The Power of Voice

Sarah and I went to our first home-group Bible study with some people at the Village Church. It was a really great time to meet people and have some good conversation–though, sadly, the coffee was lacking.

The topic of study for tonight was Galatians 4:8-20. It reads like this in the NASB:^*

⁸ However at that time, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those which by nature are no gods. ⁹ But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how is it that you turn back again to the weak and worthless elemental things, to which you desire to be enslaved all over again? ¹⁰ You observe days and months and seasons and years. ¹¹ I fear for you, that perhaps I have labored over you in vain.

Paul obviously has a bone to pick with the people at Galatia because they–for reasons that will become apparent shortly–are bent on going back to their pagan roots. By “pagan,” by the way, I mean to use the word in its factual, polytheistic, cultural sense rather than with the degrading rap that it seems to have acquired since. Paul doesn’t mince words when he describes the previous experience of the Galatians being “slavery” to this whole matter of observing particular holidays, going through ritual, and attempting to define themselves on the basis of their own religiosity. Note that this isn’t as if it’s an accident on the part of the Galatians: Paul doesn’t use the words “slip” or “stumble,” as if there were some unpredictable outside force at work here. Instead, he uses the phrase “turn back.” This was an active cultural movement on the part of the Galatian community.

The kicker comes with verse 17: “They eagerly seek you, not commendably, but they wish to shut you out so that you will seek them.” The Galatians were being led by a group of individuals (“they”) back into this same behavior which they so defiantly rejected in the past. It’s quite arguable that this was a “consipiracy” on the part of the Galatian community leaders. Now, before you get all up in arms over my reactionary interpretation of the Scripture, let’s look at the facts. A passing overview of the first four chapters of Galatians should sufficiently convince you that the Galatian church community was once a community of laws and regulations. The leaders in Galatia were people that established order on the basis of these rules–this is the role and function of the pharisee.

Then, one day when all is status quo, this guy Paul shows up–hacking and wheezing and caughing up a lung–and sets off a culture bomb: he introduces Xianity to the people. I should note in passing that I do not consider this a “bad thing.” I will argue that pharisaism–the act of a cultural élite setting a community of people in subjection to themselves on the basis of hypocritical religious observance–is a form of structural violence. Structural violence is most often used to delineate social strata by economic or racial criteria, but I am using it here in an ideological sense, which, in my opinion, is just as valid as any other.

Once Paul sets off this “bomb” in Galatia, the people begin to believe that the basis of their religious experience no longer has to be their own merit or observance. They are beginning to gain a sense of equality in Christ rather than an inequality in religious social structure. The leaders of that community are losing their grip on the society because the people are no longer in bondage to the ideas on which it was built. Imagine you’re a religio-political leader in Galatia–what are you thinking at this moment?

Fast-forward to 2003. This is Dale Lature quoting David Wienberger (with some minor editing and added emphasis):

In Small Pieces, Loosely Joined, Weinberger describes “Corporate-speak” as “bizarre”, and indeed it is. I ask the question, when does “religious or theological language” become more like “corporate speak?” When does this organizational, “let’s please all people all the time” approach become a conversation killer?

Companies talk in bizarre, stilted ways because they believe that such language expresses their perfection: omniscient, unflappable, precise, elevated, and without accent or personality. The rhetoric is as glossy and unbelievable as the photos in the marketing brochure. Such talk kills conversation. That’s exactly why companies talk that way. (p.90)

I know of a church where the pastor constantly complained about emails being sent to all the members on an email list (which consisted of people who volunteered their email addresses in order to be INCLUDED in such mailings)…The pastor also confronted the “renegade,” “unofficial” communicator of “unauthorized” emails on the matter, complaining that the emails were unwanted.

Here we have a case where a Church “official,” a “pastor,” opposes one of the earliest and still oft-used vehicles for carrying the “VOICE” which I believe is necessary to a Church sounding human and not canned. The “disclaimer” or “official” tamp on all Church email comes off very “authoritarian” and is putting itself in opposition to the mantra of the Web and online communications; and places it squarely in the tradition of companies employing “corporate speak” as a way of minimizing public discourse. This may not, and is probably not, even done as a conscious ploy to squelch anything, but merely a transference of the mechanisms of “order” and “organization” tactics employed by the business world and the corporate culture. But herein lies the problem.

Companies so “mimicked” are often not concerned with accentuating the voice of their constituents: their customers. They are devoted to the “best practices” of a culture that has become cut off from what is human. This is particularly troublesome when it works its way into Church management. Indeed, there is often a problem when “management” is the terminology used. In Church communities, conversation is not friendly to being “handled” or “managed.” Those very words smack of cover-up, avoidance, sweeping under the proverbial rug. Sometimes even “open forums” are a “strategy” meant to “appease” or be an “opiate” rather than achieve dialogue or repentance and reconciliation.

I quote this in full because of the depth of Dale’s words in light of the Galatians passage. On the one hand, we have Paul addressing his concerns with the spiritual health of a particular community because of the power and effectiveness of the voices of leadership in that community–perhaps not entirely, but to a degree that Paul addresses it with direct language. On the other hand, we have the “traditional” or “pragmatic” evangelical church of the 21^st century just aching to reproduce the leadership models of a culture they claim to shun. In so doing, they provide a climate to limit the ability for the church to communicate outside the social strata of the organization and thus an avenue to misuse the Power of Voice.

My friend Darin loved to recite this quote from John MacArthur, who used to joke about the reaction he’d get from people when he simply gave out Bibles to teach people about Xianity: “No books? No tapes? No study guides? You can’t leave that guy alone with a Bible! He might get confused!” 300-some years ago, the Catholic church attempted to convince some renegades led by Martin Luther that there was no way that the layperson was going to be able to understand the Scriptures apart from the interpretation of the church. In 2003, we find ourselves in that same position, all over again.

^*The NASB version of the Bible is, of course, brought to us by the kind folks at the Lockman Foundation who thankfully lack the copyright paranoia exhibited by some publishers.