It seems that people are always looking for good advice and self-help. Many turn to Oprah or Dr. Phil. Some climb the highest mountains of Tibet seeking wise sages. Our own Scriptures instruct us to seek for wisdom at all costs, to seek it as you would seek after a treasure chest full of gold, for wisdom is better than gold. Some are good sources of wisdom and some are bad, but perhaps the most overlooked place to find wisdom and advice is the wall of a bathroom stall. There is a message on the wall of the men’s bathroom at the end of the hall which looks like this:
What
more could I say than this? All of our searching for truth is done!
J
Look what we get when we combine all three! I think this should be known as the
international symbol for peace, happiness and love. Actually, I think this
graffiti on the bathroom wall is not only a defacing of private property, but it
is no more than reheated hippie hogwash. I am pretty sure that the person who
wrote this is defining peace, happiness and love very differently from the way I
would define them. Peace would be defined as—let’s all just get along and smoke
some pot. Happiness would be—join me and smoke some pot. Love would be defined
this way—let’s smoke some pot and do some other things we call love.
In the first century church of Philippi there was an absence of genuine peace and love because of a conflict between two women—Euodia and Syntyche. 2 I plead with Euodia and I plead with Syntyche to agree with each other in the Lord. 3 Yes, and I ask you, loyal yokefellow, help these women who have contended at my side in the cause of the gospel, along with Clement and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the book of life.
Over the years, these two verses and these two women have been a source of jokes from the pulpit. They have been used to attempt to prove the catty and temperamental nature of relationship between women. But rarely have they been examined with much depth or application to our present lives. What was true two thousand years ago is true today—there are conflicts in the church which are harming the work of the gospel. The church in Philippi seems to have been one of the most mature and healthy churches to whom Paul wrote, but it shows that even a relatively healthy church can have conflict that slows down the gospel. Do you think that Grace Church has conflict which could slow the work of the gospel? I am not aware of any large conflicts which are currently boiling over, but I am sure there are conflicts that I am not aware of and I know that the potential for disunity exists at all times.
My favorite book on marriage is called, When Sinners Say I Do. The title says much about the book. Marriage is fundamentally a lifelong covenant between two people who are both sinners. When two sinners enter into a covenant, you are guaranteed to get conflicts. How much more is this true when you have a hundred people join in a covenant with one another in the local church. Rather than merely makes jokes about these two women with strange names, we need to gain wisdom from this ancient argument.
First, let me dispel any notion that this is rock solid proof that, by nature, women are biting and backstabbing creatures. One commentator could not have said it more clearly. “It is male chauvinism pure and simple that thinks the issue is more purely personal, and related to their being women.”[i] Obviously there are catty and mean women just as there are plenty of bull-headed and callous men, but that was not the source of the conflict. Furthermore, never use this verse as a means to demean women.
Paul did not belittle these women, but quite the contrary. He describes them in an extremely complementary manner. Both Euodia and Syntyche contended at Paul’s side for the cause of the gospel. In a culture in which women were regarded as second class citizens, this was a high compliment indeed. The first two converts in the city of Philippi were women—the respected merchant Lydia and the unnamed slave girl whom Paul freed from demon possession. Women responded to the gospel first and continued to serve in significant ministries ever since.
Also, even though we know that this was not some silly argument over the color of the carpet in the nursery, we do know that it was a significant disagreement. Paul wrote this letter to the entire church in Philippi knowing full well that it would also be circulated and read by other churches. There is no way he would have mentioned these two women by name if the disagreement had not been fairly serious. If it had been a minor disagreement between two people, it would have never made to into the pages of Scripture. Most importantly, the disagreement was hindering the work of the gospel. These women had been co-laborers in the work of the gospel and their disagreement was so well known that Paul did not hesitate to call them to unity. Furthermore, it was serious enough for Paul to have asked a trusted friend to come alongside and help these women. We don’t know who the “true yokefellow” is referring to. A good guess is that it was Luke. But whoever it was, the conflict was serious enough to require assistance from a Godly and trusted man. Peacemaking often requires outside assistance.
Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him. (Gal. 6:1)
As serious of a disagreement as it was, this was NOT an issue of faithfulness to the gospel, sound doctrine or morality/ethics. They were not teaching false doctrine, they were not “dogs, evildoers and mutilators of the flesh,” as were the Judaizers. If this had been an issue of core doctrine or some serious moral lapse, then Paul would have named the issue and dealt with them much more severely. But instead he treated them gently, pleading and asking them to agree in the Lord. He even went so far as to mention that both of their names were written in the βίβλῳ ζωῆς—the book of life. BOTH contended/labored side by side with Paul in the work of the gospel. Neither was so obviously wrong as to have Paul single one out above the other. He doesn’t appear to be laying blame at the feet of either woman. He said, “I plead with Euodia and I plead with Syntyche.” He seemed to be equally pleading with both of them.
So what was the disagreement? We will never know, but if it was not a core issue, then we know it was a debatable issue. This diagram that I call the Concentric Circle of Certainty will help us understand what was happening. In the center we have absolute truth. These are the core doctrines that Paul fought against in the Philippian church and every other church to whom he wrote. Paul was continually defending sound doctrine and refuting false teaching. The second and third tiers of truth, or certainty, are interpretations and deductions. It does not matter what you call them as long as you realize that they are not absolute truths. Finally, outside the circle you have things like subjective opinions, personal preferences, feelings and cultural norms. The closer you get to the center of the circle, the higher your level of certainty. Every single belief that you hold will fit somewhere in this diagram.
Let me give an example to show how this works. Take the doctrine of the second coming of Christ. I am so certain that Christ will return for his blood bought bride that I am willing to die for this belief. You could kill me and I would not change my mind. Jesus is coming! But if I say that Jesus is going to return at the end of the seven year tribulation, I have just moved into the area of interpretation. I am not willing to die for this truth, but I am pretty certain it is accurate. I can turn this interpretation into a deduction by saying that, based on the signs of the times, I believe that the tribulation is going to start some time in the next five years. This is less certain that an interpretation and far less certain than an absolute. If I believe that the tribulation was going to begin within five years, I might conclude that I should sell all of my stocks and buy gold coins. This belief would be a subjective opinion or personal preference.
Now I will use this diagram to show how Christians routinely confuse these categories. Let’s say that I feel very strongly that I should buy gold coins and I try to convince you to do the same, and if you don’t, I accuse you of not caring about the return of Christ and call you an immature believer and a sinner. What have I just done? I have just expanded the circle of absolutes and made it so large that it now includes my interpretations, deductions and personal opinion. But I am not aware that I have done so. I believe with all my heart that buying gold is an absolute truth, so I have become a legalist. I have gone way beyond the clear teaching of Scripture. This diagram also demonstrates what liberals do. Liberal theology is the opposite of legalism. Liberals shrink the circle of absolutes so far down that little to nothing can fit into an absolute truth. The return of Christ can’t fit in there. The deity of Christ, the cross, the resurrection, sin, salvation, creation—nothing fits into this micro circle of truth, assuming it still exists at all.
Now we can return to Euodia and Syntyche. We can be sure that theirs was not a core issue of absolute truth, which means that the disagreement had to do with something in the outer circles—deductions possibly, but I am thinking it was a matter of personal preference and opinions. We can imagine that both women had opinions and ways of working that had strengths and weaknesses. Neither was right or wrong in the clearest sense. Yet, they shared a significant disagreement that was interfering with gospel work in Philippi. They probably both had a good dose of pride that was getting in the way of full unity.
What did Euodia (“Prosper”) think about Syntyche (“Lucky”)? Euodia thought that she was right. And Syntyche thought that she was right. They both held onto the issue as being way too important. But Paul asked them to “agree with each other in the Lord.” This also tells us that the issue was not sound doctrine; otherwise Paul could not have commanded them to agree. You cannot take two different sides of absolute truth and quickly combine them into an agreement. If Euodia believed that you must be circumcised and Syntyche did not, would Paul have told them, “Come on ladies, quite your silly bickering over this issue and agree in the Lord.”
Our denomination regularly uses a statement from church father John Chrysostom, who said: In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, charity; in all things, Jesus Christ. If the issue at hand is a core doctrine—an essential as Chrysostom called it—then we must have unity and agreement. If a church does not hold to the full deity of Christ, then we cannot be unified with them. If a church believes that baptism is necessary for salvation, then we cannot be unified. At the level of core doctrine, truth is inherently divisive. It divides people who do not agree but it also powerfully unites those who do.
In non-essentials, we must have charity and love. If it is not a core issue, then we must, as we often say, agree to disagree. But here is the place where it can get tricky. As I said before, if my personal opinion about buying gold is elevated to more importance that it should be, then I am going to have many conflicts. Each person in this room struggles with pride as it is, but if you add in the confusion of essentials with non-essentials, then you can have a powder keg of conflict on your hand. So for Euodia and Syntyche, they were divided either because of raw pride and selfishness or because they confused the categories of essentials and non-essentials.
I want to take a hot topic and show you how we can easily make the same mistake, and why we need to think Biblically and carefully. The topic I want to discuss is whether you should send your children to public school or homeschool them. This has become a potentially divisive topic in evangelical churches. Some are calling it the new worship wars. It is the elephant in the room that everyone is afraid to talk about. Believe me—I am afraid to talk about it, but I think it is necessary to tackle the subject.
Before I do, let me offer some introductory comments. Number one: Most of you are aware that we have always homeschooled our kids and, Lord willing, will continue to do so. This means that I bring a certain bias to the conversation. I am fully aware of this bias and if anything, I think it makes me come down a little harder on the homeschoolers because I am one of them. By the time I am done this morning, I make people on both sides mad at me.
Second comment: At present, we have a healthy mix of homeschooling families and public school families with a few Cornerstone families in the mix. I love this diversity I want to keep our unity within our diversity. You need to know how rare it is to have such a mix. If you go to most churches, they will either be predominantly homeschooled families or public school families, but rarely will you see a good mix of the two. Why? Because there can be an underlying tension that drives people in or out of the church. We must be so very careful with this topic and we must be overflowing with love for one another.
Third point: We have an interesting mix just on our elder board. We homeschool as you know. Rod is one of our elders and he has taught in the public school system for 30+ years. Chris is another elder and their family has had an ongoing mixture of homeschool, public school and Christian school.
One final point: Whatever I say about homeschoolers or public schoolers, I am painting with a broad brush. I am not responding to anything I have ever seen or heard in this church and I am not subtlety pointing fingers at anyone. We have not had major problems over his issue, which is why I want to talk about if before we do.
All parents believe they are making the right decision for their respective family, but the problem begins when either view takes a position of superiority. And I have seen both viewpoints do this. On the one hand are people like Bruce Shortt. Dr. Shortt was asked the question, “Is it a sin…for a Christian to send their kids to public school? Or is it merely unwise?” This is what is known as a loaded question. The question could be phrased this way—“Is it a sin to send your children to public school, or is it just stupid?” He quoted five verses then arrived at the following conclusion. “That is missing the mark—in other words, that is sin. But it is not merely a personal sin; it is also a sin that is likely to cause children to sin as well.”
This man is a graduate of Harvard Law School, he has a PhD from Stanford University, and he was a Fulbright Scholar. All that it is to say that he is way smarter than me and probably smarter than you too. Frankly, I don’t care how smart he is, he still makes a vital mistake. Where has Dr. Shortt placed homeschooling on our circle? He has placed it at least in the area of interpretation if not in the center circle of absolute truth. You don’t have to be a Harvard graduate to know that a statement like this is going to cause tensions and divisions. Personally, I have never heard anyone n our church ever say this, but some of you may be very close to it and I am guessing that some public school families think that this is a common belief in the homeschool community.
I don’t know Dr. Shortt, but I think I may know why he made this mistake. Two key Biblical texts are Eph. 6 and Deut. 6. “Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.” (Eph 6:4) “These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.” (Dt. 6:6-9) Training your children in the fear and admonition of the Lord is an absolute. It is a non-negotiable. Allow me to go on record as saying that if you fail to do this, then you are sinning. But here is where Shortt went astray. He took these absolute truths and assumed that the only way to obey these verses was through homeschooling. He did what I showed you before—he has enlarged the area of absolutes so that it is encroaching on areas of less certainty. As I said, I am biased and I feel strongly that homeschooling is a great way to obey these passages, but it is not the only way.
This kind of thing happens very often because it is such an easy mistake to make. The issue can get even more complicated when we realize that for some parents, they are so passionate about an issue like homeschooling, that if they did not do it, they feel as if they would be sinning. A conviction like this would be similar to a person who was clearly called to the mission field but refused to go. Just because it is a sin that they did not go to the mission field does not mean that every Christian is sinning by staying home.
Let me give you another reason why I think Dr. Shortt is wrong—single mothers. How can you possibly tell a single mother who is barely surviving on a minimum wage job that she is sinning by sending her children to a public school? We are taking her very challenging status as a single mother and adding the massive burden of guilt by forcing her to homeschool her children while she also puts a roof over their heads, clothes on their backs and food on the table. How is she going to do this?! This is an incalculable burden to place on her shoulders and on her soul. This is similar to the rebuke Jesus leveled against the Pharisees. “And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them. (Luke 11:36)
While it is true that homeschool parents can sometimes be unkind with their words, I have seen public school parents do the same. At my former church there were a good number of homeschool families. However, there was a certain culture there—kind of an unwritten law—that if you homeschooled your kids past eighth grade, you were some kind of freak. Most parents stopped at sixth grade and the really brave ones homeschooled until eighth grade. But if you homeschooled your children through high school, you were a separatistic, over-controlling, selfish parent who did not care a whit about the public schools and were going to ruin your kids. I have seen rhetoric and unkind words flowing both ways. I have seen great examples of homeschool children and great examples of public school children, just as I have seen bad examples of both. I think that there are children in public schools who should be at home and kids at home that should be somewhere else. Furthermore, if I say much more, I could be guilty of making the same kind of error that Dr. Shortt has made. This issue is the Euodia and Syntyche of the 21st century. Let me leave you with a few questions to ponder.
1. Above all, are you training your children in the fear and admonition of the Lord? Do you have ongoing and growing evidence that you are obeying passages like Eph. 6 and Deut. 6?
2. Are you certain you are doing what God wants you to do? Are your kids better off because of your decisions?
3. Have you turned your opinions into absolutes or have you watered down your absolutes into opinions?
4. Can you hold passionately to your own beliefs and practices without judging those who differ from you?
5. Can you “agree in the Lord” about this issue? Can we exhibit a unity in our diversity that, though all too rare, is beautiful and brings glory to God?
6. Are you approachable and teachable, or is it possible that others are hesitant to talk with you about this?
7. What kinds of fear, pride or prejudice are you holding on to?
8. Can we, in all things, be bound together in Jesus Christ, abounding in love for one another?
Rich Maurer
February 22, 2009