Everyone Did (Does) What was Right in Their Own Eyes-ism

The realization that, in understanding our body, it's useful to observe three eras in our history, has given me a heightened understanding of who we are today, of how we dysfunction...

...and, I think, of why the Lord of all authority and power and grace and mercy and blessing isn't blessing us.

Just a quick summary.

During the Church of God time, our body thrived. It was during the Churches of God time that our current slide into spiritual decay and numerical decline, now continuing for generations, began. And, now, in the CGGC era, our decay and decline accelerates.

Of course, the three designations refer, not only to time periods, but also to value systems...to ways of thinking about what is good, what is right, what is righteous.

This is the CGGC era, officially, in our body. But, certainly, people of the Churches of God are many, and very determined.

I think of myself as a Church of God person.

And, I've said that the community developing around the Nick and Dan Bible Study Podcast may turn out to represent the rise of a "Neo-" Church of God movement, or faction at least. What these guys advocate is not CGGC. It's also clearly not Churches of God.

If I ever redo my Characteristics of the CGGC Brand, which was last revised before the beginning of the Finley regime, I think I'd shuffle things around, probably lose one or two of the old, but definitely add:

Everyone Does what is Right in His own Eyes-ism.

Because, in spite of the fact that we have updated our faith documents in the last decade, no one acknowledges to them. Certainly, no one submits to them.

And, that lack of acknowledgement of, and submission to, shared authority, is key in describing a group of people where everyone does what he wants to do.

I do want to be clear about what I see.

In our body, the defining characteristic is not merely that everyone does what they want to do.

No, not at all.

It's that everyone does what is right in their own eyes. This is about righteousness. All of us care about doing the right thing.

The Churches of God people, the CGGC people, and the (Neo-)Church of God people are all doing what we think is right.

There are two problems with this at the very least.

One is that these groups can't all be right. Some are wrong. Perhaps all are.

The other is that, as long as our defining characteristic is that we all go around, each doing our own thing, there can't be community.

There can't be unity. There can be tolerance. 

But there can't be "Love one another. As I have loved you..." love, i.e., there can't be obedience to the New Commandment.

And, most certainly, there can't be obedience to the admonition of Paul that we should be "submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ." That, of course, points, ultimately, to our connection to, or lack of close connection, to Christ.

For all our bland, tolerant, shepherd-dominated church-ism,...

...we don't do submission well.

Not to one another. Not to Christ.

And, so, the Lord of all authority and power and grace and mercy and blessing doesn't bless us. And, spiritual decay and numerical decline continues...with no reversal of that trend in sight.

We must repent.