Truth by Committee

Have you had one of those experiences when you read the title of a blog entry and you do a little dance of joy? I had one of those last night when I checked David Sliker's blog. The entry was The Dangers of Consensus and it pulled together a lot of thoughts that have been running through my head.

Our world decides truth by consensus. Whatever the most people think is what has to be true. For example, global warming. It's on all of our televisions, it must be the most important issue. If most people don't have a problem with abortion, why shouldn't we allow it? All of politics seems to revolve around influencing public opinion to allow politicians to do what they want.

The dangers of this are a whole other blog (how do you establish universal human rights in a moral vacuum? by majority opinion? by the rule of the world superpowers?).

My real concern is this as an issue in the church. The people who are supposed to believe in absolute truth now seem obsessed with the rule of the majority. Our meetings are by congregational vote. We make our decisions by consensus.

Now, I'm not advocating a human dictatorship (absolute power corrupts absolutely), but I don't see anywhere in the Bible where we have a right to air our opinions or that we each have a right to an equal voice in decisions. In fact, in the Beatitudes I see a lifestyle of walking away from your rights and letting God fight for you. Throughout Acts I see a community that valued God's guidance and followed the teachings of those annointed by God. I see no public opinion polls. And before the arrival of the Holy Spirit they used lots, believing that God would control the outcome of the lots.

The thing is that we have the truth. Why do we still stumble around in the dark as if we don't know how to find the truth? Why do we act as if God's leading is just one option in our decision making process? Why do we have to hurry along God's leading by deciding by consensus? If we aren't getting leading, why aren't why looking in to why not? Why are we working on back up plans for God?

I've got this on my brain this week after this week's class in the Omega study where we learned about the final 7 years of the earch and how as the anti-christ brings a false peace and prosperity to the earth. The church will take a stand that will be unpopular and even within the church, the stand against the anti-christ will be unpopular, to take tough stands. If we don't believe in the truth internally, how can we stand for it in the world? If we're more worried about our rights in the church, how can we demonstrate a Sermon on the Mount lifestyle to the outside world? If we don't stand for anything solid now, how will we stand when the heat is on?