facetious there: that was a huge socio-political issue at the time and it was an important decision to get right. Of similar importance was Martin Luther's opinion that people were forgiven through, and only through, the grace of God which set him in opposition to the Catholic Church, in which he was a priest, and eventually got him excommunicated. Out of that grew the Protestant Reformation which held, amongst other things, that people could have a direct relationship with God through Jesus Christ with no need of an intermediary.
Luther never intended to start a new religion, but he wanted to Catholic Church to re-examine some of its theology.
Similarly John Wesley didn't want to start Methodism: it only became called that after his death. Wesley simply held that ordinary people were capable of teaching and ministering, and therefore should be given the authority and opportunity to do so. He started a movement within the Anglican Church doing just that, and it became one of the most influential movements the denomination has ever seen, getting involved with all the driving social and political issues of the day such as the abolition of slavery. It also got him into trouble with the Anglican establishment, who held that ministers should be formally trained in theology before they could work for the church.
Time and time again we see disagreements on theological points blow up into disunity, disagreement, and division.
Now don't get me wrong: I absolutely believe in the truth contained in the bible. I just as absolutely believe that I don't fully know what it is, that my ideas and opinions are at best a shadow of the truth, and that I am likely very wrong on a number of issues. I think scriptures need to be interpreted and that different interpretations are possible. I certainly don't believe my interpretation is fundamentally correct: when I stand in front of Christ I really want to hear him say "Well done, my good and faithful servant" but I am pretty sure what I'm going to hear is "Well...you tried hard. You'd better come in, there're a few things I need to talk to you about...".
Christianity is not about assent to a set of rules or propositions. It is not, as Lewis Carroll so deftly wrote and Richard Dawkins so appositely paraphrased, belief in six impossible things before breakfast. It is about belief in a couple of improbable, yet nonetheless true, things and a willingness to sacrifice your own way of life to serve a loving God and improve the lives of the people around you.
People who know me might be surprised to hear this, but I really don't mind if you believe the universe was created 6000 years ago or 13.7 billion years ago. I don't mind if you believe in the validity of infant baptism or the requirement for adult baptism. I don't mind if you think spiritual gifts are alive now or if they ceased at Pentecost. I don't mind a lot of differences in theology.
But what I really, really, do mind is when people make any those things a reason for division. It's the No True Scotsman philosophy: every Scotsman who says he's a true Scotsman will always be trumped by some other Scotsman who claims to be even more truly Scots. We fall into the N.T.S. fallacy because we tend to believe that we, and we alone, truly understand God. At our best we hold the gracious view that other people are entitled to their interpretation. At worst we excommunicate them. No, scratch that. At worst we burn them at the stake.
In that respect Christianity is its own worst enemy: our scriptures are open to interpretation, and so we interpret. Combine that with our tendency towards thinking we're right, and you have this whole splintered church. At least in Judaism the 613 devolved commandments were well defined.
But, here's the thing: Jesus didn't come to start a religion. He came to start a movement, and they are two very different things. Jesus was a faithful Jew until the day of his death. His first followers were all faithful Jews. They never wanted to split off and form an opposition religion. Christ himself said that he came to fulfil the law: that he had come to take the whole of Mosaic law and distill it into one exemplar life that others could follow more easily, and more successfully, than they could hope to fulfil 613 commandments. He called the law beautiful, but also accused the Church of using it as a rod to beat people with.
When a Pharisee (a member of the Jewish religious lawyer caste) asked Jesus what the most important commandment was, he said that we must love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. He followed by saying that we must love people likewise. This was in complete agreement with Mosaic Law, indeed the Pharisee agreed that the whole of Mosaic law flowed out of these two commandments.
Here we had an incredible point in history, when the whole of the religious law was funnelled down into the example set by one man, Jesus, a man whose example was easy to follow. Jesus promised for the first time in the story of religion that man could have direct access to God, through the Holy Spirit, in order to change to world. Then he told his disciples to drop what they were doing and go and actually change the world.
2000 years later a third of the world is recorded as being Christian, so the strategy is working. But alongside this grass-roots disciple-making movement there sprang up structures and systems and laws. And with the laws came law-breaking. And with the law-breaking came schisms. So from that glorious point when the whole of Mosaic Law became a singularity in Jesus, it has since been expanding back outwards into just another rule set.
In his letter to the Roman church, Paul (a former Pharisee and torturer of Christians) says this:
"God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn't deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that. The law always ended up being used as a Band-Aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it. And now what the law code asked for but we couldn't deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us." (Romans 8:3, 4 Message Translation)
Christianity was never meant to be a religion. It was meant to be a movement. A movement which would see ordinary people brought into relationship with the only man who is historically, incontrovertibly, known to have died and got over it. A movement meant to release people from the darkness of not knowing God into the light of His continued presence. A movement whose founding purpose was to go out into communities and share that awesome gift with other people.
Jonathan Swift, the political satirist and writer of Gulliver's Travels, said that we have just enough religion to make us hate but not enough to make us love. How right he was back then in the 1700s, and how right he still is now.
I once got into an argument with another Christian. I was excited by the approaching baptism of our first child and I told him so. He said "Oh, you're not really baptising him though, because you can't baptise infants. Baptism is just for believers. If you read your bible more you'll see that.". I have to say I wasn't altogether loving in my response, and so I fell into the exact trap he did of failing to be gracious.
You see the point of Christianity is not to be right: it is to be loving. Of course we need to tell people the truth as we see it, but we must do it with grace. Even Christ, the only man who we can be absolutely sure wasn't wrong when it came to theology, because, well, he's the very Theos that we -ology about, only spoke the truth with grace.
When confronted by a prostitute about to be executed by a crowd of people with rocks, Jesus didn't tell them she was innocent: no, he took a different route. He told the people that they could throw their rock, as the law allowed them to do, but only if they were themselves innocent of every sin proscribed by the law. One by one the people walked away until only Jesus and the woman were left. At that point he tells her that he doesn't condemn her, but that she has to take this opportunity to change her life. It is thought that that woman could have been Mary Magdalene, who became one of Jesus's disciples and was with him until his death.
Love is the key to Christianity. Love is the centre of Christianity. Love is everything in Christianity. Love God. Love people.
I don't want anyone to think I don't love the Church: I do. I truly love the Church. I truly love my kids: doesn't stop me from wanting to slap them occasionally. I believe the Christian church, as a community of believers, has been, and can continue to be, the most powerful force this world has ever seen. I believe the Church can affect social change on the biggest scale, be just where there is no justice, bring equality where there is division, feed the hungry, clothe the poor, bring hope to the hopeless. We can do all that and more, but we have to stop pushing other Christians away with our Big Stick Of Doctrine.
Saint Augustine wrote of doctrine, "In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in everything charity".
That's why I say that Jesus wants his Church back. He wants it back where it started: as a movement of people dedicated to fanatically loving others and sharing with them the incredible news that God loves them and that they can share their lives with Him.
The most important point is that Christ is God incarnate, and the most important things He said were these: Love God. Love people. Go and make disciples.
The rest we can discuss.
"So let's agree to use all our energy in getting along with each other. Help others with encouraging words; don't drag them down by finding fault. You're certainly not going to permit an argument over what is served or not served at supper to wreck God's work among you, are you? I said it before and I'll say it again: All food is good, but it can turn bad if you use it to trip others up and send them sprawling. When you sit down to a meal, your primary concern should not be to feed your own face but to share the life of Jesus." (Romans 14:19-21 Message Translation)
