What I See

I see my birth culture, the Plymouth Brethren, laid out as if in front of me.  There is a dividing line in the middle, dividing the hundreds of unaffiliated groups into "closed" and "open," dividing the brethren people from the other Christians. It's not a real line.  It's drawn, in crayon, by the people themselves.  Some get to be "open" and some get to be "closed" and both get to feel right.  Everyone wins.

   The "closed" groups used to hold a heresy.  Some among them still do.  The ones driving, mostly.  The ones publishing.  The heresy was that they were gathered, not in spirit and in truth only, but by the Holy Spirit, into a select, identifiable group that most Christians aren't in.  The kind of group that was so identifiable, that one could ask "Is Tom Stevenson gathered by the Holy Spirit in the correct scriptural manner? Is he one of the ones in this town who is at the Lord's Table?" and you'd get a clear yes or no answer.  You could, the story went, have a paper list of everyone in the town who was "at the Lord's Table" and know with certainty that anyone whose name was not found in the Brethren list, wasn't.

The Heresy, As I Once Held It

When I was eleven, I was "not yet gathered by the Holy Spirit to the Lord's Table, to fulfil our Lord's dying request."  I keenly felt being on the outside of the Lord's Table. When I was twelve, I "asked in."  I asked R. J. Kirkland, because I believed he could "let me in" to the Lord's Table.  He and the other guys there, in small town Ontario.  And they met with me, and told me they had let me in.  Upon consultation, would let me "take my place" at it.  I'd done good.  I'd gotten through the God gauntlet.  Answered the questions.  They had spiritually discerned that the Holy Spirit, while I'd been sitting there at the back of the room with my grandpa (who'd divorced his wife, and so would never sit up and take communion with them again as there can be no forgiveness for divorce even if he had no sex with anyone after) laid it on my heart through supernatural means, to have a godly, Christian desire to remember the Lord in His death in the scriptural way God had appointed, with Those gathered in like precious faith to the only valid group in the town.  So I was in.  And it felt great.  Rite of passage.

   Now, I met other Christians at school.  Since birth I'd been fed the heresy of there being One Correct Christian Group in our town.  (You can call it the One Place heresy if you like.)  In any case, I believed firmly that my schoolmates who went to the Pentecostal church, the Calvary Bible church, or an Open Brethren table, though very nice, had simply not been gathered by the Holy Spirit as I had been.  They weren't "in."
  I wasn't sure if I was just more blessed than they, and had been gathered by the Holy Spirit because I was lucky, or if it was the result of the faithful prayers of my parents, or was maybe due to my own Nazarite purity from television at home, movies, swimming on Sunday, celebrating Christmas, and a thousand other things.  I wasn't sure if these nice Christians hadn't been gathered by the Holy Spirit to the correct Group, with the correct street address, because they weren't as loved or lucky, or if it was a matter of them not listening.  Perhaps the Holy Spirit simply couldn't properly communicate with anyone in Smiths Falls who wasn't at 3 George Street at the appointed times.  Or didn't choose to.  We had a sign out front after all.  My dad made it.

   So we knew for certain which people in Smiths Falls were "at the Lord's Table" (in) and which people were only a church, a table of men (out).  We actually had those paper lists, if you needed one.  We were with God, while they just had someone they called a "minister."  A "pastor."  (Sounds kinda like "bastard."  A word that actually is in the King James bible.)  They had elders and pastors, while we were structured and kept ticking like a clock by the Holy Spirit himself.  They had creeds, prepared prayers, liturgies and set training and schedules for exactly what would happen in their church. It had all been planned by men.  It was just tradition.  Laid out in advance.  Anything could happen in our meetings, though.  Anything at all.  Because we had the Holy Spirit in the driver's seat.

The Heresy, As We Practised It

Some people came out to our church/non-church when I was almost in my teens.  They were 1970s Jesus People looking for a place to go in the 1980s.  Ex-hippies.  They'd gotten haircuts, but still were tempted to perhaps wonder if they could play guitar when singing church hymns (certainly not) or speak in tongues during church (definitely no to that one, too, no matter what they were used to. We routinely forbid people to speak in tongues during church, as we felt it was the work of the devil at worst, or nervous hysteria at best, rather than the work of the Holy Spirit.)

   These gentle, guitar-toting Christians came in and wanted to take communion with us, giving us only a week's notice.  We told them no.  We said that what they had to do was sit under the teaching of the Holy Spirit among us (car insurance salesmen, gym teachers and people who sold fire extinguishers all delivered this Spirit-led instruction as to why precisely how we did things was the only scriptural, correct way) and that if they one day felt led of the Spirit, eventually they could ask us to let them in.  To the Lord's Table.  Which we were "gate-keepers" to.  You had to satisfy us that you weren't going to defile the Lord's Table and Supper, or dishonour His name, before we let you partake of that bread and wine with us.

   Signs of taking our Spirit-led teaching to heart included your women losing all interest in having women's bible study groups, or speaking up in discussions, ceasing the wearing of trousers and sleeveless tops, regrowing their long hippie hair while their husbands cut theirs even shorter, and the covering of their (silent) heads while doing anything remotely Christian, just as the apostle Paul said was a Christian commandment taught us by nature itself (and to shave the heads of women who wouldn't wear hats, the silly cows.)
   They did pretty well at first.  Got the haircuts.  Put the guitars away.  Didn't mention the Spirit at all.  Sat politely while people like my Dad explained how the Beast would roar in '84, and how the Lord would not tarry (the Rapture) past the year 2000 minus the seven year tribulation.  He couldn't.  So, 1993 at the very latest.  When the current order as we knew it would be over and a time of tribulation would come.  (What they didn't realize was that they seemed to be prophesying their own division, rather than the rapture.)

   Those were our rules.  Oh, and you had to not want to speak in tongues or go on about miracles or the Spirit anymore, too.  We'd not be laying hands on them if/when they got sick.  Not suddenly. Not at all.  We knew the Spirit. He didn't do dramatic things. He kept us silent, meek and orderly.  Obedient to assembly decisions made behind closed doors at night by a few guys.   He ensured that we did the same exact thing, the same exact way, every single meeting, with nothing changing a whit since the reign of Queen Victoria.  We believed it was just like in the day of Paul of Tarsus: the First Brethren Pope. He sang from the Little Flock Hymnbook, prayed with "thee" and "thou" and read from the King James too.

   Also, if you, let's say, had association with the Baptist church (singing, for instance, in their choir, or helping out at their youth group), you obviously had to quit all that.  If you wanted us to let you into the Lord's Table where we were, of course.  Ecclesiastical connections were defiling, Bob Thonney told us over and over again at bible conferences.  We did not need the cooties from other Christians in our little (only correct) group. We had no need of them.  If they were not Brethren, we treated them as if they were therefore not of the Body.

   So we put these gentle hippie folks under all this bondage, and they sweated under it for a while, finding quickly that their very lives were being crushed, their spirits and souls starving and dying.  They were warm, gentle folk, and they also had life to them, and "the Lord's Table" was clearly not safe, healthy or nourishing for them.  So they dried up and fell away and we let that happen. We didn't go after them when they left, one by one.  We knew that not everyone had what it took to be able to last for long in our select,  one-of-a-kind group.  No hard feelings. Go be a Baptist.

The Lesson From Above

In the 90s, we had an opportunity to learn better regarding this One Correct Group heresy.  The young tried to grow, tried to pursue Jesus and worship and reach out in fresh ways, and we stepped all over them, shamed them and made them feel like reckless, church-wrecking hedonistic rebels for doing what their hearts were leading them to do.  The young people who weren't inspired to reach out after Jesus were never found acting this way.  They were too passive and disinterested to make waves. The people we crushed were always reaching out to him.  It was those very efforts that drew our attention to them to begin with.  And we treated them like they were just trying to wreck everything for the sake of novelty.
   What was shown clearly for us to learn, was that we would invariably, unthinkingly put the maintaining of traditional ways over relationship with, the health of, or even continued care over and connection to, the young.  To our own kids.  To anyone.  We showed that being "doctrinally correct" was such an idol of ours, that we would sacrifice the majority of our population, and also hurt people to be able to claim this.  Even though those very actions of ours proved such a claim to be as empty as our meeting halls had now become.

   Now the lesson was waiting to be learned: you can't fail so badly in the "love" stuff and still act as if you are more or less nailing the "light/correctness/doctrine" stuff and feel that people should come listen to you explain it all.  Recorded on tape.  You just can't.
  If it's about the bible meaning something to you or not, and you aren't willing to take two steps for someone who needs your love, then we know who you are in the Good Samaritan story.  And if you see that story, and recognize your guilt, and instead of repenting and trying to switch roles, you say "Well, no one's perfect.  Stop going on about it.  We have to get by somehow.  We're just looking after our own kids and can't and won't do a thing for anyone outside that, because Our Own come first and you aren't Our Own" then you are unrepentant sinners.  And there's no hope for you until you are willing to face some reality/Jesus.  Feed, not sacrifice, my lambs.
   If you hold tight to living as if that heresy was actual Bible Truth, and you alike refuse to listen to the actual bible, the plaints of your abandoned ones and victims, and the uncomprehending gasps of other Christians in the world, you are headed down a path that is going to earn some very direct dealings with God.  The withholding of blessing (e.g. health, finances, marital integrity, relationship with your kids, mental stability, emotional health) and the bringing of direct judgment upon yourselves. That's at the door.
   If you're feeling accusatory and defensive right now, take a hard look at what you're defending, and why.
   This is what I see right now.  And I'm telling you so you'll know.  I'm trying to be very clear and direct.  It's not a nice message.  But it's not nice to not warn people.  I may be a bit glib to try to brazen through to the end, but I'm serious.  Deadly serious.  I'm not kidding.  I'm not taking what's been recently called "a sick delight in upsetting others and causing pain." And I care.

The Message

It's 2014.  You know everything you need to. You know that the One Correct Group doctrine is heresy.  You've known it for some time.  You know it's precisely what's made all the divisions and Brethren drama and heartache possible.  You know that the fighting wasn't over anything less, or other than, the right to claim to be that mythical One Correct Group.  You know that without it, there would have been nothing to fight over.  You know that lying, threats, manipulation, deceit and all manner of behaviour that would disqualify a man from being a greeter at Wal-Mart happened, and that these men are still allowed to run things among you as much as they feel the need to.  You know all of that.

   And you tell me you know all of this. You tell me you've changed.  That you laugh at the idea that I might think you haven't.  That you feel and think and believe and live differently.  That no one believes the One Correct Group doctrine (besides the men in charge) anymore.

  I have a simple test for you: Find that person.  You know the one.  The one who isn't on the "membership" list of the group you're part of anymore.  He or she used to be, but he or she is "not one of you" anymore, because of some letter some guys wrote, or just due to wandering off.  You know that no one can put someone out from "the Lord's Table" and then demand that you bow to their supposed authority to do that.  You know that if someone could do that, it would not be done like this, to these people, in this way, for these reasons.  And you know it's all smoke and mirrors.  Power games.  By clearly unprincipled men who will stop at nothing and for no one.

   You likely have blood relatives, friends, neighbours, who are supposedly, according to your group, "out."  Not one of/with you anymore.  Not connected.  Not united.  Well, God says different.

   The Brethren group I was raised in taught us that there only One Body of Christ.  There is one Church only.  These sub-divisions of it, these "churches" and sects, are meaningless.  They appear to divide things up.  They insidiously tempt us daily to view ourselves as divided up.  When we are really one, and are to think and feel and live according to that reality.

   Now, you may say that those church walls, those membership lists, those networks of affiliation do NOT really divide up the Church in your head, anyway.  Okay.  Prove that.  Reach out to someone who is on the other side of your church wall.  Eat with him or her.  Let him or her speak at your church stuff, if he or she has stuff to say.  Let that person help, instead of trying to fix him or her.  Live unity.  Let those other Christians inside the walls, if you really don't think there are any walls, or they don't mean anything in terms of how you live.

   Some non-doctrine-heavy churches are willing to do this, very carefully, in some cases. Try it. yourself.  Weekly.

  You have brothers, sisters, cousins, parents, friends and other connections who are divided, on paper anyway, from you.  Can you "undivide"?  Can you see things as God asks us to? There is not a single epistle written to a group on one side of a division.  There is no scriptural guidance for us, once we're divided, other than to get back into a state the scripture actually addresses.  John was not given messages to the fourteen churches in seven cities.

  Now, let's say someone is "carrying on" in adultery.  Leave them aside for the moment as a more complex issue.  Deal first with what should be simpler.  You are a Free Methodist church.  Bob goes to the Calvary Bible church, unaffiliated with you, though just up the block.  You meet on Sundays like you're different religions, rather than unified in any real way.  He knows a bunch of cool stuff about something you think your church would like to hear.  Invite him to speak.  Now do stuff like that all the time.  Every week.  Some churches do.  Let's all do more of that.  Undivide.  Live unity.  Try demonstrating the unity of the one body in some other way than supporting "assembly decisions" to divide and be split.

   

You have a Plymouth Brethren table.  Stop remaining divided because distant people claim a right to tell you who is in the Lord's Table, and who is out of it.  No one can really do that.  You know that.  It's not real, and yet it's hurting people.  I know because it's hurting me.  To have my own father refuse to ask the other three guys in his assembly if I can maybe not be called wicked anymore.
  I believe it's hurting the heart of Jesus and working counter to his agendas and concerns.  We are invited to gather at the Table.  We are not gate-keepers.  We sit at the Table, not stand at the door.  It is not our table.  How can we claim to know that all of those people in our community who we've never met, are all not at the Lord's Table because they haven't introduced themselves to us, and therefore can't be?  How can we claim the power to not only tell who is in and who is out, but also to keep some away?  To punish them for bad attendance?  How dare we enact a ritual which symbolically claims that we are not one with those other people?  It's heresy.  It's bad for kids and new Christians.  It is forcing people to meet in ways that directly contradict scripture.

   So, you claim to not believe in the One Correct Group heresy.  Well, talk to me about the bible, then.  To me and other Christians who aren't in your church.  Some churches do this.  We should all do it.  Who are the Christians in your neighbourhood?  (Why don't you know the answer to that question?  They're the people that you meet when you're walking down the street, they're the people that you meet each day, after all.)  Your neighbourhood likely has an awful lot of Christians who need God, need you, and need connection.  Yet they aren't on your church's radar at all.  Too busy with throwing money at Africa.  That's why it's up to you.  Church radar doesn't work very well, mostly.  Not up close.  So connect.  Reach out. Tag, you're it.  You're a Christian, I'm a Christian.  You don't have to agree with me.  It's okay.  It's not my place to let you into the Lord's Table. It's only my place to answer the invitation to it, and note that you're there too.  You don't have to get through me to partake.

   And if we sit in a room, and I eat the symbolic bread and wine, and you're a Christian, and you come in that room, and yet must not eat that symbolic bread and wine, not this week anyway? Not until we get to clear up some questions we have?  Every week we eat and you don't, we're acting out a lie.  We're lying with our worship.  Our worship says you aren't a Christian. It says we're not One Body.  It says we are not connected, are not brothers.  How many weeks are we willing to leave that like that?  How much strength does it take to stop pretending to be divided, even if other guys say you have to?  How much strength does it take to stop pushing people away?  What if they had a division and people kept worshipping together?

   Tradition will be brought out: "But that's not how it's done." "It doesn't work like that."

   News flash: it doesn't work at all.  Not the way we're living.  We are weekly enacting a worship-lie.  We are acting like there isn't One Body at all.  We are acting like the Spirit gathered us and had us divide up.  Had us repeatedly enact ecclesiastical divorces we were correct to enact.  Unlike the Good Samaritan, unlike the Lord we lyingly say we follow, we won't touch the churchwounded, lest we somehow get defiled/it gets revealed we have no ability to be gentle, or to help and heal.  There are more churchwounded Christians than Samaritans.  We did it.  We wound Samaritans.  Yet there is no room in the inn.  In fact, the inn seems to have a "spiritual, healthy people only.  No dirty people" sign.

   There is no hope until we repent.  Repent means rethink.  It does not mean we simply claim to think and feel differently.  It does not mean we feel regret.  Like faith, without it changing our actions, it is dead, if not wholly fictional.  It's a theoretical thing that doesn't do any good.

I'm A Guinea Pig

That's what I am.  A canary in your coal mine.  Me and a bunch of others.  I'm a test to see if you mean what you say.  If you will live as a Christian, or just claim stuff.  What fictions are you willing to sacrifice in order to embrace reality/Jesus?  

  You believe I am a Christian.  You believe I feel the call of the Spirit to gather with other Christians.  You see that I do almost nothing but connect to Christians, electronically and in person, whenever I'm not working, and sometimes when I am.  You see that I connect instantly and heart-warmingly with Christians on an individual basis, so long as they aren't doing church instead of Christ, making them refuse to deal with me as a person.  You see that when I have no one to talk to, I post things to the Internet.
  You know that the assembly I was going to in the 90s decided to get rid of not just me, but literally hundreds of people, and had the whole world divide, all for their own power reasons.  You know that without the One Correct Group heresy, none of that would have happened.  You know that the divisions are a judgment upon us for holding it.  You know that any remaining vestiges of that heresy among us still, leave us wide open to all manner of judgment, and evil springing up among us, rather than "keeping the Lord's Table/Testimony clean," as we shamelessly claim.  You know that the Church isn't really divided, and that we're being tricked to hold heresies and live and worship just as if it were anyway.  Which absolves us of having to behave like Christians to other Christians.

   Undivide.  This week. Reach out.  Talk about your heart to someone Christian.  Someone who's not playing the same church sport you are.  Someone with a fresh perspective.  Be known.  Give someone the opportunity to accept you.  Better to risk rejection than sacrifice acceptance without giving other Christians, the Lord Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, any chance to understand, relate, connect.

   No man is an island.  Don't live as if you are. It's a lie.

   My church group threw me and many others into the ditch.  The ditches, sidewalks, alleys and gutters are full of people like us.  Don't walk by.  Don't avert your eyes.  Reach out.  To all of us.  We're in your community.  We're you.  Be human to us, if not Christian.  Treat us like people, if not brothers and sisters.  Don't avoid our eyes and walk by.  No, we don't have churches to go home to.  The system is broken.  It's only human.  If you need it to not be broken, and to be able to claim it works and is divine, then you need us not to be.  You need us hidden away somewhere where no one can see us.  But we need change.  Your change.  Not pity.  Change.

   Look at us.  Right into our eyes.  Ask yourself why that's scary.  Ask yourself if some of what scares you about us is some facets of God you're seeing and fleeing.  Check and see what it is.

  Be.Christian.Today.  (Yes. Even as relates to church activities! Even there!) No more "Oh, well... you know how it is.  We're doing all we can. It's just like this now, and it's never going to change. Can't fix anything.  Just hold tight.  I'm not in charge.  No one would listen to me.  I have to go along.  You know how some people are. The ones in power. The Faceless, Ancient Ones who rule us."

   Enough.  Just quit all that.  Be real.  Don't hold up walls meant to protect nothingness, lies and fiction from the light of day shining in and showing there's nothing there.  Be willing to sacrifice what isn't real, in order to gain the real.  In order to gain Jesus.  Open those empty hands you clasp shut, claiming to have the entire treasures of heaven clutched therein.  Open them up and let the rain fall into them.

   No more limping back and forth between two mindsets, two places you keep the two sundered shreds of your heart tissue, the two identities.  Be real.  Refuse to have anything to do with anything that's not.  Refuse to bow down in the house of Rimmon, if you don't believe in Rimmon anymore.  If your leprosy is healed, don't tell people you are unclean and draw away from them.  Don't cover your lack of leprosy and obediently go outside the city.  Don't bow to "assembly decisions" you know right well did not involve the assembly, and which were not agreed upon or decided, and which claim powers no human on earth possesses.  "Assembly decisions" about fictional, agreed-upon pretend dividedness.  "Assembly decisions" that someone just can't be at the Lord's Table anymore because they were cheeky to Dwight.
   Do not bow to faceless power.  Do not bow to "but this is how it's always done," "the way it is," and "you know."  Don't just say you see the error.  Stop being the error.  Don't step over the imaginary cracks as if they were real.  They aren't there.

   Stand up.  Serve God and reality and good, rather than an undefinable "it/you know/stuff" in which you are trapped and enslaved.  Jesus means "saviour."  He is working right now to free not only your thoughts, your feelings and your supposed "positions," but your hands and feet.  The only way you're going to remain bound each day is if you put your hands out each morning and ask to have them bound together again, by the faceless power you bow to and serve when it calls you to.

  Stop serving faceless, dividing, draconian, bureaucratic, uncharitable, walking by on the other side, not looking, "just me and my family, that's all I can concern myself with" naked pretend power.  Because I know what Its name is.  So do you.  And you do not want to continue serve that name.  It is anti-Christ.  It is anti-God.  It is anti-life.

  The name that accuses, condemns, shames, divides, abandons and leaves people God loves lying right there in the ditch where it put them.  You know the one.