Fetish for Control

I have no qualms at all about describing as a fetish the common approach of many religious groups – whole church denominations included – insisting that they have a divine mandate to “control” their congregations’ and their members’ lives.

According to The Dictionary at Vocabulary.com [http://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/fetish] “A fetish is an extremely strong devotion to something. There are sexual fetishes and nonsexual fetishes: both are obsessive interests.”  A little further down on the page, it gives one (non-sexual) definition of a fetish as “excessive or irrational devotion to some activity”.

Time and time again, over most of my adult life, I have become aware of individuals, groups, congregations, denominations who have an excessive and irrational devotion to control, believing they have a divine mandate to control and regulate people’s lives.  Of course, the counterpart to this is the vast number of individuals who entertain that control of their lives and who, in point of fact, seek out such religious control.

Some groups who practise this control have been identified and publicly exposed to ridicule or criticism; others have not.  And within denominations, congregations, clusters of congregations, and pastoral leaders (individually and in cliques) practise their fetish for this control with apparent immunity from discipline while insisting on applying their version of discipline to the people they claim to “lead”.

But the same philosophy of control exists in countless local churches on at least four continents, including Australia.  I have some friends who recently became the victims of this fetish for control when they were squeezed out of a local church for being who they are in God in their local church.  It has become clear over and over again that the vast majority of churches that say they believe in the Holy Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit actually only believe in their own private philosophy propped up by pious reference to the Holy Spirit and to the idea of ‘all members ministering according to their gifts for the building up of the whole body.’

Every “gift”, every “ministry”, every “effect” or “outworking” (see 1 Corinthians 12:4-7) is forced into the equivalent of a sausage machine so that the result is predictable, manageable, and under control.  It’s the spiritual version of the ‘venturi effect’.  And this is seen as a good thing, despite the fact that, more often than not, the people involved end up serving a system and only marginally serving God or the people in their care.  It is little more than a thinly disguised quest for control.

I rather like this 1905 cartoon postcard by an unknown artist.  ‘Nipper’ was the dog featured in the original Victor Gramophone promotions with the dog listening to “His Master’s Voice”.  That original picture was the inspiration for this postcard, but it tells the story well.  “Look for the dog and find the sausage” is somewhat of a metaphor: “Look for the disciple and find the sausage” out of the “successful church” sausage machine.  The machine chews up whatever goes in and churns out look-alike sausages for sale.

And the justification for this is quite often some oblique reference to God being a God of order, not of chaos.  Imagine the 11 apostles trying to control what happened on that first Pentecost following Jesus’ resurrection.  It looked confused and chaotic to many of the people witnessing it, but it was fully under the control of the Holy Spirit – as all new-covenant spiritual life can be if we actually trust God instead of our own skills and plans.

The fact that this ‘fetish for control’ happens today, apart from any teaching on the subject in the New Testament, indicates that pastoral leaders and churches not only have a belief system that allows such a thing, they have it written up in church doctrinal statements and in the membership commitments they get people to sign up to when they join.

But of course, it is not all one-sided.  Churches and institutions can only get away with it – and justify it – because the people want it so.  In many instances, it is precisely this that people are looking for when they go looking for a suitable church.  We don’t want the responsibility of a direct and personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ; we want a go-between, an intermediary, to tell us what is right and wrong and what to do.

If customers do not want to buy sausages, there is no point in manufacturing them; as it is, lots of people – probably most – want to buy a ‘sausage’ that suits them regardless of the raw material that was crammed into the sausage machine.

At one stage in my life I submitted to the process of being prepared for the sausage machine.  Fortunately I saw what was coming and revoked my candidacy, much to the chagrin of many around me.  I have two very strong wishes: one, that people will stop wanting to be trained for the clergy; two, that there will cease to be a market for the clergy.  I realise they are fairly forlorn wishes, but I’d like to think we can begin this side of eternity to live as Jesus wished rather than as we ourselves wish.

I draw the reader’s attention to the solid work of Ronald M. Enroth in Churches That Abuse and its sequel, Recovering From Churches That Abuse.  I encourage readers to take advantage of Enroth’s excellent work.  The church is riddled with all kinds of abuse, and abuse exists in an environment of ‘power-over’ structures created out of a felt need to control and manipulate people and outcomes.

The creation of human beings by the eternal Father, their redemption by the life and work of Jesus, and their transformation by the power and ministry of the Holy Spirit into sons of God fit for the eternity which God inhabits were not so we could – or would – be manipulated and controlled by fellow-human beings, least of all some elite class called ‘the clergy’: self-appointed and self-justifying ‘guardians’ of our souls.

The fact that this type of control exists, and that it has become a fetish for many, must stem from some underlying beliefs or a belief system drawn from scripture references, biblical ideas, fanciful interpretations, or some combination of the three.  It would be hard to justify it in church belief statements or membership commitments if no such things existed.

One of the bible-bangers’ favourite scripture references to quote to justify this control is Hebrews 13:17 – and my friends were hit with this one just as I have explained.  One of them, soon after, wrote me and asked an important question.  They know that, as a gifted Teacher in the Body of Christ, I regularly “search the scriptures to see if [certain teachings] are so” as Paul noted of the Bereans in Acts 17.  This was my friend’s question:

Is there a translation error of Hebrews 13:17?

On the surface it looks quite simple and to the point: “obey your leaders”.  But that is precisely the point.  The translation of this verse from the Greek was, I believe, manipulated to fit the hierarchical ecclesiastical structure of the time (17th century AD Europe).  But at the time of its original writing (to early 1st century AD Hebrew disciples of Jesus), there were no such “hierarchical ecclesiastical structures”, neither does it appear that there was any reason or impetus for them.  Why?  They all well understood the teaching of Jesus and Paul that: “There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all”; Christ is the Head of this “one body”, the ekklesia; and the Holy Spirit is the One in control.

This is how I answered my friends.

Not so much an error as an obfuscation.  Wikipedia says: “An obfuscation (or beclouding) is the hiding of intended meaning in communication, making communication confusing, wilfully ambiguous, and harder to interpret.”

A ‘beclouding’ is precisely what it looks like: if there is an object in the sky and a cloud comes over it, you cannot see clearly what the object is.  The current search for the missing flight in the southern Indian Ocean is an example.  There are objects in the ocean, but the searchers cannot interpret them properly or make any assertions about them because there is cloud in the way.  If you hear something in the air and don’t know what it is, you look to understand.  If there is cloud in between you and the object, that is a beclouding.  You may be able to get a proper understanding of the object once the cloud is removed.

The popular translation and understanding of Hebrews 13:17 is a beclouding – an obfuscation – because it is designed precisely to force readers to interpret the passage in one particular way; and that interpretation is that the “clergy” (the priests, pastors, ministers) are God-appointed and therefore to be obeyed – often without question.

But there are problems with this.  The word translated ‘obey’ is peíthesthe, a derivative of the Greek verb peíthō.  Its central meaning is to persuade or urge.  In the Hebrews passage, it would be better translated to “have confidence in” rather than to “obey”; to be persuaded of what is trustworthy.  Strong’s Dictionary says this: “peíthō involves obedience, but it is properly the result of (God’s) persuasion.”

Other translations of the word are (with the number of occurrences in brackets): assure (1), confident (3), convinced (7), followed (2), have confidence (2), having confidence (2), listen (1), obey (3), obeying (1), persuade (4), persuaded (8), persuading (1), put...trust (1), put confidence (1), put...confidence (1), relied (1), seeking the favour (1), sure (2), took...advice (1), trust (2), trusted (1), trusting (1), trusts (1), urging (1), win...over (1), won over (2).

We need to remind ourselves that being a disciple of Jesus is not a religion but a relationship; and the “church institutions” and the “clergy” who inhabit them are not designed or built by God.  In the days when Hebrews was written, no such institutions or clergy were known among the disciples of Jesus except those within the Hebrew system.  And remember, this was a letter written to Hebrew disciples of Jesus.

We also need to remind ourselves that the author of Hebrews was clearly not advocating their obedience to the Pharisees, Sadducees and Priests of the Hebrew religious system of the day – that would have been completely contrary to the teaching of Jesus as he referred to them as “blind leaders of the blind” and “whitewashed tombs”, among many unfavourable things.

What the writer was meaning, I believe, is that, as Hebrew disciples of Jesus, they could have confidence in and follow those whom the Spirit raises up as leaders (Greek: hegemony) – as they are ‘persuaded’ or ‘won over’ by God.  Most probably these were the apostles, prophets and teachers Paul talked about.  And it is quite clear from Paul that these leaders (this hegemony) did in fact have a charge from God to watch over the souls of the new disciples and would give account for their behaviour and treatment of the disciples.

Context and background are very important.  We are never meant to simply pick a few words out of the bible and make a rule out of them.  First, making a rule out of a few words of the bible was NEVER, I believe, God’s intention in giving us the bible.  Second, it is a very dangerous and counter-productive thing to do because, in the new covenant, we are “not under law but under grace”.  As Paul said, law produces sin – whereas grace produces righteousness.  Unfortunately, most modern thought says the opposite: that law produces righteousness and grace produces sin.

The context of this verse is the whole letter written to the early Hebrew disciples.  Whoever wrote it would not be telling these disciples to do things contrary to the life and the instructions of their Master, Jesus of Nazareth.  The verse must be interpret and understood consistent with the rest of the letter, and consistent with the teachings of Jesus and Paul.  To interpret it as “you must obey your pastors and other leaders” is, as I said, a ‘beclouding’ or a severe case of obfuscation.

The background of this verse is the whole mission of Jesus, the new covenant relationship with God, the kingdom of God, the good news of the kingdom of God in Jesus, and Paul’s commission or charge as the one responsible for the revelation of this entire new administration of the covenant between God and man.  Against the background of these impressive things, the ideas of church institutions and the clergy are pathetic materialistic attempts to control people in the name of God.  Some translators have made this verse fit institutional church but that is a shame and a disgrace.  It has been twisted to fit the system.

When the letter was originally written, no explanation needed to be given; it would have been clear to the recipients just what was being said.  For us, many hundreds of years later and vast cultural and linguistic gaps between us, this verse needs explanation.  And that explanation needs to include background, context and etymology (the study of word origins and meanings).  It also needs to be remembered that this was never intended as a general instruction for all who happen to read the bible or, for that matter, all disciples of Jesus across all time.  It was written for Hebrew disciples of the first century.  If we can learn something from it, well and good – and I think we can.  But we are Gentile disciples of around 2,000 years later.

This is how I would read that verse:

“In keeping with the pattern of the work of the Holy Spirit in and among the new covenant disciples of the kingdom of God post Jesus, a certain hegemony – a certain leadership – of apostles, prophets and teachers is being raised up by God among you, and the work of the Spirit in you will persuade you to trust and to follow this leadership.  You can do this, because they have been given a charge to ‘feed’ you and watch over your spiritual life and growth until you reach maturity; and they will give account for their work before God.”