That Nutty Small Group Dialectic

Diane over at Crossroads: Where Faith and Inquiry Meet discusses one of my pet issues when she takes on the Hegelian dialectic. For those unfamiliar with this philosophical term, Diane explains:

Hegel basically created his philosophy to explain the process of history. First there is one view or event called the thesis. Then there is the opposing view or event called antithesis. Out of these two (many times a compromise of the two; other times simply the end process of the two clashing) is the synthesis.

Here is an example from Hegel’s writings:

THESIS: In Ancient Greece the stoics believed in a moral absolute that applied to everyone.
ANTITHESIS: During the Enlightenment period, Rousseau believed that the individual decided what was right and wrong for him.
SYNTHESIS: Society decides what is right and wrong for its citizens.
In the continuing process, the new synthesis then becomes the new truth or thesis. Then an antithesis is introduced which culminates into synthesis which becomes the new truth or thesis and so on—the process continues ad infinitum.

The obvious problem with the dialectic is that it can be used to come to a synthesis that is blatantly false. As a perfect example of this, consider

Thesis

Antithesis

Synthesis: Because Jesus broke the power of sin, now no one will go to hell.

If this kind of reasoning seems familiar to you, it’s because nearly all small group Bible studies are beholden to the Hegelian dialectic. After nearly thirty years of Christian small group experience, I can say without reservation that every small group I have been in (spanning ages, sexes, denominations, and maturity levels) has employed this kind of faulty reasoning at some time or other to make pronouncements on spiritual truth.

The crux of the problem is the group leaders. By and large most small group leaders are either too passive to rein in flawed group synthesis or they lack the command of the Bible they absolutely must have to counter a heretical synthesis with the actual truth of God. Fast-growing churches are bedeviled by this, assigning (or allowing) group leaders who have no business leading a group because they lack Christian maturity and the inner witness needed to stop mangled synthesis in its tracks.

Now here comes the controversial part.

Though I have studied under some of the best-known small group proponents in Christendom, I believe with all my heart that small groups are a disastrous place for people to learn the Scriptures. Let them be about fellowship, prayer, worship, service to others, or anything else, but not about studying the Bible in depth. The tendency for synthesis of ideas that contradict the Scriptures is rife within these groups. Time and again I’ve heard leaders assent to heretical ideas synthesized by a group trying to reach some consensus. The need for group leaders to maintain peace at all cost necessitates this, even if truth is sacrificed.

I have come to this sad pronouncement because too many churches are using small groups as their main means to teach the Scriptures. Seeker-sensitive churches where the preaching on Sundays is more chatting than teaching, where the sermons are not sermons on the Word but reflections from life on some topical idea that demographic studies say the people want to hear, suffer from this to an extraordinary extent. The outcome is that a person desiring sound biblical exposition and a knowledge of the Scriptures instead sits through a small group study where the conclusions reached by the group may contradict the word of God. That person never develops a comprehensive view of the unity of Scripture because the topical teaching doesn’t provide it, nor does his small group.

The naivety of church leaders is to blame for this. A couple hours of weekend trainings for a month doth not a small group leader make; it is silly for churches to believe that small groups can possibly provide the depth of Bible exposition that a trained and approved handler of the Scriptures—supposedly the pastoral leadership of the church—can provide. Yet too often the pastor in the church preaches topically on Sundays and believes that a small group meeting during the week led by someone with a passing comprehension of Scripture can make up for what he’s leaving out.

That’s just plain crazy, if you ask me.

The small group movement and its emphasis on moving Bible study to these groups to make it more accessible has instead compounded the very lack of understanding of the Scriptures that it sought alleviate. Preachers who abandoned expositional preaching and teaching made this worse because they gave no opportunity for their best seekers to hear the Bible in its complete context. Is it any wonder then that the people who fill our churches on Sunday have no holistic Christian worldview?

Unless we have small group leaders who know the Bible inside and out and can take firm control of a group striving for heretical synthesis and steer them back to real truth, I think we should stop studying the Bible in our small groups. Put Bible study and teaching back into the hands of workmen approved to handle the Scriptures. If that can’t happen in small groups or adult Sunday School classes, then put it back into the pulpit. As the word of God says,

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge….
—Hosea 4:6a ESV

Thanks to the Hegelian dialect and the loss of sound expositional preaching from the pulpits across America, the destruction continues unabated.

A Hodgepodge of Thoughts on This July Fourth

Some things rolling around in my head:

Now that the business series is over, I’ll be the first to admit that a few things got left out. I should’ve talked more about the loss of rites of passage within the Church after the economy shifted from agricultural to industrial. I also did not go into detail about how individual Christians can further their careers by playing the business world’s game while not being destroyed by it. I’ll admit that as the series went on, my conclusions there became more grave and I felt I needed to back off, so this omission on that one issue was intentional. There are several Christian Web sites out there with those talking points, but honestly, they seem to me to be mouthing the same old same old that has not made one dent in a real Christian presence at the heart of business. Like I said in the series: you can gold plate a 1975 AMC Pacer and it’s still a lousy car.

I think our answers must be more radical. Even now I’m reading a book called Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology, and while the author is clueless as to the religious reasons that people abandon the hectic post-industrial lifestyle we have created for ourselves, his book does show the pervasiveness of healthy community found in those groups that have dropped out of the 21st century rat race. I’m not entirely through the book, but I’ve already got a knot in my chest because he’s talking about the same deep need that I am for real community.

We invited some of our neighbors over a couple weekends ago for an impromptu hanging out in our backyard. No real plan. We supplied all the food and we just chatted as the sun went down. I hope that we can develop truly deep friendships with our neighbors, but I am unsure if it will ever live up to what I imagine it can be.

People are too isolated into little islands. If we can’t rely on the communities we form around us, then we are lost as a civilization. And I’m not just talking about a nod here and a wave there; we need to shoulder each other’s burdens in a way that we are simply not doing. The result over our isolation is overburdened lives completely stretched and stressed to the max. God did not make us to live that way. Should we wonder why so many people founder in it?

Maybe we’ve done it all wrong. The amount of money I pay in insurance alone is criminal, but I’m probably underinsured compared with most people. I spend money to make sure nothing happens to my stuff, to my wife, to my child, or to me. Almost every insurance man I know is a backbone in his church. We talk about wise stewardship of the things God has given us, for sure, but what if our insurance was meant to come from the community of Christ instead? Should my house burned down, what if it was that community—a community that lived directly around me comprised of the saints of God—that shouldered that burden with me. And what if I shouldered theirs? Doesn’t that make so much more sense than what we have now?

We reach out through copper wire and satellite feeds and spill our thoughts into the ether about this and that, but is that community? In my soul, it just doesn’t feel like the same kind of thing I get when my neighbor walks over with a newspaper clipping about a used book sale she thought would appeal to me. If I need a wrench, do I buy it from the Internet, or do I walk over to my neighbor’s and borrow one?

We almost never ask if there is more truth in one over the other. Our perpetual blindness to the way that systems erupt and take hold of us without our thinking bothers me, and I feel as if too many of us have stopped asking the hard questions. Every day lately I wonder if we are not trying to solve the core problems of what it means to live out a real Christian presence as a vital community of faith because we gave up trying to do so. Those problems are intractable, right? Better that the wave just carry us along than we question it.

I wonder if we are far more impoverished in the depths of our being than we understand. Perhaps the injuries we’ve suffered by uprooting the very good for what we initially perceived to be “the even better” has not turned around and bitten us—and we have yet to realize we are bleeding.

For the first time ever this year, I’ve had to reject medical treatments for my family because they were too costly, despite the fact that we have insurance. Did God offer a different kind of medicine, but we scorned it in favor of what grew to be the monolithic healthcare system we have now? At what part of the process did we fumble the ball?

Sales of iPods continue unabated and people risk being oddballs if they don’t have one. But what if we stopped working so hard to buy the massive overload of gadgetry we are told we must have in order to define ourselves or to keep us from being seen as out-of-step? Is out-of-step the worst label we could bear? Could we recover some portion of a life without these things, a life that has more of God in it and less Nokia or Sony or Dell? I’m still astounded at the fact that everyone seems to have a cellphone now when just seven years ago I had no friends who owned one. What did we do before frying our brains with unproven technology became de rigueur? Are our lives better for it? Does the cellphone on our ear replace something that God put in place but we in our desire for rocket packs elected to abandon?

The Church never seemed to question the Industrial Revolution and I can’t see how they could not. And yet we today with the benefit of seeing through the lens of history have the same tunnel vision. The recent post on psychology opened up huge wounds in a lot of readers and the comments on that post are the harshest this blog has ever seen. But are we better people because of psychology? Was the whole world nuts in 1835 compared to today? I’m not sure I see the absolute benefit, but I certainly see the harm psychology has caused the Church. Doesn’t it seem like we gained a handful of toothpicks and lost the entire forest? Isn’t that true of far too many things today?

Perhaps my great-great-grandfather was a better man than I am. Maybe for lack of all the gadgets and gizmoes, for want of THE LATEST KNOWLEDGE™, he was a more satisfied man, too. Could it be the community he lived in knew more about what it took to be a real neighbor?

I think the Church in America has to decide at some point when it will get off the treadmill. I think for our own souls’ sake, we have to. When that will be, I don’t know. I know that ultimately satisfaction is found only after we die, but I sure would like to see a lot more of heaven this side of it. Isn’t that why the Church exists?

Been rambling too long. Just looking out at the fireflies dancing just beyond my reach and wondering….

{Image: “Miami” by Alex MacLean}

I’m Extinct!

Cerulean Sanctum has vanished from N.Z. Bear’s Ecosystem. This formerly Large Mammal has gone the way of the Steller’s Sea Cow, the Woolly Mammoth, the Irish Elk, the North American Giant Ground Sloth, and the Quagga. Like those long dead beasties, I have no idea what hit me. I’m afraid that if I resubmit the blog it will create more issues.

Any other Ecosystem denizens experiencing problems?