daily java

Daily Java:

I will sing to the Lord as long as I live.
    I will praise my God to my last breath!
May all my thoughts be pleasing to him,
    for I rejoice in the Lord.
Let all sinners vanish from the face of the earth;
    let the wicked disappear forever.
Let all that I am praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord! (Psalm 104:33-35)

I left the Church of Christ in 1994 after several years of agonizing searching. I came to a point that I felt that I could no longer hold the corporate theology (Baptismal Regeneration, the unscripturalness of instrumental music in worship) and knew that to take their money without believing these core doctrines would be wrong.

So I left in 1994. But where was I to go. The Church of Christ was my life church. I had pastored for them for 20 years and had two degrees from their institutions. What was I to do? Where was I to go?

After casting about, I decided that the Independent Christian Church was a good fit at the time. Oddly enough, though, I ended up going to a Disciples of Christ church in a small town in Northwest Missouri. They advertised in Independent Christian Church newspapers and college placement departments.

I found out later that they could not afford the larger salaries demanded by Disciples of Christ pastors and could get Independent Christian Church pastors for much cheaper.

The first Sunday was something else. I had done some interim work at a church in north Houston so I was getting used to the instruments in worship. But in this church, the Disciples of Christ church in Hopkins, MO, I was also expected to lead the singing.

They used two big raw-boned Iowa farm boys as musicians. They had played piano and organ together for years. I stood up and announced the first song, I started, then they started, we stopped, I started, they started, we stopped again. After three or four false starts, we got together and almost twenty years later, I lead singing with a piano, organ, keyboard, guitar, whatever.

Such a leap to go from acappella to instrumental in one fell swoop. I have never had problems leading singing acappella, and even have almost perfect pitch.

But the cultural leap is amazing. Then there was Christmas with a large church Christmas tree (Church of Christ didn’t acknowledge Christmas as religious), Easter the following year and on. The Church of Christ was iconoclastic, denying all Christian holidays and seasons. We could do them at home and even had church Christmas parties at people’s houses, but not as an official church function.

Almost two decades later, it is hard to remember the both fear and thrill of being cut loose from old traditions, in realizing that they were not scriptural mandates, but were in fact just traditions.

And I sing.

going to the church of christ

We went to a local congregation of the Churches of Christ tonight here in Lincoln. It was wonderful, but it was also a bittersweet event.

I spent 44 years in the Churches of Christ. I ministered in them for 20 years, with two degrees. These came from some of the most conservative colleges in the Churches of Christ.

The problem is that makes me a rogue. I left and became something else.

In the Church of Christ, they are the sole sphere of God’s influence. Everybody outside of the Church of Christ, no one is a true Christian. A lot of it comes down to doctrine. Acappella music is mandated, the point of salvation is at baptism, and weekly communion is also mandatory. If any of these is broached, the person becomes, if still a Christian (and there is much debate over that), then an erring Christian.

Lots of stuff could be written about all this, but that is not what I am doing right now.
Some observations on the whole thing.

1. The informality was really striking. A guy got up and had some announcements and told us that we would be singing tonight. Then the minister got up and led some songs from an PowerPoint.

2. The people were very friendly. Extremely so. Almost everyone introduced themselves to us and asked us where we were from.

3. The songs that had the harmony in the them were in shape notes. They are almost uniquely used in the Church of Christ. They come from the old Sacred Harp hymnals and were designed for sight-reading. No one can sight-read better than members of the Church of Christ. Those shape notes help a lot.

4. On that note, the harmony was beautiful. One does not hear harmony like in a Church of Christ. I had the chance to sing bass and still remembered how to do it.

5. Churches of Christ usually sing songs that can be sung in four-part harmony since acappella music is so important. Most of these are older Stamps Baxter style songs. But tonight the church sang some newer ones.
Now, granted, they were songs from the 70’s that had been put out in CD’s in harmony. But still, it is an interesting move.

6. Having the Lord’s Supper at every Sunday is part of the Church of Christ credo. Because it is so vital, church polity demands that it be offered at every service. On Sunday nights, it is offered to anyone who didn’t have a chance to take it that morning. Kind of odd, and I always felt so, since it shows that if we haven’t taken it and Jesus comes again, we will be lost. So two people raised their hands and it was administered to them.

7. One jarring thing was that the little girl in front of me played with puppets the whole time and talked. It tended to break the otherwise good feeling.

It was a good evening and I am glad we went. At one point in the singing, I almost began to cry. I suppose that sometimes the things that I left are so strong. There were a lot of things about the Church of Christ that I didn’t like – the mandating of things that are opinions – but there were many things I liked.

In the Church of Christ, I really liked the singing, the harmony, the love of music, the obvious love of music together.

There was also a fellowship that is missing in so many other denominations. People stayed and talked and were happy. So many in other churches are so quick to leave. The fellowship was good and real.

It was a good evening, but it made me sad. I loved and love the Church of Christ and always will. Unfortunately, it left me. I never wanted to leave it, but was finally forced. When the core beliefs do not match, it is not ethical to continue taking money for preaching.

But it was still a good night.

on the other hand

There is always an other hand. No matter what the situation may be, there is always an other hand.

In Fiddler on the Roof, Rev Tevye is talking to himself about his daughter’s marriage to one he considers an infidel, a Russian Orthodox man. He keeps considering on the other hand, this and on the other hand, that. He finally comes down to the end, realizes that she has broken with his faith and, at least in his mind, with his trust and tradition, and says, There is no other hand! And he counts her as dead.

There is always an other hand. When you are in a church where things are one way and never another, there is something wrong with the church. You are never in an absolutely closed-ended situation. There is always an other hand.

I spent 44 years in the Church of Christ, 20 of it as a minister. I have two degrees with them. But I suppose that part of my problem with the Church of Christ was that I always saw the other hand. The doctrine was so repressive that most considered it was this way or not at all. One of the biggest comments made on stuff was, “Honest scholars say …” In other words, if something that was said disagreed with what you already thought, the scholars who were “behind it” were dishonest. It was an ad hominem argument.

An ad hominem argument is appealing to one's prejudices, emotions, or special interests rather than to one's intellect or reason. Another definition is: attacking an opponent's character rather than answering his argument.

If they do not agree with you, they are (choose one): dishonest, lazy, have an agenda, evil.

A man in my church (the last Church of Christ I was with) came to me one day and told me that when I came, he thought I was pretty smart. But now, he wasn’t so sure. I had said some things he didn’t agree with and my intelligence went down considerably in his sight.

Since he had his mind made up, and I said something different than what was in his mind, I was no longer smart. I now had some kind of agenda and no longer knew what I was talking about.

I guess the problem was that I began to see the other hand too clearly to ignore it.

My schooling was all very conservative Church of Christ stuff, in very conservative Church of Christ schools. So conservative, in fact, that when it came time to leave the Church of Christ, I found that I could not go into the more progressive side of the Church of Christ because they were afraid of my conservative schooling.

It seemed that they too were not progressive enough to see the other hand.

I finally had to leave the Church of Christ completely and go into a whole ‘nother denomination. That was not what I wanted. I loved and still love the Church of Christ. But they no longer loved me. I had begun to see the other hand and realized that there were other arguments and viewpoints than the ones they held.

That has been the problem my whole life. But it only came to a head in 1994 when I left the Church of Christ.

When someone looks at something and says that there is no other point of view, they are being fools. Psalm 53 – The fool has said in his heart, there is no God. Anytime you say that God cannot be in something you are wrong.

Unless – and there always is an exception to every rule – God himself says it is wrong. There is no service to God in homosexuality, nor in division nor lying. Those are wrong and always will be.

But, on the other hand, God can change anybody to be what he wants.

The point is, when we get so bollixed up in our own viewpoints that we cannot see any others, we are wrong.

There is always an other hand.