Hannah Anderson tweeted this a while back and I thought it mirrored my experiences:
A little advice from someone who grew up in religious separatism: In certain spaces & with certain people, the only shared conviction that really matters is who you condemn & separate from.
You can talk yourself blue in the face trying to convince them that you share the same convictions on a question, but the only thing that will satisfy them is whether you condemn the same people they do.
They *need* you to condemn these folks because they've based their righteousness on certain folks being WRONG & their being RIGHT. If you don't agree to that inherent calculus, it gets very, very personal very, very quickly. That's why it's never enough to share their position on a question if you also see that question as a secondary issue. The whole point is that the issue MUST be a primary-level issue b/c its primacy is what grants moral high ground.
In this sense, the real divide isn't what you think about a given question. It's the weight you give that question. It's whether that question has become a means of establishing the boundaries of the group.
So my advice is don't waste your breath trying to defend your credentials. For certain people in certain spaces, they don't really care what you think. They only care about who you condemn.
I remember this coming up specifically at Geneva with fellow students who were OPC. I didn't know the "RPCNA-correct" way to deal with them. On one hand, they were NAPARC, shared pretty much every doctrine we did, yet they did not practice Exclusive Psalmody, which was taught as a critical doctrine. A lens through which all so-called Christians were to be judged. On the other hand, they were kind and respectful people who obviously loved God.
On another note, the flip side of the same coin is that RPs will read a paper. A certain paper on gender identity comes to mind. The theology and doctrine can be laughably poor and inconsistent, but because it condemns the right people, the denomination unanimously passes it.
6 comments:
I have seen this in action in the RPCNA as well. Add to it the moving goalpost- "What are we condemning/looking down on today?"
Very isolating because everything outside of the pastor's preferences is condemned eventually.
The pastor and the denomination are the gods. One has to either not really know God or check his or her conscience at the door to be RPCNA.
I think they are a true church, in the sense that the salvation they preach is the gospel, but once a convert is made, they have to squelch the voice of the Holy Spirit with "Total Depravity" and replace it with the voice and goals of the leadership. So, people get stuck in a state of spiritual infancy and discouraged from growth. Growth is okay, as long as you are lock-step in the path the leadership has for you.
this isn't a true church. there is only one truth church, and it is the bride of Christ. it is the Church. From the outside the structure gives the appearance of a church on the right path, but its a whitewashed tomb.
There is the invisible church, which is the bride of Christ, yes. The visible church is made up of those institutions who proclaim the gospel and serve Jesus. I don't have a strong stand on the RPCNA because my experience is going to be different than yours. I see the gospel being preached, but I also see it being twisted into "obey your leaders and that's what really counts." There are lots of fine lines when it comes to NAPARC, so I can see people ending up on one side or the other. My opinion is that it is like the church Jesus taught against - do what they say, but not what they do. Much of what is preached is good, but the practices are often evil and abusive.
The RPCNA is not the the true Church, it is a cult. The fact that once in a while from a RPCNA pulpit the gospel is preached doesn’t change the first fact.
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