(This blog posting was written for Presbyterian Action's General Assembly blog.)
As a member of the Presbyterian Action GA team, I was one of the observers last night (the 21st) in the back of the hall when Bruce Reyes-Chow was elected Moderator of the 218th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA).
Reyes-Chow has a broad appeal due to his youthfulness and engaging manner. He injected an air of freshness and humor into his remarks. Much of this, in addition to his positions on theology and issues, undoubtedly went into his election. However, as I listened to his 5-minute statement, and to his answers to questions posed by commissioners and advisory delegates, one remark struck me and caused me to ponder its meaning.
Reyes-Chow said he wants the PC(USA) to be a church that "cares more about being faithful than about being right."
I understood this to mean that he hoped Presbyterians would care more about being faithful than about being doctrinally correct--care more about being faithful than about what they are faithful to. Later my husband said that he thought Reyes-Chow meant that he hoped that Presbyterians would care more about being faithful than about being the right one in a dispute--care more about being faithful than about winning an argument.
Let me discuss this second view first.
If Reyes-Chow meant that he hoped that Presbyterians would come to care more about being faithful than about winning arguments, this implies that he believes that now there are at least some Presbyterians who do care more about winning arguments than they care about faithfulness. No matter who he might have in mind, this is a patronizing attitude to take towards any group of people, let alone fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.
If this is indeed his meaning, it implies that there are some Presbyterians that he has not gotten to know well enough to understand their motives. It is also disappointing to think that a candidate for Moderator--who now actually is our Moderator--would have such an uncharitable attitude towards any group. One always hopes that anyone would attribute the best possible motive to anyone until there is concrete evidence of a worse motive.
If this was indeed Reyes-Chow's meaning, let us hope that, as he grows into his role as Moderator, he will get to know all groups in the PC(USA) well enough that he will understand their motives and support them as fellow Presbyterians, even if he disagrees with them. I think he has expressed such intentions at least, and, since Reyes-Chow has shown kindness to our family in the past, I do not think that he intends a putdown to anyone. Perhaps the full implication of his words--if this was his meaning--have not occurred to him.
I thought, however, that what Reyes-Chow meant was that he was looking forward to Presbyterians caring more about being faithful than about being right or wrong in their beliefs. And after he said it, it struck me that--if that was his meaning--I didn't know how that could actually be possible in a meaningful way. How can anyone be faithful to anything if they don't know whether or not they're right about it? Or, at least, how can their faithfulness be meaningful in such a situation?
Faithfulness needs to be faithfulness to something. It's wonderful to care about faithfulness. But if we don't know whether or not we're right about what we're faithful to, then no matter how much we care about our faithfulness to it, we may actually be doing harm in the world rather than good, if we are wrong about what we're being faithful to.
For example, white supremacists may be very faithful to their cause. But, as I'm sure Reyes-Chow and most people reading this blog would agree, the white supremacist cause is both wrong and harmful. Faithfulness alone, without being right, is not sufficient.
Rightness, and truth, matter if we want to love the world with God's love, rather than blunder through it willy-nilly, even while being faithful. When we care about being right, we don't care about it for the sake of winning arguments, or for the sake of pride in the correctness of our doctrine, but rather we care about it so that we can serve God in the way that God knows best, to his glory, the furtherance of his reign, and the better love and care of all his people.
It sounds very friendly and inclusive to hope that Presbyterians will care more about being faithful than about being right, but it is actually careless and dismissive. I hope to hear better things in the future from our new Moderator.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
It might be that Bruce is talking about other kinds of faithfulness and right-ness. There is also faithfulness in the context of interrelationship. I can be faithful to a friend without that friend being "right" - in fact, if I'm ever to be faithful to any person, it will have to be in spite of them periodically not being right, and my periodically being wrong as well. Its the nature of human beings that we are only rarely 'right', and then only partially and temporarily.
I think it is also possible to, for example, err on the side of relational faithfulness as a denomination, rather than erring on the side of conflicting over who is 'right'. I realize, or have realized, that this is not a comfortable option for some, who seem to find it very difficult to be in relationship with someone they think is wrong on a particular piece of dogma - and in some cases is hard for me as well I suppose (it'd be hard to be relationally faithful to a white supremacist, for example).
I try to do this a lot at my internship, where I have conversations with people who disagree with me, sometimes pretty vehemently and passionately, on things I feel pretty confident about. In those situations, I think about how I can stay in relationship to them, and sometimes that means not broaching a certain subject, or broaching it in such a way that I'm open to what they have to say - as open as I can be, anyway. I try to make my main concern not be demonstrating that I'm right, but rather being 'right with them'. Bruce might mean something like that.
I just mention this because, while I can't speak for Bruce, he is a postmodern, and for him that likely means that relationship is more important than articles of assent.
We can also talk about rightness of relationship, perhaps. It might be that in some situations, even when I disagree with someone, even when I am quite sure they are wrong, to still relate to them in other ways. Again, I can't speak for what Bruce means.
There are definitely times when it is 'right' to call someone out, to call them to account, for their own good and for yours. We still need standards of relationship - not to have to endure abuse, for example, or manipulation, or dishonesty.
Actually, you might want to email him or post a comment to his blog and ask him. I'm almost certain he'll respond, and you might have detected something in his thinking that he needs to be made aware of. Or he might have a bit of clarification to make that will bring more understanding. But he's a pretty approachable guy - I'd say contact him before he gets too Moderator-y and that changes :)
Thanks for that insight, Doug. I was actually thinking of being faithful in terms of faithfulness to God and/or Christian belief, rather than faithfulness to each other as Presbyterians, but this is certainly another area that could be explored. I might take your suggestion of contacting him; Jim actually knows him.
So do I - my friends were his interns from SFTS, and I've been to some services there. He's a really approachable guy, or at least he has been to date, and has a huge internet presence through his blog, so he's used to being contacted that way. I imagine he's busy, but I doubt he'll fail to respond at all - certainly not intentionally.
Debbie,
Doug said it better than me, but in response to your comment that “Faithfulness needs to be faithfulness to something.” I’d like to say that I think Reyes-Chow’s comment assumed rather that faithfulness is not to some thing, but faithfulness is to some One.
Personally I believe Jesus calls us to express our faithfulness to the living God by showing faithfulness to each other, loving our neighbors as we love ourselves.
My own extension of this view is perhaps patronizing, because I think that Fundamentalists in their devotion to inerrancy make the worse error of all by placing their faith in things and ideas instead of in the person of Christ, while ultra liberals make a similar error in their devotion to militant causes by taking matters in their own hands rather than trusting the methods Jesus taught. But by itself his view is neither uncharitable nor patronizing. You can’t deny that our church is full of people more dedicated to proving themselves right and their opponents wrong than being charitable towards their perceived enemies and letting them have the last word in a dispute. Reyes-Chow is only quoting Jesus when he says that it is more important to be faithful to each other than trying to prove each other wrong, or proving ourselves to be right.
Does this apply to matters of doctrine and biblical interpretation? Absolutely.
Am I suggesting you are wrong and I am right? Yup, it’s a Catch-22. You can’t play this game and win. Only by loosing do you win.
I think that is why they call it the way of the cross.
Jodie
Jodie, I'm rushing between GA events so this is short. First, I was discussing faithfulness in general when I talked about "faithfulness to something", so I was not implying anything about not being faithful to someone (i.e. God/Christ) in the context of Christianity.
Second, as I am unfamiliar with fundamentalist doctrine and am not acquainted with any fundamentalists, I'm not sure why you're bringing fundamentalism into the conversation. In addition, the Presbyterian evangelicals of my acquaintance also do not believe in inerrancy, so that is also a straw man.
Since I don't know any people who are "more dedicated to proving themselves right and their opponents wrong than being charitable towards their perceived enemies and letting them have the last word in a dispute", I can't answer your challenge on that; you must know a different group of people from those that I know.
Debbie
Post a Comment