PERFECTIONISTS (ARRIVALISTS) OR PILGRIMS?

Terry O’Casey

Ok, I am not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Someone even said of me, "the gates are down, the lights are flashing, but the train isn't coming”. Yet as a 5^th generation preacher, I finally caught on. I struggle with being a Pharisee! Let me define my deviancy. When I meet someone, I always give him or her an orthodoxy test. Now mind you I do not believe in creeds, but hey, who says I have to be consistent! For instance, if I want to know what someone believes about baptism, I ask just a few questions, just the bare bone basics, you know: "How old where you when you were immersed?" "Who done it?"" What denomination was it done by?" "Was it for the remission of sins?" “Was it for salvation, or 'an outward act of an inward turning?'" "What was pronounced as you went under?" Then I query people about the Lord's Supper, Calvinism, and their view on spiritual gifts, ending with where they stand with the end time theories: pre, -post, or a-millennialism. Just a short test, slightly more than the SAT for High Schoolers, a little less than the Graduate Record Exams to be admitted into Quantum Physics at MIT. If someone scored a perfect 100% than they could join the half a dozen of us who have “arrived.” If however they scored much lower, say a 99%, then we would hold them to a probation status: Probably saved definitely smelling of smoke. For instance if they could name all 5 points of Calvinism and why they were right or wrong, but then slipped and shared how they were immersed in a Baptist congregation having previously been saved prior to baptism, then with shattered hearts we would grade them down.

Then I came across a monkey in the family tree. Alexander Campbell, who helped re-discover a simple non-denominational Christianity, was a pilgrim not a perfectionist. He had this odd idea that the Bible was a gold mine that could never be played out. As a consequence he would always be discovering new, wonderful, contagiously exciting Biblical truths. Even his sound conclusions about baptism took him decades of digging to discover. We must NEVER compromise truth, but we must give people time and love on their pilgrimage to the truth. We who think we have arrived (Arrivalists) at ALL the truth (Perfectionists) are really limiting God. God is played out, thoroughly figured out, boxed in and up with our conclusions.

Who fills your church: Pilgrims or Perfectionists/Arrivalists? Pilgrims still have pick and shovel, headlamps and lunch bags as they go off to work, and the return with excitement with each new Biblical find. Arrivalists have checklists and easy chairs at the gates of churches and pulpit search committees and act as grumpy guards. Pilgrims were excited when the New Covenant came. Arrivalists, had the cold, old stone tablets. Pilgrims were excited when the Gentiles received the Spirit, the Arrivalists could not accept germy Gentiles, never mind the Spirit! Pilgrims are searching, Arrivalists are starched. Perfectionist are impatient, judgmental, unforgiving and demanding. Pilgrims pick each other up, Perfectionists put each other down. Pilgrims hold each other in their arms, Perfectionists hold each other at arm’s length. Arrivalists contend that they are contending for the faith once delivered…but in reality are merely defending a gold dig interpretation from another century, not having gone back in themselves to discover!

A great example of pilgrims helping pilgrims is in Acts 18. When God's P.A. team, Pricilla and Aquilla heard another Pilgrim, Apollos, they recognized that he was a bit further from Jerusalem’s truth than they were. Arrivalists would have stood up and corrected Apollos publicly, perhaps so embarrassing or angering Apollos as to cause him to leave the faith. Pilgrims rejoiced at his excitement as he mined God's word, they just wanted him to dig deeper. So God's PA team took him home, patiently established a relationship with him in a non-threatening way and THEN taught him the way of God more accurately. Truth would not be compromised, but they gave him time and love.

As a recovering Pharisee, I felt a strange kinship with an early church heresy called Gnosticism. I too falsely believed I was saved by being in possession of certain key points of knowledge. I was saved by the conclusions I had attained. In reality I am saved by Christ. I was not saved by WHAT I knew, but WHOM I know, or more importantly, that he knows me. What saves us is not what we know many things about Jesus, but whether we know Christ who is being formed in us and we have submitted to his Lordship (Galatians 4:19).

Ask yourself and your church: are you part of Pilgrim's Progress or an Arrivalist’s Regress? While the truth indeed is once delivered, it is not at once acquired by us. Get out the pick and shovel, there is another vein to follow in the mother lode deep within our Father God's Word (Acts 10:34).