truth without love, love without truth

[profnachos]

In my correspondence with one of the forum participants, she quoted me this she got from somewhere (thanks, I hope you don't mind me sharing). This is so profound.

"Truth without love is too hard; Love without truth is too soft"

At the risk of making sweeping generalizations, I think "hurtful churches" can be roughly broken into two camps.

On the one side, you have rigid legalism. The classic example is John MacArthur whom I am very familiar with because of my experience. Careful attention and deference are paid to Scripture, and people are very ernest in pursuing doctrinal purity in their beliefs. But yet, there is very little love, and such is well portrayed as the Church of Ephesis in Rev. 2 which Christ severely rebuked for having left the "first love."

On the other side, there is a lot of emphasis on love, but sloppiness when it comes to the interpretation and application of Scripture is often tolerated. Charismatic churches are often said to be guilty of such, but I am not too familiar with them enough to elaborate further.

Each side does questionable things which serve as fodder for the other. I met at MacArthur's church many disillusioned ex-charismatics who found MacArthur's devotion to God's Word refreshing and nothing like anything they were exposed to in the charismatic movement. Boy, they had some truly horror stories to share. In retrospect, they jumped from the frying pan to the fire.

Then you have people like me, who left MacArthur's church. And because I got so sick and tired of wrangling over what seemed like petty doctrinal fine points, I find refreshing to be around people who tend to overlook Scriptural integrity. Whenever I hear people engage in hairsplitting arguments over obscure verses, I tune them out. I just do not want to deal with "that" again.

As Shelly optly put it, the frying pan/fire can go both ways and it often does. And that quote "Truth without love is too hard; Love without truth is too soft" is so true and so profound. There is no excuse for me to neglect Scripture just because of my past experience.

One sad thing is that I have met a lot of ex-MacArhtur followers who no longer identify themselves with Christ. In many cases, these are ex-Charismatics who left charismatic churches to attend MacArhtur's church, then left there. They jumped from the frying pan into the fire, and now they are really burned (excuse the pun). They believe the frying pan and the fire are all there are to Christianity, they feel really burned and tired and now they don't want to have anything to do with Christ whatsoever. MacArthur would tell you that they were never saved in the first place (this infuriates me beyond belief....).

[Theodora]

...I'm needing to call it quits for tonight, but wanted to thank you for your meditative post here. I'll be interested in seeing others' thoughts as well.

Hope you've been having a good Saturday and will enjoy your Sunday as well.

THANKS for your contributions on this forum!

Theodora

--


In my correspondence with one of the forum participants, she quoted me this she got from somewhere (thanks, I hope you don't mind me sharing). This is so profound.

"Truth without love is too hard; Love without truth is too soft"

At the risk of making sweeping generalizations, I think "hurtful churches" can be roughly broken into two camps.

On the one side, you have rigid legalism. The classic example is John MacArthur whom I am very familiar with because of my experience. Careful attention and deference are paid to Scripture, and people are very ernest in pursuing doctrinal purity in their beliefs. But yet, there is very little love, and such is well portrayed as the Church of Ephesis in Rev. 2 which Christ severely rebuked for having left the "first love."

On the other side, there is a lot of emphasis on love, but sloppiness when it comes to the interpretation and application of Scripture is often tolerated. Charismatic churches are often said to be guilty of such, but I am not too familiar with them enough to elaborate further.

Each side does questionable things which serve as fodder for the other. I met at MacArthur's church many disillusioned ex-charismatics who found MacArthur's devotion to God's Word refreshing and nothing like anything they were exposed to in the charismatic movement. Boy, they had some truly horror stories to share. In retrospect, they jumped from the frying pan to the fire.

Then you have people like me, who left MacArthur's church. And because I got so sick and tired of wrangling over what seemed like petty doctrinal fine points, I find refreshing to be around people who tend to overlook Scriptural integrity. Whenever I hear people engage in hairsplitting arguments over obscure verses, I tune them out. I just do not want to deal with "that" again.

As Shelly optly put it, the frying pan/fire can go both ways and it often does. And that quote "Truth without love is too hard; Love without truth is too soft" is so true and so profound. There is no excuse for me to neglect Scripture just because of my past experience.

One sad thing is that I have met a lot of ex-MacArhtur followers who no longer identify themselves with Christ. In many cases, these are ex-Charismatics who left charismatic churches to attend MacArhtur's church, then left there. They jumped from the frying pan into the fire, and now they are really burned (excuse the pun). They believe the frying pan and the fire are all there are to Christianity, they feel really burned and tired and now they don't want to have anything to do with Christ whatsoever. MacArthur would tell you that they were never saved in the first place (this infuriates me beyond belief....).

[Hesed]

I thought that was a very interesting analysis, Profnachos.

After having read the website for MacArthur's church, the whole approach seems very much the same as what I grew up with [although I'm sure there are doctrinal differences which would most likely result in each church accusing the other of heresy and false teaching! :rolleyes: ].

In addition to going to church, I also attended church-school and was steeped in it (although this was in the late 1960s / early 1970s). It's also my experience that the vast majority of my contemporaries ended up rejecting church and Christianity altogether. Others - a minority - stayed in the denomination and a few - also a minority - attended more mainstream denominations.

For me, the "problem" was that we were so "brainwashed" that all other denominations were heretical (that's almost too soft a word because we were taught that they were damned) and that we were the only genuine Christian denomination. There was a time in my life when I rejected Christianity on the basis of "Well, I know what REAL Christianity is, and I don't agree with it." (I don't know if that makes sense?)

[profnachos]

Would you mind sharing what the denomination is? You could send me a private message if you feel uncomfortable about making it public.

I know what you mean by knowing what "REAL" Christianity is and rejecting it. That is a great way to put it. I will have to use that. As with ex-MacArthur followers who do not identify themselves as Christians as more, their thinking is that they have seen the BEST of Christianity (because they were brainwashed to believe that MacArthur's brand was the zenith of Christianity), and they are underwhelmed by it, and they reason that the rest of Christianity must be really bad since what MacArthur offers is the best.

MacArthur's brand of Christianity is not the best that the Christian faith has to offer, and it is truly underwhelming. It is about the worst, but you are absolutely correct. Brainwashing does some pretty twisted things to the human mind.

I thought that was a very interesting analysis, Profnachos.

After having read the website for MacArthur's church, the whole approach seems very much the same as what I grew up with [although I'm sure there are doctrinal differences which would most likely result in each church accusing the other of heresy and false teaching! :rolleyes: ].

In addition to going to church, I also attended church-school and was steeped in it (although this was in the late 1960s / early 1970s). It's also my experience that the vast majority of my contemporaries ended up rejecting church and Christianity altogether. Others - a minority - stayed in the denomination and a few - also a minority - attended more mainstream denominations.

For me, the "problem" was that we were so "brainwashed" that all other denominations were heretical (that's almost too soft a word because we were taught that they were damned) and that we were the only genuine Christian denomination. There was a time in my life when I rejected Christianity on the basis of "Well, I know what REAL Christianity is, and I don't agree with it." (I don't know if that makes sense?)

[Hesed]

MacArthur's brand of Christianity is not the best that the Christian faith has to offer, and it is truly underwhelming. It is about the worst, but you are absolutely correct. Brainwashing does some pretty twisted things to the human mind.

I've heard people who join my former denomination say that what they like about it is that "they know what God wants from them".

I'm going to PM you the name of the denomination; I have said before but I don't really want to go around dissing them. Because this is a denomination and not a single congregation, I don't think that it's absolutely the case that each congregation will necessarily become abusive. I do, however, think that when you set up a theological system that says we can't get any of our ideas about God wrong or we'll go to hell, then there is a large risk of abuse built into the concept. It requires really, really Godly people in each congregation to make sure that abuse doesn't happen, I think.

The congregations that seem to work in this denomination, from what I've seen, don't take 100% seriously the idea that they will go to hell if they get the doctrine wrong. They seem to see the denomination's strong stand as maintaining orthodoxy, but seem to treat God as someone who is ultimately forgiving. My congregation was of the more scrupulous type; I think the pastor was a narcissist and one or two of the "elders"; but most of the elders seemed to be weighed down by guilt all the time and the rest of us learned by example. I remember one of my teachers, when I was in the third grade, falling on his knees in the middle of math class, telling God what a horrible person he was and begging God's forgivness and he made us do the same. I don't know what that teacher did, but I don't think it was appropriate in math class, nor was it appropriate to make a bunch of 9-year-olds share the weight of his guilt [but of course, "there is not a righteous man on earth who doeth good and sinneth not" :eek: ]