Blankets on the Baby

Once upon a time a new baby came into the world. There was much fanfare upon her arrival, and she quickly found favor with all the people. But soon, as her infancy began to progress into childhood, she was attacked by a nasty disease and became ill. Her caretakers needed to act quickly, so they got a blanket and put it on her. Her condition soon improved, so the caretakers reasoned that the blanket was a good thing and that she should stay under it.

After a little while, one of the mean little boys in the neighborhood fell on her, and she immediately began to cry. So the caretakers, who had never seen fit to remove the first blanket, decided that if one was good, and since she needed something else, that a second blanket would be even better because it would bring further protection. The baby again seemed to recover to a degree, so the blankets were left in place.

Soon the baby became a bit restless. She started crawling around whenever she got the chance; and when that wasn’t enough anymore, she started to try and pull herself up so she could begin to walk. Of course the caretakers were delighted that she was growing up, but they noticed that her attempts to move around were difficult and laborious. It seemed that those two blankets she still had wrapped around her kept tripping her up and frustrating her movements. But her caretakers thought that perhaps one more blanket would steady her; and besides, if she moved around too much, she might get into trouble.

In time, the child became lethargic and complacent. Her caretakers knew this was a problem, and they also knew that her father wasn’t very pleased with her condition. So they responded as they always had and put yet another blanket on her. Then they tried to encourage her to be more active, but movement was still difficult for her—even more so now under the weight of four blankets. She resigned herself to sleeping a lot, and didn’t try to move around very much anymore, except occasionally pretending to be happy and excited so her caretakers would not worry. She always seemed to be eating well enough, and though she sometimes got bored with her milk she rarely pushed it away. Her color was pale, her temperature was slightly elevated, and her breathing became shallow and somewhat labored. Her weight began to increase while her strength decreased.

Then the caretakers thought of something. They reasoned that perhaps if they gave her blankets of different colors she might do better. When she seemed to respond, they went on to try striped blankets, polka dots, and even blankets with teddy bears on them. They tried blankets of different shapes and sizes. They tried cotton, polyester, rayon, and wool. One of the caretakers even thought that they should cut one end off of one of the blankets and sew it onto the other end, because that ought to make it longer. Yet with all this, she looked more interesting, but her health didn’t really improve.

I often find myself thinking thoughts or feeling feelings that I have a bit of trouble articulating. Therefore I’m always overjoyed when I stumble across something that helps me explain what is going on in my mind that I might not understand for myself; much less know how to communicate it to others. I felt that way when I first read Howard Snyder’s The Problem of Wineskins, and again when I read Charles Finney’s description of love as “benevolence” in his Systematic Theology.

One day I surfed to a page called “Christian Humor;” and amidst the usual jokes and stories I discovered something which I found to be much more profound than funny. The author of the page related a statement made by Richard Halverson while he was the U. S. Senate chaplain, describing all of church history in a nutshell. He didn’t remember it word for word, but later I found it at another site and saw it quoted this way:

Christianity started out in Palestine as a fellowship.
Then it moved to Greece and became a philosophy.
Then it went to Rome and became an institution.
And then it went to Europe, and became a government.
Finally, it came to America where we made it an enterprise.

(I need to make clear that the version I first found contained some minor differences; for example, it said that in Europe Christianity became a culture, and in America it became a business. Obviously, both versions carry the same message.)

I was floored. Halverson probably did not mean for this statement to be taken so seriously, but I didn’t laugh at all. Here it was—a way to describe how all the human interference over the years has ruined our ecclesiology (the way we “do” church) by indulging in one compromise after another, mostly in the name of flexibility or relevance. This would provide a framework for my understanding of what would need to be done to return us to the way of doing church as described to us in Acts.

But why is this box such a bad one that we must think outside of it? Doesn’t this progression simply outline for us the normal evolution, or even the necessary survival instinct, of the Church throughout its history? Shouldn’t we expect that a living, growing Church ought to change with the times? Change isn’t necessarily a bad thing of course; but we need to be discerning about which changes are worthwhile and which are either unnecessary or, at worst, downright detrimental. So, using this as a starting place for the ensuing discussion, let us examine these changes and see whether a return to a former set of practices is the right prescription for the church.

In its beginning, this new faith consisted of a group of followers of the disciples of a Rabbi whom they proclaimed as the Messiah. These followers were committed to the principles of this teacher and were bound together in common fellowship. They were for the most part considered by the Roman government to be a sect of Judaism, but later, with their acceptance of gentile converts, they took on a wider dynamic.

Soon the fledgling Church faced problems from within, for after little more than a decade had passed, heretics began to wield influence and cause splinter groups to begin to stray from the original message of the Gospel as brought by the original Apostles. Before long, as the Church grew in size and influence, it became an attractive target for these self-seeking individuals who were consumed with a quest for personal power. Further problems came from without as competition for allegiance came from the many established teachers of philosophy who were vying for the attention and fealty of the masses. In such an environment, the leaders of the early Church recognized the need for an established creed and body of teaching which would define not only what they believed (theology), but also why (apologetics).

The Church also faced those who openly opposed its very existence. From its inception, the Church was prepared to withstand the onset of the persecution of a decadent and often violent society. Jesus had warned about it, and the ways in which the fledgling Church bound itself together as a community reflected their preparedness to remain a tightly knit group despite whatever they might face. In response to their situation, they met wherever and whenever they could; because time and place did not matter—only the fact that they had God and each other.

Then, in a dramatic reversal of fortunes, Christianity became the official state religion of the Roman Empire. In order to accommodate this newfound “partner,” the Church soon found itself with an organizational pattern which in many ways mirrored that of its surrounding government. There emerged an “emperor” who was viewed by many as the “father of the church” (and was thus called “Papa” or “Pope”), and whose very title reflected the essence of the previous view of the emperors, whose lore included a certain level of veneration to their status as descendant of the “creator-gods.” The resulting top-down authority structure required multiple modifications over time for the individuals in the line of authority so that their rule could be enforced.

It did not take long in the midst of these changes for a clergy-laity system to develop. It also did not take long for these clergymen to assume some level of authority in the civic realm. Those who were not of noble birth found that if they could attain some position of power in the ecclesiastical system, they could wield as much influence in the public arena as if they had been born to royalty. When the Renaissance finally arrived in Europe and pushed aside this medieval way of thinking, the influence of the church had already made a deep impression upon the other elements of the surrounding culture.

With the discovery of the “New World” came the promise of great wealth for those who were able to benefit from the activities of the traders and colonists in the Americas. An attitude of self-sufficiency and adventurism prevailed in this new land, and “rugged individualism” became the mind-set of the times. With the independence of the colonies from Britain and the large amount of territory yet to be explored and exploited, it seemed the potential for realizing the “American Dream” was limitless. Then when a government for this new federation of states was developed, it offered a system based on a republican ideal infused with Christian principles, and yet alongside that unusual foundation was the guarantee of freedom of religion.

Many factors contributed to the development of this new nation into the launching pad of free enterprise that it eventually became. The advent of the industrial revolution, the idea of an unfettered and freely competitive marketplace, the amazing abundance of natural resources, and the encouragement of creativity and inventive ideas all had a hand in the creation of the modern American business environment. The church, now finding itself in this environment, happily conformed to what we saw around us. We adapted our ways to fit in with many elements of the structure, language, attitudes, and unfortunately, even in many ways the morality of the corporate world.

Today, the church in America and in much of the West is weighed down with the cumulative effects of the compromises and adaptations which are the residue of our history. We find ourselves largely ineffective at the task of engaging the culture that surrounds us, and that to a great degree is because we are too much like it to show it the advantages of the change that Jesus can bring. Instead of being what we really are, we have become what we think that our neighbors expect us to be.

Did God give us a blueprint in Scripture for the structure of His Church, or were we left to our own resources to use the “clues” and “suggestions” in the book of Acts to organize our efforts to promote the Gospel? If we feel that there is a certain amount of “play” in the paradigm, we are then free to experiment at will and make whatever modifications might suit us at the time. But if the human element in our structures is actually interfering with our progress and effectiveness, then we must see that we are morally obligated to rid ourselves of it and keep only those things that God originally intended for us to have.

We see that throughout our history, when an action was taken as a matter of accommodation to the surrounding culture for the purpose of witness, our unfortunate tendency has been to codify it down to the very last detail, so that when it has run its course, we then refuse to remove this spent innovation and move on. For those of us who see the problem here (and I know I’m not the only one), we must make a choice. We can choose to accept things the way they are, we can work within the system and attempt reform, or we can build from scratch a new structure for the Church—one that returns us to the original norm, and the original form, that the historic Church had at its inception. We cannot maintain the current status quo, for that would make us a part of the problem, not the solution. The history of the institutional church shows that it has an amazing capacity to resist corrective change, no matter how necessary, or how substantial or unsubstantial, that change is. So for those of us who accept the great challenge of rebuilding, I pray this site will spur you to thought and to action. But if your choice is the first or second alternative, and not the third, I strongly urge you to surf away from this site NOW and do not return. Ever.

As the girl now languished in her fancy blankets, the thought occurred to her that there must be more to life than blankets. Maybe she shouldn’t be so satisfied where she was. Maybe her caretakers don’t really have all the answers. Maybe her father would be happier if she acted her age instead of acting like she did as a baby. Maybe the other kids in the neighborhood would treat her with some respect if she stopped trying to impress them with the way she was wrapped. Maybe she could feel healthy again. And maybe, just maybe, she could be the young woman she was meant to be.

Our girl now did a very brave thing. She went to her closet, where there was a beautiful white robe that her father had bought for her and was saving until she was ready for it. She quickly threw the blankets across the room and dressed herself in it. The caretakers saw her blankets on the floor and panicked, saying that she needed those blankets, because she had always needed them and they had never done things any other way before.