The Clarity of Scripture — Allen Roth — Ep. 160

Obedience precedes understanding. I will give him the benefit of the doubt. He is God; I am not.

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Anabaptist Perspectives. We're down here in Athens, Tennessee, and are honored to have you with us again, Alan Roth. Last time we did this, I think, was up in Brooklyn, where you're from. So why don't you introduce yourself to the audience? Well, just very briefly, I grew up on a farm out in Oregon and served in northwestern Ontario among Canadian First Nations people. From there, we went to Central America, where we lived seven and a half years in church planting. From there, we moved to New York City, living in a very Hispanic and Caribbean neighborhood, where we have lived now for about 34 years, 35 years. Very good.

So this episode, we're going to take a few points you had made in an essay you wrote for our website, anabaptistperspectives.org. And I'm just going to read a section here. The title is "Planting an Anabaptist Church in a City." And you posed this question to the audience: How does one plant churches teaching people to obey clear commands of Scripture that go in the opposite direction of many accepted norms of prevailing culture? And then part of the answer you provide in that same essay is this: The church planters will need to discuss among themselves the hot-button issues that they face, always asking the question, "What does the Bible say?" The Bible actually says a lot more about things than we give it credit.

So could you unpack that a little more? What are the hot-button issues that the Bible actually does talk about very clearly? Okay. These are some of the ones that we have faced. And the list keeps growing longer as our cultures depart from a Judeo-Christian worldview. One was very early on in church planting and winning people to Christ from a non-Anabaptist and unchurched background: How mature must new believers be before you baptize them in terms of their lifestyle issues?

And a related question is: Should baptism and church membership be one and the same thing at the same time, or do you baptize first, disciple some more, giving new believers time to process lifestyle issues, and then incorporate them into church membership? So that's one issue that needs to be thought through. Another one is, this would be in the area of church administration: When you have the Lord's Supper, is it to be open communion or close communion? Open communion meaning that people may participate who have clearly affiliated with Christ as their Lord and Savior and have received believers' baptism, but they're not necessarily members of our church or of any church. Close communion, sometimes they say closed, but often close communion is that this is for members only.

Sometimes we think that only Anabaptists are the ones that have close communion, but there are other denominations that do as well. So it's not merely, it's not only or exclusively an Anabaptist issue. We have worked in both approaches. Each approach has its own set of challenges and strengths. A third issue, of course, is divorce and remarriage.

What do you do when people come to you who are divorced and remarried prior to coming to Christ? That's one of the hardest ones that a pastor is going to face. It's very, very difficult. And the emotions run very deep, and the ramifications are very, very deep.

A fourth one would be, you know, what do we think about biracial and cross-cultural marriages? And some people feel very strongly that people should marry just within their own race or their own ethnicity. Others would say, well, no, intermarriage is good. And so what do you think about that? And people have defended both positions, have tried to defend both positions with the Bible. Another one would be for us from an Anabaptist perspective who care about biblical teachings on modesty and on gender distinctions in clothing. How do we work at that?

And that's not easy either. How do you go about saying, well, this is modest and that isn't? And this is distinctively male and this is distinctively female. And when they're, you may be working in cultures where it's quite different from what we have grown up with. Still another is outward adornment. That includes things like makeup. It includes things like the wedding ring. Sometimes we don't think about it in our own culture, in our own conservative Mennonite culture is, what about expensive watches? And so we can develop blind spots to some of these things. And then when we try to teach what the Scripture says about simplicity and not having outward adornment, people say, well, look, you're not being consistent yourself.

That's another issue. Another one, and here's where I can risk walking on some thin ice, but the whole thing of distinctive attire, choosing certain clothing styles in order to mark us off as being a separate people. So that is related to a larger issue: is non-conformity to be something that we aim for in order to make us distinct from the world, or is it something that is a result of obeying the clear commands of Scripture without attempting to be distinctive? So that's another issue that in some of our circles will have to be talked about. Still another one is what are acceptable styles of worship in church? And here we're going to be talking about things like instrumentation in worship.

May one use local musical instruments in a style of worship that feels comfortable to the people of that culture? Or in order to have acceptable worship, must all churches, all converts learn to sing four-part harmony unaccompanied? That's another issue to talk about. Still another is what exactly is the women's role, the woman's role in the life of the church?

And so you have the distinction in roles of the genders, but particularly how it impacts church participation. So that one needs to be unpacked at some point. Increasingly, we have questions about homosexuality, about transgender issues. How do we love people and welcome and respect people when there are certain lifestyles that seem to us to be clearly proscribed in Scripture? What do we do with that?

And then there are still some more. Just a collection would be our thoughts about immigration. How do we work with incorporating new believers who are undocumented? Must they wait to be baptized until they get a green card here in this country, which can take years? Or if we go ahead and baptize them and then try to get them in process in the immigration system, may they participate in leadership roles or not if they haven't gotten approved by the government? Where are we in that?

Another one, and it's a hot-button issue currently, is the whole thing of discrimination, racial discrimination. Another one can be political involvement. Must people, in order to be good members, abstain from voting, or may they vote? Must they abstain from involvement, say, in local civic organizations or not?

Another issue would be when you are working at planting a church, what about affiliation? Is it better for this church to be unaffiliated, or is it better for this church in the long haul to be affiliated with a broader association of churches? And in case you thought that that's enough of a list, there will be more to add to the list later on. These are issues I'm assuming you've had a lot of personal interaction with in various ways over the years. That's how I know that list exists.

That's quite a list. It is. It's a lot of challenges. Why don't we give Scripture more credit for the things that it does clearly address? So yes, you had quite a list there. And in various ways, Scripture does address each of those things.

What are we missing here? Well, I would say, first of all, we don't know our Bibles as well as we could or should. And so we may think, as I have thought different times on certain of these issues, well, the Bible really doesn't say anything about that. So we're free to use common sense and so on. And then later on, through the ministry or the prompting of the Holy Spirit or through daily Bible reading, I discover, oh, it does say something about that, and I thought it didn't. But it was because of my ignorance of the Word of God.

And I could tell you stories on some of those that the Lord rebuked me for my ignorance when I was saying that the Bible doesn't say anything about it. Another reason could be that, you know, our culture is becoming so secularized and is so rapidly moving away from a Judeo-Christian worldview.

And not only that, it's becoming increasingly hostile toward those who embrace a Judeo-Christian worldview. We are impacted by the surrounding culture. We are impacted by our diet of what we read and view and think and just what we study. And so we may grow up just assuming the Bible doesn't say anything about certain things. It's a cultural blind spot for us, just like people in other cultures are blind to certain things in their culture. That could be another reason. And right close to that one, Reagan, would be the pressure of an increasingly ungodly culture around us and the pressure that they put on believers who wholeheartedly embrace and espouse or promote biblical values. That pressure is there.

Often, there's hostility there. And then you add to that compromised churches across the country within our own culture. You have other believers who say, no, well, I know the Bible says that, but it doesn't mean that. Obviously, that was just their culture. That brings pressure on us as well. And so when we start reading the commentaries online or in print, and we see, for example, where Jesus says, don't swear at all. And James says, so at all. Also, don't swear at all. But we get our evangelical study Bibles, and I'm not saying we shouldn't use them. But down there at the footnote, it'll say, well, this does not forbid all swearing, only swearing lightly.

Well, I just got done reading up there. It says, do not swear at all. The prevailing view of certain passages of the broader Christian church also brings pressure to bear on us as well. Because obviously they know better than my preacher that didn't get past high school, and these guys have their MDivs and their THMs and whatnot. Obviously, they know better than my pastor does.

So that brings pressure on us as well. Another one? You still want another one? Yeah. Okay. The growing, I would say the growing and outsized confidence that we have in science and in psychology to define and to explain reality for us. If science says that, or if psychology says that, psychology says that certain people were born in certain ways to do certain things, well, who are we to refute science or to refute psychology? And this results in a decreasing confidence in the trustworthiness of Scripture because obviously science has disproven this or that. And I think I see too just increasing open, frequent attacks upon Scripture as being infallible. It's inerrant. It's trustworthy wherever it speaks to whatever it speaks.

Once that trust in the trustworthiness of Scripture is eroded, then what you do there is go to common sense or to prevailing views or to science or psychology and so on. And that was really Satan's first temptation to Eve in the garden.

He said, did God say? Right from the very beginning, he worked at creating in her doubt in the trustworthiness of Scripture, the Word of God. And once that has been established, then everything else flows downhill from there. I would say that our people are being exposed more and more to divergent views of what has been traditionally understood to be the meaning and application of Scriptures. Say, for example, a hundred years ago, nobody but nobody in the Christian world would have said that 1 Corinthians 11 is not talking about a piece of cloth in addition to long hair on a woman's head.

Even the secular society, women did wore something on their head. Just go to an art museum and you can see it. But now, with so many divergent views of Scripture, it can be bewildering and confusing when you hear, you check out 12 commentaries, all of them except one say, no, it doesn't really mean a literal material piece of cloth. That was just a cultural understanding. Even if it did refer to a piece of cloth, it doesn't refer to us today.

And so the young believer who's reading all this says, well, my, the vast majority of people believe that it doesn't mean exactly what we read on the page. And that can undermine our confidence and reliance on the Scripture. What are some practical steps our audience can take to building, first of all, you mentioned deeper biblical understanding, but also a greater respect for the authority of God's word, really. What's some practical next steps people can take? Well, one of the things, Reagan, that's been so helpful for me since 1981, I've made it a habit of mine to read through the whole Bible every year. The whole Old Testament at least once in a year and the New Testament twice.

The Holy Spirit can't bring to your memory things that you don't know. But when you read the Scriptures over and over and over, then when a particular lifestyle issue comes up, a question comes up, or a new believer or a hostile unbeliever asks you a question, the Holy Spirit has something to work with, and he can bring to your memory. Oh, the Bible says, and that ought to be at the top of our list. What does the Bible say? Does it speak to this issue? Scripture memory, of course, is also very useful because it's a way of repatterning how we think so that we begin to think God's thoughts after him, the transformation of our minds.

It is also helpful to read in church history to see how the church has viewed things down through the millennia. There are very few totally new issues. Satan's not that creative. He merely repackages things, brings back old heresies. And people, they're like a hen that finds a piece of corn and she grabs it up and cackles and thinks she's found something new. And everybody else runs around after her because she found something new. But it's really not new. A pastor friend of mine said, if it's new, it's not true. And if it's true, it's not new.

It's the faith once for all delivered to the saints. So that's where church history can be useful to learn what are some of the ancient errors and to recognize them when they come around again. Another thing that's been very helpful for me is, remember Jesus said, I think it's in John 8 or John 7, either one, if a man will do my will, he will know that the doctrine is of God and is not of men.

Obedience precedes understanding. And so we need to come to the Scripture with the posture, God's word is right, even if and when I don't fully understand it. I will give him the benefit of the doubt. He is God. I am not.

And so if there's a particular passage that I'm not completely sure about, why not try putting it in practice and then watching to see the fruit that comes out of that? Now, I know that runs risking disapproval by your peers at times.

But Jesus did say in Matthew 7 that in the judgment day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, didn't we do this in your name and didn't we do that? And the other thing he says, I never knew you. Get away from me, you workers of iniquity. You did not do the will of my Father.

So obedience, obeying what we know, opens the door for understanding more. Refusing to obey clear commands of Scripture shuts down, slowly but slowly, our understanding of other Scriptures. God has designed it that way. He reveals himself more fully to people who fully embrace him as Lord and his word. Well, thank you for sharing those things. That's some really good advice.

Yeah. Thank you for your time, Alan. You're welcome. And for the lessons you're willing to share with us. Thank you all for watching or listening. If you like content like this, we produce new material each week. You can go to our website for more and also to find the essay that you wrote on this topic as well. We'll be up on our website at anabaptistperspectives.org. Thank you for joining us for this episode. And thanks to our donors and partners for making this possible. We publish essays on our website at anabaptistperspectives.org. We also release these essays in narrated form as their own podcast called Essays for King Jesus.