If you were wondering, I usually pick the subjects of my article over a year in advance, so I rarely time a certain article with tany regards to current circumstance. On occasion I may adapt the subject to a current event. Nevertheless, the topics are quite universal in the applicability to the Gospel because the Gospel meets everyone, wherever they are in life, it doesn’t matter who you are. It’s a matter of how you’ve responded to it.
Anyway, on to the subject to start off this new year.
When I was in the Navy, I used to spend a substantial portion on my mental life reading about Royal Navy officers in the 18th Century. That was a manifestation of over 15 years of passion for the study of European History during the Era of Sail, and in particular, the time of Lord Nelson.
I’m not a historian, but looking back, it does seem rather odd, to be living, even in ones thoughts, another life and glorifying an age gone by and, to some degree, neglecting he present.
Nevertheless, this was one of the strongest motivations for me when I in 1998 made a decision to return to the Navy as a Chaplain. I was idolizing the navy officer’s uniform as though the meaning and its status to me had a larger than life meaning and a substantial part of my identity.
Ultimately, I realized, those people who I idolized were living in their current time, their present time. They were fighting the evils of their time, much like we who live today have contemporary evils that we must fight against, not by living in the past but very much being present for God’s work today, now.
Ultimately, I responded to my conscience, realizing that despite the powerful motivation the status as a Navy chaplain would be to me, the motivation was spiritually wrong.
While it is often necessary to exhibit authority by the donning of a uniform (sometimes with a firearm), a uniform of authority for many people who wear it, should bears with it caution and sober responsibility, unless in some regards it have the same effect as it had on me for those years in my life.
While many churches have leadership and pastors who do not wear the uniform of clergy, it can be a crutch that both the clergyman and the congregant rely on visual differentials in status and vestments to achieve the correct spiritual relationship and authority, especially if it means that clergy misappropriate an aspect reserved for Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.
To further emphasize the possible reverence given to cloth or other garment or dress of authority, some denominations and religions can only worship with the presence of venerated relics. Those things that we spend time preserving can become the idols that God exhorts us not to do because it is an abomination to glorify anything, to worship anything or anyone but God himself. At some point, the uniform can inhibit its usefulness in fulfilling the call of the gospel.
The gospel involves a personal and direct relationship to the person and work of Jesus Christ.
As another warning of such behavior, Jesus saved his strongest criticism for the religious Jews whose outward piety, which typically involved a certain garb, was only exceeded by inward depravity.
27 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. 28 In this way, you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. Matthew 23:27-28
Like the police officer who is armed and carries with the authority of the law, clergy wear the vestments or other religious Garb that signal authority and convey trustworthiness. Those congregants who are lead by “Christian” pastors away from the teachings of Christ suffer the greatest verbal condemnation.
Repeated for emphasis in the synoptic gospels, is this warning from Christ about leading new believers in Christ the wrong way. There is a need for vigilance in avoiding self-idolatry, which includes the symbols of our authority we may bear.
Now He said to His disciples, “It is inevitable that stumbling blocks come, but woe to him through whom they come! 2 It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea, than that he would cause one of these little ones to stumble. 3 Be on your guard! If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. – Luke 17:1-3
Direct others to and raise Christ. As John the Baptist declared, who was the last Old Testament prophet, He must increase but I must decrease. – John 3:30
For a one minute explanation of the Gospel from the late Pastor John MacArthur, watch this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCP9UcC7BzE
For a review of the Ten Commandments: https://www.challenyee.com/the-ten-commandments/
All quoted excerpts have footnotes removed, usually from Legacy Standard Bible (LSB), sometimes from New International Version (NIV), on rare occasion the Amplified Bible (AMP).
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4-27-24