One of the marks of the coronavirus crisis so far has been the sudden scarcity of a number of strange items.  The empty toilet-paper shelves at grocery stores will, I think, become one of the enduring images of 2020.  For myself, I decided a week or two ago that I needed some 00 buckshot in my life, but I discovered that there were no boxes of 00 buckshot to be had anywhere, either in town or online.

We’re in the middle of a coronavirus epidemic, not a dysentery epidemic, so there is no particular reason why people’s toilet-paper needs should have spiked.  Instead, the only thing that has spiked is anxiety.  Somebody, somewhere, decided that they needed to buy a year’s worth of toilet paper to prepare for the coronavirus, somebody else saw them doing it, got scared, and decided to do the same thing, and now just about anybody who goes to the grocery store will at least feel the temptation to buy an extra pack “just in case”.  As a result, some have houses full of toilet paper while others are reduced to plaintive appeals on Facebook.

As I considered this bizarre phenomenon, I could not help but be reminded of the parable of the rich fool in Luke 12:13-21.  Jesus relates this parable as a warning against every kind of greed, but the particular kind of greed we see on display is hoarding.  The rich fool has been blessed by God, but he is utterly uninterested in sharing his blessings with others.  In today’s parlance, he decides to tear down his toilet-paper barns and build bigger ones.  However, his death reveals the poverty of his selfishness.

Today, we can reveal our own selfishness not only in the way we heap up wealth and possessions but also in the way we accumulate further possessions at others’ expense.  In a time of abundance, there’s nothing wrong with putting aside something extra to prepare for an uncertain future.  The prepper who buys an extra bag of rice or beans every time he goes to the store has harmed no one, so long as the shelves still are filled with rice and beans.  He’s motivated not by selfishness and fear, but by wisdom.

 However, hoarding in a time of scarcity is another matter.  One of the sisters at church has a co-worker who recently was desperately searching for potatoes.  This co-worker’s means are modest, and she relies on potatoes and other inexpensive foodstuffs to feed her family. 

However, when she got to the grocery store, there wasn’t a potato in sight.  Panicked people had bought up all the rice, beans, and potatoes, leaving her with options she couldn’t afford.  Thankfully, generous people quickly stepped up to help her, but it’s not hard to imagine a scenario in which sacks of potatoes rot on a hoarder’s pantry floor while others go hungry.

The spiritual problems with this behavior are serious.  To begin with, it’s a clear violation of the second commandment.  You don’t love your neighbor if you’re hoarding the food they need to survive. 

Additionally, it shows a lack of faith.  Though the Bible encourages us to be prudent and wise, we are not to rely on our own prudence and wisdom.  We are to rely on God.  When we are so concerned about protecting ourselves that we harm others in the process, our behavior proclaims our lack of trust in Him.

This is a dark time.  As Christians, we are called to be lights in it.  We should strive to be known for our concern and generosity toward others.  By contrast, when our fear drives us to hoarding, our light becomes hidden beneath the heaps of goods we have amassed.  If this is where God finds us when He calls our souls to Him, the truth of our poverty will be eternally exposed.

Many of us can remember studying, even in childhood, the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and the fiery furnace in Daniel 3.  Indeed, in the Joliet church building, there was a semi-permanent fiery furnace constructed out of moving boxes and brightly hued construction paper.  It was sized so that preschoolers could walk into the furnace (through the crepe-paper flames) and admire the angel at the back.

However, most of us are not as familiar with the other fiery-furnace story in the Bible.  Indeed, preacher that I am, I only noticed it myself a year or two ago.  It appears in Jeremiah 29. 

Contextually, the Jews who have already been carried off to Babylon have a problem with false prophets (surprise!).  Two of them in particular, Ahab the son of Kolaiah and Zedekiah the son of Maaseiah, have been leading the people astray with lying “words of the Lord” while practicing adultery on the side.  God is not best pleased with them and pronounces judgment upon them.

However, Jeremiah 29:22 contains some interesting information about the form their doom will take.  It reads, “Because of them this curse shall be used by all the exiles from Judah in Babylon, ‘The Lord make you like Zedekiah and Ahab, whom the king of Babylon roasted in the fire.’”

This is worth considering for a couple of reasons.  First, it corroborates the historicity of the book of Daniel, despite the scoffing of the liberal-theologian crowd.  Even the most rabid form critic thinks that part of Jeremiah 29 dates from the time of the exile, and it confirms that, yes, Nebuchadnezzar was in the habit of incinerating people he disapproved of.

Second, though the text doesn’t explicitly say so, one imagines that to a point, the experience of Zedekiah and Ahab was similar to the experience of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.  Zedekiah and Ahab might not have mouthed off and made the furnace extra-hot, but down the hole they went regardless.  At the bottom, they found not salvation, but no angel, no protection, and no hope.

All of us have fiery furnaces in our future someplace.  Maybe it won’t be because we refuse to bow to an image set up by a Babylonian monarch, but there is some trial waiting for us that will try us to the depths of our being.  In the heat of that trial, one of two things will be true.  Either we will go through it as faithful servants of God, or we won’t, and that distinction will make all the difference.

Sometimes, the difference won’t be obvious to worldly eyes.  In 2 Timothy 4, Paul anticipates being executed for the cause of Christ, and he was almost certainly right.  However, 2 Timothy 4:18 points out that Paul, though dead, would be rescued.

Zedekiah and Ahab were just dead.

The furnace will reveal the truth about who we are and what we have done.  If we have been righteous like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, the furnace will expose that.  If we haven’t been, well, the furnace will reveal that too.

Those who are opposed to the project of restoring New-Testament Christianity often love to point out times when the churches of Christ (or other conservative groups) are inconsistent in the use of Scripture (they think).   The argument goes that if believers are ignoring the authority of the Bible when it comes to Practice X, they don’t have the right to object to Practice Y on the basis of Bible authority either.  Thus, they conclude, we should feel free to engage in Practice X and Practice Y alike.

There are many different areas of study in which this argument appears.  For instance, Craig Keener famously uses it in his discussion of women in ministry (which those who are so inclined can read here.  He contends, among other things, that people who hand-wave away the covering as a cultural practice 2000 years ago also must accept the argument that 1 Timothy 2:12 is a cultural practice that does not apply to us today.  Others similarly argue that people who eat shellfish should not condemn the practice of homosexuality (Law of Moses for the win!), and that churches that don’t practice foot-washing and the holy kiss shouldn’t insist on a-cappella worship either.

I think there are significant flaws with all of those analogies (comparing apples to elephants does not permit the conclusion that apples have floppy gray ears!), but there is an even more severe problem with the form of argument than that.  If indeed it is true that Christians are being inconsistent by ignoring Commandment X and insisting on Commandment Y, the cure for the disease is not to begin ignoring Y too.  It is to begin practicing both X and Y.

If indeed the Scriptures require women to wear the covering, they should wear the covering.  If indeed Christians are instructed not to eat shellfish, we should not eat shellfish.  If indeed God expects His people to wash feet and exchange holy kisses, we should wash feet and exchange holy kisses.  Period.  End of discussion. 

By contrast, if we are wrong about coverings and shellfish and kisses, we should not compound our error by allowing female ministers and the practice of homosexuality and instrumental music!  Unrighteousness is not an excuse for more unrighteousness, not ever.

I don’t think that every commandment in the Bible is binding on Christians today, nor do I even know anyone who argues that they are and lives accordingly.  There are reasons to ignore the ordinances about shellfish, along with the rest of the Law of Moses.  There are reasons to regard commandments concerning the covering as specific to a particular place and time.    If we’re going to say yes to shellfish and no to the covering, we need to know, understand, and accept those arguments.

What we must not do is dismiss the parts of the Bible that we don’t feel like following as “cultural” while insisting on the rest as the inspired word of God.  There is a deadly problem with so doing, and it is not that we have opened the door to lady preachers and gay marriage.  It is that we have done what is right in our own eyes while rejecting His ordinance.  We have dethroned Him as King and set ourselves up in His place.

No one with a spirit like that can inherit eternal life, and that’s true no matter what our culture (or any other) says.

Several weeks ago, I got a distressed phone call from one of the sisters at Jackson Heights.  She expressed her concern that in one of the adult Bible classes, it didn’t seem like anyone was talking.  I sympathized with her and promised that I would write a blog post on the value of Bible-class participation, so here we are!

To me, one of the most beautiful things about the churches of Christ is our core belief:  that ordinary Christians are equipped by God to read and understand the Bible for themselves.  We don’t need priests, pastors, or anyone else to tell us what to believe.  We can figure it out on our own.

I think a Bible class is one of the highest expressions of this ideal.  Maybe we don’t know much about the Bible ourselves (though this assumption is often mistaken when it comes to brethren), and maybe we’re in a class with other Christians who don’t know much about the Bible either (ditto), but the few things that we each know usually aren’t the same things. 

As a result, a good Bible class is like a potluck dinner.  Nobody wants to make a meal out of nothing but their green-bean casserole.  However, when we bring our casserole, and somebody else brings their Jell-O salad, and somebody else brings their ham, and somebody else brings their iced tea, and so forth, the result is a meal that will satisfy everybody.  I’ve never heard anyone complain about being underfed at a potluck!

In the same way, even if that auditorium or classroom isn’t filled with top-notch Bible scholars, it’s probably true that everybody in the room has something to contribute.  Maybe it’s an answer to the who’s-buried-in-Grant’s-Tomb opening question.  Maybe it’s a related passage.  Maybe it’s a personal experience with the spiritual concept under discussion. 

Probably none of those things would be enough to carry a sermon, for instance, on their own.  However, when you put them all together, what you really are doing is pooling the spiritual wisdom of the group.  I respect ordinary Christians as individuals, but I have a whole lot of respect for what ordinary Christians come up with when they put their heads together!  In fact, I can’t recall having been in a discussion-based class without feeling nourished and edified by the discussion.  As much as I love worshiping in song, I love studying the Bible with my brethren just as much.

Potlucks work.  You’re never sure beforehand just how they’re going to work, but they always end up working.  The only way they can fail is if the participants don’t bring anything but show up expecting to eat anyway.  In the same way, what sinks a Bible class is not the comments that the people in the class make.  It’s the comments they don’t make.  You’ve got the poor Bible class teacher up in front with his green-bean casserole all by himself, and it makes for a poor meal.

In conclusion, then, I have this to say:  if you’re used to sitting there in Bible class not talking, now’s the time to start (unless, of course, you have conscience issues with participating).  You know more about the Bible than you think you do, a lot more.  Trust me!  I’ve studied with folks who truly knew nothing about the Bible, and the difference is profound.  You have insights that are wiser than you think they are.  You have experiences that are more relevant than you can imagine. 

Share what you have.  If everybody will do the same, I guarantee that everybody will be well fed.

Some brethren are allergic to slippery-slope arguments.  Whenever they see someone arguing that departing from the pattern in one area will lead to apostasy in everything, they link to the Wikipedia page about logical fallacies, which does describe a slippery-slope argument as an informal logical fallacy.

However, we need to understand the limits of this counter-argument.  All Wikipedia, etc., are saying is that a slippery-slope argument proves nothing by itself.  It does not necessarily follow that because things have gotten this bad, they will continue to get worse.  Sometimes, they stay the same.  Sometimes, they do get worse.

Sadly, experience has taught us that the latter tends to be true when it comes to matters of Scriptural authority.  Indifference to the silence of the Scriptures naturally leads to indifference to isolated commandments.  That in turn naturally leads to indifference to the most important commandments of the Bible. 

Over the past 75 years, we’ve seen congregations make this sad journey.  They began by embracing church support of colleges and fellowship halls, even though we read nothing of such things in the word.  Increasingly, such churches are now in the midst of rejecting Bible teaching on a-cappella worship and women in positions of authority.  The conclusion of this process seems to be denial of the necessity of baptism for salvation.

As evidence for this proposition, consider this pamphlet produced by the Oak Hills Church of San Antonio, formerly the Oak Hills Church of Christ.  I would describe this pamphlet as a model of obfuscation, designed to offer just enough to appease both those who believe that baptism is necessary for forgiveness of sins and those who do not.  Though offered the opportunity to stand either with the first-century church or with the denominational world, Oak Hills appears to be doing its best to choose C) None of the Above.

However, there are a couple of sections in this pamphlet that give the game away.  The first is its analysis of 1 Peter 3:21 on Page 6 (there are no page numbers; you’ll have to count).  According to Oak Hills, the passage teaches that baptism is important because it shows commitment to God.  Well, yes, I guess you can get that out of 1 Peter 3:21, but it is hardly the core teaching of the text! 

1 Peter 3:21 is important because it says, in so many words, that baptism saves.  If Oak Hills acknowledges that, they can’t say, as they do at the bottom of the page, “Please understand; it is not the act that saves us.”  Of course, if you repeat Bible teaching on the saving effect of baptism, you also put a stumbling block in the way of those who don’t believe it’s important.

I was also struck by Oak Hills’ message to those who were sprinkled as infants and see no need to be immersed.  They say, “If you choose not to be immersed at this time, we still welcome you as a member. We ask only that you respect our teaching position and not be divisive.”  They go on to say that members who teach have to accept the church’s position on immersion.  Presumably, others do not.

Hmm. 

As I understand this, you can be somebody who was sprinkled as an infant, go to Oak Hills, be received as a member, appear in the church directory, be in the church band, and lead prayers, all without ever being immersed, period, let alone for the forgiveness of your sins.  In other words, Oak Hills does not view Bible baptism as a necessary part of being made right with God and being added to His church.  They may talk a big game about the importance of Bible baptism, but when you get right down to it, they think baptism is an extra.

In Luke 16:10, Jesus notes that he who is faithful in little will be faithful in much.  Concerns about fellowship halls and orphans’ homes may strike some as rampant legalism, but ultimately, it’s about respect for the authority of the King.  We can’t shrug our shoulders at that authority when it comes to matters that seem unimportant to us while still honoring it in things that we think are essential.  As Oak Hills’ example proves, such a spirit easily can lead to unconcern with the things that we used to think were essential too.