In monastic orders, there's something called a sacred silence, a practice of not talking between certain hours of the day, using the silence to meditate on God. I think sometimes this is a good thing. We can get awfully caught up in our words, in our relationships, in our thoughts and feelings and expressing them to each other and God. Sometimes, it's good to stop talking and just listen.
In some modern churches, there's a sort of a sacred silence as well, but it is different. The silence isn't an agreed upon thing, temporary, so that all might focus their attention on the God Who speaks into silence. It's an interminable thing enforced between some believers and not others, designed not so that both can concentrate on God but so that one Christian need not be contaminated by the company of the other. It is a sacred silent treatment, a punishment resurrected from the juvenile antics of middle school and given the veneer of godliness. The theory is that since some sin is involved or anticipated on the part of one or both of these Christians, it's okay to separate them.
One of the most common examples is in gender relationships. Many churches have bought into the idea of emotional purity. The believe that the sexual purity the Bible admonishes us toward is only part of the equation. Sure, the Bible says we're not to commit adultery, nor to have sexual relations before marriage, that much is clear. The Jesus also said that to lust after a woman in your heart was to commit adultery with her, but the emotional purity doctrine says that Jesus didn't quite go far enough. Isn't it wrong to love someone other than your spouse? Assuming that your married already, certainly yes. The emotional purity doctrine goes even further, though, and applies this idea to the unmarried. It brings it to bear on the often-tumultuous world of dating relationships and condemns the whole idea of giving one's heart away to someone you aren't going to marry. Many of its proponents say that, in order to avoid this man-proclaimed sin, it's best to give your heart to no one until your certain they'll be your future spouse (methods of assuring this vary, but most rely on either the father or a church leader to basically play matchmaker). And how does one go about making sure they don't give their heart to someone of the opposite sex unintentionally--or worse yet, cause someone of the opposite sex to "stumble" and have feelings for them? Enter the sacred silent treatment. If the genders don't talk to each other, if they don't interact, they won't fall into the egregious sin of emotional attachment. Sometimes this is applied wholesale, sometimes on an as-needed basis between people who begin warming up to each other without a leader's go-ahead. In all cases it boils down to the same idea that lies at the heart of all sacred silent treatments (gender based and otherwise): because God wants me to preserve myself from this sinful contamination, it is okay to avoid my brother or sister in Christ as if they have the plague. God approves because keeping my purity intact is more important to Him than love and unity among believers.
Several problems arise. The first, with this particular application of the sacred silent treatment, is that the Bible is totally silent on the issue of emotional purity in singles. It says nothing about the horrible sin of having an emotional attachment or romantic interest in a member of the opposite sex, as an unmarried person. In fact, Paul in 1 Corinthians 7:36 has his golden opportunity (as a life-long celibate) to condemn the sin inherent in the process of two singles falling for each other and considering marriage--and he passes it up. More than that, he explicitly says that "it is no sin." People who teach purity of heart have to essentially make up a sin from scraps of verses taken out of context (such as Proverbs 4:23, which says, "guard your heart" but from the context the writer clearly had no intention of speaking to emotional attachments, but to holding onto wisdom and instruction and shunning wicked ways) and from a number of extra-biblical arguments (note for example, how this author of an emotional purity book makes her case: notice that she neither has nor mentions a single verse to support her case but simply relies on drawing a pseudo-logical connection between sexual immorality and the emotional connections she thinks make it more likely to occur). The lack of proof is just the beginning, though. Emotional purity comes dangerously close to the heresies of denying that Jesus came in the flesh (1 John 4:2) and was tempted just as we are--yet without sin--(Hebrews 4:15), since Jesus did many things that some proponents of the doctrine would consider inadvisable or even sinful (remember His conversation, alone, with the woman at the well, whom He knew perfectly well was a loose woman?). It also seems to deny the Christian doctrines of redemption and renewal, by implying that the romantic longings of the single are irredeemably sinful. It causes a number of other ill effects by providing a formulaic approach to an aspect of the Christian's life, rather than an approach that is receptive to the Spirit and not led by man-made laws and codes. It devalues the heart, by teaching that the more you love the less worthy you are to be loved (you've given away "pieces of your heart," thereby cheapening it). Most of all, though, emotional purity butts heads with the Christian commands to love one another. Avoiding someone and giving them the silent treatment is simply not loving to them, there's no two ways about it. This failure of love is supposedly okay because avoiding the impurity is even more important to God...but is it really so?
The Bible, as it turns out, may be totally silent on the implicit sinfulness of emotional entanglements, but it says plenty about the importance of love between believers. Christ, on the night He was crucified, took the time to give His disciples some final instructions, comfort, and one command so important that He introduced it simply as "a new commandment" and "the command I give you" and stated it three times in that address. Later, John reiterated it over and over and over again in his first epistle. The command was this: "love one another as I have loved you" (John 13:34 and 15:12). Notice that He did not take this opportunity to mention how important it was that His disciples kept themselves pure from emotional entanglements or bad company or even heresy. The most important thing to Christ's mind was that they love each other with the same all-consuming love that He had for them. Christ even brought it up again in His final prayer in John 17.
But how does this command for love stack up when matched with all God's other desires for good works, sound doctrine, personal holiness and the like? It turns out, that time and time again in the Bible, His desire for His people to love one another trumps His desire for any of these things. In Isaiah 1:11-17 even contains a pre-church example. God had Himself proclaimed all of Israel's sacrifices, feasts, assemblies, and religious observances...but here He expresses absolute hatred for them because of the way His people abuse one another.
What, then, is so sacred about the sacred silent treatment? Seeing that love and unity between Christians (male and female included: Galatians 3:28) is so vitally important in the eyes of God, what gives us the right to, in His name, drive wedges between Christians and stamp out our love for one another? Does emotional purity: a "sin" whose existence cannot even be Biblically maintained? What about complete agreement on obscure doctrinal issues? Does the Bible say it's okay to hate Christians you disagree with? Last time I checked, it doesn't. The Bible, to be fair, does state one circumstance when shunning a person is the best solution, as a last resort: excommunication for gross and unrepentant sin...and that only after the sinner has refused to repent after being confronted by the entire church (Matthew 18:15-17). Since it's easier to shun someone privately than to convince an entire church that they deserve it (or go to the effort of restoring them), it's not surprising that many excommunication practices violate the procedures of Matthew 18. In almost every case where this juvenile discipline of silence is observed and deified, it is done in violation of God's word. It is not sacred, it is a sin. It is not acceptable to God, who loves unity above purity, such that He left His own holy glory behind to live among us in our filth, in hope of redeeming and being unified with us and uniting us with each other. By creating silence and separation between believers where it ought not to be, were are not doing God's work, but destroying it. It is a shameful thing, and it is no wonder Paul rebuked the apostle for this sin. Would he were here to rebuke us!
In some modern churches, there's a sort of a sacred silence as well, but it is different. The silence isn't an agreed upon thing, temporary, so that all might focus their attention on the God Who speaks into silence. It's an interminable thing enforced between some believers and not others, designed not so that both can concentrate on God but so that one Christian need not be contaminated by the company of the other. It is a sacred silent treatment, a punishment resurrected from the juvenile antics of middle school and given the veneer of godliness. The theory is that since some sin is involved or anticipated on the part of one or both of these Christians, it's okay to separate them.
One of the most common examples is in gender relationships. Many churches have bought into the idea of emotional purity. The believe that the sexual purity the Bible admonishes us toward is only part of the equation. Sure, the Bible says we're not to commit adultery, nor to have sexual relations before marriage, that much is clear. The Jesus also said that to lust after a woman in your heart was to commit adultery with her, but the emotional purity doctrine says that Jesus didn't quite go far enough. Isn't it wrong to love someone other than your spouse? Assuming that your married already, certainly yes. The emotional purity doctrine goes even further, though, and applies this idea to the unmarried. It brings it to bear on the often-tumultuous world of dating relationships and condemns the whole idea of giving one's heart away to someone you aren't going to marry. Many of its proponents say that, in order to avoid this man-proclaimed sin, it's best to give your heart to no one until your certain they'll be your future spouse (methods of assuring this vary, but most rely on either the father or a church leader to basically play matchmaker). And how does one go about making sure they don't give their heart to someone of the opposite sex unintentionally--or worse yet, cause someone of the opposite sex to "stumble" and have feelings for them? Enter the sacred silent treatment. If the genders don't talk to each other, if they don't interact, they won't fall into the egregious sin of emotional attachment. Sometimes this is applied wholesale, sometimes on an as-needed basis between people who begin warming up to each other without a leader's go-ahead. In all cases it boils down to the same idea that lies at the heart of all sacred silent treatments (gender based and otherwise): because God wants me to preserve myself from this sinful contamination, it is okay to avoid my brother or sister in Christ as if they have the plague. God approves because keeping my purity intact is more important to Him than love and unity among believers.
Several problems arise. The first, with this particular application of the sacred silent treatment, is that the Bible is totally silent on the issue of emotional purity in singles. It says nothing about the horrible sin of having an emotional attachment or romantic interest in a member of the opposite sex, as an unmarried person. In fact, Paul in 1 Corinthians 7:36 has his golden opportunity (as a life-long celibate) to condemn the sin inherent in the process of two singles falling for each other and considering marriage--and he passes it up. More than that, he explicitly says that "it is no sin." People who teach purity of heart have to essentially make up a sin from scraps of verses taken out of context (such as Proverbs 4:23, which says, "guard your heart" but from the context the writer clearly had no intention of speaking to emotional attachments, but to holding onto wisdom and instruction and shunning wicked ways) and from a number of extra-biblical arguments (note for example, how this author of an emotional purity book makes her case: notice that she neither has nor mentions a single verse to support her case but simply relies on drawing a pseudo-logical connection between sexual immorality and the emotional connections she thinks make it more likely to occur). The lack of proof is just the beginning, though. Emotional purity comes dangerously close to the heresies of denying that Jesus came in the flesh (1 John 4:2) and was tempted just as we are--yet without sin--(Hebrews 4:15), since Jesus did many things that some proponents of the doctrine would consider inadvisable or even sinful (remember His conversation, alone, with the woman at the well, whom He knew perfectly well was a loose woman?). It also seems to deny the Christian doctrines of redemption and renewal, by implying that the romantic longings of the single are irredeemably sinful. It causes a number of other ill effects by providing a formulaic approach to an aspect of the Christian's life, rather than an approach that is receptive to the Spirit and not led by man-made laws and codes. It devalues the heart, by teaching that the more you love the less worthy you are to be loved (you've given away "pieces of your heart," thereby cheapening it). Most of all, though, emotional purity butts heads with the Christian commands to love one another. Avoiding someone and giving them the silent treatment is simply not loving to them, there's no two ways about it. This failure of love is supposedly okay because avoiding the impurity is even more important to God...but is it really so?
The Bible, as it turns out, may be totally silent on the implicit sinfulness of emotional entanglements, but it says plenty about the importance of love between believers. Christ, on the night He was crucified, took the time to give His disciples some final instructions, comfort, and one command so important that He introduced it simply as "a new commandment" and "the command I give you" and stated it three times in that address. Later, John reiterated it over and over and over again in his first epistle. The command was this: "love one another as I have loved you" (John 13:34 and 15:12). Notice that He did not take this opportunity to mention how important it was that His disciples kept themselves pure from emotional entanglements or bad company or even heresy. The most important thing to Christ's mind was that they love each other with the same all-consuming love that He had for them. Christ even brought it up again in His final prayer in John 17.
But how does this command for love stack up when matched with all God's other desires for good works, sound doctrine, personal holiness and the like? It turns out, that time and time again in the Bible, His desire for His people to love one another trumps His desire for any of these things. In Isaiah 1:11-17 even contains a pre-church example. God had Himself proclaimed all of Israel's sacrifices, feasts, assemblies, and religious observances...but here He expresses absolute hatred for them because of the way His people abuse one another.
"When you come to appear before me, who has required of you this trampling of my courts? Bring no more vain offerings; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath and the calling of convocations-- I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates; they have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow's cause."In Jesus' time, there were the Pharisees, who were so observant of laws of religious holiness that they not only tithed of their income (as the Bible commands), but also from their spice rack...and yet Jesus' condemnation of their loveless conduct is famous. When it came to the church, things were evidently the same. Paul publicly called out Peter "because he stood condemned" for giving Gentiles the sacred silent treatment over supper (Galatians 2:11-14)--which is notably the only recorded time in Scripture where one apostle said anything negative about another. In Revelation 2:1-7, Christ Himself appears in a vision to condemn the church of Ephesus, not because of heresy or impurity (He admits that the church is passionate in combating heresy and maintaining its own purity) but because of lack of love (which the church at Ephesus had originally being famous for: Ephesians 1:15), for the which He threatens to remove their status as a church of God. Finally, Paul writes famously in 1 Corinthians 13 about the one thing that is most essential to the Christian life--and it isn't purity or religious observance! It's love, without which he says that even the best Christian practices are reduced to meaninglessness.
What, then, is so sacred about the sacred silent treatment? Seeing that love and unity between Christians (male and female included: Galatians 3:28) is so vitally important in the eyes of God, what gives us the right to, in His name, drive wedges between Christians and stamp out our love for one another? Does emotional purity: a "sin" whose existence cannot even be Biblically maintained? What about complete agreement on obscure doctrinal issues? Does the Bible say it's okay to hate Christians you disagree with? Last time I checked, it doesn't. The Bible, to be fair, does state one circumstance when shunning a person is the best solution, as a last resort: excommunication for gross and unrepentant sin...and that only after the sinner has refused to repent after being confronted by the entire church (Matthew 18:15-17). Since it's easier to shun someone privately than to convince an entire church that they deserve it (or go to the effort of restoring them), it's not surprising that many excommunication practices violate the procedures of Matthew 18. In almost every case where this juvenile discipline of silence is observed and deified, it is done in violation of God's word. It is not sacred, it is a sin. It is not acceptable to God, who loves unity above purity, such that He left His own holy glory behind to live among us in our filth, in hope of redeeming and being unified with us and uniting us with each other. By creating silence and separation between believers where it ought not to be, were are not doing God's work, but destroying it. It is a shameful thing, and it is no wonder Paul rebuked the apostle for this sin. Would he were here to rebuke us!
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