Christian Living
CONFORMING TO THE HIVE
(Getting with the program vs. living from the new heart)
“Resistance is futile.”
– The Borg Collective, Star Trek – The Next Generation
(The Borg are a cyber-race that joins victims to their ranks through forced assimilation.)
QUESTION: “In your experience going to church, have you felt pressure to be good or freedom to be holy?”
Meredith, from Tampa: “I have felt the pressure to conform in churches. I am not free to be the woman God created me to be. For example, I went to one church, and a group of people ostracized me because I am Jewish. I have been a believer [in Christ] since I was a little girl. [Many Jews have been coming to faith in Jesus.] None of them asked me anything about my relationship with God or made an attempt to get to know me. They called me a ‘fake’ Christian that ‘serves two masters.’ I still have no idea why they said that … They use themselves as the measuring stick of goodness against others … In church I feel lonely very often …”
MEREDITH'S STORY
The following are excerpts from a series of e-mails from a friend who has discovered just how wounding churches are that use control and shame. Here are Meredith’s own words:
“I was thinking about recovering a good heart and understanding it. One thing I have noticed about myself is the terrible toll spiritual abuse takes on a person (in churches). Churches deal some terrible and unnecessary blows to a heart out of a desire to control. Not all churches are this way, of course.
Right now, I am trying to recover from a situation like that. I am a young, strong, stable, successful woman. And, I have to say that I am reduced to panic attacks and tears in trying to go to church. I found a nice one, and am soldiering through so I don't miss out on what the church has to offer. But, whew, what a rough time I have, sometimes!
It all comes from having been in a congregation in which I was used terribly, lied to, not allowed to defend myself, and forced to conform in every conceivable way. Even getting away from the congregation was hard. The leader cursed me and cried when I left. I was harassed by the people in the congregation for leaving. In retrospect the whole thing seems ridiculous, because it was. But, it is still something I have to work through a lot. And I am finding that situations like mine are not as uncommon as I once believed.”
Meredith goes on to say:
“One great thing that has come out of this is that my relationship with God has flourished and I am getting to know Him more and more as a friend and it has been amazing. My relationship has never been better with Him, truly.
However, I have lost a lot of friends out of this. When I left my congregation, naturally I lost a lot of friends. My remaining friends from there (who weren't as involved) do not understand what I am going through and neither do the rest of my church-going friends. When I share my heart with them, I am met with disbelief and judgment and Scriptures having nothing to do with the situation are hurled at me like weapons. (As if I have done something to deserve to be abused.) They tell me that if I don't go to church I will lose my relationship with God. Which I know from experience is bologna! Although I have visited a seemingly nice church twice recently....
Since all of this I have reached out to other friends who don't go to church and told them what happened and asked them why they don't go to church. They have had experiences like mine! And unfortunately they have moved to other parts of the country or the world, so I don't get to spend time with them excepting brief visits here or there. Consequently, I feel so isolated.”
When churches don’t believe the New Covenant truth that each believer is given a new heart (and now want to do God’s will), those churches will resort to control and shame as means of persuading and manipulating their people.
DENNIS' STORY
A friend of mine, Dennis, is afraid he may be fired from the church where he’s a drummer for the worship band. The reason they could ask him to leave has nothing to do with his abilities as a musician or his desire to serve. The church has instituted the typical church-wide small group mandate, stating that every person on every team needs to be involved in a small group. (You have to love mandated relationships. Contrived community always comes up empty.) It’s not enough that everyone on the worship team is being strongly urged to participate in a small group, but they also have to read the same book. Perhaps that means that everyone will be on the same page when they’re done reading the book. (Getting people on the same page usually means that disagreeing with the leadership is discouraged. Can you smell autocratic “unity” here?) Notice the pressure to conform to standards of religious behavior, even well-intended activities?
Dennis is a deeply committed believer, and tends to think for himself; meaning that he’s not satisfied with an unquestioned approach to faith. What’s more, he’s already strongly involved in a fellowship with people he’s been walking with for years; but that fellowship isn’t connected to the local church where he’s playing drums.
Dennis is afraid that if he questions the mandate to participate in the worship team small group—with its scripted small group study—he’ll be challenged at best, and asked to leave, at worst. His fears are not unfounded. He knows how religious organizations conduct themselves, even well-intended ones: “Unless you follow Jesus in the way we’ve prescribed, your faith is suspect and your commitment is questionable.” Uniformity of behavior and conformity to particular benchmarks are modus operandi of many of today’s churches. Conformity makes us feel as if everyone’s in agreement, pursuing the same path to righteousness: It is control masquerading as discipleship. Uniformity gives us the illusion of ‘church unity,’ when all it does is produce masses of cyborg Christians who have no mind of their own and are reluctant to take responsibility for their own spiritual growth.
KEPT ON THE BOTTLE
It becomes a rather alarming situation when religious systems keep people from thinking and acting for themselves. We have churches in America where members are being kept, even unintentionally, in their spiritual diapers with a bottle in their mouths—not knowing enough to challenge assumptions from the pulpit. For the most part, this is not their fault. Because pastors are viewed as infallible and obviously more learned and chosen than the rest of us, we can’t tell when they may be mistaken. Leadership’s intention is probably not be to mislead their people, but let’s be frank: no one can be right all the time. Everyone has faulty assumptions and an incomplete theology. (Even this author!) Because most people in the pew have come under a false view of spiritual authority, authoritarian leaders may take advantage, even unintentionally, of their naïveté. Fear and control become operational procedures even in God’s family, because divergent opinions, even Biblical ones, are not tolerated.
In his discussion on leadership in the family of God, Dallas Willard describes what we all too often witness in churches: some leaders “will invariably turn to controlling the flock through their own abilities to organize and drive, all suitably clothed in a spiritual terminology and manner.” Leaders who control and drive rather than lead from humility and mutual submission forget whose Church it is. Many leaders won’t tolerate the possibility they could be mistaken or that a word from the Lord might come through another in the family. They operate under the “premise that God speaks to one or several central people in the group in a way that he does not speak to the ordinary members. These members are taught not to trust their own minds or their own communications with God except within the context of the group, with all its pressures toward conformity to the word from on high.” Conformity to the hive is the supreme mandate. Willard reminds us that this is the leadership behavior of cults.i
A WRONG VIEW OF SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY
I recently heard of a situation in a church that centered around the messy firing of a staff member. When the pastoral leadership met with the volunteer group that was to be most affected by the staff member’s termination, one of the group members challenged the decision of the church leadership. Some of the group felt that they were being utterly left out of the decision making process and that critical choices were being made for them by the leadership. In response, one of the pastors said that the people must submit to the authority of the pastoral staff. The church member challenged that authoritarianism by saying, “And you [pastors] can never be wrong?”
People can tell when authority is being “lorded over” them. Notice how conformity to the will of the leadership was to go unquestioned, as those adhering to law rather than operating as mutually informing members of the Body of Christ.
Notice the assumption behind the mandate to conform: church members’ hearts cannot be trusted. Their will and their desires are suspect. In contrast, the will of the leadership is beyond discussion and reproach.
In contrast to this destructive and imperious leadership mentality, hear what Charles Spurgeon says: “What position is nobler than that of a spiritual father who claims no authority and yet is universally esteemed, whose word is given only as tender advice, but is allowed to operate with the force of law? Consulting the wishes of others he finds that they are glad to defer to him. Lovingly firm and graciously gentle, he is the chief of all because he is the servant of all.”ii
JAMES' STORY
James was the drummer on a church’s worship team. He was given strict instructions to keep the beat very simple, because as he was told, playing any heavy or complex drum fills was the ‘Devil’s music.’ In the middle of a worship song, James decided to veer off the simple and restrained beat and played a tasteful drum fill. He was immediately kicked off the team. When James told me the story, my mouth fell open. I said, “Are you kidding me?” He was not. Notice that congregation’s focus on strict adherence to an outward behavior. In fact, “godliness” was kept through a strict set of behaviors that had nothing to do with the Gospel: drum fills were not merely frowned upon out of artistic preference, they were considered ‘of the Devil.’ When we don’t know the Gospel, we’ll assume our preferences are the Gospel itself. We’ll declare as ‘unholy’ that which God has made no such judgment against at all. And we’ll destroy our brothers and sisters in the process, not to mention our credibility in the world.
“IT'S NOT OUR POLICY.”
Most churches develop extensive policies to manage people—largely because fear and control prevent leaders from trusting people. If you don’t believe Jesus has given your people new hearts, your only option is to mistrust their motives. Just lay down a set of policies to keep people in line. Soon, the policy actually prevents people from relating to each other: The policy becomes the intermediary, rather than having brothers and sisters in the Body who can make decisions together as respected equals. It’s one of the best ways we “lord it over” those who serve with us. Churches that live by policies prevent themselves from living relationally.
GOD IS NOT A BEHAVIOR-MODIFICATION THERAPIST!
It is quite possible to act like a Christian, yet live far from your heart. In fact, many sermons and teachings from the Church today amount to Christian behavior modification—getting people to act like Christians. The assumption is, that if you get church attenders to serve, be more committed, share their faith at work, read their Bibles and join a small group, that you’ve necessarily produced Christ-like transformation in them. But, in fact, this may or may not be so. It may appear that you are producing Christ-like behavior because people are involved in church programs, outreach, small group studies, and doing noble work, yet those very appearances are misleading. The external behaviors look good, yet the doer of the good deed may be living far from his new heart. We get people to act like good Christians, yet never address the work of Jesus in the new heart. Even a godless person can act like a Christian. Churches are full of people who act like Christians, yet live far from their new hearts.
One of the flagship mega churches in America recently discovered that the strategy for spiritual growth they had been using for 30 years—into which they dumped millions of dollars and untold resources so that people could move from atheist or agonistic to mature believers—was in fact failing to produce the desired results. This church and others like it had endless programs, Bible studies, and services to accommodate the various spiritual needs of its members, had a very sizeable budget and staff, yet could not carry the spiritual seeker or new Christian into full maturity. In fact, the data reported that those who “loved God the most” were the most dissatisfied with their church experience and wanted to bail out of the organized church setting. If you were to observe this church, it would look like an active, successful church, filled with people doing good; and in many ways, that was certainly true. So why didn’t the church’s programs and events produce the spiritual maturity they were hoping for? Were people just busy with spiritual activities, or were they really developing into the fullness of their new life in Jesus? My fear is that this church will replace one system with another, not realizing that systems can never produce the results they hope for. Only organic, relational fellowships, living under the life of the New Covenant can produce deeply-rooted maturity.
"SPIRITUAL" ACTIVITY THAT IGNORES THE HEART
This mega-church’s conclusion was that, “We need words that reveal the heart of each person. We want to know what moves them at the deepest levels.”iii I agree. This is the most important question the leadership can ask. Religious activity, no matter how noble, that ignores the resources of a Christian’s new heart, will only produce external activity without sustaining roots in the heart—the center-most part of a person. It is no longer about conjuring up good Christian behavior. This is the very failure of the Old Covenant (old way of relating). It must be about the heart.
God is not a behavior-modification therapist. As Larry Crabb suggested in his ground-breaking book, Connecting, God is not interested in tinkering with our old nature in order to improve it. Nor is does he pressure us into spiritual change, or attempt to fix our old nature.iv Rather, as Crabb suggests, God is interested in releasing something—releasing a God-given goodness beneath the surface.v A radical purity is now the dominant force in the Christian—whether or not that goodness is always seen or acknowledged. The new heart is the headwaters from which that goodness flows. That new purity must be nurtured and affirmed in order for the “good behavior” to have roots and longevity. Only once in forty-two years have I ever heard a teaching on the new heart from a church pulpit. Without the teaching on the new heart, discipleship becomes little more than behavior management with a Christian veneer; and because it appears that we are doing and saying all the right Christian things, we assume that our ministry is fruitful when, in fact, we’ve simply been successful at modifying the externals. It is possible for a person to sit through sermon after sermon, lesson after lesson, year after year, doing their best to reproduce the bullet-point list of good behaviors during the following week, and never engage the deeper resources of their heart. Trying to be a good Christian will take you a certain distance; but life has a way of stripping us of pretense. Sooner or later, the person will meet a situation in which trying harder (managing appearances)—without living from the power of their new hearts—will leave them frustrated and ashamed.
HEART, FIRST.
In fact, the way you produce the fruit of the Spirit is not by getting people to buy into certain good behaviors; you get them to mature into the kind of transformed person that Jesus was, to live with the heart he had, as theologian Dallas Willard suggests. The kind of heart that Jesus had is more fundamental than his good actions. Jesus’ good works and noble actions were a direct outflow of an inner life lived in union with his Father and the Holy Spirit. In every moment, every decision, he lived out of a thoroughly noble and glorious heart. Behavior must flow from heart. Fruit grows and ripens only as it receives life from the vine. “Abide in me, for apart from me, you can do nothing.” In other words, Jesus is indicating that “Your goodness is a direct outflow of a new reality—I am in you and you are in me—in your new heart! That’s where we meet. This is the hope of your ever-increasing restoration.” The internal and supernatural resources of Jesus have now become ours.
Therefore, a better approach to discipleship is to help Christians live from their new heart rather than getting them to act like good Christians. The wonderfully encouraging news is that we have the capacity to be truly good because we have been given the very heart of Jesus. We have been rescued from the futility of Christian behavior modification.
BECOMING PRESSURE-SENSITIVE
When you’re in a context in which religious pressure is the way that leadership gets people to behave better and “live uprightly,” you’ll likely feel a number of things: You’ll believe you haven’t done enough to please God or them, and you’ll feel guilty about not being more committed, more serious about your faith, more giving, more something. “Should” and “ought” are the subtext of these churches. Of course, the guilty verdict isn’t stated so overtly. The message is usually about your lack of commitment or sharing your faith, or something. But the foundational assumption from the pulpit or Sunday School classroom is that, “You are not doing enough” —which accumulates over time to suggest that, “You are not enough for God.”
By contrast, when you experience a context of true Christian freedom, you’ll walk away feeling more alive, more settled in your convictions about God’s goodness, and more desiring to live for him. In this liberating setting, guilt is never needed to motivate people because people who experience God’s affection won’t need you to tell them they ‘should’ be doing this or that. They already want to do what God has called them to do because they are deeply aware of God’s desire for them and of his glorious work in their hearts that is both already accomplished and ever-increasing in them.
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(Article is excerpted from Jim's new book, RECOVER YOUR GOOD HEART - Living Free From Religious Guilt and the Shame of Not Good-Enough. www.ROBBINSWRITINGS.COM)
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i Dallas Willard, Hearing God, (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 1999).
ii David Otis Fuller, ed., Spurgeon’s Lectures to His Students, quoted in Dallas Willard, Hearing God, (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 1999).
iii From the website, www.revealnow.com
iv Larry Crabb, Connecting, (Nashville: Word, 1997).
v Larry Crabb, Connecting, (Nashville: Word, 1997).
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