Advice that could heal the breach
The Layman – January 2009 – Vol. 42, No. 1, January 5, 2009
By lashing out against the Presbyterian Lay Committee and sessions that choose to honor God by restricting their giving to Biblically faithful ministries, General Assembly Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons is making worse a deepening divide. Yet, maybe even now, Parsons has the opportunity to initiate a season of healing within his deeply wounded denomination.
How? By issuing an advisory opinion that is consistent with the whole counsel of God.
Suppose Parsons issued an Advisory Opinion that said:
The Presbyterian Church (USA) is in deep trouble. We have lost the confidence of millions of our own members and of faithful Christians around the globe. We have pulled our anchor out of Scripture and sailed rudderless into beliefs and practices that do not honor God.
We were long called the People of the Book because of our conviction that the Bible is the ultimate and infallible authority for life and practice. God’s Word, not the Book of Order or The Book of Confessions, bears the divine imprimatur. It alone is the Word of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Sadly, we have repudiated its clear teaching and denied its theological and moral claims on our lives.
We have rejected the essence of what it means to be created in the image of God by exalting our own unrighteous behavior. We have become obsessed by a passion for individual rights rather than discipleship that trains the church to be the light of the world. We have often failed to affirm that Jesus alone, by the grace of God and His eternal plan, is the only Savior for the world.
We have used the Book of Order as a weapon against our brothers and sisters who sincerely question our direction and our ambivalence about the faith that was handed down to us. We have turned “having been reformed and being reformed according to the Word of God” into a mere mantra for “progressive theology” and ideology that distorts God’s revelation to us.
We have politicized the faith. We have dabbled in the unspeakable and the inane as standards for social life – euthanasia, pantheism, liberation theology, anti-Semitism, secular entitlement causes … yet the politicians laugh rather than listen because our voice is a noisy gong. It is spoken without faith, hope or love.
We have ridiculed fellow Christians as “schismatic” and greedily pursued their property. We try to keep them imprisoned in our chaos. We shackled many who cannot afford the legal costs to keep their property or the imposition of our exit fees. Their fellowship with us is only because of coercion, not love. We no longer resemble the body of Christ and are an offense to the gospel that our lips proclaim.
We humbly confess that we have done those things that we ought not to have done and we have not done those things that we ought to have done. There is no health in us.
As an initial act of repentance, we will heed the cry of those who choose to leave us. We will not lay claim to their property. We will send them off with good will and encouragement, praying for them and asking that they pray for us. God willing, our contrition will bear fruit, and, in the Lord’s time, we may once again unite in Christ.
This advisory opinion is rooted and grounded in the Word of the Lord: A new commandment I give you: Love one another as I have loved you.