Cut it off and throw it from you

The church makes up the body  and bride of Christ. If one part of the body does something good, the whole body rejoices. If one part of the body sins, the whole body grieves and must bear the responsibility– even the cutting off, if necessary. You can’t cut off a hand you think you never had.

The better an organization/community/form of government/religion is, the more responsibility it bears for its members, the more connected it is. So the Roman Catholic church is at its best when the bishops are denying communion to unrepentant members, and at its worst when nuns are escorts for abortion clinics without being disciplined.
The Protestant part of Christianity starts on the wrong foot by denying responsibility for the rest of the church– somebody asks about the Crusades– “Oh, that was just the Catholics.” (It wasn’t… but that’s a common response). Or the pathetic state of tithing. “It’s not us, it’s those Methodists.” Or what have you.

Atheists, are, of course, the worst. Jumping straight to Godwin’s Law, you can’t compare them to Hitler (or Stalin, etc), because they aren’t affiliated with him. They aren’t affiliated with anyone. Each atheist is essentially an island of his own responsibility.

Christianity is bearing others’ burdens.

Posted at 3:46 pm EST on the 30th of November 2009 by H. G. Roorda.

Under Philosophy, Theology as ,

There are 9 replies.
 
  1. Carl Schilmer says on November 30th, 2009 at 5:19 pm

    Is this because you lost your wisdom teeth?

  2. Nathan Spear says on December 1st, 2009 at 5:43 pm

    Do Protestants really say that? And would this be an example, that all Christians must share the responsibility of the Protestants-who-say-this?

  3. Lucie Bretwalda says on December 1st, 2009 at 5:52 pm

    I’m sure there are some Protestants who say that…I don’t, though.
    It’s not a very Christian attitude though, no matter how you look at it.

    (Actually, the Crusades happened before there was a Catholic/Protestant distinction to be made. So anyone who says that is wrong.)

  4. H. G. Roorda says on December 2nd, 2009 at 11:44 pm

    Nathan, yeah, Protestants do blame things they don’t want to take responsibility for on other Protestants. (Catholics do the same thing; in some ways the error of Catholicism is the rejection of Protestants).

    Lucie– right, I think we’re all agreed on that point. My point is that Protestants who try to distance themselves from the rest of the church are not just in historical error, but moral error.

  5. Nathan Spear says on December 3rd, 2009 at 12:20 pm

    I suppose my question could also be: why would they (the Protestants) want to shift responsibility for the Crusades? I mean, these are the Crusades! The Christian Knight vs. the Mohammedan Saracen, the might of Right vs. the right of might, the Christians coming to the defense of their brethren in the Middle-East vs. the oppressors of those same brethren. True, the massacre of Jerusalem wasn’t a good thing, and more priests should have come along with the soldiers, but still!

  6. Nathan Spear says on December 3rd, 2009 at 12:26 pm

    Ok, now, more seriously, how can one bear the responsibilities of the shortcomings of past Christians? Take the massacre of Jerusalem. I am hardly a scion of it to the third and fourth generation, even if one of my ancestors took part in it (I don’t know if one did; this is hypothetical). Or am I looking at this wrong?

  7. V. K. Blake says on December 3rd, 2009 at 12:41 pm

    Like Nathan, my gut reaction was to protest, “Not all protestants do that!” ^_^
    I think you may be equivocating two different things, though. Yes, we are responsible for looking out for each other and bearing burdens and rebuking each other if we see each other going wrong, etc. On the other hand, bearing one another’s burdens isn’t the same as having their sins imputed to you, which is what you seem to be doing with the crusades and “those Methodists”.

  8. John R. Ahern says on December 4th, 2009 at 6:53 pm

    Incisive question, Nathan. But, I guess I’ll take this from another level. I totally agree and that’s a message I think we need to hear more. But, as for the Protestant thingy, my question would be, are “those Methodists” really Protestants? In bearing the responsibilities of “protestantism”, am I really bearing the responsibility of Methodists? I’d argue no. You have to be protesting against Rome to be a protestant. Anabaptism and most of the 19th century denominations really aren’t doing that in a fundamental way.

    (And, as Peter Leithart once pointed out, there’s a more fundamental sense in which we are all, including Catholics protestants…we have the choice to leave what church we’re at and go to a different one. It’s actually an incisive observation.)

  9. Lucie Bretwalda says on December 4th, 2009 at 7:24 pm

    How are we defining “bearing responsibilities”? I just want to make sure I understand what everyone’s talking about. ^_^