straining out a gnat, and swallowing a camel

ever heard of such things? Jesus spoke of such things.

i am currently still reading a book, a church that flies, and last night i read a few paragraphs that struck me. here they are:

look at the front page of the tennessean for sunday, may 23, 1999. above the fold, the headline reads, "goodlettes officer, woman die in rampage." the accompanying article tells of the shooting deaths of a policeman and a 20-year-old woman, both killed by the woman's abusive and frequently-arrested husband. for the past month, the front page had been filled with news of school shootings in colorado and georgia, the war in kosovo and the plight of the refuges, chinese espionage, sexual assaults, drug busts, and political scandal.

but this particular sunday, the front page headline below the fold read, "church of Christ congregation's use of music creates echoes of discord." the article told of a local congregation that used an instrumental music recording in its easter sunday service, and the firestorm of controversy it sparked. a church-related, k-12 school nearby decreed that none of its faculty or staff could attend that church and keep their jobs. the preacher, caught between his ministry and the fact that his wife worked at the offended school, resigned his position rather than prompt her dismissal.

the comments of the reporter were telling. "what sounds trivial to outsiders is a potential cataclysm in the church of Christ fellowship..." he then went on to list some further flash points of controversy among us. "some churches are 'one-cuppers' who insist on serving communion form a common cup, not individual vials. some insist on wine; others go with grape juice. some refuse to hold sunday school classes or build gymnasiums on church property."

the comments of a knowledge "source" were even more telling. "that's a crisis facing church of Christ. the worry is if you let bar down, you lose your identity .... the question is: which of these practices is essential to belief? if you've spent you whole life building an identity on certain practices and all of a sudden those things are unimportant, where is your life?"

it would be one thing if this front page article were an anomaly, if it represented something counter to our reputation, if such controversies were uncommon and uncharacteristic. but the article is convicting, and cutting, precisely because it exposes us for what we are -- a movement that has lost it's focus on the central and become enamored with tiny things. the article, so public and glaring, does what it should do. it embarrasses us.

it is embarrassing that our "identity" should be tied to such issues. the cross, yes. the lifestyle of discipleship, certainly. the centrality of grace and the Spirit and the community of faith, by all means. but the use of an instrument? one cup or many? a gymnasium? what does it say about us that we have spent our collective life "building an identity" around such issues, that we could "lose" our identity by playing a piece of recorded music on a sunday morning?

and it is embarrassing that we should be defined to the world by such matters, that people would read in the sunday paper that things which are "trivial to outsiders" are cataclysmic to us. what does it say to those readers that our "orthodoxy" centers around such arcane minutiae and (as the article goes on to comment) that such "church of Christ orthodoxy" is enforced by "peer pressure and the threat of social blackballing"?

but it is beyond embarrassing. it is mortifying that, nestled among daily fare of killing and seduction and war and hatred and greed, is an article that has the people of God addressing none of those issues. we're too busy policing each other's worship styles to make news about the way we are changing the world for God. we make the front page for our fascination with the tiny rather than for our commitment to weightier matters like justice, mercy, and faithfulness.

perhaps this doesn't embarrass you. but i think it should. it is symptomatic of a peculiar blindness that afflicts those who have taken their eyes off of the central. it puts us, sadly, in common company with the pharisees of Jesus' day.

sorry for the length of this post, but it is something that hits home for me.

what are our gnats that we strain out? do we go after the "presentation" styles? ... the singing styles? what do you fight to strain out?