Tunnel Vision

"Therefore, I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all men.
"For I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole purpose of God.
-- Acts 20:26--27, NASB

You've probably noticed my blog rambles quite a bit: I'm not following much of a thread or a theme. The only theme on my blog is, it's my blog.

I want to take a brief look at a problem that appears to afflict all Christians with more than a nominal Christianity: tunnel vision. Paul claimed to have declared "the whole counsel of God" to the Ephesians. It was on this basis he said he was "innocent of the blood of all men." But my experience in Christian circles is, we tend to develop tunnel vision. And apparently, the more passionately we hold a conviction, the more completely and more quickly we develop tunnel vision around it.

From time to time, someone asks me what I think of a particular author. I frequently end up saying something like "well, he's correct, but he only sees half the truth." Sadly, that sums up most of us, including me.

The problem with tunnel vision is at least twofold:

1. it makes us miss important doctrines, teachings, and practices outside our very narrow field of vision
2. it results in our lacking perspective for our views

We all tend to get caught up in a new truth or some new realization. I don't mean that in the sense of an ecstatic vision or additional revelation: I mean that in the sense that we see something in Scripture we've never seen before. Sometimes it's something we've never actually even heard of before, but often it's a point we thought we knew, but then we see it: we recognize it's reality. When that happens, we frequently allow it to dominate our thinking to the point that we ignore the rest of Scripture entirely. Or worse, we read our new understanding into every single verse.

From my own experience---and that of many Christians I have known---a prime example would be our crucifixion with Christ in Romans 6. It is a liberating realization when we see that we are dead to sin. It frees us, allows us to get off the treadmill of sin-confession-repentance-sin that so many think is a normal Christian life. But frequently when people first discover Romans 6, they camp out there for years. I once offended someone by pointing out that Romans doesn't end in chapter 6, nor even in chapter 8. The whole counsel of God is more than just a few doctrinal and practical points (even major ones like our identification with Christ). We need to embrace the whole truth of the Word of God, not just the bits we consider interesting, compelling, or earth-shaking.

And if we avoid that pitfall (or perhaps we fall into it and eventually get back out), there is still the danger of allowing a sense of tunnel vision in terms of perspective. Whole churches and denominations have been founded on a single idea---often a correct idea. But we have to ask ourselves, where's our sense of perspective, if we allow ourselves to form a denomination on a single idea? Someone once said that all heresy is truth out of perspective. I don't think that's entirely true, but it's not a terrible approximation.

I was listening to an mp3 sermon of a speaker from "open brethren," who was talking about people leaving "the assemblies." His point seemed to be that they were all wrong to leave. He kept saying "a bad assembly is a good school." That's an interesting proposition, but his conclusion was clearly wrong. I don't want to put words in his mouth: I might well have misunderstood his message; but what I understood him to say is, people who left the assembly and went to a mainline church were wrong, because the mainline churches don't "follow the New Testament pattern." This sounds very inspiring, but if we stop and consider it, what he's really saying is, nothing is more important in a church than its format. Maybe there's gross moral or doctrinal evil: it's still better to stay than to go somewhere else that repudiates that evil, but has wrong church order.

See, that's tunnel vision too. It's majoring in minors.

The Lord Jesus said, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others." (Matthew 23:23, NASB). See, there are more important issues. True, we don't have the right to just ignore the "minor" issues. But it's important to have our perspective right. The Lord Jesus told the Pharisees they were wrong: not because they ought not to have tithed their spices, but because they ought to have recognized the "weightier matters of the Law."

I've seen many assemblies (mainly in "brethren," but I don't think it's a "brethren" problem in particular), where great emphasis is placed on matters of form and format: the minors; while very little care and attention is paid to the moral issues: the majors. I've mentioned it before, but phrases like "every church has problems" or "there's weakness everywhere" always raise a red flag for me. In my experience, those phrases indicate a bad perspective: moral problems are indicative of the same weakness everyone has, but at least we have correct format.

We're in a tough spot right now, because of our assembly/fellowship position. We've left a group we've been with for a while, and we've gone even further, stepping completely outside "brethren" circles we've been with for 20 years. It's not been done lightly, and it's not been done maliciously. We're trying to find what the Lord wants of us, and it's not been an easy task. As we've been examining various options, tunnel vision is a problem. It's been very difficult to keep the whole counsel of God in view on the one hand, and keep perspective on the other. We have no idea where we're going to end up: we might well end up right back where we started. But I can't help but think this experience will have proven to be a very positive one, if we can avoid the pitfalls of tunnel vision.