Why are Christians such hypocrites?

As human beings, we hate hypocrisy. Whether it’s public figures taking private jets to climate change conferences or politicians telling people to host a refugee while refusing to do so themselves.

But while we don’t like hypocrisy in general, religious hypocrisy gets us even more. We’re indignant when people who claim to live according to a higher standard – and perhaps even tell others they should do the same – don’t even live up to those standards themselves.

In 1999 the actions of a minister in this town made national headlines for that very reason. A member of his congregation was quoted in the Daily Record as saying: ‘He was always preaching about the sin of adultery…I have never known such hypocrisy’.

I’ve no doubt there are many who have never been back at church since, for that very reason. And while for some the claim that ‘Christians are just a bunch of hypocrites’ may simply be an excuse, for others it’s a genuine stumbling block when it comes to accepting the claims of Christianity.

It’s an objection which can’t simply be explained away by saying that genuine Christians aren’t hypocrites. If hypocrisy is defined as saying one thing and doing the opposite, all Christians are hypocrites to some extent – and I include myself in that.

Now it is true that all who claim to be Christians wouldn’t be recognised as such by Christ himself. He tells us: ‘Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord”, will enter the kingdom of Heaven’. Church attendance in Scotland has fallen drastically, but even now only a fraction of those who go to church would define themselves as ‘evangelical’ or ‘born again’ Christians. And if most churchgoers would say ‘we can’t take the Bible literally’ – then it’s no surprise that they don’t live their lives according to it.

But what about those who have genuinely committed their lives for Christ and are seeking to live for him? We are hypocrites too in that we fall short of the standards we say we try to live by. But that would only be a deal-breaker if our hope for heaven was in trying to be better than those around us.

The following quote might sound shocking, even to many churchgoers, but I think it’s an accurate summary of the Christian gospel: ‘To be a Christian is to acknowledge your utter moral failure and to throw yourself on the mercy of the only truly good man who ever lived’. The Bible isn’t ultimately the story of good people and bad people. Some of the most famous Bible characters fell short of God’s standards in huge ways. Yet their hope wasn’t in their own goodness, but in the fact that the one truly good man who ever lived – Jesus Christ – lived and died in their place.

But if someone does throw themselves on Jesus’ mercy, does that mean it doesn’t matter how they live? Not at all! Before we are converted, God’s law simply condemns us; after we’re converted, it becomes a guide for living. And yet although we now genuinely want to do what God says, we often fail. The Christian life is an ongoing battle in which, as Jesus’ brother James put it, ‘We all stumble in many ways’.

If we define hypocrisy as not living up to how we think everyone should live, every true Christian is guilty as charged. But hypocrisy can also be defined as wearing a mask and pretending to be better than you really are. And what I think you will find if you spend time among genuine Christians, is that the element of pretence is largely gone. You’ll find people who are genuinely trying to live for Jesus, whether other people are watching or not.

So we’re right to be angry about religious hypocrites – in fact, Jesus saved his strongest words for them. Yet if we think we’ll be ok on Judgement Day because we’re going to tell God about all the religious hypocrites we knew, his response might simply be ‘I know – but what about you?’

However we define our terms, all Christians are hypocrites to some extent. But the Christian’s great goal in life is to point away from themselves to the one person whose life always backed up his lips – Jesus Christ. He came to earth not merely to be an example that we could never live up to, but to die in place of hypocrites like us, so that his record of flawless obedience could be counted as ours.

Published in the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press, 25th August 2022

Global RP Unity: Camps, Conferences and more

Over the past year or so, the RP Global Alliance have contributed a series on Global Unity to the various RP Church magazines around the world - the Covenanter Witness, RP Witness and Good News. Stephen was asked to contribute two articles from a historical perspective. You can read the second one below:

Having considered in the previous article how Reformed Presbyterians have sought to express unity with believers outside the RP church family, we are now going to consider how a sense of unity has been fostered between the various denominations which make up the global RP Church.

International Support and Encouragement between Covenanters

There were, of course, personal links between Covenanters in Scotland, Ireland and North America even before the formation of the various Reformed Presbyterian denominations. Congregations in what are now the United States and Canada were formed as Covenanters emigrated from the Old World to the New, with pastors sent from Scotland and Ireland to minister to them. The first American RP Presbytery was formed in 1774 by four immigrant Irish and Scottish RP ministers. In 1858, the first RP congregation in Australia was started after an Irish RP licentiate was sent as a Colonial Missionary.

While the majority of Covenanter ministers who crossed the Atlantic in the eighteenth century did so permanently, there were also who visited for the sake of mutual encouragement, before returning home. In 1789 Rev. James Reid was given leave from his duties in South West Scotland to visit America, returning the following year with a call from South Carolina, either to himself or to any other member of the Presbytery – which they all declined. This practice of ‘mutual eligibility’ – a minister in one RP denomination being free to receive a call from a congregation in another RP denomination – has continued without controversy to the present day.

As time went on, traversing the Atlantic became less of an ordeal. In fact, in 1844, Rev. John Sprott (a Scottish RP licentiate who had become a Seceder minister in Nova Scotia), commented that ‘crossing the Atlantic is now an easy matter’ as it only took ten days. In 1860 RPCS minister John Graham, having recently become minister in Liverpool, went to America and came back with $3000 which enabled his new congregation to finish their church building. Irish RP minister Thomas Houston spent four months in the States in 1856, and an American obituary stated ‘his friends and admirers on this side of the Atlantic were as numerous as those in the country of his birth’. William Milroy was the first RPCS minister to train for the ministry in North America, studying at the university of Toronto, before being licensed by the RP Presbytery of Pittsburgh in 1861 and immediately returning home to accept a call in Scotland.

 International Conferences

Opportunities for unity between the various RP denominations, particularly in the form of conferences, began in 1896, and really took off in the second half of the twentieth century. Obvious reasons for this were the rise of air travel – journeys which had once been measured in weeks and then days, now only took hours – as well as better economic conditions in the English-speaking world.

Another reason is that by the time of the first international conference in 1896, it was clear that institutional unity with other denominations would be impossible for RPs unless they gave up their distinctive principles. The second half of the 1800s was a time when there was a great push for the different denominations to unite with each other. As we saw last time, these efforts at visible unity were something that Reformed Presbyterians had a great deal of sympathy for, and some of the leading RPs of the 19th century were noted for their catholicity and warm personal friendships with those in other denominations. However, they were not in favour of unity at any cost.

In Scotland, the majority of the denomination, which had split off in 1863, united with the Free Church in 1876, which in turn merged with the United Presbyterian Church in 1900 and then the Church of Scotland in 1929. In 1872, RPCS minister Torrens Boyd, speaking at the Irish RP Synod, had prophetically warned that such unions were like chaining two ships together – when the waves begin to roll ‘they will rasp each other’s sides off, tear open each other’s hearts and go down together’. At the same Synod, the RPCI received a proposal from the mainstream (and still exclusively psalm-singing) Presbyterian Church in Ireland to discuss a potential union. They replied, acknowledging the Christian kindness and love of union in initiating the proposal, declaring their ‘earnest concern and desire to have the divisions of the Church speedily healed, on the grounds of Scriptural truth and duty’, but concluding that given their ministerial and membership vows, any discussions were unlikely to produce the desired union.

Against this background, the ‘First International Convention of Reformed Presbyterian Churches’ was held in Scotland in 1896. The purpose of was ‘to examine the distinctive doctrines that were held by the three Churches and to renew their commitment to these common principles’. The book published to commemorate the conference lauded its success in this regard: ‘The first international Convention in her history has infused new life into the Church, and cheered her ranks’. Another benefit of the conference was that ‘Covenanters from the Old and New Worlds met each other for the first time face to face, and clasped hands warmly together in a friendship which will endure while life lasts’.

One of the resolutions at the conference was to ask the Synods to hold a similar convention in 1899. As it turned out, however, it was almost four decades before a similar conference was held – marking the tercentenary of the signing of the National Covenant of Scotland in 1938. The conference – once again held in Scotland – was organised by Revs A. C. Gregg, W. J. Moffett (RPCS) and Rev. J. Boyd Tweed (an American pastor who had recently been inducted as pastor in the Glasgow RP Church). The number of delegates totalled 630, with more joining them for the various public meetings.

Once again, it was hoped that a series of conferences would follow, but the war and its aftermath delayed plans. International Youth Conventions were held in Scotland in 1962 (with 35 Americans chartering a plane) and Ireland in 1964.

The first all-age International Conference of the modern era was held in 1966 in Carlton College, Michigan. Between 60 and 70 Irish RPs chartered a flight to attend, with a total attendance of 1352. A conference planned for Scotland in 1968 did not take place. Further International Conferences in the US were held in 1966 and 1970, with the planned 1974 conference moved to 1976 due to fuel shortages. Since then, International Conferences have been held in America every four years, with the venue changing to Calvin College, Michigan in 1996 and then Indiana Wesleyan University in 2012. The conference planned for 2020 was initially postponed for a year due to the outbreak of COVID-19, before being cancelled altogether. God willing, we will return to IWU in 2024.

 International Conferences organised by the Irish RP Church have been held every four years from 1982, initially at Kerrykeel, then Portrush, Termonfeckin (five times), Gartmore (Scotland – twice) and from 2018 at the Gold Coast in Waterford.

 The current arrangement means that an International Conference is held every two years, alternatively in the USA and the UK/Ireland. As the years have gone by, the number of countries represented has increased dramatically given new RP works in Asia and South America.

The RPCS contingent at the last International Conference in Waterford in 2018

 Opportunities for Global Service and Ministry

The Geelong Bible Conference is held in Australia every two years and has featured speakers from the RPCNA, RPCI and RPCS, as well as from those outside the global RP church. Due to their relative proximity, the Australian RP Church has taken a particular interest in the Japanese Presbytery, sending and receiving mission teams, as well as sending ministers to teach at Kobe Theological Hall (as other RP denominations have also done). 

A ‘Consultative Committee of the Three Covenanting Churches’ met 3 times during the 1966 conference and discussed efforts by the Synods towards drawing the three churches together. They discussed the following issues: Praise (namely the possibility of an international psalter), Christian Education, Magazines, Exchange of Personnel (in the form of pulpit exchanges and stated supplies, as well as Irish RPs teaching and studying at RPTS as well as Belfast), Foreign Mission Work, International Conferences, Pensions, and Reciprocity in Doctrine.

A joint meeting of ministers and elders representing the Churches in Scotland, Ireland and America was due to be held in July 1972 in Portrush but was cancelled due to the outbreak of the ‘The Troubles’ in Northern Ireland. In our own day, the RP Global Alliance seeks to continue these efforts to facilitate cooperation between the various denominations.

Since 1997, congregations in the various RP denominations have benefited from hosting RP Mission Teams, organised by the RPCNA, but with opportunities for others to serve as well. Irish and Scottish young (and older) people have served together on go teams.  Young people from the US and elsewhere have had the opportunity to experience the wider RP church through formal initiatives like the Covenanter Summer Institute and Semester in Scotland, as well as through attending church camps in Ireland. Irish young people have taken part in Theological Foundations Backpacking trips in Colorado. Seminary students have taken advantage of the opportunity to do internships in RP congregations on other continents.

Many of us have been personally enriched by these connections, and while we feel the smallness of our own denominations at times, those things we perhaps miss out on are more than compensated for by being part of a global body with an international vision and an abundance of opportunities for service and fellowship together.

Buffer Zones and the Right to Protest

With the reversal of Roe versus Wade in the United States, abortion is very much back in the news. Here in Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon responded to developments in America by giving the government’s backing to a bill that would introduce buffer zones, criminalising any form of vigil or protest outside abortion clinics.

However as the First Minister has acknowledged, such legislation would need to be ‘capable of withstanding any human rights challenge’ – a tacit acknowledgement that it would potentially clash with rights such as freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of conscience, all protected by the European Convention on Human Rights.

Sturgeon has framed this as being about ‘women’s rights to access healthcare without intimidation and harassment’. However as the First Minister well knows, intimidating or harassing a person anywhere is already a criminal offence, and so creating buffer zones would only target those who are peacefully – and often silently – offering help to vulnerable women. Indeed, through Freedom of Information requests by Compassion Scotland (a group of women campaigning against buffer zones), Police Scotland have revealed that there were no recorded incidents of intimidation or harassment at any of 13 different locations across Scotland from 2016-2019 (the most recent period for which there are statistics).

Women are certainly being intimidated however – recent BBC research shows that 15% of women have experienced pressure to terminate a pregnancy when they did not want to. Buffer zones would criminalise those who want to offer emotional and practical support to those women. A 2020 investigation found 10 pages of mumsnet posts by women seeking help after feeling coerced by their male partners to undergo an abortion. Even if they haven’t experienced coercion, many women attend an abortion clinic because they feel they have no other choice. Eleven years ago Alina Dulgheriu was single, pregnant and facing unemployment. She received a leaflet outside an abortion clinic offering help to obtain housing, as well as a pram, cot and nappies – and chose to keep her baby, a girl called Sarah. She says: ‘I didn’t sleep the night before my appointment at Marie Stopes. Some would say I had ‘chosen’ abortion. I wanted to keep her, but I didn’t know how. What could I do?’ What does she think about taking that option for women in her position to be given such help today? ‘Removing the option to receive help is deeply patronising, assuming that we can’t make a decision for ourselves’.

In fact, it’s almost laughable to categorise those who oppose abortion as the aggressors who others need protected against. The only incident of harassment or intimidation disclosed through Compassion Scotland’s Freedom of Information requests was against a protestor. In the days after the Roe v. Wade reversal, crisis pregnancy centres seeking to help vulnerable women in places such as Portland were firebombed. When SNP politician John Mason spoke out in defence of anti-abortion vigils outside Glasgow hospitals in May, Labour leader Anas Sarwar called for party discipline against him.

So why are Christians willing to stick their heads above the parapet? Ultimately it’s because we believe that life begins at conception – and is not ours to take. The Bible’s claim ‘you knit me together in my mother’s womb’ (Psalm 139:13) inevitably clashes with the slogan ‘my body my choice’.

Indeed, as journalist Olivia Utley recently pointed out, the fact that we don’t have abortion up until birth means that implicit in all abortion laws is the recognition that, at some point, deliberately ending a pregnancy would be wrong. Those who oppose abortion simply disagree with others about the timing of it. 24 weeks is ultimately an arbitrary limit, because whether a baby could survive outside the womb - or whether it’s wanted or not - doesn’t fundamentally change what it is.

Even aside from that however, the logic of ‘my body, my choice’ doesn’t hold true in other areas of life; try driving past a police car with no seat belt on, or going into the supermarket naked. In fact, Christians wholesale reject the idea that our bodies are our own – to be a follower of Jesus is to realise ‘you are not your own, you were bought with a price, therefore glorify God with your body’ (1 Corinthians 6:20).

The introduction of buffer zones would criminalise those wanting to offer hope to vulnerable women who feel they have nowhere else to turn. There aren’t always easy answers, but women in those situations need to know that they have a choice. And – however scary – it is always possible to ‘choose life’ (Deuteronomy 30:19).

Published in the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press, 28 July 2022

The Consultation for the new bill ends on 6th August - Compassion Scotland have put together some guidance for responding to it

Cost of Living Crisis

‘As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy’ (1 Timothy 6:17).

Living near Morrisons has many advantages, but it’s been depressing recently to watch fuel prices creep up on an almost daily basis. And that’s even before you go into the supermarket and see the price of food! As we head into the summer, people are cancelling or rearranging holidays, or else heading off as planned, but with the thought that this might be the last one for a while.

What makes it all feel like a sucker punch is that after two years of restrictions, we thought things were finally getting back to normal. We’ve gone from having money, but not freedom, to having freedom, but not money.

The Bible talks about ‘the uncertainty of riches’, and times like this really bring that phrase home to us. Maybe we think that talk of ‘the rich’ and ‘riches’ doesn’t apply to us, but on a global or historical scale, we have far more than most people who’ve ever lived.

Yet even if there wasn’t a cost-of-living crisis, money is a very insecure thing to set our hope on. Even if we had unlimited wealth, one day we’d have to let it go. The Bible reminds us that ‘we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of the world’ (1 Timothy 6:7). In the face of that, the Christian message is that we must put our hope in something that will outlast this world – God himself. A crisis like this, when there’s huge financial uncertainty, challenges us to ask what our happiness is rooted in. Doubtless we’ve all repeated the old adage that ‘money doesn’t bring happiness’, but do our lives show that we don’t really believe it?

Nor is materialism a recent problem, that we could be cured of if we could only go back to some mythical simpler time. I was recently asked to write an introduction to a Spanish translation of a seventeenth century tract which you could once have been killed for owning, entitled The Causes of the Lord’s Wrath against Scotland. This ‘seditious, treasonable and poisonous’ tract enraged Charles II, was burned by the public hangman at Edinburgh in 1660, and its author was executed the following year. In many ways, the tract and the circumstances in which it was written seem light years away from 2022, but much of it is startlingly up to date. For example, one of the sins that it highlights is that ‘the majority of the people spend their time in seeking after the things of a present world; and as they prosper, or are frustrated in these things, accordingly do they think themselves happy or miserable’. Truly, there is nothing new under the sun.

If a seventeenth century tract seems too obscure, take it from someone who’s achieved everything in the world’s eyes. The actor Jim Carrey has said ‘I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer’. But if riches and fame aren’t the answer, what is? Not to set our hope in God’s gifts, but in the Giver.

Our big problem as human beings however is that by nature we’re alienated from our Creator. One of the evidences of that is that we ‘worship and serve created things’ (Romans 1:25). We might wonder how we’re going to be able to pay skyrocketing utility bills over the winter, but that’s nothing compared to the debt we owe to God. Christians pray in the Lord’s Prayer ‘forgive us our debts’ – and that is no small thing to ask, since ‘the wages of sin is death’ (Romans 6:23). Come winter, we will be a lot slower to put the heating on than before because we know that it will cost us – but have we ever considered what living in God’s world without acknowledging him will cost? If we’re now living in a financial day of reckoning, what will a spiritual day of reckoning look like?

And yet if only we will face up to our need, we can then hear the news that someone has come to solve our spiritual cost-of-living crisis – by offering to pay the price for us to live forever. The cost? ‘Not perishable things as silver and gold, but the precious blood of Christ’.

Published in the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press, 30th June 2022

Why meet with elders before communion?

Update: A good article to read first is: ‘Why every church should practice “open” and “closed” communion’

Last week, Stephen & James had the opportunity to spend time with Drew Gordon. Drew is an elder in the North American RP Church, and edits their denominational magazine, the RP Witness. One of the regular features of the magazine is a Q&A section, where commonly asked questions are answered.

One recent question was as follows:

Noah Bailey (who spent time in Airdrie as part of the ‘Semester in Scotland’ programme before entering the pastorate) sought to answer the question, and here are some of the key points:

“Elders make an effort to hear a credible profession of faith in Jesus. This profession needs three “witnesses”: a verbal statement of belief, baptism into the church, and membership in a Bible-believing church. These three corroborate the session’s belief that this person is in fact united to Christ by faith and thus able to partake of the Father’s feast as beloved and adopted children.

In 1 Corinthians 11:28, the Apostle Paul commands each individual believer to examine himself or herself prior to partaking of the Lord’s supper. Why not just leave it at that? Let each person self-examine and decide. We do not leave individual believers to themselves in self-examination because their partaking of the supper is also communal and public. These two principles require examination by others and not just the individual.

Communion, not surprisingly, is communal. Believers do not partake privately but together, as a body…Because we partake together, publicly declaring our participation in Jesus’ death, someone needs to sort out who partakes, that is, who demonstrates a credible faith in Christ.

Thankfully, Jesus gave such unifying, community-building people to His church (Eph. 4:11–16). The leaders of the church watch over the souls in the church (Heb. 13:7). They check to see if a person’s claim to be united to Christ is being made visible in his or her union with others (John 13:35). They make sure that all who are added to the Lord (Acts 5:14, 11:24) are likewise added to the number (Acts 2:41, 47). 

In the end, elders examine professing believers before serving the Supper to them because this is not a feast for strangers. We do not partake anonymously. This is the Supper of God’s children, and only siblings of Jesus Christ have a seat at the table…Elders examine visitors to worship because it is their extraordinary honour to watch over the people of God and say to a guest, “Welcome home, brother/sister. Let us partake together.”

On the broader question of why someone needs to be a member of a church to take communion, Stephen said the following as part of a sermon on the subject a few years ago:

“1st Corinthians 11:28 is a verse that was often printed on communion tokens. ‘Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup’. And someone could say: ‘It says let a man examine himself. So it’s up to the individual! It’s not for someone else to decide for them!’ Clearly, the verse teaches the duty of self-examination. But to say it’s totally up to the individual doesn’t fit in with the rest of the NT’s teaching, particularly in regards to church discipline.

If we turn back a few chapters earlier to 1 Corinthians 5, we have the example of a man being excommunicated. In the words of chapter 5sv12 and 13, of someone inside the church being removed from among the people. Now that doesn’t mean the excommunicated person can’t come to church. If one of the aims of excommunication is to restore someone, then the best place for them to be on a Sunday is in church hearing God’s word. But the clearest sign of someone being removed from the church is that they can’t take the Lord’s Supper. Someone who is excommunicated is no longer in communion, no longer in fellowship, with the rest of the body. And the visible sign of that is that they can no longer be allowed to take the Lord’s Supper.

Matthew 18 gives us a step by step guide to church discipline. And the final step is to regard someone as a Gentile or a tax collector. In other words, as someone who isn’t part of the church and so has no access to its sacraments. The person may protest that they’re a born again Christian. But whatever they say about themselves, they’re not to be treated as one. And so the person in 1 Corinthians 5 can’t appeal to 1 Corinthians 11 and say ‘well it says let a man examine himself, and I’ve examined myself, and I don’t see any problem’. His own personal self-examination isn’t the final authority. The Christ appointed leaders of the church are. 1st Corinthians 11 has to be read in light of 1st Corinthians 5.

…

The sacraments must be tied to church membership, because they’re tied to church discipline. No-one receives the Lord’s Supper in the NT unless they’re under the oversight of the church.

Iain Murray who’s a church historian, explains it like this, when commenting about a Presbyterian minister in New Zealand in the 1920s. He says: ‘It needs to be understood that in Presbyterian churches the Lord’s Supper was only open to communicant members.  Only as regard for church discipline declined or disappeared was admission to the Lord’s Table left to the discretion of the individual worshipper.  He concludes: ‘Historically the Presbyterian churches never practised ‘open’ communion’.”