Hopefully you made it through the last nine posts. As I said, my focus here was on the most serious charges, that he preached heresy against the Holy Spirit. But for the sake of completeness let's also address the topic of Foot Washing that was covered in the first document.
In many ways this commentary mirrors Part 4, where the commentator said that just the act of asking a question about a doctrine automatically brands someone as deviating from the faith. Case in point, not once does Pr. Yang teach anyone that "foot washing does not pertain to salvation". In fact, ironically in the passage here he very deliberately poses the statement as a hypothetical knowing that people are actively looking to use his words against him (which they do anyway).
And once again, this Q&A session was presumably within a group of believers whose faiths were at a "solid food" level, who had the promised Holy Spirit in them and who finally found a forum where they could talk about deeper spiritual topics themselves, using the Spirit of Truth that was within them, This group of brothers and sisters chose to do this rather than doing what the rest of us tend to do--avoid even thinking about difficult spiritual topics altogether and delegating such "advanced understanding" to a select few that could discern the "real" truth hidden in Scripture.
As I said in that post, the assertion that merely asking questions is tantamount to "heresy" is a dangerous concept. Why? Because it has a chilling effect.
It has a chilling effect on the believers. People who do have questions, whether a new believer or a long-time minister, are conditioned over time to stay quiet and keep their questions to themselves for fear of being "exposed" as "deviant". And as a result so they need to put on the outward appearance that they don't have questions. And this leads to institutionalized hypocrisy, as people feel compelled to pretend that they fully understand doctrine instead of allowing them to feel free to ask honest questions, much less challenging ones.
It could also have a chilling effect on our church's doctrines. How?
If you look at our church's history, our church didn't receive the 10 Basic Beliefs on stone tablets on Mount Sinai. No, over time the Holy Spirit revealed new things about the truth to our church. The commentator comes close to mocking "new discoveries" about the truth, but if you look back at our church's history what we have come to accept as truth today has gone through many changes. Oh, and by the way. That's okay.
I remember years ago I came across my mom's collection of old Holy Spirit Times which dated back to the first issues. I thought to myself, what a great activity for Senior Class if I were to ask them to translate them all into English. It sounded like an exciting thing to do, like finding old historical texts in an archaeological dig and using it to uncover history.
When we started transcribing it, though, a sister came up to me and said they were finding a lot of things that just seemed odd. And surely enough, when we looked at what the church called their basic beliefs back then, there were a lot of things that we just don't ascribe to today (I mentioned the proscription against seeing doctors, but there were more).
We decided to stop the project, not because our faiths in God or the church was shaken (thank God, the Senior Class youth of the Elizabeth church were all quite mature spiritually), but simply because we didn't see much value it in. We understood that over the years, the Holy Spirit has continued to be with the church and to lead the church into new understandings of the truth. "New discoveries", if you will.
This doesn't mean that the truth changed--there always has been, is, and always will be one truth. But as humans we do not have a complete understanding of the truth. Yes, there may be aspects of the truth that have been revealed to our church--solely by the grace of God and not because of anything we did to deserve it--that may be more complete than other churches. But we still need to constantly rely on the Spirit of Truth to continue to lead us into all truth.
In fact, that's one of the reasons we call ourselves the true church, right? Because we believe that we've received the one Baptism according to the Bible, that allows us to receive that Spirit of truth.
But simply viewing the Holy Spirit as a birthright isn't enough. We need to be open to the Spirit to reveal the truth to us, help us gain a more perfect understanding of the truth, and most importantly, live out that truth in a way that glorifies God and helps man.
What do I mean by this? Let's look at the doctrine of foot washing as an example:
The sacrament of footwashing enables one to have a part with the Lord Jesus. It also serves as a constant reminder that one should have love, holiness, humility, forgiveness, and service. Every person who has received water baptism must have his/her feet washed in the name of Jesus Christ. Mutual footwashing may be practiced whenever is appropriate.
We say we're a church whose articles of faith are all "based on the Bible and extracted from it", but if you look carefully in Scripture can you find anywhere where it says that foot washing is to take place just once in someone's life, after water baptism, and in the name of Jesus Christ? And in fact, if we were to really follow Scripture more precisely, couldn't an argument be made that "mutual footwashing" be the norm and not the exception, since Christ commanded us to "wash one anothers' feet", not "have an ordained minister wash your feet"? And for that matter, where is the scriptural basis for the phrase "whenever is appropriate"?
These additions were not from the Bible. Does that mean they're wrong? Of course not. We take it on faith that the Spirit of Truth revealed these truths to our church members over time. But that only came after they asked questions. A lot of questions.
And as you can read from the commentary in our church's early history different churches had different opinions on this doctrine. Since I can't read Chinese, I can't view the details of the disagreements they had. But from what I can tell they didn't shut each other down nor start excommunicating when they asked questions or had different opinions. It seems that they were still in a place spiritually, 15 years after the gospel revival and the descent of the promised Holy Spirit, to allow for the Spirit's guidance instead of imposing speech codes to stifle any opinions other than what was documented.
In other words our early workers didn't draw a line in the sand and declare that on a certain date and time they suddenly had a complete understanding of the truth and that no questioning was permitted after that.
And for those who say that these things should be left solely in the hands of the IA and WDC taking "democratic votes", as I've stated, as troubling as some find Pr. Yang making off-handed remarks about his questions on foot washing (again, all posed as personal opinions and questions to think about and not official edicts), isn't it even more troubling that as the result of a "democratic vote" our long-standing doctrine of the Holy Spirit was changed in a closed-door meeting to something clearly inaccurate like "speaking in tongues is the sign of someone being filled with the Holy Spirit"? Despite how many people in that room were "filled with the Holy Spirit", why would the Spirit tell us to reword our doctrine to something that clearly contradicts Scripture?
When I first read Pr. Yang's words saying "I really do not know whether the foot washing sacrament is that important" I admittedly cringed as I'm sure many of you did. Why? Because from the time I was born, like you, I've been indoctrinated with the teaching of foot washing. And let's make it clear--when I use the term indoctrination I don't use it as a pejorative. I don't mind being "indoctrinated" if the doctrine that's being inculcated in me is at its foundation the truth. I'm very thankful that I received this teaching and each time I'm privileged to witness the act of foot washing I'm reminded of the Lord's actions on that night.
But as I looked at what he said more closely, I'm beginning to realize that what others see as heresy is simply honesty and humility towards God. If in his heart he has legitimate questions about our current understanding of the truth and encourages the believers who have similar questions to not just blindly pretend to understand it but to work hard to come to a deeper, more genuine understanding of it, what's the harm in that? As I said before, if we truly believe that our doctrines were given to us directly from God (which I happen to believe) then why are we afraid when questions arise about them? Shouldn't every question be seen as an opportunity to explore and understand the truth on a deeper level, using the Spirit as our guide? What does it say about our own confidence in the Spirit of the living God when we forbid any questioning?
Asking questions leaves the door open for the Holy Spirit to work. Again, except for the one line of Scripture and one verse in 1 Timothy referring to widows washing others' feet, the Bible doesn't mention foot washing as a sacrament at all. Remember that at the time of the apostles, foot washing was something that happened every day. You walk into someone's house with dust on your sandals and the host or hostess would wash your feet.
Yes, Jesus set a new pattern that night when he washed his servants' feet. But are we 100% sure that we are implementing our sacrament in the precise way that the apostles did?
There are plenty of accounts of baptism in the New Testament, and enough accounts of the Holy Communion for us to understand the basics of how to perform it. But for foot washing, we have no idea. Did they really practice it after baptism? Did they really practice it as part of a separate rite vs. something they somehow did in conjunction with their every day foot washing? And regardless of the the answers to these two questions, what does it all mean concerning our practice of it today? We have to rely on the continual inspiration of the Spirit of Truth to reveal these things to us.
Since there are so many things about this doctrine that cannot be directly validated in Scripture I see this preacher as just giving his honest opinion that even though he accepts this doctrine on faith he simply doesn't fully understand it. If you see this as grounds for dismissal, ask any True Jesus Church minister if they have achieved perfection in their understanding of the complete truth. If any one of them answers yes, here's a news bulletin: they're either lying, misguided, or certifiable.
And once again, nowhere do I see him say he will stop practicing foot washing or instruct others not to practice it. Nor does he even suggest that it's not worthy of being practiced. To the contrary, he says that those who do practice it had best not just perform the physical rite but much more importantly live out the meaning of the sacrament.
And that's what I find the most ironic about this whole thing. Even as the church leaders condemn Pr. Yang for his "heresy" against the doctrine of foot washing they are completely ignoring the teaching behind the doctrine itself. If the IA sees themselves as "more powerful" than Pr. Yang, to the point of wielding their massive authority to give him ultimatums, remove his position, and ultimately expel him as a member from the church, then as the "masters", shouldn't they instead have poured water into a basin and washed his feet, both figuratively and literally, instead of using their "power" to destroy him? If the Lord Jesus Christ could wash the feet of the man who betrayed Him, why is it that the IA cannot show the same humility and forgiveness that the Lord they worship showed? Instead of covering their ears and yelling at the top of their voices to drag this man out of the city, why not try to understand the questions he had and prayerfully and humbly approach the Lord together as one for answers?
And let's just say, hypothetically, that one day we were to find another church that held to all our Basic Beliefs except perhaps they conducted foot washing differently than we do or not at all. But let's say we found that they too seemed to have the abidance of God, the presence of signs and miracles, and most importantly members whose lives we could witness were transformed by the power of the Spirit? Would we be willing to at least hear from their perspective how they got to this point and be humble enough to admit that perhaps there were truths that the Holy Spirit revealed to them just as much as He revealed them to us? Or would we circle the wagons and say that just because their interpretation of Scripture was slightly different than ours they're "heretics"?
No comments:
Post a Comment