CREDIBILITY

Recently, a “Pastor” wrote a letter to one of my friends repeatedly assessing him as having no credibility.  My assessment of my friend disagrees markedly with this Pastor's assessment and I have known the person in question pretty much all his life.  On the other hand, the Pastor barely knows my friend at all.  The letter demonstrates two important things: one, his measure of what is credibility is drawn from a very narrow field of what can best be described as "public opinion"; two, the Pastor simply assumes he himself has credibility (in order to make his assessment of another person) based on his position as "Pastor" of a church within an established religious denomination.

So, let’s talk about credibility.

Essentially, credibility is believability: the extent to which a matter or a person is believable.  It is the quality of being trusted or trustworthy; of being convincing or believable.

By its nature, credibility is to a considerable degree a subjective element.  The same situation or person may be credible to some but incredible to others; believable and trustworthy to some, unbelievable and untrustworthy to others.

Synonyms for credibility are plausibility, authenticity, reliability.

However, to judge a person as lacking credibility requires a value assessment of the person against a set of criteria, at which point it can easily become a personal judgement rather than an objective assessment when the person making the judgement uses private and personal criteria or limited and biased public criteria to make their assessment.

Consequently, a person can have credibility in the eyes of one person and no credibility in the eyes of another.  It follows then that a person assessing another as having no credibility is making a personal judgement and expressing a personal opinion – and it may well be to do with the extent to which the one being assessed is truly known by the assessor.  It may also have to do with the choice of criteria to judge or assess the person against.

In relation to the “Pastor” and the letter he sent to my friend, both the reasons I have just referred to came into play.  On the one hand, the “Pastor” doesn’t truly know my friend – personally and relationally.  He is more inclined to think he knows my friend based on second-hand information: gossip, rumour, innuendo and the like.  On the other hand, he is making his assessment based on a set of private and/or cultural-group criteria my friend is only partially privy to.

In addition, the “Pastor” is himself relying on having his own credibility based on a set of criteria wholly manufactured by himself, his colleagues and his particular religious tradition – criteria that may or may not be accepted as valid criteria by a disinterested observer.  This is one of the reasons groups and organisations retain their own lawyers – to defend their cultural criteria and their assessments against criticism.

All this sounds scarily familiar.  The pages of the New Testament resound with similar assessments – on Jesus and apostle Paul and others.  According to the Scribes and Pharisees and Sadducees, Jesus had no credibility.  And Paul: well he was one of them until he “saw the light” (literally) and fully traded his set of criteria for assessing Jesus and his life and message.

The systems that have been created – manufactured and constructed – to satisfy religious proclivities all have their own set of criteria, most differing from one another.  And they all measure, assess and judge people – inside and outside their particular group – as having or not having credibility.  And at times, that assessment can change over night with a person having credibility yesterday but not today – all on the whim of the organisation’s ‘gatekeepers’.

So: how credible is a) the religious organisation’s own credibility; and b) a judgement from them that my friend (or any person for that matter) has no credibility.  To me, he has far more credibility than do those who are saying he has none.  And my long-term assessment of the organisation (and the lawyers) standing behind the “Pastor” is that their credibility is a spurious credibility based on their own private definitions which differ considerably from biblical definitions on many matters; and on a paucity of sound relational knowledge of the people they make judgements about.  And that is precisely how the Pharisees operated.

What credibility is there in a system that manufactures its own private credibility based on its own traditions, rules and debateable interpretations?  Well, there is an answer to that question: read your New Testament.  That is precisely what the first century Jewish leaders did, with some of them believing in resurrection and some not, with others being their ‘legal counsel’ in case they needed to challenge somebody who disagreed with them.

What credibility is there in a system that names itself as it chooses, at times, in the process, redefining words and phrases that have established credible meanings, and then using the law of the land to register those names, thereby usurping the original credibility and claiming it for oneself?  (e.g. Assemblies of God, Churches of Christ).  And in thus naming itself and claiming legal status, it renders itself exclusive to those who put themselves in charge and those who agree with and sign up to their rules, traditions and interpretations.  Again: a mirror of the old Jewish religious system dating back thousands of years.

What credibility is there in a system that takes the name of the Christ of God yet constructs itself completely contrary to the very words of the Christ (and of His first apostles) and believes, teaches and practices myriad things in complete contradistinction to the beliefs, teachings and practices of its original founder and proponents?

What credibility is there in a system that appoints ‘pastors’ as ‘hired-holy-men’, gives them artificial titles, and demands loyalty and obedience to them when Jesus was quite emphatic about not doing any such thing?  It’s the manufactured credibility again!  It’s the ‘credibility’ of tradition and history.  What Jesus and his first apostles said and did doesn’t matter; what matters is the hundreds of years of tradition flowing from the so-called Reformation.  The traditions of men not only carry more weight than the teachings of Jesus, they carry all the weight; and the teachings of Jesus are contorted to fit the tradition.  Again, this is precisely how Jesus described the work and ministry of the Pharisees of his day.

What credibility is there in a system that creates an hierarchy of alleged authority and accountability based on the world’s system when the method Jesus used and taught – and taught his disciples to use – does pretty much the opposite?  Humility is the central theme of Jesus, and those who sacrificially serve the body without pay are its true ‘elders’.  Each member is to learn to esteem the other as better than him/her self.  How credible is it to demand loyalty towards someone who, as an appointed leader, is disloyal to Christ, and to discredit one whose ‘crime’ is to identify that disloyalty?

What credibility is there in a system that, having constructed itself into existence and claimed legitimacy for that existence on the basis of misappropriated words, arrogates the right to redefine roles and spiritual gifts and distribute them how it pleases?  None whatsoever!  To ‘arrogate’ a thing is to claim, demand or take that which belongs to another; and to do so in an over-bearing and haughty manner.  What a perfect description of much of what goes by the name ‘church’, with its quest and its claim for credibility.  In church, everyone has to submit to the pastor since he/she is the ‘approved authority’.  ‘Pastor’ here has lost its original meaning and come to mean CEO, and it has been arrogated into the church system and given supreme authority.  In the New Testament, pastoring is one of many ‘spiritual gifts’; it is combined with apostle, prophet, teacher and evangelist to form the local congregation’s growth structure; and it is missing from the original essential compound of authority in ecclesia noted in Paul’s list of “first apostles, second prophets, third teachers; then miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, administrations, various kinds of languages.”

What credibility is there in a system that talks much about personal relationship with God, spiritual gifts and individual responsibility (at the expense of “the body” and corporate responsibility) yet arrogates to itself the right of Jesus – as Head of the Body – to distribute His graces as He sees fit and to utilise those gifts as He determines for the cleansing and purity of the Body as His Bride.  Again: it is hubris not credibility that is present and active here.  The fundamental assumption underpinning this arrogation is that, since the system or organisation has managed to construct its own legitimacy in the eyes of the government of the world and its own supporters, its credibility is both established and unassailable.  This is precisely the hubris of the Scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees.

What credibility is there in a system that accepts as credible and trustworthy styles, practices and preferences introduced into “church life” hundreds of years after the death of Jesus and his first apostles when those styles, practices and preferences take their cues from secular society of the day and mitigate against most of what Jesus and his apostles were trying to achieve? None – especially when the system refuses to countenance opposing views and disenfranchises those who may well be prophets sent by Jesus in the power of the Spirit to correct imbalances.  The problem with the system is that is presumes “the Pastor” is also the prophet and that God would tell him/her without reference to any other gifted person.  This, of course, is a complete contradiction of scripture itself and of the specific teaching of apostle Paul who, according to scripture, was given the manifestation of the new order of the kingdom of God and ecclesia.  True pastoral credibility permits and encourages prophets to be prophets rather than redefining prophecy to tame it and make it subject to “the Pastor”.  And this is true of teaching ministry and apostolic ministry as well – as it is for all the gifts of the Spirit sovereignly given for the building up of the Body of Christ.

I believe that the use of the word ‘credibility’ to describe any part of this system – or even to attribute credibility to the system – is an abuse of the very word itself and an example of “the lady doth protest too much, methinks”.  Generally, people who protest their credibility do so because of a lack of it.  In keeping with the context (Gertrude in Shakespeare’s Hamlet), you would be a lot more credible (believable) if you were not so vocal about your credibility.

The far more appropriate word to attribute to the system, rather than credibility, is hubris: over-bearing, arrogant pride and presumption.  Indeed, in my experience of around fifty years in “churches”, I have seen many times more hubris than credibility in the beliefs, teachings and practices of religious groups.  Sadly, most completely miss Jesus’ point about ‘specks’ and ‘logs’ and continue to condemn others and justify themselves, especially when it comes to accepting teaching and correction.   Again: a mirror of old Israel and first century Judaism, who hate and kill their prophets but honour their tombs when the interred are dead and gone.

To categorically say that such-and-such a person has or does not have credibility – and do so credibly – one has to be careful and insistent about the criteria by which credibility is being measured being common and agreed criteria, culturally relevant, testable, contextually moral and ethically responsible.  Given that, I believe it is a mistake to rush to make such an assessment; and that every such assessment, in order to maintain ethical integrity, would be properly prefaced by a statement like “I believe” or “to my mind” or “from my frame of reference”.

If, as some insist, credibility is earned through life experience, it follows that everyone has a measure of credibility of some sort in the eyes of some people.  Obviously there are varying amounts of credibility and wide variation in the range and quality of the criteria by which credibility is measured.  But, at the end of the day, to proclaim that somebody has no credibility is churlish in the extreme and – like Gertrude in Shakespeare’s Hamlet – probably says far more about the person making the pronouncement than about the person being assessed.  And in the situation where such person has no means of defence or right of reply, it may even constitute verbal abuse.

Perhaps Jesus knew what he was saying when he instructed his followers to not judge one another – because we almost invariably get it wrong.  And when we judge someone by a standard they are not privy to (one that we have constructed ourselves), we had better be clear that that is how we ourselves will be judged by God.  A careful reading of the New Testament will reveal, I believe, that that is how the Pharisees went about things.

Further, we are told clearly not to judge anything ‘before the time’ (1 Corinthians 4:5).  Our English word for such an action is prejudice: pre = before; judice = judgement.

In 1993, I wrote a piece entitled “The Presumption of Legitimacy”.  What I wrote then is no less applicable today – perhaps more so.  There has been, in “the church”, a super-abundance of hubris, leading to the situation where so many things have been systematically removed from the arena of challenge, pushing innumerable errors and false teachings out beyond the reach of scrutiny and allowing people with highly questionable credibility the luxury of pronouncing a lack of credibility on anybody who dares to disagree with them or challenge something that has been legitimised by history or tradition (however short or flimsy) or by the common practice of the prevailing culture of the day.

It seems that we have forgotten – or perhaps never understood at all – what Paul meant when he said, “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Romans 12:1-2)

So we should tolerate sin because “no-one is perfect”?  What rubbish!  Such an attitude simply proves we do not understand New Testament words and concepts – and that we, still today, refuse to allow prophets to prophesy and teachers to teach.  We should blindly accept and follow our Pastor/Manager/CEO and discredit anyone who dares to question him/her.  What piffle!  Perfect does not mean sinless or spotless; it means ripe and ready for use for that which a thing (or person) was created.  And that, precisely, is the goal of each of us according to Paul in Ephesians 4.  The problem is, it takes apostles, prophets and teachers, as well as – and before, I might add – evangelists and pastors; and true pastors are the under-shepherds of Jesus, not the shepherds of Ezekiel 34 who use the sheep for their own gain and devour them or force them out into the hill country to fend for themselves.

Cheers,
Kevin.