Intellectual Responsibility

"It is the responsibility of intellectuals to take dissident positions, privilege confers opportunity and opportunity means obligation."

--Chomsky

Okay, so I'm no fan of Chomsky as a linguist. He wants to find all of the commoln threads between languages and I think that the beauty of diverse languages is in their differences. But I think I can get on board with this quote.

I believe that the movement against concentrated power is as much a part of God's design for humanity as acts of personal conscience. I have a good friend who is really struggling with his position as a subordinate party in a missions endeavor. The issue comes down to their faith in their own designs verses his faith in God's (rather obvious) plan.

Gina and Steve and I are also struggling with the situation at church. We are at a loss about what to do. The elders (I really wanted to put that in quotation marks) have, as I mentioned before, decided that they want to remove the preacher for, in their own words, putting "the Word of God" above their requests. The question becomes: in the fulfillment of the role of prophet, which the preacher must take, is the preacher a prophet of God or of the Elders? I say that he is the prophet of God and the Elders should be accountable to the word of God; they say that is is a prophet of the elders (like Aaron to moses?) and that the elders are accountable to no one. If I am correct, then the check on a preacher's power is The Word of God (as understood in the community of faith) and the elders have a responsibility to make sure that he fulfills that task. The check on the elders is the Word of God (as understood in the community of faith) and the preacher holds them to that standard.

If the authority of either party outweighs the Word of God, then evil men pursuing evil actions will always win. They will always win because, once the Word of God is rejected, there is no check on power and unchecked power attracts evil people; evil people will use any means to get what they want, but good people will not, therefore, evil people will always win when power is not checked by something.

I'm not saying that the elders here are evil, but I am saying that they are defying God and opening the door for evil. So what do we do? "Do not resist evil, but overcome evil with good." Yes, but how. I don't know . . . and it is obvious that the earliest church did not know either, otherwise they would not have ended up with money-grubbing, power-hungry, despotic, and evil men running the church into the deepest levels of depravity during the middle ages. What I do know is that I cannot in good faith either support ungodliness or rebellion against God nor can I seek to incite rebellion against the eldership. Should we leave? Should we stay? We can't really do either easially.

Gina and Steve, though they have been here much longer than I, have formed no attachment to the church here, and I am not even an official member. So, leaving poses no difficulty from that standpoint, but we have no place to go . . . the only other cofC is a post-Boston movement church in recovery, and it would be somewhat unfair to go there only for the next year until Steve retires and they move. I would say "stay," but I'm afraid that our pressence would be a further divisive influence, and who wants to help cause more division? Besides that, we all feel like the victims of an abusive and cheeting spouse who has left us to pursue someone else, whom he or she wanted. You can't just take the abuse, and you can't fight back, either you leave or you accept the violence directed at you as right, staying only insures that the abusive adulterer will continue cheating and abusing.I'd say we need counseling as a church, but the elders would have to be the ones to seek that, and they have shown no interest in relying on the wisdom of others.

So, what do we do?