Accountability, Church Discipline and Jesus
Recently, a church in Texas has made the news because of the "controversial" way they handled a certain church discipline. Because I'm not familiar with the details of the situation, I'm not going to say anything specific about it, but it does bring up certain questions I've had about accountability and what the Bible says about it.
The standard passage used by churches to help define the method by which they perform official church discipline is Matthew 18.15-17. Essentially there are four steps:
- Correct the sinner privately, if that doesn't work:
- Correct the sinner with another person, if that doesn't work:
- Tell it to the church, if that doesn't work:
- "let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector" (vs. 18)
(My wife is lecturing me right now about slippery slopes and all that, but I am tuning her out. Honey, you can't avoid something just because it's a slippery slope. And I don't know why you're using that phrase anyway because you hate it.)
Anyway.
Many people respond that the Church needs some way to hold people accountable for their actions. Does it really? The only reason (that I can think of) for this would be to maintain power and control. If you were to look at all the times in the bible the word "account" (i.e. give an account, be accountable, etc.) is used, never once does it mention people being forced to give an account to each other for their sin. Instead everyone has to give an account to God. It's really between the person and God. When it does talk about people giving account to each other, it is always confessional and always initiated by the sinner. It seems to me, from my experience at least, that people who want to initiate some form of accountability on someone else are usually the most judgmental and least loving. The powers that be use it to maintain a power structure which usually puts them at the head.
One last thing on the Matthew 18 passage: what does it mean for Jesus to tell his disciples to treat the unrepentant sinner as a gentile or tax collector? He was notorious for his association with the outcast (i.e. gentile and tax collecter) and not disassociating himself from them, but accepting them where they were! This statement is so out of character from everything else the gospels tell us about him, it makes me suspicious...any thoughts?
5 comments:
The point of disciplining my children is not to "gain power over them". It is to bring them to repentence and reconciliation. If a church is doing what Matt. 18 says, the goal is to bring about repentence and reconciliation and fits in exactly with the parable of the lost sheep. "Kicking someone out of the church" is not mentioned here. You simply treat someone who refuses to repent as a "pagan or tax collector", which simply means an unrepentant person, which they've already shown themselves to be. Which also means you love them as Jesus did (and how we should love everyone). Don't let people that you consider wrong in the first place interpret a passge for you.
How do you see this passage/idea fitting in with 1 Corinthians 5..?
Dan, I don't think you can equate disciplining your children to church discipline, it's at an entirely different level. And just as a side thought, isn't a part of discipline establishing your authority over your kids. You have the power to discipline and they don't.
Secondly, the goal of the passage is not, from a plain reading, reconciliation. From a Jewish perspective, making someone a "gentile and tax collector," meant having no contact with them...no reconciliation. There is no connection to unrepentant people, because these people had nothing to repent from, they were on a different level from unrepentant sinners. (Except for possibly the tax collector--collusion with the government/greed).
Brian, Welcome! You bring up a valid question, and thank you for asking it. I'm not sure, right now, that I would connect the teachings of Paul with the teachings of Christ. Paul reacted in harsh, unmerciful ways that I'm not sure Jesus would've condoned. In my mind, I think many Christians have in a sense deified Paul, so that his words are innerant, and I don't accept that right now...tomorrow, I might have a different answer. :) Jesus' community was filled with "unrepentant people," else why the accusations against him. His group was also full of repentant people too, don't get me wrong, but as soon as we disconnect contact with someone because they're a "sinner" I think we've created a boundary that Jesus didn't have.
Ben~
I had fun with this, only my reply kept growing and growing and I just feel bad about dumping it all here. So, for your convenience, I'm giving you the gist of my thoughts and--not to hijack the conversation, I promise-- posting the extended version on my livejournal, if you care to read how these gists flesh themselves out. Ok. Ah-hem:
*It is odd for a moment, until I remember that Jesus often spoke of future things, including the shape His kingdom would assume, that befuddled his myopia-ridden disciples.
*I guess I’m not sure why the location of this teaching seems weird to you? I think it flows nicely, but maybe I’m off. My reading of the over-all context is this: The disciples, as usual, are concerned with an irrelevant question—‘who is the greatest in the kingdom?’ Jesus, using a child to illustrate the topsy-turvy dynamics of His kingdom, establishes (again) the communal-nature of the kingdom; everything that follows seems, to me, directly related to what it looks like when an earthly community functions by observing heavenly laws.
*I think that with the slightest shift in your interpretive grid, you might be able to see this as a teaching in reconciliation rather than ex-communication....To sum up: not to be the human manifestation of God’s discipline, but to be the human manifestation of His love for us that longs to draw us back to His heart and back within His family, no matter how many times we scurry off.
*As much as He wanted his hearers to broaden their vision of the Kingdom and of who could be included in it, He also knew that their instinct was still to reject the gentile and revile the tax collector. In this instance, I think it could be safe to assume that a tax collector is just a tax collector.
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