Listening to Each Other (Updated)

(In response to OneMom’s comment, I did rewrite my conclusion to make sure that I was clear, and didn’t manage to contradict my entire point.)

This post is more or less directed just to Christians, though I suppose that the principle applies to other people, as well. It’s also going to reprise a number of other conversations I’ve had, including a number of posts here and comments on other people’s blogs.

There are times when honest Christians disagree with each other. I think something, another believer disagrees with me. Because of some of the issues I’m going to discuss in this post, I want to make sure that all of my biases are revealed up front. Consider it “full disclosure,” as the real reporters like to say.

My church is part of the Conservative Baptist denomination. We have a contemporary worship style (for those who don’t know, that means that we have guitars, drums, a keyboard, etc., and the worship songs we use are very different from traditional hymns). Not only does my church use a projector to put song lyrics on a screen in the front of the worship center, I am one of the people who operates that projector and runs the computer tied into it.
Although we do some of the traditional hymns now and then, we’re much more likely to pick up a song from Tommy Walker, Lincoln Brewster, or Chris Tomlin. Our worship pastor is also a songwriter, and we frequently sing some of his songs.

My pastor often doesn’t wear socks. He preaches wearing sandals. (He’s from California … apparently even two decades in NH hasn’t straightened him out.)

One of the first times I came to my church (Durham Evangelical Church in Durham, NH … I love it!), the worship pastor remarked, “This is a great place for you if you don’t like organized religion, because we’re about as disorganized as you can get.”

I’m telling you this so that you know from whence I come on any of these issues. My mother is an organist and pianist. She used to direct a handbell choir. I’m not sure that she gets how I could possibly be her son. I’m not sure that my father understands how I can comfortably be in a church without a tie.

So, know that all of this is clear, you can perhaps imagine how I reacted whenI recently received a comment on a post that, I think, deserves more attention. To clip the relevant part:

… we can wear tank tops and jeans to church or something that shows our respect and honors our King.

Feel free to read everything, including the full comment, here.

I’ve had other similar conversations, in various places, over the past few months. A lot of these seem to focus on what kind of music really honors God and what people should wear when they gather to worship. I’m not really sure why these issues are as contentious as they are, but they seem to absorb a lot of the Church’s time and effort. A few months ago, for example, I addressed a cluster of posts around a post from Slice of Laodicea, which had set out to define what a real Christian church looks like.

There is a consistent pattern in a lot of these conversations, and I don’t think that it’s a good thing. Notice what Ingrid Schlueter had to say about modern songwriters:

Why are we so arrogant as to think we don’t need those wonderful songs any longer? Have we gone through more suffering, more affliction, more pain for Jesus than those who wrote these enduring hymns? Does a semi-secular song writer in Nashville with a multi-million dollar music contract have more to say to us about God and the Christian life than the 17th-century hymn writer who lost four children and his wife during the 30 years War?

Why do we have to define the attitude as arrogant? Basically, what she’s done is decide that she doesn’t like something, and attribute a negative trait to those who do like it. I don’t think that anyone would actually make any of the statements that she attributed to them (ahem … make that “us”).

The use of adjectives is terrific, and there’s a lot to unpack. Is she saying that Rich Mullins was “semi-secular”? A number of churches (including mine, at times) use such songs as “Awesome God” and “Step By Step” in worship.

In a comment about it, Joel had remarked:

The minute an older Christian protests the changes in their Church, they are immediately labeled a Pharisee by the new, young, leadership (and sometimes by older leadership that has been blinded by ambition).

If a person is automatically called a Pharisee, then that is as wrong as calling contemporary worshipers arrogant. (That being said, I stand by my question as to whether that’s actually what is being said.)

All too often, what we’re encountering here is people not engaging with the other person’s point, but rather assigning ideas to other people and attacking based on that.

My pastor writes songs, not because he’s arrogant and thinks he’s better than Martin Luther or Fanny J. Crosby, but because God is speaking to him. Joel rejects contemporary worship, not because he’s judgmental and dogmatic, but because he wants to avoid corruption in the Church. Both points of view have merit. If we really want to learn anything, then we need to do two main things:

(1) Listen to what the other side is really saying, not just what we can pretend that they’re saying to attack them.

(2) Look to Scripture for the right answers.

In response to the first, let’s remember something — we’re all supposed to be brothers and sisters in Christ. This is really a family spat, and we’re getting far too harsh over it. The accusations being tossed around are pretty vicious. Instead of trying to deal in love, we want to win.

Just as does the secular world, we all too often fight to win the argument, rather than find the truth. Whereas Ingrid’s post automatically assumes that the real reason people don’t dress as she’d like is because we’re lazy, I have snapped back in someone in an argument and said, “Is it really that important to you to show off that you can afford nice clothes?”

I was wrong (and, to be honest, I apologized almost as soon as the words came out of my mouth).

So, let’s look to Scripture. I don’t know of any passage that states a requirement for dressing up in “Sunday best” to honor God and worship Him. That being said, I do know of a perfectly-applicable passage: I Corinthians 8. Although discussing food sacrificed to idols, I think that the principle matches up quite nicely. (Of course, this is the passage in which we see mention of the “weak brother,” and it never goes over well to term someone as such.)

Let’s look at what it says, though (I Cor. 8:4-13, NIV, courtesy of BibleGateway.com):

So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that an idol is nothing at all in the world and that there is no God but one. 5For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”), 6yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.

7But not everyone knows this. Some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat such food they think of it as having been sacrificed to an idol, and since their conscience is weak, it is defiled. 8But food does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do.

9Be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak. 10For if anyone with a weak conscience sees you who have this knowledge eating in an idol’s temple, won’t he be emboldened to eat what has been sacrificed to idols? 11So this weak brother, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. 12When you sin against your brothers in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. 13Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause him to fall.

While there is nothing, really, wrong with eating the meat in question, it is better not to do so than to cause stumbling blocks for those who don’t get the freedom to honor God that we have.

At the same time, that passage isn’t granting license to limit other Christians’ expressions of worship. The decision is meant to be made willingly.

If we want to have these conversations, then we should be discussing them as family. We should be listening to what those with whom we disagree are actually saying, and respond to that. We should not reinterpret their arguments into something else, and we should certainly not fire out random accusations simply to bludgeon them into agreeing with our own points of view.

If your act of worship includes dressing in your best outfit, then that’s great. If it’s worship, it’s worship. I don’t see that as particularly meaningful in my life. Neither of us is wrong, really, unless we start trying to compel the other to worship as we’d prefer. What God wants is for us to bring our hearts before Him and give our lives … not to bicker over trivia — it’s a waste of valuable time to bicker over whether He can be worshiped by men without ties, and no better to charge that other worshipers only wear ties because of a Pharisaical devotion to a tradition.

Let’s listen in love, show grace, and seek the truth. If we all did that, I wonder how different some of our conversations as Christians might look.