Thoughts on discipline

Last night I was attending the Mens Bible Study at the church where we are working our way through the book of Acts. First let me start by encouraging you that if you have both an X and Y chromosome in your DNA that you should probably be there. David Peeace does a wonderful job of leading the study and the discussions we have are iron sharpening iron at it's best! But back to last night: We found ourselves in Acts chapter 5 this week with the story of Ananias and Sapphira - an interesting story if there ever was one. It's a passage that I've taught and preached on before so I was interesting to see what we would pull out of it. For those of you who are less familiar with the narrative here's the story:

However, a man named Ananias, along with his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property. With his wife’s knowledge, he withheld some of the proceeds from the sale. He brought the rest and placed it in the care and under the authority of the apostles. Peter asked, “Ananias, how is it that Satan has influenced you to lie to the Holy Spirit by withholding some of the proceeds from the sale of your land? Wasn’t that property yours to keep? After you sold it, wasn’t the money yours to do with whatever you wanted? What made you think of such a thing? You haven’t lied to other people but to God!” When Ananias heard these words, he dropped dead. Everyone who heard this conversation was terrified. Some young men stood up, wrapped up his body, carried him out, and buried him.

About three hours later, his wife entered, but she didn’t know what had happened to her husband. Peter asked her, “Tell me, did you and your husband receive this price for the field?”

She responded, “Yes, that’s the amount.”

He replied, “How could you scheme with each other to challenge the Lord’s Spirit? Look! The feet of those who buried your husband are at the door. They will carry you out too.” At that very moment, she dropped dead at his feet. When the young men entered and found her dead, they carried her out and buried her with her husband. Trepidation and dread seized the whole church and all who heard what had happened.
Acts 5:1-11 (Common English Bible)

Now the story of Ananias and Sapphira is one about a number of things - greed, notoriety, hypocrisy  and strangely enough the divinity and personhood of the Holy Spirit. But one of the things that came out of the discussion last night was the idea of church discipline. It's plain that the enacting of the death penalty for the couple was something that was done by God - not the church. It was God who struck them dead for their deception but it is also plainly obvious that Peter made the decision to confront the duplicitous behaviour in a public setting. I wonder would anyone in the church today have the guts to do something like that? Would any of us be willing to stand up and cause a spectacle by calling someone on their sin in the church or are we so tolerant of sin in the body of Christ (while simultaneously being radically intolerant of the world - which is another post altogether) that we'd rather take their money and feign ignorance than confront the couple?

Then this morning in my Bible reading I found myself in 1 Corinthians chapter 5 which talks about a situation where there was sexual immorality within the church and Paul's advice for dealing with that. While we get no accounts of God striking anyone dead for their sin we do get some fairly dire warnings from the Apostle followed by some harsh instructions.

Your bragging isn’t good! Don’t you know that a tiny grain of yeast makes a whole batch of dough rise?  Clean out the old yeast so you can be a new batch of dough, given that you’re supposed to be unleavened bread. Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed, so let’s celebrate the feast with the unleavened bread of honesty and truth, not with old yeast or with the yeast of evil and wickedness.

But now I’m writing to you not to associate with anyone who calls themselves “brother” or “sister” who is sexually immoral, greedy, someone who worships false gods, an abusive person, a drunk, or a swindler. Don’t even eat with anyone like this. What do I care about judging outsiders? Isn’t it your job to judge insiders? God will judge outsiders. Expel the evil one from among you!1 Corinthians 5:6-8, 10-13 Common English Bible

Paul is saying to the Corinthian church that if they do not deal seriously with sin in their fellowship that it will infect every aspect of the church - like a little yeast working its way through the dough. We are to be "new dough" a representation of a new way to be human and in relationship with God, and in order to experience what that means we need to ruthlessly root out sin and confront it. That doesn't mean that we expect people to be perfect - it's quite clear that Paul would rather this sinful man have repented and changed his ways but in the face of unrepentant sinfulness Paul calls for the nuclear discipline option - expelling the immoral brother.

In the Christian and Missionary Alliance we have a policy on church discipline, if you're interested you can download it off the national website here. But I would hazard to say that in the past we've not been very good at enacting it. I'm not even talking about following through with the "nuclear option" but even the early stages of confronting sinful behaviour in our family. If we are to be serious about being the church that God wants us to be we need to value righteousness and holiness at our core - why are we so afraid to do that? Why some 2000 years after the Ananias and Sapphira incident are we still so reluctant to take sin in the body seriously - do we need people to be struck dead in our assembly by God to take notice? Luke reminds us that "Trepidation and dread seized the whole church and all who heard what had happened." do we need a similar experience? Or are we willing to learn from the lessons of our forebearers and take sin in the church as seriously as God does - not so we can be judgemental but so we can spur each other on towards good deeds and righteousness in Christ and so that we become the beautiful bride without spot or blemish that Christ is calling us to become.

I had no intention of talking about church discipline today - there really isn't a specific situation that comes to mind that's fueling this little tirade but I just feel like I got two doses of a similar message from Scripture in the last 24 hours so it was worth sharing with you.

Onto Transformers where today I once again return to Grimlock. But today rather than being an excavator or a dinosaur he's a pony. Or a pony car rather. Today's figure is Alternators Grimlock. A Licensed scale replica of a Ford Mustang GT in a glorious Dinobot Silver. Unlike RID Grimlock this figure is meant to be a homage to the T-Rex we all know and love and is his character re-imagined in the alternators universe.

He has all the signature colours and accessories that made Grimlock who we know and love, from a head sculpt that is highly reminiscent of his original incarnation, to his red energon sword which is cleverly stored on his undercarriage in vehicle mode to his engine weapon (a feature that most Alternators toys have in common) which in Grimlock's case transforms into a double barreled blaster very similar to his original weapon.

Grimlock is a special figure to me one because I had a mini collection of Grimlock figures that I was slowly building up and this was a difficult to track down piece of that puzzle, but two because he was a more rare figure and consequently was more valuable than other Alternators. This mold in particular was rare even in it's other incarnation as Wheeljack so it's worth holding on to. But alas, this too shall pass.

Until tomorrow,

Chris