15 October 2023
The American Anglo-Saxon cultural roots get "trust" all wrong. I've said often enough that America is built on top of a high-trust culture. The connotations of "trust" in our society amounts to keeping yourself open to rape. There is a strong tendency for government to forbid self-defense because it hinders state prerogatives. But that is merely symbolic of an underlying mentality that demands you remain open to deep intrusion from outsiders.
The Bible presumes a low-trust society. Even within the Covenant, you should be guarded against your brothers and sisters. If you can look in the mirror and see your own moral flaws, then you have reason to expect even your closest confidants to fail. There are some elements of your soul that you cannot expose to anyone but Christ.
The real flaw, then, is in what American culture defines as guard-worthy. The Covenant will very adamantly disagree with that. We already know that our lives and all we own are forfeit to the Cross. It's the intangibles that we are more careful about. There are some things you cannot afford to give, and Americans get this mostly wrong.
It's exceedingly difficult to put this in clinical terms. I'm no better than anyone else, and there are times I might stomp your heart. It's not a question of keeping me distant in fleshly terms, but to steel yourself against certain kinds of loss. The difficulty for Americans is the false ideals. We have this crazy notion about what sort of things must be open to someone who shares our faith. We don't know how to carry a sword among brothers.
You will need one in my company; I will carry one in yours. You will need to understand how to defend yourself when I clumsily transgress your personal boundaries. I'll give a more concrete example.
On one occasion, I was filling the pulpit of a pastorless church. I didn't know the people, and they didn't know me. At one point, I referred to church goers who felt obliged to pray in butchered King's English. They don't understand the grammar of the KJV. I said it was okay; we can learn to tolerate things like that.
Turns out there was a fellow in the congregation who prayed like that. Only, he did it right; his King's English was superb (as I later learned). But he was sensitive about it, feeling insulted by my off-handed comment that was by no means aimed at him. A real godly man would have defended his linguistic art based on his convictions, and would not have worried too much about my feelings. "This brings me peace with God; you need to get used to it, Brother." He should have been carrying his sword and marked out his boundaries.
The core issue here is worshiping with broken people because there aren't any other kind. You need not be wide open to wounding in your soul. Mark your boundaries; don't hide them. No, it's not the kind of thing you need to rant about every chance you get. Mention it when it's pertinent. Defend yourself against how Satan uses even God's people. Don't run them off; reclaim them. Expect them to grow, albeit at their own pace.
It didn't help that the church in question didn't believe in the heart and used "convictions" as just a religious word that seldom figured in their approach to faith. The man who choked on my comment was rather insecure, yet was a deacon. All very typical of American Big Eva, rooted in Anglo-Saxon culture.
I would go so far as to say that the reason for hundreds of denominations is that people don't know how to carry a spiritual sword. They feel obliged to leave themselves wide open on the wrong things. The only way they know how to mark out their boundaries is to narrow down what they will tolerate, and build a new denomination to include only a slender selection of believers who would think alike. We don't have a good biblical concept of what should be allowed some variation. They insist that "faith" is the content of belief, not a commitment and trust in God.
We have a long, long way to go to build a covenant community.
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