Snobs R' Us

ARPC is a great church - I stay in it because I think it has humble leadership. a pretty genuine community of earnest believers, a constant desire to walk the straight and narrow. I am glad too that we have a head pastor who has stated numerous times that we need to make sure we do not get too cocky about the progress of our church. I stay in this church because he has plainly stated that the moment he and the leadership start going down questionable paths, the congregation should not hesitate to leave.

Like him, I understand and fear that the greatest danger of being in a "good, Bible-teaching, godly" church is when you get too caught up in your own glamour of being a "good, Bible-teaching, godly" Christian.

Snobbery (aka Pride) is a sneaky thing - it creeps up in your words and actions insidiously. Dismissive words come just a little too quickly to the tongue, what started as opinions spiral slowly into diatribes and rants, labels start replacing names and faces. We can get snobbish over "Christians who just don't get it" and before we know it, we have adopted the "Holier Than Thou" attitude so many of us hate.

I speak as one who knows the Dark Side. (cue: heavy Darth breathing). I know I am not a nice person. I know I have ugly things to say. I try hard to keep it in check and mince my words into finer things. While some may think it self-censorship, I prefer to see it as self-control. Sometimes I am successful sometimes I am not. It's really quite scary to spend a day watching and weighing out what comes out from one's mouth. Try it and you have a profound new respect for the BIble's warnings about how the little rudder of a tongue can steer one's whole life into nasty little directions if one is not careful. Extraordinary things can tumble out of that wretched little tongue of ours that we wish we could retract.

Over the weekend, FunkyMonkey mentioned that it was very disheartening to hear Christians complain. How can a Christian bow his or her head in grace and say "Thanks for the food, Lord and everything you have blessed us with" and yet follow that up with complaints about the quality of food served? Or the quality of the hotel rooms during a church camp? Music ministries across different churches tussle constantly with the desire to play beautiful, professional standard music and coping with voluntary musicians who offer much heart but little talent. How do you cope with Christians who voice out complaints about fellow Christians in church? Do Christians have a right to criticise each other's quality or type of ministries?

We cannot and should not blanket ban critique. There is a time and place for a well-timed word of truth. Critique definitely helps us perfect our tasks. It may also help us take a more careful look at our selves and what we are doing. There is a time and place for a well weighed out, fairly balanced word - as long as that word is delivered with the focus on building up not just a "ministry" but to build up a "person".

There in lies the problem - Building up ministries is easier, I think, relative to building up a person. Theoretically, you can perform a music piece, run a Youth group, answer theological questions to perfection of the Nth degree as long as you plough in the requisite hours. That's if we look at these ministries at a purely "task" level. If we look at ministries as what they are meant to be - a building up of human hearts, minds and strengths for God's purposes - then we witness a far harder task.

Human beings are tricky tricky things. They need to be handled with finesse, sensitivity, caution, gentleness, kindness, firmness, justice......so many many many factors. Not to mention the crappy fact that you yourself are one of these tricky tricky human beings!

Jesus summed it up best by telling us simply to 'Love our neighbour as ourselves". Love is a very heavy word. It is weighed down by the tyranny of expectations, the fraglity of hopes and the yearning for fairness. Worse. we are expected to be this careful about the way we love with all people - the ones we gravitate to and the ones we rather not deal with.

Till this day, I have come across two guiding principles which have helped me in my tenuous walk towards a kinder, more godly, more grown-up faith.

one: Love + Justice
Through out the Bible, the themes of Truthful Justice and Love run parallel. In a way, they are symbiotic creatures. You cannot have one without the other. Both give each other meaning. Justice without Love is a monstrous, cold creature that upholds rules and regulations to the point of injustice. Love without Justice is ignorant folly, hand-holding people down a path to hell strewn with pretty lies. Somehow in our daily walks we have to balance out both in all that we do.

two: Ba Ba Black Sheep
Mike Raiter once shared this story when asked what he would do when Christians disagree with Christians. A family wanted to sing together at a church camp. The 16 year old wanted to do jazzy Hillsongs type songs. The parents wanted good, old-fashioned hymns. The 3 year old wanted Ba Ba Black Sheep. The whole family ended up singing Ba Ba Black Sheep even though it was below their capabilities. But they picked that song because it was the one song they could sing together for now.

Should the family continue singing BaBa in every church camp? Of course not...with each year and with the family's help, the 3 year old would have advanced on to more complicated tunes, expanding the repertoire of what the whole family could sing together. The constant theme though was that They Wanted to Sing Together As Long As They Possibly Could. A church should prize unity among the body.

These have been encouraging principles for me to keep in mind. Encourage...what a word...it means to put courage into someone. We seldom stop to think of why the word encourage is written the way it is. We need to put strength and courage into each other more often. By doing so, we tell them, what you believe in about God's ways....is worth it...and it works. The Christian walk is hard enough without your fellow racers taking the wind out of your sails.

A well-placed word, a timely compliment sincerely offered can sometimes cement a ministry, build a church far more profoundly than a dozen chastisements. Sometimes it may be worth it to swallow down words of criticism for another day, another time or after one has put a lot more thought into reshaping those words in more edifiying form.