Division Helper
[NOTE: for those waiting for chapter six in the new novel...I'm working on it. However, it seems that I have a major disagreement with a couple of the characters. They want to go a direction I was not prepared for and we are trying to work it out. I am in Tabernacle, NJ with one more day of my meeting on Spiritual Warfare. I get to go home on Thursday, just in time for a major marathon of a weekend. We've had two letters from Duncan. Keep the prayers going!!!]
Remember Hamburger Helper? Maybe you still buy it, but it seems that HH’s heyday was in the 70’s and 80’s. It made a pretty good meal with little muss or fuss. It kept people content but has lost a lot of popular favor now that people count calories, fat grams, and sodium. It’s high flying days were over the day the government required listing of nutritional information on the side of every box.
So what’s the point? Let’s play. Pretend with me for a moment. Pretend that you are a goat herder in Yugoslavia (that’s right. You are so far off the beaten track that you don’t even know there isn’t a Yugoslavia anymore). A Bible falls out of the sky right in front of you, in your language. Let’s stretch this a bit and assume you are literate, so you sit and read the thing — perhaps several times. While these questions are primarily directed at my own religious tribe, I think we could come up with some interesting questions for a variety of religions.
1. Would you come up with the idea that the Lord’s Supper was commanded once a week, day, month or year? Would you assume the elements are holy and shouldn’t be touched except by a priest? Would you assume that it was all right to fight the other goat herders about this?
2. Would you assume that instrumental music was wrong? Would you assume that God only liked certain kinds of music? Would you think God cared whether the words were memorized, chanted, read from a book, or projected on a screen, downloaded to an iPod…..?
3. Would you assume that you needed to build a building and start Women’s Day programs, Senior Suppers, Youth Pizza Night…?
4. When you told others about what you’d read, would you insist that they dress up first? And sit in rows facing you while remaining silent?
This list could go on and on and the answer would always be the same: no. Then why are all of these — and hundreds more — issues that cause people to leave churches, call for debates, proclaim this person or that congregation out of fellowship, and enforce that division by fiat, shunning, papers, and seminars?
Think of it: one of the greatest divisions among religious people occurred when Rome and Constantinople argued over whether the Spirit came through the Father only, or the Son, or both (a simplification, I confess, but the issue was as arcane, technical, and obtuse as any ever argued). I don’t think the Yugoslavian goatherd would have thought that an important issue. He would have needed Division Helper to get to that point.
Division Helper: no longer in a box, but in editorials, pulpits, theological schools… When I was a young man (and dinosaurs roamed the earth) I was a Division Helper. I thought division was a duty when the goatherd could have told me: it’s a sin. It takes real "experts" and "doctors of the law" to find things in the Bible that are so hidden we would have missed it — and heaven — without their brains!
As I get older, I pray that I will continually search my cupboards for old boxes of Division Helper and toss them out — making sure, first, that my face isn’t on any of them. Maybe without all those Division Helpers, we could see Jesus plainly enough to lift him up and, finally, see the fulfillment of his promise that "if I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto me."
May 16th, 2007 at 2:27 am
If this were our tribe, it would really just be a NT, right?
May 16th, 2007 at 2:53 am
In the end my question is: am I really lifting Him up?
May 16th, 2007 at 2:59 am
You made me laugh! That was a good one, Terri.
May 16th, 2007 at 3:03 am
This article is why I anticipate your next one!
May 16th, 2007 at 12:09 pm
On my screen it looks like you and all your responders answers are in the middle of the night. Do you guys never sleep?
Wonderful post Patrick!
May 16th, 2007 at 12:12 pm
In this regard, James 3:1 leaves me terrified. (Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.)
May 16th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
Awesome post, PM!! I’m sick of civilized religion.
DU
May 16th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
I so needed this post right now. I fear I have slipped into Goat herder mentality and am sick to death of the in fighting among the “Division Helpers”….even though I used to be an avid fan….
Thank you.
May 16th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
For those of us who are reformed “Division Helpers” you want nothing more than for everyone to be released from the chains of legalism that are one of the main ingredients in “Division Helper”. I am in awe of the God who loved me enough to free me so that I could see that it is all about lifting HIM up so the world can be drawn to HIM and covered in His grace. Thanks for a great post!
May 16th, 2007 at 3:34 pm
DH. May God continue to move me away from that mentality.
May 16th, 2007 at 5:28 pm
Very good. Back when I was in college, someone wrote a similar paper for a missions class, writing about an island tribe called the Anybuddies (I think). Things that seem so “obvious” to us wouldn’t be obvious to someone reading with fresh eyes. And things that are so “obviously important” wouldn’t occur to them at all.
Grace and peace,
Tim Archer
May 16th, 2007 at 9:44 pm
The verse that has been riding hard on me is James 1:27, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.â€
It hurts me that there are so many of our churches that spend so much time seeking out what they consider “pure religion†and making sure everyone else’s religion is also pure by their standards that they do not see the lost hurting people around them.
May 17th, 2007 at 12:57 am
That’s a pretty good way of getting the point across. Probably more accepted than outright confrontation.
Generally the folks causing the divisions never realize that they are the problem rather than the answer.
May 17th, 2007 at 1:33 am
Wow! Another great post, Patrick. But sadly, so true, so true. We need a healthy diet, to say the least, and this post promotes one.
May we all “imbibe” on only things that are healthy for us and shun the “Division Helper” kind of meals that surround us.
Cheers & Blessings to you all today! Dee
P. S. I just heard that there is a scale out now for us all to use at home that goes all the way to 1,000 pounds. Heaven help us all.
May 17th, 2007 at 3:03 am
Great thoughts and oh so true! Heaven will be a place of great revelations to us all!
May 17th, 2007 at 1:02 pm
I know you talked about communion a while back but I wanted to ask a question about a view that many churches have taken. One of my teens the other day wanted me to talk to one of our unchurched/non-christian teen visitors because he has been taking communion and “last time I (my teen) checked, he was not a Christian.†Where do we get the mindset that communion is a “closed to members only†meal?
I would like to hear your thoughts on this if you don’t mind taking the time. I hadn’t thought of it much till I just started studying it with him.
May 17th, 2007 at 3:47 pm
As a staffer at a church presently struggling with issues straight out of the Division Helper box, I am wondering if you could connect me with the employer of this Yugoslavian goatherd and ask him or her if there are any positions available ….
May 17th, 2007 at 9:25 pm
I think the coolest biblical bizarre hypothetical was the Sadducees’ one on the woman married to the 7 brothers in secession producing no heirs with them all dying before her. “Whose wife will she be in the resurrection?” The reason I think this is the best bizarre hypothetical raised is because Jesus revealed new information about the resurrection and marriage in his answer as he soundly defeat it.