Zeal For Truth

This is part of an eight part series on the importance of fellowship. Read the other parts here:

Part 8: Unconditional Love
Part 7: Honesty
Part 6: Fighting Superficiality
Part 5: Sanctification
Part 4: Why You Need It (Yes You)
Part 3: Dealing With A Dead or Dying Church
Part 2: Accountability
Part 1: Introduction

I realise it has been over a month and a half since I have written anything even remotely political. Over the past couple years of this blog, I have found it much harder to articulate thoughts on my faith - and instead relied heavily on politics, economics and philosophy.

I am not sure what’s wrong with me.

Experiencing biblical fellowship over the past nine months has had a radical impact on my life. But more than that, these last nine months have been cataclysmic opening of things that I have been convinced about for most of my Christian life, but I had been simply bereft of the language (both externally and internally) for articulating them. I hope the writing from this past month has provided a clear idea of some of my thoughts on the matter.

This subject - superficiality - is one I probably could have written before this transition took place, albeit, without the doctrine and theology that I have now amalgamated into my thinking. This doctrinal ally, I hope, will enable to me to write this blog without the personal feelings and experiences that had coloured my thoughts of superficiality (and erroneously defined “fellowship”) in the past. None of us should ever presume to be unbiased or unaffected by past events, situations and relationships - reading this guys blog (and keeping grace in perspective) reminds me that my own past mistakes aren’t that bad, and that those who have annoyed, angered or offended me didn’t do anything so severe.

In a lot of ways, this series has been a detox and I will write it as long as it serves a benefit for me and hopefully encourages others to seek out reliable, biblical and sanctifying fellowship.

Superficiality: The Enemy of Sanctification
That is the main problem with superficiality in fellowship - there is no way sanctification can take place. As I mentioned last time, sanctification is critical in fellowship - it’s part of God’s design for it. We have to be allowing God to use us to make each other holy. We have to be open to the Holy Spirit making us more like Christ, and we have to admit that we aren’t going to get all the answers by flipping through our bible alone, casually attending church or waiting for an angelic visitor to reveal hidden mysteries to us.

But we are doing ourselves a great disservice by holding superficial relationships up as fellowship. I was in a discussion with a friend of mine in leadership some time ago about this subject, and I noticed how his conversation about fellowship slipped seamlessly in and out of sanctification and superficiality. On the one hand, he was speaking about being accountable and offering encouragement to one another as fellowship but then he would speak about having a church barbeque and movie-night as ways to stimulate fellowship.

I’ll post more from Why Small Groups - it’s just articulated too well not to use:

You may think fellowship with God is all you need. After all, doesn’t the Bible teach that God and his Word are sufficient for all our needs pertaining to life and godliness? Yes, it does. But the error comes in limiting the means God uses to help us apply truth to our lives. Only the Spirit can illuminate Scripture to our minds and give us the power to obey it.

Yet the Spirit often chooses to employ other people as a means of communicating his truth to our ears and heart. Who are we to argue with him? He will of course use teachers of the word through sermons, books, and tapes. But he will also use the regular guy in your small group—and there’s the rub. We can ignore teachers, close books, and turn off tapes. When we do pay attention, we can conveniently misapply teachings. But the people closest to us, if they’re doing their job in fellowship, are not likely to let us ignore God’s urgings so easily.

The chief reason we love superficiality is because it removes the danger of being confronted with truth that we don’t want to hear. That’s right - not only are you harbouring pride and dishonesty in your heart about who you are, but you are actively protecting it, keeping it from being exposed by talking about the weather, sports, celebrity gossip, your new couches, music or anything else that blocks God’s truth from working in your life.

This applies to all of us to some degree. Remember, we aren’t yet sanctified - so sin still pollutes us and affects us. Our natural man wants to survive. We all have to take this word as for us - we need to systematically set up fellowship because there are going to be times when we don’t want to deal with our sin.

Case in point. I meet with a guy regularly to keep me accountable, encourage me and regularly point out my own blind spots to sin in my life. How often to I want to meet with this guy? Almost never. It isn’t because he’s not a swell guy - on the contrary, we share common interests and passions, and our personalities seem to mesh well. It’s not because I think he’s going to point out something to me that’s way off, judgemental or wrong. It’s because I am terrified that he is going to share truth with me that tears down my pride and exposes my weakness.

If I did fellowship simply “as I felt led” then I would never do it. Who feels led to be humbled? Good luck finding someone like that! No, it is important to set up relationships where you share some trust, and to put in a framework that enables you to benefit from fellowship.

Think about church. Sometimes Sunday morning church is annoying. Can’t we just all meet together whenever we feel like it? Yes we can - but if we didn’t institutionalise one day a week or so to meet - we’d probably neglect it sooner or later.

Dumbing it Down
Superficiality is the dumbing down of fellowship - where the forms of fellowship still exist (communication, relationships, emotions, passions, connections) but the substance has been completely removed. I believe this is a direct consequence of abandoning deliberate, systematic fellowship. When the zeal for change and reform fade, and we begin to want to plateau, then fellowship is slowly replaced with superficiality.

Solve this slide by setting up a devotion with your spouse. Meet with another believer to pray for one another. Join (or create) a small group at your church which deals with application. Ask another believer to watch your behaviour and to feel free to point out areas where you are blind to your own sin. Worship God with passion corporately, singing and proclaiming how great He is.

Most importantly, know that God’s truth is only going to improve things. The initial discomfort is just your natural man resisting. If you are with even remotely mature Christians, then no one is going to judge you, and in fact, you are likely going to be a means of grace for others - encouraging them by your own exampl to seek fellowship themselves.

On to Part 7: Honesty.