You Can Fake It All

[ILG]

Originally Posted by MissBrattified

I agree with you, but I also believe we are given a set of filters in the New Testament which provide a sort of litmus test for who's real and who isn't. Unfortunately, those litmus tests aren't usually the ones the church today uses.

The NT litmus tests were comprised of "love for one another", "looking after orphans and widows", "keeping yourself unspotted from the world", and "bridling your tongue." The most vague of those is the one about keeping yourself unspotted from the world, which allows for the most expansive application and the most abuse (in the sense that the term can be exploited to fit nearly any agenda). The others are largely discarded in my observation, and understandably, since bridling your tongue, loving people and looking after the disenfranchised are much more difficult things to accomplish.

That said, I don't think those filters were given to us so we could go around labeling people as being in or out or tares or wheat. It's more of an FYI to help us know the people with whom we labor and be aware of who to follow and who not to follow. I don't believe that those guidelines were given to us for the purpose of taking action against others to remove them from the church. I guess my POV is that we can observe and take note, but with the humility that we don't really know what's in people's hearts (so we can't really say for SURE) and that it's God's place to deal with the fakes.

A funny little thing happened yesterday. One of my girls and I were going over a list of words from an ACT prep list, and we came across the word "sanctimonious." She didn't know the definition, so I read it to her: "making a show of being morally superior to other people"--and I added, "people who act holier than thou." She immediately responded with a snort and said, "Yeah, most of the people around here act holier than thou." I looked at her and responded with, "And that was a sanctimonious statement that you just made."

It's so hard to see ourselves while we malign and judge other people. I hope my children at LEAST get the message that they are responsible for themselves to God, and that they don't need to take on the burden of forcing others to live right, do right, speak right or even make it to heaven. More importantly, I hope they never make their relationship with God contingent on their relationships with people.

Excellent post and some great points! The "litmus tests" as you put it are pretty open to interpretation. I think when people start limiting those interpretations that trouble can happen. Of course, there are limits, which is almost another topic, meaning that church hierarchy does have to draw certain lines and remove certain people, like pastors if they are committing adultery etc. Interestingly some churches that use narrow litmus tests also like to use the "we're only human" reasoning when it comes to removal of people in higher positions of authority. This is where people will often call foul and feel hypocrisy is in the midst.

Again, these are mostly conceptual ideas that can't be drawn into black and white rules (love one another, be modest). I think there are some instances that the more they become black and white, the more dangerous it is and other instances that ARE black and white (adultery, stealing) that people try to make vague.

It is when there is this combination of of tight, narrow litmus tests that are used to prove spirituality combined with the vague litmus tests for authority figures in the same movement that things become very toxic very fast.