I often scroll Notes in order to find adjacent material that people are writing to pick their brains and find genuine questions to pursue. I was about this work when I came across
article Two Paths Diverged in the Woods1, which she shared with a quote from her article,“A robust Christian imagination must start with story and eschew fear”
-Ashley Hales
I always test statement like this—not for badness, but I like to see where it leads, so I commented.
“Yet, fear is often what keeps us in line—giving to symbiotic organisations that abuse us because we think there is no salvation outside of them. To completely eschew fear means a heck-a-lot of dismantling the constructs of fear that are inbuilt in our organisations. Current permission structures often do not tolerate our lack of fear. They find it disobedient.”
and to that the invitation came:
Say more about the “constructs of fear inbuilt in organisations.”
I found my response to flow from my finger tips and so I shared the first part of this in Notes and decided to write the rest in a post for everyone. I hope it blesses you and that God leads you to a fuller view of fellowship with Him and others in love, faith and hope in the gospel.
Constructs of Fear
There is a lot to say. Let’s start with the concepts of safety, legitimacy and provision on which all fears rest. These three are the foundation stones of all fear and faith when attributed to people or God respectively.
If I live by faith I attribute all of my safety, legitimacy and provision as coming from God. If I live by fear then I attribute all these things to myself or other people, organisations or nations. It is rarely so cut and dry as living by faith or fear alone, though a few individuals come to mind who lived by an otherwise inexplicable faith.
Constructs of fear offer themselves as the answer when we feel threatened in any of these three areas. They offer safety, legitimacy and provision outside of God. In the book of Hosea the meaning of his children’s names, Lo-Ammi and Lo-Ruhama mean “you are not my people” and “you have not received mercy”. God instructs Hosea to name them these strange names because the people of God had attributed their safety, legitimacy and provision to quote “other lovers”. In the context these are nation-states and businesses and people with whom the people of God have committed adultery.
I would say that most of the constructs of fear that surround the people of God in the West today have to do with the fear of illegitimacy. You’re not a real Christian if you don’t go to Church. That’s a interesting concept to me. Why is it that we doubt a person’s faithfulness to God for not belonging to a 501C or otherwise organised group of believers? What spirit of self-protection do we possess that makes us hit out at the outsider and fire warning shots from the Church porch? What is it about the way we are organised that makes us feel safe, legitimate and provided for, but also unsafe, illegitimate and unprovided for when the tide turns against us? If we had placed our faith in God rather than people or organisations or nations we would have been unmoved—but we continue to be shaken every single time someone breaks fellowship.
I should back up a little and say that I believe that the people of God are only rightly identified as the people of God who have received mercy as per Hosea 2 and Romans 9. This is to say that any extra-biblical organisation surrounding the people of God is merely symbiotic and not the true identity of the people of God. We are not Baptists or Presbyterians or Evangelicals—these are the symbiotic organisations and ideologies that have grown up alongside the people of God and, in some cases, consumed them. There isn’t anything inherently sinful in having a symbiotic organisation (SO) so long as it remains mutualistic or at the very most commensalistic. Too often, though, the SO is parasitic and feeds off of the people of God until there is only one or two left in the fellowship who keep the whole thing going thinking that this is what it means to be a true Christian.
Above all, constructs of fear replace the spiritual freedoms and rights of the people of God with their own structures to keep people safe, redefine what legitimacy looks like and provide for the lack they create.
The first thing that an SO takes away from the people of God is their unity in love, faith and hope in the gospel and replaces it with unity in love, faith or hope alone.2 Afterall, eternity is at stake. In the SO that values faith or hope alone, Love is a hero in their grand narrative but denigrated to subservience to faith or hope as merely being trustworthy or a romantic notion to be trivialised in times of great trouble.3
Having dispensed with a truly biblical notion of love, the SO then goes about re-structuring the people of God into believers and non-believers with those who believe the most4 in places of power. At this point you may be asking what’s wrong with that? Are we not believers in Jesus? And to that I say, yes, but that is not our identity in Him. The Scriptures do not categorise us first as believers in God but as lovers of God.5
The redefining of the people of God is almost complete. The SO has redefined love to be under faith and hope and placed those with the most knowledge at the head of the table. It now has a more than firm hold on the people of God and demands payment for its services. The building, the teacher, the sundry ministries—so it starts to pull scripture out of context to protect, legitimise and provide for itself.
First, restrict half of the population from gaining power of any sort; the fewer believers who can rise to power means that there are fewer who can challenge the status quo. Plus, the half that remain tend to be the lackadaisical half who are quite happy to be the only ones allowed to rise—if they want to. You can of course further restrict this population by focusing on some sins rather than others to further disqualify those who would even attempt.
Second, pulling more scripture out of context, instate a mandatory bible-based tax on all members to provide for this system. This should be a minimal amount, and will be motivated by the sundry ministries we are have started because God wanted us to.6
Third, on threat from those who are actually reading the scriptures and listening to the Holy Spirit, the teacher must teach through the whole Bible to maintain appearances that nothing is wrong with the organisation. If they also hold a doctorate of divinity or otherwise it helps to solidify institutional trust. Doing so ensures that people are kept in line and that they do not question those in power for fear of questioning the Word of God and being expelled. Oh—yes, now this one is important.
Fourth, the Word of God as we understand it is unquestionable in its plain meaning to us and no reading which threatens the organisation will be allowed. Certain allowances for culture shift will take place and a re-emphasise of the Word through chapter breaks, titles, study Bibles and the like to promote 110% participation in the Organisation will be necessary. Under no circumstances are people to be allowed to leave and maintain fellowship with the people of God inside the organisation. They should be encouraged to join another SO lest they see behind the curtain.
Fifth, people who look like they are going to leave the SO ought to be encouraged to be church planters. Oh, they will try to build a New Testament Church but they will see that it is difficult and that the services of an SO are necessary for dynamic growth and to pay for all of the things they grew up doing and thinking were the point of Christianity. Don’t despair, this usually takes place in around 1-5 years after planting7. Discourage people from willy-nilly planting a church with sayings like Churches Plant Churches—this will ensure that the half of the population who aren’t supposed to be eligible for leadership nor those disqualified because of their sins come to power in the SO.
Sixth, people in power will mess up, but don’t worry, this only serves to strengthen the SO. When a powerful leader falls from grace all you have to do is tighten up the restrictions on power and take more ground on the rights and freedoms of the people of God. They will think, as we have taught them to think, that they are more safe, legitimate and provided for as a result. They will limp along for a while, but their trust in the organisation will not fade—even if they distrust one organisation they will run into the arms of another like that scene from Shrek Forever After when the villagers run from one Starbucks into another on the opposite corner.
I could continue, but this would be a much longer post than it already is, and I have yet to show light at the end of the tunnel.
We have covered that the basis of both fear and faith are an attribution of safety, legitimacy and provision to either people or God. It was necessary to detail what it looks like to place our trust in people rather than God because the hard work of the future is to shed those constructs of fear and to build constructs of love, faith and hope in the gospel—to reclaim definitions and examples that have been co-opted by the world to fulfil the desires of the flesh. In that spirit we must understand what God means by love and no longer consider anything as a forgone conclusion.
Love is, and is the realisation of all that is. We love because we have been loved. Faith is the living out of that love and hope is the certainty we have that the One who first loved us; who made us and sees us exactly as we are, is coming home to us and bringing Heaven with Him. There is no fear in love because fear is always about what is not, can’t be, or shouldn’t be the case. What does it look like to organise in love, faith and hope in the gospel of Jesus Christ? It looks like really living, really loving, and breaking every boundary that fear puts in our hearts for the sake of safety, legitimacy and provision. It looks like returning to the scriptures with fresh eyes, soft hearts and open ears to the Spirit to guide us into the mind of Christ and into unity with Him in love, faith and hope.
This is the whole point of being saved. We were once in the Kingdom of Darkness and have now been transferred to the Kingdom of Light in order to fellowship with God and with one another. Fellowship is the point of life—fellowship with God brings about every good thing—drives out all evil—makes all things new. That common fellowship is in love, faith and hope in the gospel. It doesn’t need our constructs to exist—to keep people out or in, and so when we are a part of this fellowship the constructs themselves fall away—which can look to the world like we have left "the faith,” and in a sense we have. We have left the faith of the world and entered into love, faith and hope in God.
3 Applications
Get alone with God as soon as you can and ask for His love to be revealed to you. If you stick around here long enough you’ll know that it is not a job of copy and pasting of information. Now I know God loves me. No, It is about dwelling in that place of knowing and behaving in the reality that your safety, legitimacy and provision come from God and no one else.
While you sit with God in His love, ask Him to remind you of who He is and what He has done that makes you who you are and informs you of how you ought to live. This is true faith in the gospel
Ask God to show you His people for who they are and treat them with the same love and mercy and comfort which we have received and enter into dialog with us. There are no expectations for the people of God who have received mercy beyond being that people and growing in love and mercy in Christ. At Ammi Ruhama Community Christian Union we have a good amount of information to share to help you work out your salvation with fear and trembling, but God will reveal Himself to you in time and give you what you need to take your place among the people of God. He is working in you for His good pleasure, therefore do not submit copy pasting your faith; to be worked in by someone else and to be used for another’s perverse pleasures.
among evangelicals the focus is usually faith, though hope runs a close second.
and, in the interest of keeping power, it is always a time of great trouble.
This usually means Bible College and/or Seminary with a view for further education.
I will speak more about this further on, so let’s continue.
As seen in Stop Supporting Your Local Church
Some SOs are better than others at keeping people “in the flock”