02 July 2024
There is a compelling reason why Scripture puts such a heavy emphasis on the shepherd image of manhood: God expects His followers to keep on eye on the sheep of His pasture. He most certainly does delegate that task. You know that Paul kept insisting he didn't volunteer to be an apostle, but Christ commanded him to take up that role. A major element in the shepherd image of leadership is that good men of God are reluctant to take the lead. It doesn't matter why; they must be dragged into it by the power of God. Anyone eager to lead is morally unqualified.
It's all part of the bigger picture. The Radix Fidem community teaches that God's Creation is inherently feudal and God expects us to operate that way in our covenant community. This is the nature of "church" in the New Testament. Most leaders don't want to do it that way. Our cultural instincts are to be libertarian or democratic, however you prefer to think of it. We don't want to tell others how to live. Instead, we are driven by conviction to follow a moral path, and for some reason, the Lord brings to us a number of people who feel led to follow us on that path.
We don't choose our followers. We don't even call for them; we simply express our convictions. For all we can tell, God has chosen who will follow our lead. That's a part of our leadership doctrine.
Since we cannot avoid the attention of others, we are compelled to make good use of it by teaching according to our faith and convictions. Our community strives to refer to Scripture as the foundation, but it's for sure no two of us will read it exactly the same way. We make it a doctrine to flex a little; we don't take ourselves too seriously. If you can tolerate my peculiarities, then I'll be glad to cover you spiritually.
We certainly don't mind answering questions, and won't run you off until you get downright disruptive. We don't feed the trolls, but if there's an honest teaching point we can make, we are inclined to answer any question. Either way, we aren't building earthly kingdoms. I can honestly say that I lead because people won't leave me alone. So, I extend my pastoral love over them and try to cultivate in them a taste for otherworldly sacrificial fellowship.
We've discussed how Americans are very individualistic by social conditioning. There's not much I can do about that conditioning, but I suppose it calls for frequent reminders that Scripture is quite the opposite -- very much communitarian and collective. It's very hard to embrace that shift, but we ask only that you recognize it's part of the gospel message and a covenant ideal.
There is an American knee-jerk ideal in favor of democratizing everything, and it seeps into church operations. If elitism is one extreme, then raw democracy is the other. Nothing in Scripture promotes either one, but for people who camp on the extreme of democracy, everything else looks like elitism. Sorry, but the biblical model of leadership and fellowship looks elitist to Americans. The gospel itself seems elitist, since it includes the Doctrine of Election. God Himself says going to Heaven is not democratic. Responding to the gospel is not democratic. Without His initiative and power, no human can even desire redemption, much less gain it.
But the paradox of Election is that humans have no idea who is and isn't Elect, though we learn that we can know for ourselves if we are chosen. As for others, 1 John 2 tells us our only guide is whether someone keeps His commandments. So, we would assume there is some element in revelation that looks like a law code, and of course, there is. With the Nation of Israel, it was fairly obvious. The Law of Moses was written like a law code. For us in Christ, it's not written out like that. The commandments are scattered in a collection of documents we call "The New Testament".
I can tell you that the primary point of the Law of Moses was to demand feudal loyalty to Jehovah. It's the same with the Covenant of Christ, in that we declare and keep feudal loyalty to Jesus. Once that is clearly established, then we proceed with explaining to new believers what our Lord demands in detail. Why did it take Paul several years to explain only a portion of Christ's demands to the church in Corinth? They didn't lack for basic loyalty to Christ, but they bore a very heavy burden of false assumptions and bad reflexes. Following Jesus was a culture shock for them.
I'm sure they could afford to buy and read the common Septuagint Old Testament, but the documents of the New Testament had not been written yet. Paul was adding oral narrative about Jesus and His teaching to explain their "Bible". Yes, they could read it for themselves, but very obviously they didn't have a good grip on how it applied to them. It required the help of men called of God to explain things in more basic terms, translated into their own cultural terms.
Scripture has never been democratic, but it's not elitist to say so. It is God's love letter to His loyal servants. Your average Joe off the street is not the target. It's people who are gathered together as a family of faith. You must join that family of faith and invest yourself into the community before the Word starts to make sense. Faith is experiential to the flesh, not intellectual.
We don't promote keeping the Bible away from average Joes and Janes on the street. Let them read it all they want. But we will not let them come into our community and cling to their western pagan outlook. Other communities can follow their own sense of direction, but Radix Fidiem is driven to a faith that is more in line with the assumptions of the Hebrew people who wrote all but a few portions of the Bible. Americans in particular have an ever bigger culture shock in store than the folks at Corinth, because most Americans have even more depraved instincts than the Corinthian church Paul planted.
Your Election is your promise of Heaven, but here below, you must embrace the redemption of your life through the Covenant, and that Covenant is feudal, tribal and communitarian. Whether or not you get to Heaven is not the question. It's whether you can glorify Him. His earthly blessings belong to the Covenant, and the Covenant presumes a community of faith. If you cling to the individualist "going to Heaven" approach, you cannot participate in His earthly agenda, and you cannot truthfully call yourself a follower of Christ, i.e., a Christian.
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