Participants:
Series Code: LI
Program Code: LI200465B
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00:01 Welcome back to the Liberty Insider.
00:02 Before the break with guest Amireh Al Haddad, 00:06 we were talking about the Reformation 00:08 and a lot of things that flow from it. 00:11 And to start it off again, 00:13 the reason that I like this discussion 00:16 is the Reformation is so important 00:18 for understanding religion and religious liberty today. 00:22 And yet 500 some years ago it seems so distant, 00:26 that there's a danger that we'll forget. 00:28 But not only the heritage, 00:30 but the dynamic and what was worked out there 00:32 and what we've inherited. 00:34 Yeah, that's always a danger, especially when you get, 00:38 you know, a couple of centuries down the road. 00:41 And look how different we are as a society today 00:45 than how they were then. 00:46 And look at technology today. 00:48 I mean, even the way we do war is different. 00:52 Yeah, now, it's a TV screen 10,000 miles away, 00:57 a video game and you're zapping someone. 01:00 Yeah. 01:01 But, you know, even the idea of the individual 01:05 having rights and being the sovereign entity 01:08 both on religion and political matters 01:09 that came out of the Reformation 01:11 that really didn't exist before then. 01:13 And you could make a good argument 01:15 of other advances, 01:16 including printing and the growth of philosophy 01:20 and so on that were not purely religious, 01:23 but it all came together with the Reformation. 01:25 And that was the spark in the tinder of a dead church 01:30 that brought what we know as religious freedom. 01:32 Do you have the right to protest 01:35 what your church is saying? 01:37 Right. 01:39 Want to talk about it. 01:40 Even if you still want to be part of your church, 01:43 because Luther wasn't looking to leave the Catholic Church 01:47 when he protested, 01:48 he was looking to correct something 01:50 that he thought was wrong. 01:52 It's an interesting point. 01:53 And let me rephrase it 01:55 because I think you're taunting me. 01:57 The question is at what point 02:00 does the discrepancy or divergence 02:03 of religious opinion within a church 02:05 become so intolerable? 02:07 You leave or try to, 02:10 you know, force the overall entity to change? 02:13 It's a very interesting point. 02:15 And I do not have the answer. 02:16 I don't have the answer, but I think about it a lot. 02:18 Yeah. 02:19 It definitely is something 02:21 that comes into my field division 02:24 as the Director of Public Affairs 02:26 and Religious Liberty, 02:27 because this comes into play 02:31 not only from the religious liberty side, 02:34 but also from the public affair side 02:36 and how you handle conflict. 02:40 To say that there's never going to be 02:42 conflict within a church is to say that, you know... 02:46 Human nature has ceased to operate. 02:48 Yeah, exactly. We're all robots. 02:50 We're all automatons, 02:51 and no one will be a free thinker, 02:53 free, independent thinker. 02:56 But, you know, you kind of flip that 02:58 with thinking that the church 03:02 is still run by human beings, 03:06 and human beings are not perfect. 03:09 And there are times 03:11 when leadership styles 03:13 are our personality styles as well, 03:15 and it's not you have to decide 03:17 when is this problem a personality issue 03:21 and when is it a doctrinal issue? 03:26 I'm trying to think was, 03:27 might have been both Jesus and Paul, 03:32 I think when they were before councils 03:34 said things and then when they were told 03:36 that this was the high priest. 03:38 If I said, I didn't mean to lot remember. 03:41 Right, yeah. 03:42 But how far do you take respect for a leader 03:46 of any given church 03:47 that you see is carrying on a wrong policy 03:50 or maybe even pushing consciously 03:55 a wrong thing? 03:56 Hadad, it's an interesting point 03:58 because as you mentioned, Martin Luther, 04:01 there's no evidence that I can see 04:02 that when he first started, 04:04 he expected to leave the church little and leave, 04:06 leave it not even at all, 04:08 certainly not to establish another church. 04:10 He was wanting to reform what he saw as the church. 04:14 And I've listened recently 04:16 to Roman Catholic radio broadcasts. 04:19 And there are many Roman Catholics 04:21 traveled to the extreme about the ongoing sexual abuses 04:25 that they see some of them 04:27 as deriving from structural problems. 04:30 They're not just bad eggs. 04:32 There's something that they don't like, and yet, 04:35 a lot of them are saying, well, this is God's Church, 04:37 you know, this is sort of the punishment 04:39 from the devil and, 04:40 you know, will bear up under it and will stay with it. 04:43 But maybe with the Protestant sensibility, 04:46 you say, "Well, I can't, 04:48 this is a sign of too much corruption. 04:50 I'll leave." 04:51 So where does that point, it's... 04:53 I don't think you and I can come to the answer, 04:55 but it's... 04:56 I guess the answer is somewhere 04:58 in the matter of conscience where you break. 05:01 And Ellen White, 05:03 who was one of the Adventist pioneers 05:05 had to deal with this. 05:06 And she said, 05:07 which very few of our member seem to know, 05:09 she says, "Some people may have to wait make their way 05:12 to the kingdom outside the church." 05:15 May be just so contentious and disruptive, 05:17 they may have such a bad deal. 05:19 There may be such injustice 05:21 in the implementation of church order 05:24 and doctrine and so on. 05:26 That you have to get out, 05:27 which doesn't mean the church 05:29 for what it stands for is wrong. 05:31 Right. 05:32 And ironically, 05:33 Rome was practicing a wrong form of Christianity, 05:37 but I'm willing to grant not gonna give Peter's 05:42 you know, the donation of power the Peter, 05:44 that's a whole thing. 05:46 But I'm willing to grant 05:47 that the Roman Catholic Church 05:48 goes back to the original early Christians. 05:51 And at some point, it's legitimate. 05:52 Yeah. 05:53 And it doesn't mean 05:55 that because you've left the church 05:56 or your church, 05:58 it doesn't mean that you can't make it a habit, 06:01 you know. 06:02 This internal conflict that we sometimes face 06:07 is one of the reasons why a lot of people say, 06:10 "Well, this is why I don't want to be 06:12 part of an organized religion, 06:14 you know, it's off putting to people. 06:17 And, you know, that's an issue too because... 06:21 Well, at the best it doesn't definitively answer 06:24 but the Bible does say that not to forsake 06:26 the assembling yourselves together. 06:27 Yes, right. 06:29 So religion is not a solitary calling. 06:31 Yes. 06:33 Of course, it can't be religion without reference to God, 06:36 but living here and now 06:37 we have to join with their fellow creatures 06:39 and, of course, 06:40 true religion is caring for our neighbor, our brother, 06:45 the widows and so on, it's concerned with other so... 06:48 And not just ourselves. 06:50 Yeah, but back to the Reformation, 06:52 or at least proper. 06:54 I don't know if you thought about it, 06:56 but it's troubled me greatly 06:58 in the view of recent developments 07:00 that a major thing 07:02 that came out of the Reformation 07:04 immediately was religious warfare 07:07 probably for 30 years I think, 07:10 in Europe, but at the end of that 07:12 all of the warring factions 07:14 which are roughly divided between Catholics, 07:16 Catholic and Protestant principalities, 07:19 got together at the Treaty of Westphalia, 07:22 and made the modern world, the world as we know it. 07:27 Before that it was empires and little duchies. 07:32 And, you know, pretender of this, or that, 07:35 or travel group. 07:36 It was not till the Treaty of Westphalia 07:38 you had what the modern state is 07:41 with defined borders 07:42 may not be all the one people 07:44 but it's under the one governance. 07:46 They have borders they defend their rules within the country 07:49 and respect from other countries. 07:52 And I see that breaking down, 07:54 and maybe I think differently than other people. 07:57 I see that breakdown as running in parallel 08:02 and in some ways, 08:04 enabled both ways 08:05 by the breakdown of religious sensibility. 08:09 Today, you're saying today. 08:11 As the influence of the Reformation dissipates, 08:15 it's affecting attitudes of religion, 08:17 it's affecting the very structure 08:19 of the modern world, it's collapsing. 08:22 I'm not sure that I agree with you on that, but... 08:25 Well, I'll tell you one evidence 08:26 of the breakdown of borders and so on 08:28 that you refer to it, 08:29 the whole idea of drone warfare 08:32 and had the killer teams that in the middle of the night 08:35 go into other countries without telling anyone 08:37 and snuff out a few people here there. 08:39 Borders don't mean what they used to. 08:43 That's true in terms of physical barriers. 08:45 And in one country or a coalition of countries 08:49 taking police action in other countries 08:51 that that goes against the spirit of Westphalia. 08:54 So I'm still kind of questioning 08:56 the border issue. 08:58 I think 08:59 where we're breaking down the borders 09:02 is more in technology 09:04 than, you know, protecting the borders. 09:08 Sure we can protect the borders. 09:09 But I think that technology wise 09:12 and with social media 09:13 and with the changing attitudes that we're experiencing 09:17 among all of our society, 09:19 it does create a more difficult, 09:24 you know, or different. 09:26 It's harder to keep a population under control 09:28 when information bleeds in from outside. 09:30 Always. Soviet Union found that. 09:33 Any number of dictators have found that. 09:35 That's been the problem 09:36 since the beginning of the printing press. 09:39 Yeah, so, but on a certain level, 09:42 I think borders are becoming untenable. 09:45 And yet, they're creating the backlash 09:46 where they're being defended more aggressively. 09:50 So I don't know which way it'll go. 09:52 I used to see, say very vigorously 09:54 that national identity was failing 09:56 and it was religious or tribal identity. 09:59 That's still somewhat true, 10:01 but nationalism is on a radical upsurge 10:03 at the moment, there's no question. 10:05 And, you know, it goes back to this question 10:07 that we started off 10:08 with in the beginning of the segment about how, 10:14 how we relate, 10:15 you know, through the Reformation 10:18 and it's outgrowth 10:19 and how that internalizes to the way 10:25 we as church members of whatever group, 10:29 we're a church member of interacts with leadership, 10:34 or doctrine, 10:36 or any of those issues that we tend to, 10:40 personalities, we tend to have conflicts with. 10:43 And again, it kind of to me 10:45 just brings it all back to the issue 10:47 of whether or not 10:48 there's religious freedom within those groups. 10:52 And in our church, we always say, 10:55 you have lots of religious freedom, 10:57 but this is a closed membership club. 11:01 And if you don't believe 11:02 what the membership standards are, 11:05 then you make it us to leave. 11:07 So that's religious freedom too within the church boundaries 11:12 when you're talking about boundaries. 11:16 There is an incredible and very significant difference 11:19 between religion and spirituality. 11:22 And I think the Reformation itself 11:25 showed that distinction. 11:26 There was a lot of religion 11:28 at the time Martin Luther got his understandings 11:33 of righteousness by faith 11:35 and the powerful internal effect 11:39 that the truth has on our mind and our heart. 11:43 We need to rediscover that in our age. 11:46 In many ways, we're living in a time of revolution. 11:49 As the Bible says, 11:51 "All of the powers that can be are being shaken." 11:54 But as the Reformation showed, 11:56 when people go back to the Word of God, 11:59 study and internalize the great values 12:02 and spiritual truths that are found there, 12:05 then that will by necessity change the world, 12:10 change the world around us 12:12 and prepare 12:13 those who are receptive in this world 12:15 to travel to the world to come 12:17 to borrow a phrase 12:19 from John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. 12:22 Yes, an age of revolution, 12:25 but the greatest revolution that can ever be 12:28 is the change in the individual heart. 12:32 For Liberty Insider, this is Lincoln Steed. |
Revised 2020-06-18