Reflection #22: Still Making Mountains out of Molehills

If we call ourselves Christians, what should be the significant and absolute center of our faith and life? Christ Jesus, of course!  And yet in my 25+ years of ministry I have seen too many examples of losing sight of the most important aspects of our faith, and getting side-tracked with non-central issues.  We too easily get fixated on non-essential theological or ecclesiastical arguments, we quickly make mountains out of molehills.  Things that have little to do with Jesus (either who we understand him to be or what he taught his followers to do) can take the center of our attention and create unnecessary trouble and grief.  Over time we begin to see the true size of those concerns which consumed so much of our focus and energy, conflicts that created such bad impressions with our neighbours – with the passage of time we begin to see that many of these things were adiaphora.  This ancient Greek word refers to things that are debatable or neutral, to things outside the essentials of the Christian faith.  Too much of what has pre-occupied the church in past decades is adiaphora.

At the time of the Reformation leaders like Martin Luther had to determine what they considered central to the Christian faith, and what was adiaphora.  In other words, they had to figure out what was essential and foundational, and what was flexible and non-essential.  The Augsburg Confession states “And to the true unity of the Church it is enough to agree concerning the doctrine of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments. Nor is it necessary that human traditions, that is, rites or ceremonies, instituted by men, should be everywhere alike.”  (Article VII)  The Gospel and the Sacraments were central, they were the mountains, all else was adiaphora.

So what sort of things have Christians put a lot of energy into debating and defending during my time in ministry? What sort of things have become mountains in the life of the church in the past few decades?  Here is a brief list of some of the controversies and debates I am aware of:

• What musical instruments are appropriate for worship (Should it be organ only, or guitars and drums primarily?)
• What colour should the carpet be in the sanctuary?  (Or any number of decorating issues that pop up in the life of a church.)
• Is it right to kneel or stand for confession and prayer?  (A huge controversy at the church I serve, which took place before my time, happened when kneelers were installed in the sanctuary.)
• What translation of the Bible is allowable?  (I still run into people who insist that only the King James Version should be used by English speaking Christians.)
• What translation of the Lord’s Prayer should be used?  (I am tempted to ask “Does God really lead us into temptation?”)
• Should the pastor wear a goatee?  (Seriously, I received an angry anonymous note about this shortly after I grew my distinctive beard – and by the way, it is the only kind of beard my face can muster.)
• Should the congregation sit or stand for singing hymns?  (I’ve heard both articulated as the “right way” to do things).
• How should communion be served?  (Kneeling or standing, by table or continuous, whole loaf & common cup or individual cups & wafers, and so forth.)
• Can we allow women to be ordained pastors? (Having served with a couple of different women clergy I know personally the value of female pastors, but there are still many churches that insist this cannot be of God.)
• Will there be a ‘rapture’ and will that happen soon, or should the Book of Revelation and other such apocryphal writings even be read as a road map of future events?  (End-times have been big time in the North American church my whole adult life, resulting in much fear-mongering and successful marketing.)
• Can we allow children to receive communion before they are confirmed?  (“If we allow children to commune before they are confirmed how will we be able to keep kids in the confirmation program?” went an argument that I have heard more than once.)
• Can we allow GLBT people to be fully part of our church - as pastors or married couples?  (The current “big mountain” we are dealing with throughout the church in North America.)
• Should everyone who has the Holy Spirit active in their lives speak in tongues?  (As a young adult I was often made to feel inferior as a Christian because I didn’t speak in tongues – though sometimes the way I garble the English language one might wonder if I was exhibiting glossolalia!)
• Should Sunday School be offered during worship services, or at a different time?  (We had some people leave our congregation over this issue.)
• Should God be referred to as both masculine and feminine?  (The debate about inclusive language in worship was a significant part of my seminary experience.)

I had better stop here before this post gets too long.

All these controversies listed above I would consider adiaphora – they have little or nothing to do with Jesus, and everything to do with personal preferences and interpretations.  They are not central to our faith, but they have been central to our church experience at one time or another.  With the exception of the debates around communion (and I would consider how we serve communion, and at what age we offer communion, as less central than the  requirement of the Christian Church to celebrate communion and uphold its significance), all these issues have little to do with the gospel of Jesus.  We keep making mountains out of molehills.  Mount Calvary should be the focus of our life together, not Mount Tradition or Mount Personal Preference.

While thinking about this I came across an interesting contrast between a biblical mountain and molehill.  The Bible contains more than 2000 verses on poverty and justice, and God's deep concern for both, yet lately the church in North American seems far more focussed on 5 verses that refer to same sex relations, even though exactly what these verses condemn is unclear, and the translation of some words in these verses is uncertain at best.  (I should clarify here that I don’t consider the passages about Sodom and Gomorrah to be about same sex relations.) When considering this contrast which should be the mountain?  Which, by comparison, is a molehill?  One of these topics is 400 times larger than the other, but I seldom hear it discussed in church circles these days – at least not with the same level of passion and conviction.

As Christians we are called to follow Christ and should consider his words and actions of primary significance – but the mountain of Jesus’ revelation gets obscured by molehills of Pauline admonitions, end-times speculations, and the dirt heaps of personal preference and protection of tradition.  We debate whether women should be allowed to be pastors based on a couple of comments Paul makes in his letters rather than spending time and energy debating how best to fulfill Christ’s commands to “love God and love others”.  We split churches over issues around same-sex relations (even though there is absolutely nothing about this topic in any of the gospels) rather than consider the implications of Jesus’ prayer for unity and his inclusion of those marginalized by society.   We should be examining what Jesus is actually asking us to do, and discussing as a church body how best to do these things, rather than get caught up in theological miscellanea.  We should guard against majoring in the minors, and minoring in the majors.  We should keep the main thing the main thing rather than distract ourselves with subjects that are not central to Jesus’ ministry and message.

What should we be majoring in?  There is only one thing Jesus ever commands his followers to do, only one thing!  To love.  That’s it, everything else Jesus teaches is related to that central command.  To love God and love others it is not a suggestion – it is the pinnacle of Jesus’ revelation (both in word and deed).  There is only one topic that Jesus comments on throughout his ministry, something he encourages in his disciples over and over – the importance of having faith, to place one’s confidence in God rather than give in to fear.  Love and faith are central to Jesus message, they are what he identifies as essential for his followers.  The bulk of our communal and personal energy should be never be channeled away from these two central themes.  Love and Faith – that’s it in a nutshell.  It’s time to stop acting like blind moles, digging around in our little molehills like they were the only important thing to consider. Time to open our eyes and see what Jesus wants us to see.

May we not be so fixated on the little pile of dirt at our feet that we forget to raise our eyes to the heavens, and thus miss the grandeur of God’s majestic mountain of grace.