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Lament and Prayer: An Option to Dealing With Others….
Devotional Thought of The Day:
37 “Jerusalem, Jerusalem! You kill the prophets and stone the messengers God has sent you! How many times I wanted to put my arms around all your people, just as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you would not let me! 38 And so your Temple will be abandoned and empty. 39 From now on, I tell you, you will never see me again until you say, ‘God bless him who comes in the name of the Lord.’ “ Matthew 23:37-39 (TEV)
14 “But then I will win her back once again. I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her there. 15 I will return her vineyards to her and transform the Valley of Trouble into a gateway of hope. She will give herself to me there, as she did long ago when she was young, when I freed her from her captivity in Egypt. 16 When that day comes,” says the LORD, “you will call me ‘my husband’ instead of ‘my master.’ Hosea 2:14-16 (NLT)
In the last few days, I have seen behavior that causes me to mourn. That needs to be rephrased, I see behaviours hat cause me to mourn, and indeed, cause me to want to pray.
It starts with someone who writes or proposes something that is heretical, or so close to it that it does not matter. In a couple of these cases, (there isn’t just one) it has been pastors or professors who have denied Christ’s existence. Yet would stay “in the ministry” because it is not about Him. It is about the people, he claims. Not about God and His people.
The pain they cause is real. Even from a distance, those who value their relationship with Christ, the hope gained by knowing and trusting Him, feel immense pain. The reaction is to strike out. We find ourselves judging such men, mocking them, condemning them in our hearts and attempting to in the court of public opinion. We feel their betrayal of God as a betrayal of all we stand for, and we do not know how to respond. I’ve even read of some praying, no, cursing them in the name of God.
So we meet evil head on, by doing evil in return. Like in days of old we symbolically rip our clothes, and consdier them dead to us. We shun them. Okay, really we don’t – we try to get close enough to “kill” them with our words, to do battle with their viewpoint and crush it under our superious knowledge, and if that doesn’t work, by our castic wit.
I have an option for dealing with our pain, with the betrayal, with those who have thrown away and tried to crush our Spirit.
Rather than react to them, I suggest we weep and mourn for them. We cry out to God the Father, just as jesus did! We need to lament and pray and intercede, that they would know God’s love, that they would find healing as the Holy Spirit comforts and strengthens them. In order for a person to come to a heretical position or notion, something has broken. Something has deluded them, something is holding them in bondage. Something they are most likely blind too, caught up in the darkness. To mock and curse them is like putting tripping hazards before a blind man.
It is a sin.
Can we mourn for them, can we weep and intercede fo them in prayer? Can we desire their reconciliation to God? Can we like Hosea’s chasing after Gomer, as the Father’s sending the Son to die, can we go beyond our brokenness to engage them, to confront them directly, in love?
Can we encourage those who would judge, mock condemn and curse them to pray for them, to be prepared to even sacrifice time to pray, and if led to , to lovingly confront those who are erring?
Which reaction testifies to God’s glory and action in our lives? Which option tells others of our confidence in the mercy and love of Christ?
We need to learn to lament, to pray, to plead for their souls…. and to love them. It is for this that we’ve been called, that we would walk in the steps of Christ.
AMEN.
Why fighting false teaching is not a oneman job.
Devotional Thought of the Day:
19 Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not cast it out?” 20 So Jesus said to them, “Because of your unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you. 21 However, this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting.“ Matthew 17:19-21 (NKJV)
Again you say, “The temporal power is not forcing men to believe; it is simply seeing to it externally that no one deceives the people by false doctrine;85 how could heretics otherwise be restrained?” Answer: This the bishops should do; it is a function entrusted to them86 and not to the princes. Heresy can never be restrained by force. One will have to tackle the problem in some other way, for heresy must be opposed and dealt with otherwise than with the sword. Here God’s word must do the fighting. If it does not succeed, certainly the temporal power will not succeed either, even if it were to drench the world in blood. Heresy is a spiritual matter which you cannot hack to pieces with iron, consume with fire, or drown in water. God’s word alone avails here, as Paul says in II Corinthians 10[:4–5], “Our weapons are not carnal, but mighty in God to destroy every argument and proud obstacle that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and to take every thought captive in the service of Christ.”[1)
Over the last few days, I’ve given a bit of thought to how to deal with those who promote heresy or heterodoxy, and to those who attempt to deal with it. It is a bit of a focus in the higher echelons of my denomination presently. Or at least some are making the case that it is, and they are struggling to determine how to deal with it, or not deal with it.
Yet in the parish, we have to deal with both heresy and heterodoxy. It may be someone who has strayed into it. It may be someone who deliberately comes into the church, or posts something on FB. So how do we approach those who would lead people away from the mercy of Christ?
The question, no matter the situation, whether large and prevailing, like Arius, or the lady who watches Joel Oseteen, is whether we can confront is love, and call the person to repentance. This is why force cannot be used, or power and “authority”. That is not the pastoral approach, nor is tt that of Matthew 18, where it is not the individual or the elders that deal with the sinner, but the community of God.
Why does this work this way? Simple, because as faith and prayer, leaving it in the hands of God.
You see, when you fight heresy by your own strength, by your own will, what you are doing is falling into heresy, for you have created a idol out of your position. Worse than heresy is this… for it is blasphemy.
You see, when dealing with history, one must be pastoral, one must care for souls. Doing so is critical, to have the people of God be the correcting source, the church is the one who has the witness. Not just any one man has the ability to defeat heresy or heterodoxy. You see, dealing with it through force, through authority doesn’t evangelize, either the heterodox or heretical, or those who are watching the confrontation. You see, they need to hear the clear gospel as well, those who would challenge it. By using authority, by using force to bluntly crush heresy and heterodoxy, you fail in that regard, you don’t show the people the true gospel, the light that will always shatter the darkness, that will reveal clearly Christ.
That’s what is important, not seeing them crucified, but seeing them crucified with Christ.
This is ministry, it isn’t easy to bear this cross, and not everyone is able to….. but this is how He did it, embracing, reconciling transforming….
That is what those who follow Him pray to see… not to win a battle, but as we see Christ victorius over sin and satan and death.
May we pray for all souls.. even as we desire to see all reconciled.
(Side note – seeing the church work together in this – also allows for the humility that corrects us when we go astray…)
85 On Luthers approval in another connection of the position here rejected, see Kawerau (ed.), Kötlin’s Martin Luther, I, 584.
86 Cf. Titus 1:9ff.
[1] Luther, M. (1999). Luther’s works, vol. 45 : The Christian in Society II. (J. J. Pelikan, H. C. Oswald, & H. T. Lehmann, Eds.) (Vol. 45, p. 114). Philadelphia: Fortress Press.
