As a student at Illinois Wesleyan University in the late 1950s I was required to select a major field. I was headed for the ministry in The Methodist Church, but at that time Methodist seminaries didn’t recommend a college major in religion for pre-theological students. (I think seminary faculty were afraid that students entering with a college religion major would have to be re-educated!). As a result, I needed to choose a different major.
Because of my interest in music I chose to major in that field. Illinois Wesleyan had a prestigious School of Music, but I was in the College of Liberal Arts. Therefore, I became the only liberal arts music major in the university, and took forty hours in that field. Although I had enough religion credits to count for a major, and was going on for more work in that field rather than music, I spent my college years “majoring in the minors.” (I couldn’t even minor in religion, because IWU’s course catalog didn’t provide for a “minor” designation at that time.)
I’ve never regretted my “majoring in the minors,” because the knowledge and enjoyment of music has always been an important part of my adult life and has certainly contributed to the ministry. However, when the process of “majoring in the minors” is applied to areas of life outside of academia the results can be ludicrous.
A man who pursues a hobby, to the neglect of his family relationships or gainful employment, is pursuing the wrong major. A parent who pushes a child to develop talent in sports or some other field, to the neglect of the child’s character development, is doing the same thing. A politician who focuses on superficial solutions to public issues, such as government-run health care, is misplacing his emphasis. In this instance the focus ought to be on the reduction of medical costs through the elimination of layers of bureaucracy, the reform of litigation, and education in life-style changes that promote better health and reduce reliance on harmful and expensive drugs. You can easily multiply the examples where “majoring in the minors” has unintended consequences that only add to life’s problems.
The church in North America today is similarly addicted to misplaced emphases. Church leadership is always tempted to stress denominational distinctives; theologians tend to focus on the salient aspects of their particular point of view. Catholic, Reformed, Dispensational, or Pentecostal doctrine comes to the forefront in place of what C. S. Lewis wanted to call “mere Christianity.” These things become the “majors,” while the heart of New Testament faith — the living presence of Jesus Christ with His people — becomes the “minor,” mentioned only in passing.
Lay people sometimes fare no better. They might choose a church to attend based on such things as worship style. Do we sing “contemporary” choruses, old-time “gospel songs,” or stately organ-accompanied hymns or chants? Does the preacher use a manuscript, or speak in extemporaneous fashion? Do officiants wear casual clothes, encouraging other worshipers to do the same, or do they dress more formally or even wear vestments? Do we lift our hands or pray in other tongues during worship, or do we participate more placidly? Compared with the presence of the risen Jesus Christ, by the Spirit, these differences are only differences in style. Elevating them to prominence is truly “majoring in the minors.”
If Jesus Christ is who the Scriptures say He is, Christians need to become trans-denominational. If, as Hebrews (1:3) states, Jesus is “upholding the universe by his word of power” (1:3), and if, as John (1:3) says, “all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made” — then the living Christ is present wherever His people gather to honor and celebrate Him. We can be aware of His appearance, or parousia, in any worship setting regardless of style.
The presence of God, revealed in His Son, can break through into our lives because Jesus is alive — and, as Paul reminds us (Acts 17:28) quoting a Greek poet, “In him we live and move and have our being.” In a culture increasingly hostile to Christian faith, it is time for Christians of all traditions to quit “majoring in the minors,” and make it evident in all aspects of living, including formal worship, that Christianity is Jesus.
2 comments:
Yes, Christ is indeed the center and focus, but you can't simply leave it at that "major". That's how you get over 30,000 Protestant denominations, many of whom are at loggerheads with each other as to who Christ is and what he taught. You need the answers to these questions because you can't really fall in love with someone you don't know. In other words, if you believe something about Christ which is false, you're not really majoring in him are you? It's a totally different faith centered around a false view of Christ and his teaching.
There is "one Lord, one faith, one baptism" (Eph 4:5). The question is...who knows what it is?
My answer would be the same Church formed by Christ, descended from the Apostles. The same Church God gave the authority to determine the canon of Scripture in the fourth century. The Church that has been there from the beginning...the Catholic Church.
Regrettably, my son (and we have had this discussion before), that is exactly the viewpoint of other Christian groups -- they hark back to the "original" church, which they believe was lost or, at least, suppressed for centuries. There are Baptists, for example, who claim a history going back to followers of John the Baptist who became followers of Christ. There is no one "same Church formed by Christ, descended from the Apostles," etc. in existence today. From earliest times there were multiple branches of the apostolic church, some of which have modern descendants such as the Syrian Orthodox and the Coptic churches. The Roman line is only one of several, and any line -- ancient or coming forward at the Reformation -- is likely to claim it has something other than "a totally different faith centered around a false view of Christ and his teaching."
But I am not concerned with the history, only the attitude of exclusiveness -- or at least of "superiority" -- that one can find in any Christian group. It was not in a Catholic setting that I was moved to write what I wrote, but in a Pentecostal setting in which I recently found myself.
As to "who knows what the one faith is," that would be a matter of historical study into Jesus' purposes within the context of ancient Judaism and Paul's and John's recontextualization of that purpose into a somewhat different cultural setting; by such a historical study we may be able to make some overtures, consistent with Scripture, toward what "the faith" is when recontextualized into our culture. Personally, I believe that in most preaching and teaching the purpose of Jesus' coming, and his death and resurrection, are wrongly contextualized into concerns of our own, and not understood in terms of their biblical purpose.
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