Follow the leader

Today during the children's message (i.e., the sermon that actually gets heard), our pastor had a brief game of Follow the Leader with the assembled kids. Everybody waved their hands, hopped on one foot, and followed the pastor on a brief walk up and down the aisles of the church. When they were done, the pastor gathered the group and asked, "What do you need to play Follow the Leader?" One girl piped up, "A line!" A detail-oriented young lady after my own heart. The next boy's answer was, "You need a bunch of people to play so you can follow them."

This wasn't the answer the pastor was quite looking for, but I found it interesting. In the game of Follow the Leader, especially if you are in a line, you are probably following the person in front of you, not the actual leader. Person A, immediately behind the leader, has a responsibility to do exactly as the leader does in order for Person B to be able to follow. The further down the line you are, the more people you are relying on to have paid attention and performed faithfully what's been handed down to them.

This got me thinking about a conversation I've been observing on Facebook about gay marriage and whether an interpretation of Scripture that accepts and blesses gay couples is appropriate or not. One of the issues at the heart of this particular conversation is the question of how much of ourselves to bring when we interpret the Bible. Those who believe that God speaks to people through the Bible want to hold back any part of our reason that may be faulty and get in the way. I personally feel this way, because I know that my own mind is imperfect, beset by temptations, and not to be unilaterally trusted. On the other hand, we are commanded to love the Lord with all of our minds. That means we MUST wrestle intellectually with the content of Scripture if we are to discover its truths. And we must decide whether to trust, sift or outright shun the collected (and sometimes conflicting) insight of centuries of study done by those around us and before us.

Many people choose the last option, I think because it feels safer. Like in Follow the Leader, if I'm way back in the line, I'm wondering how many of the people ahead of me have possibly screwed up, and how I might be about to trip over something. It seems like a better idea to jump the line and just go right to the source. I can Follow the Leader just fine by myself.

However, that's not how the game works, and that's not how we work. There's just no way that I can come to the Bible, or to prayer or to worship, as a tabula rasa and expect to get the unfiltered goods without any historical or cultural bias influencing me on any level. That's not possible, nor is it more righteous. By attempting to isolate myself and my understanding in order to "hear more directly" from God, I am effectively saying that I believe I am more capable of receiving truth from God than anyone else is or has been. I am dangerously close to making an idol of my own insight. Yes, I must apply discernment, but that includes acknowledging that my relationship with God does not, and was not intended to, exist in a vacuum. Humans are made to be in community, in time as well as in space. For better or worse, we are followers, not only of God, but of each other. It requires an enormous amount of trust. I have to trust in the Leader to keep an eye out for the whole line and to lead us in a good path, but I also have to trust in the fallible, imperfect, untrustworthy person in front of me. The person behind me is doing no less.