Book 3 of Musings Confusion

We are in doctrinal confusion today.

We don't know what God's goal is for us, and we don't know how He is getting us there. We are not systematically working toward clearly defined objectives.

I like to think in terms of objectives, and how our efforts are achieving our stated objectives. Do you?

I remember when programmed instruction first entered the thinking of public school people, due in part, I believe, to the research of Professor Skinner.

I was a public-school educator at that time, and it so happened that I attended a class on programmed instruction at the University of Rochester in New York. If I am not mistaken, it was one of the first such classes to be held in the world.

The emphasis was on clarifying our objectives-exactly what behavior we desired as an outcome of our teaching. I loved it. It made so much sense!

I knew, as an experienced teacher, that we elementary teachers did not teach in terms of specific goals. Each teacher emphasized what he or she felt was important. It was a seat-of-the-pants kind of thing. If it felt good we did it.

Some of the teachers were seriously involved in social objectives. They saw the school as a way of changing society.

Others of us were more concerned with the traditional academic subject matter.

If the goal of the school was to produce skill in reading, writing, and arithmetic, then much time was wasted because these were not the objectives of many of the teachers, except in a kind of nominal way.

For example, a third-grade teacher might impulsively decide to spend the day making kites, and then going out and flying them. He or she might have a kind of general idea that this was a good "social experience," or taught art in some manner. But the teacher was not thinking about measurable, tangible objectives. He or she was intent on doing something that day that the children would enjoy.

Since I have been out of public education for many years, I do not know how the matter of clearly-defined objectives has fared. I think this issue tends to be ignored, since instruments can be developed that measure progress toward specific objectives, which in turn makes it possible to evaluate a teacher's effectiveness. Obviously this is threatening to the staff, who would far rather live with the idea that they are doing something that somehow is "good for the children," and good for society as a whole.

Christian teaching suffers from the same lack of specific objectives. Perhaps I am mistaken, but I don't believe Christian pastors and teachers are afraid of being evaluated. I am not certain why we do not use the objectives set forth in the New Testament but have developed our religious objectives, such as getting people to Heaven by grace.

Several years ago, before cell phones became so popular, only business and professional people had car phones. To have a car phone, to be speaking to someone while we were driving down the road, was a status symbol.

Consequently some entrepreneur (believe it or not) manufactured and sold imitation car phones. I don't know whether the car phones were wood or plastic. They resembled an actual phone but were not functional of course. A person who wanted to be viewed as important (there sure are various kinds of people in the world!) could hold up the dummy phone to his ear so people would think he was someone of significance in that he had a car phone.

Wanting people to think we are important is not a socially acceptable objective. We would not want other people to know we were holding up a dummy phone so we would be regarded as important.

It is true also that the objective of getting more people to join our particular church, which is far and away the primary goal of Christian efforts in our day, is not really acceptable, if you think about it. Not only is this objective without basis in the New Testament, but I would think most people would question the idea that the larger a church is the better it is.

So we of today do not have scriptural, clearly defined objectives toward which our efforts are to lead us.

So much for a lack of specific, scriptural objectives.

Now, to our way of attaining our goals.

In the case of the dummy phone, the objective was to make an individual look more important than he actually was. I really doubt that any of us are so interested in other people that we care whether or not they possess a status symbol. Perhaps there are such envious folks, but I would not care much for their opinions. Would you? So I don't believe those who purchased and exhibited fake phones came to be regarded as important. Their method of attaining their objective was probably ineffective.

Let us say we stepped into a factory that manufactured fake car phones. Let us suppose further that the company believed it actually was producing genuine phones.

We might argue with them that their phones did not function, and that as car phones became more popular they would be out of business. Their phones were not actually phones!

They might respond by saying, "Look at the thousands of phones we are producing. We are finding sources for our materials that are going to permit us to manufacture these phones in the millions, and drop the price considerably."

"But," we answer, "You are going to crash. Your product soon will be worthless on the market."

"It doesn't matter," they respond. "Look at the number of phones we will have on the market at the end of this year!"

I realize this is not a perfect analogy by any means. But there are some points in common.

There are clearly stated objectives in the New Testament. We are ignoring them, just as in the case of the factory above they were ignoring the fact that their phones would not serve to meet the needs of people in the days to come; and it did not matter how many thousands they manufactured, they were spending their strength in vain.

So it is with us. We might mount an evangelistic campaign that brought several million people into our organization. But what if we were not achieving the objectives set forth in the New Testament? What if we had the wrong goals? What good would our outlay of money and personnel accomplish in that case?

It would be like a man who missed his exit on the highway, but kept driving ahead at full speed because the weather was good and the highway was clear.

Like a man who will not stop and sharpen his axe because he doesn't have time.

The factory described above did not know how to manufacture a genuine cell phone, only a phony car phone. So they were heading toward disaster.

This is where we are today. We are emphasizing world evangelism without understanding whether we are bringing the right people into the churches and teaching them what they are supposed to know.

If I remember correctly, the Holy Spirit guided the Apostle Paul in the Book of Acts as to what cities he should teach in and what cities he should avoid. Am I correct? If so, we better give some thought to trading our computer-generated models for prayer-generated models.

Are there really specific objectives in the New Testament that have little to do with how many people are in the assembly or how they are to get to Heaven.

Yes, there are. The New Testament lays out the objectives, and in numerous passages instructs us how to achieve these specific objectives.

Perhaps it is time we thought about them.

One objective is to be made into the moral image of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Another objective is to be brought into untroubled union with the Father through Christ.

These are clearly stated objectives! There is nothing vague about them. They have nothing to do with adding more people to the assembly or going to Heaven by grace.

Now, has God told us how to reach these lofty objectives?

Yes, God told us in the fourth chapter of the Book of Ephesians that the ascended Christ has given various gifts and ministries to the Church so we all might come to the fullness of Christ.

Then too, there are numerous practical admonitions in the New Testament that are designed to help us press forward to the fullness of Christ.

Paul stated as his supreme goal attaining to the resurrection from the dead. Paul told us also, in the third chapter of the Book of Philippians, the steps he was taking to achieve that wonderful goal.

So we have a manual, the New Testament, that lays out our objectives and how to achieve them. In any system, the operations of the system are reviewed continually to see if the goals are being reached. The quality control department tells us if our goals are being attained.

I think Christian leaders might consider reviewing the New Testament objectives and the New Testament methods for attaining to those objectives.

Otherwise we will continue on as the factory turning out fake car phones. The revolution comes, cell phones sweep the world, and the factory is boasting of the millions of car phones it is turning out-now totally useless!

If numbers of people were the objective, let us consider that the Catholic people number somewhere in the hundreds of millions-two or three times as many adherents as the entire population of the United States. Does this mean the Catholic Church is fulfilling God's purpose to a greater extent than some small, independent work that is successfully turning drug and alcoholic addicts to Christ and continuing to work with them until they are established in Christ.

I visited one such effort recently and I was thrilled to see the young men they have taken from the street and filled with the love of Christ.

This small, independent institution to my way of thinking was of vast importance, even though the group was less than a hundred people.

We need to get our objectives and our methods straightened out or we are going to find ourselves peddling a useless religion that Christ does not recognize and that will not come close to meeting the awful needs of the age of moral horrors that is upon us..

Until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. (Ephesians 4:13)