OK.  It’s meme-check time again.  I encountered the above on Facebook a few days ago.  It plays off of two common beliefs:  first, that Jesus preferred the company of sinners and primarily associated with them, and second, that Christians are a bunch of stuck-up modern-day Pharisees who prefer the company of their own kind.

I think the first belief reveals a lack of familiarity with Jesus’ actual ministry rather than the pop-culture conception of that ministry.  Yes, Jesus was the friend of tax collectors and sinners, but those weren’t the people He associated with above anybody else.  Instead, He spent the most time with His disciples. 

The disciples are around when Jesus is eating with tax collectors and sinners (as in Mark 2:15).  They’re around when He is debating with Pharisees, chief priests, and what have you (Mark 7:2; Matthew 23:1).  They’re around when He is teaching the multitudes (Matthew 13:1, 10). 

However, there are also several occasions during which Jesus separates Himself (or at least tries to do so) from everybody but His disciples.  John 11:54 is only one example of this kind of conduct.  In short, when we ask the question, “With whom did Jesus spend most of His time?”, the answer is unequivocally, “His disciples.”

When we consider the class of disciples, several characteristics emerge.  They abandoned their previous lives to follow Jesus.  They often suffered great personal and financial loss as a result of having done so.  They were more interested in His teaching than anyone else was.  The best of them continued to follow Him even when they found Him hard to understand. 

Are you trying to tell me that modern Christians wouldn’t accept with open arms people who had those characteristics?  Come, now!

However, even granting that Jesus spent “most of His time” with sinners and the poor (though I think that the gospels have more to say about His interactions with the crowds and even the Pharisees), I don’t think it’s true that “most Christians” don’t want those people in their church either.

For instance, across the street from the Jackson Heights church building is the Columbia Inn.  It’s one of the lowest, if not the lowest, motels in the city.  Lots of folks on the down-and-out stay there with government assistance.  With great frequency, they show up at services Sunday morning asking for money.

In two and a half years, I’ve never seen the brethren treat these people badly.  They are uniformly welcomed, treated kindly, offered a visitor’s packet, and conducted to a seat.  Commonly, kind-hearted individuals give them money.  They’re offered the chance to study the Bible and are even baptized if they want to be.  At the end of the service, they’re invited back.

To be blunt, this is not a ministry that bears much fruit.  I’ve neither seen nor heard of someone from the Columbia Inn sticking it out as a Christian for more than a couple months.  And yet, the Jackson Heights church has been welcoming these people into their assembly for decades, for no other reason than Matthew 22:39.

I don’t know whether “most Christians” would want sinners and the poor to join their congregation.  I do know that the Jackson Heights church does, and the same has been true everywhere I’ve been a member. 

When others paint Christians as self-righteous hypocrites, it becomes much easier to dismiss them and the gospel they proclaim.  However, before we rely on such a portrait, we ought to make sure it’s not a caricature.  Otherwise, we will make the same self-righteousness we condemn in others plainly evident in ourselves.

The recent pandemic has had many negative consequences, but on the positive side of the ledger, it has at least crippled, if not killed, the American myth of self-reliance.  For decades, the gospel in this country has been battling the delusion that I’m Just Fine On My Own.  Don’t need God, don’t need nobody, don’t need help for nuthin’!

Well, no.  The downfall of the most self-reliant person on the planet is never more than a catastrophe away.  Sometimes, the catastrophes are personal; at others, they involve the whole nation.  In the U.S., we’ve largely been spared the first-tier national kind since probably the Great Depression, which is more than long enough for the experience to fade from our collective memory.  As a result, millions have been allowed to indulge the fantasy that they can handle whatever comes their way.

No more.  You can nurture your small business for decades, guiding it through every foreseeable challenge with wisdom and skill, but when the governor shuts your doors for two months, it’s game over.  You can eat right, exercise, have yearly physicals, and confidently expect to get your four-score years due to strength, but if the wrong person coughs on you these days. . .

The changing times have left lots of folks feeling more than a little bit uneasy.  They recognize for the first time that they can’t make it on their own, that the struggle before them surely will overwhelm them.  For the first time, they find themselves turning to a higher power to protect their lives from harm.

I refer, of course, to the government.

It is striking how the news for the past couple of months has been dominated by the government.  It has been responsible for the first-order (“The virus is coming!  Shut everything down!”) and the second-order (“Everything’s shut down!  Throw lots of money at the problem!”) reactions to the pandemic.  Partisan bickering, though not silenced by the crisis (that would have been too much to hope for), has at least been focused on it.  Both parties are promising that if we do it their way, we’ll get through this thing with nothing more than a metaphorical hangnail.

However, trusting in the government, regardless of who is at the helm, doesn’t make any more sense than trusting in oneself.  The problem with self-reliance is that we all are fallible humans, but the government is made up of fallible humans, and it tends to magnify the frailties of those in power.  No matter who wins the next election, their response to the present distress will be expensive, short-sighted, poorly coordinated, and bedeviled by unintended consequences.  I’m no prophet, and neither was Dad, but you can take that one to the bank.

In short, don’t put your trust in princes.  Don’t set your hope on the government.  It will not protect you.  It will not make all right with your life or with the country.  It will not do for you what only God can do.  Indeed, history teaches us that the higher the aims of a government, the more catastrophic its failures will be.

The Christians of the first century were well familiar with crisis.  They faced persecution, disease, famine, natural disasters, civil war, and, as the crowning glory of the century, the destruction of Jerusalem and the overthrow of the Jewish nation.   They had no illusions about the government fixing things and making them better.  As 1 Timothy 2:2 reveals, their highest aspiration for the government was that it would leave them alone so they could worship.

Instead, they trusted in God and were not disappointed.  Through all of the above trials, they were more than conquerors through Him who loved them.   Government promises, but God performs.  If, in these troubled times, we want a kingdom that cannot be shaken, there’s only one place we can look.

Even as the epidemic continues to ravage the United States, the blame game is already ramping up.  It’s the fault of the Chinese.  It’s President Trump’s fault.  It’s the fault of the CDC.  It’s the fault of those moronic Gen-Z spring-breakers.  And so on.  COVID-19 will have run its course in a year or two, but I would imagine the culpability debate will outlive me.

There’s a sense in which all of this is quite reasonable.  We are faced with a generational tragedy, and already it has become apparent that not all the decision-makers involved have done everything exactly right.  It’s fairly easy to indict any of the above people or groups for what they did or didn’t do. 

However, foolishness and poor judgment has been par for the course for the human race since the beginning.  As a history enthusiast, I’ve read countless books that show how the failures of some leader led to catastrophe.  The story of the Civil War (the period of history I know best) is a story of if-onlys.  If only McClellan had been willing to launch a final assault during the battle of Antietam!  If only Lee had declined battle at Gettysburg and sought a better opportunity through maneuver!  Nearly every battle in the war is defined by someone’s consequential mistake.

In short, the flawed people and organizations of today have plenty of company.  Theoretically, all of them could have done better than they did.  Practically, humankind never does do better. 

Our power exceeds our wisdom.  Our ability to predict the future is not nearly as good as we think it is.  We think of ourselves as rational actors, but when we most need to think clearly, our judgment instead is clouded by our desires and fears. 

However, we find these truths about ourselves difficult to face.  It’s easier to play the blame game, to pretend that with the right leaders and policies, we would have gotten it right, and indeed that once we put the right leaders and policies in place, from now on, everything will be right.  It’s easier to pretend that we are imperfect but capable of perfection.

Rather than calling us to better performance, though, these tragedies should remind us of our inherent fallibility.  In reality, the new policies and leaders will fail somewhere like the old policies and leaders did.  There will be new catastrophes and new disasters, every one of them avoidable--in retrospect.  Our striving for perfection is a doomed struggle.

Instead, we should strive for humility and grace.  It is not only the powerful who have failed and always will fail.  It is our families, our friends, our co-workers, our brethren, and ourselves.  We shouldn’t think that we will get it right, nor should we expect others to.  Failure is part of the human condition.

Above all, we should learn to rely on God, precisely because He is not like us.  We don’t know what we’re doing, but He does.  The future is hidden from us, but He sees the end from the beginning.  We continually fail, but His word continually accomplishes His will. 

Rather than pretending that we’ve got it figured out, or even that we have the capacity to figure it out, we need to follow and trust Him.  This is true when His will makes sense to us but especially when it doesn’t.  Regardless of how it seems to us, we never will put a foot wrong when we walk in His footsteps.

Throughout this crisis, then, seek God.  Continue to seek Him when it is over.  Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.  In all your ways, acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.

I think this was the only time in my life that I ever willingly clicked on a Facebook ad.  It was from an organization called Authentic Theology, and the title was, “"Interview--Female Church of Christ Preacher, Poet Who Reached Millions, Kaitlin Hardy Shetler".  Well done, adware!  That’s the sort of link I’m going to click on!

Anyway, for those disinclined to read the article, the deal is that last December, Shetler posted a poem or short sermon about Mary breastfeeding Jesus that ended up critiquing churches that exclude women from the pulpit.  Churches of Christ, that means you! 

The poem/sermon attracted many thousands of shares.  In another article, the writer for Authentic Theology notes that it attracted more attention on Facebook for 2019 than all (other?) writers from the churches of Christ put together.  Apparently, even atheists found its message inspiring, which might be a tell of some sort.

The poem/sermon ain’t half bad, and though I did not find its message inspiring, I did find it fascinating.  Abstracted out, the point of the poem/sermon is this:  Mary’s unique experience should entitle her to preach, and men who have not had similar experiences should not silence the voices of those who have.  In other words, personal experience is the source of authority and truth, and no one has the right to keep the one who has had the experience from preaching their truth.

No wonder the poem aroused such widespread enthusiasm (though not among members of churches of Christ)!  That’s the postmodern credo in a nutshell.  To the postmodernist, truth is not external and objective.  It is internal and subjective.  It doesn’t matter what my DNA says.  If I feel like a man, that’s what I am (note that at the end of the interview, Shetler puts in her plea for acceptance of trans people too).

If we’re going to accept experience as the foundation of moral reasoning and the basis of moral conduct, then yes, Shetler is exactly right.  There is no reason why my experience should be privileged above my sister’s experience, my wife’s experience, or anyone else’s experience.  It’s an injustice to keep women out of the pulpit.

If.  And therein lies the rub.  I, along with everybody else who belongs to a church of Christ and has considered the matter at all, do not believe that truth is internal and subjective.  Instead, I believe that it is external, objective, and epitomized in the word of God, which is inspired, infallible, and authoritative until the end of time.

Part of that truth is 1 Timothy 2:12.  Despite the valiant efforts of folks like Craig Keener to prove otherwise, the text means what it says, and it says that women don’t get to exercise authority over men in a religious setting.  Doesn’t much matter how I feel about it.  If I want to please God, I need to do what He tells me to do.

It is interesting and telling that in her sermon/poem, Shetler doesn’t engage with this argument.  Reasoning from a standard doesn’t resonate with her, any more than determining religious practice by studying the livers of sacrificial animals resonates with me.  Instead, she describes the opposition as “ministers who say women are too delicate to lead.” 

That makes for a nice rhetorical contrast (women face the burdens and indignities of childbirth and breastfeeding, but they are “too delicate” for the pulpit), but it doesn’t reflect the actual arguments made by me, anyone I know, or, I suspect, anyone Shetler knows.  I don’t think she’s intentionally building a strawman, though.  I think it’s the best experience-based argument against women in the pulpit that she can come up with.  If we’re playing rhetorical ball on her ball field, that’s the scrub that comes trotting out for the away team.

Of course, the decision to emphasize experience over revelation is fraught with consequences.  Toward the end of the interview, Shetler expresses the hope that in the churches of Christ of the future, women will be church leaders as fully as men, preaching, teaching, and everything else.

What she does not see is that such a decision would kill the churches of Christ, and indeed the entire Restoration Movement.  We’re the people who do Bible.  We’re the people who follow the pattern.  Once we start ignoring one part of the pattern, there’s no point in holding to any of it.  Once our experiences rather than the Bible become our guide, those experiences, which are common to the world, will make us indistinguishable from it. 

Maybe the churches of Christ in the United States are doomed.  I don’t know the answer to that.  Only God does.  This I do know, though:  If we fail because we held fast to the word until the end, God will be honored by that. 

If we fail because we exchanged the word for the world, He will not be.

In every congregation I’ve ever been a part of, the message has been the same.  Children’s Bible classes, as wonderful as they are, are not supposed to be anything more than a supplement to parents fulfilling their Ephesians 6:4 duty to bring up their children in the training and instruction of the Lord.  How widely parents in any of those congregations have combined in-building training with at-home training, I have no idea.

Regardless of what Christian parents have been doing beforehand, things just got real in the teach-your-children department.  If you’ve been bringing your kids to Bible class, they’ve been getting 90 minutes of instruction every week.  If those Bible classes have been cancelled because of coronavirus, though, all of a sudden, their weekly Bible instruction has dropped by 90 minutes.  Maybe it’s dropped to zero. 

If, as I suspect will happen, restrictions on social gatherings are kept in place for the next couple of months, that’s a significant problem.  Without in-home replacement, your kid is going to come back to Bible class thinking that Saul of Tarsus hosts a Minecraft channel on YouTube.  Even those of us who have been doing teaching at home will need to step up our game.

The solution to the problem is not, I think, to invent a whole Bible-class curriculum for our children from scratch (though if you want to do that, it’s certainly fine).  Instead, there are a number of alternatives that will help us bridge the gap without quite so much effort.

The first is to use daily Bible readings as a springboard for daily spiritual discussion.  At Jackson Heights, Clay designed the Bible-reading program we’re using this year specifically with children in mind.  The readings are all from the gospels, which means that many of them are story-based, and they’re generally short enough that even an early-stage reader can navigate them with help (particularly in a kid-friendly translation like the New International Reader’s Version). 

Work through the day’s reading with your kids, and then spend 10-15 minutes talking about you’ve read.  You don’t have to offer deep, compelling exegesis.  Just make sure they have gotten the point and understand some applications.

There are, of course, plenty of other great reading resources for children out there.  I know that in his Bible-reading posts, Edwin Crozier always includes a note for children.  Those would be a great starting place too.  I’m sure there are many other places to turn that I simply don’t know about.

Similarly, parents should take advantage of all the livestreamed-and-recorded sermons on YouTube and church websites.  Jackson Heights has years’ worth of worship services on its YouTube channel, and the same is true for many other congregations.  Just pick a sermon and listen to it with your children.  If you can tell that they’re struggling to understand something, stop the video and talk through it with them. 

Basically, whatever you might imagine would be useful for teaching your children during this time, there’s probably somebody online who has provided it.  You can find curricula; you can find worksheets; you can find all sorts of things.  The key is to look and be diligent, and to remember that God has entrusted your children not to the church, but to you.  If you live up to your responsibility, your children will be benefited, and He will be pleased.