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Radical Reformation History  /  Lecture 17: The Church Splits of Holland – Lessons for Today  /  Discussion Questions
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Question 10
In the Frisian/Flemish reconciliation meeting, the moderator made one side stay kneeling until the other side “lift you up because your sin was worse than theirs,” leading to lasting division into Russia and even Canada; what does this incident reveal about pride disguised as repentance, and how might Jesus’s “log and speck” teaching demand a radically different approach to apologies, mediation, and “who started it” in your own church conflicts?
Another way to ask: What does the kneeling incident show about pride that looks like repentance? How does Jesus’s “log and speck” teaching change the way we apologize, mediate, and argue about who started it?

Direct Answer The incident shows that “reconciliation” can become a stage for superiority: forcing one side to accept that their “sin was worse” turns repentance into humiliation and triggers deeper offense. Dean’s “log and speck” application demands the opposite posture—treating my own wrong as the bigger issue and refusing apology language that quietly says, “but you were worse.”

Support from Transcript:

  • The meeting begins well: both sides kneel and “confess the wrong that you had done.”
  • The mediator’s fatal move: “Don’t get up yet… I want the Cretian brothers to lift you up because your sin was worse than theirs.”
  • Result: “Most of them got offended… the rift was there, and it was solid.”
  • Long-term consequence: the division “never recover[ed]… carried it into… Russia… even into Canada… some… remain to the day.”
  • Dean’s Rule #10: “when you’re making up, don’t say that your sin is worse than mine… It’s not an apology.”
  • He ties it to Jesus’s teaching via a friend: reconciliation grows when “your sins… seem so big” and your brother’s “seems so little”—the “log” vs “speck” mindset.
Discussion Follow-ups In your apologies, where do you smuggle in self-defense? What would mediation look like if the goal was not determining who was worse, but helping each side take full responsibility (100/100) and seek peace?

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