When Geese Fly

Dr. Matt Friedeman

Our first visit to a church in our new southern locale some twenty years ago prompted a question for the pastor. Remembering the tumultuous civil right era of Mississippi and wondering if attitudes had adjusted, we asked the preacher of a Caucasian congregation whether a black family would feel welcome if they attended a worship service there.

“You mean,” he said, “if a black family came in would they be warmly greeted, made to feel comfortable, and loved into the life of our congregation?” Yes, we said, that’s what we were asking.

“No,” replied the pastor. Then, after a short pause, he admitted, “But neither would a white family.”

Suffice it to say, we didn’t go back. As an addendum to this sad story, let me note that this congregation purportedly believed thoroughly in the Wesleyan doctrine of “perfect love” and had split from another denomination over such doctrinal distinctives.

It is of such churches and their theology (which, doctrinally, seemed to concur with my wife’s and mine) that John Wesley was likely thinking when he said that religion does not “consist in orthodoxy, or right opinions….A man may be orthodox in every point; he may not only espouse right opinions, but zealously defend them against all opposers…and yet it is possible he may have no religion at all…” (Sermon: The Way to the Kingdom)

Longtime seminary professor and popularizer of inductive Bible study Dr. Robert Traina used to tell his classes, “You do what you believe, and you believe what you do.” Really, there is no separation. Or, perhaps, for the responsible and thoroughly honest student of doctrine, there is no separation.

“Theology is necessary because truth and experience are related,” says Millard J. Erickson. “While some would deny, or at least question this connection, in the long run the truth will affect our experience. A person who falls from the tenth story of a building may shout while passing each window on the way down, ‘I'm still doing fine,’ and may mean it, but eventually the facts of the matter will catch up with the person's experience.”

Erickson further notes, “Since the meaning and truth of the Christian faith will eventually have ultimate bearing on our experience, we must come to grips with them.” (Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology, Second Edition (1998)

Dr. Robert Coleman, professor of evangelism, used to ask his students to read a book titled Dedication and Leadership by Douglas Hyde. Hyde was a former communist who converted to Christianity but who recognized the value of the communist zeal for learning and applying. Said Hyde:

Any Communist tutor who is worth his salt finished each class with these words: “What are the comrades going to do about what they have learned today? How are you going to apply it to the hospital where you are nursing? You in the school where you teach? You in the factory where you are employed? You as a housewife to the neighborhood where you are living?”

The first item on the agenda when the class next meets will be: “How did the comrades apply what they learned last week?” It does not matter whether the subject is trade union history, scientific socialism, or dialectical materialism, teacher and taught must try to relate it to life and action.

In passing, I would reiterate that this is not the way in which Christianity, for example is normally taught…

I was at a conference not too long ago where the speaker remarked, “Everybody says they love poor people.” To align with Scripture, of course, they have to articulate that sentiment. But the presenter revealed that she had begun asking not “Do you love poor people?” but “What are the names of the poor people you love?” Good theology, she proposed, is particular in its expectation that right belief should be reflected in accompanying action. And, frankly, biblical theology is just that. It animates, brings to life, and embraces faith with obedience.

As a pastor, the pulpit and the home cell have substantial, albeit limited, power. Unless I lead my people to the prisons, the abortion clinics and the nursing homes in response to Truth, the sermons and well-executed Bible studies are likely to be marginally helpful at best, deadening at worst. New Testament readers ought to be reminded that Jesus said “Follow me” and then led his disciples to the hurting places of Palestine. In the midst of activity and shared love, He taught them the lessons of Scripture and of the mind of God. One can only suppose that the teaching method of Jesus shouldn’t be lost on the contemporary pastor.

Soren Kierkegaard, the “Disturbing Dane,” once penned a journal entry that spoke to the necessity of such animation. “Suppose it was that geese could talk,” proposed the 19th century philosopher. And with that imaginative beginning, the Danish existentialist proceeded to paint a verbal picture of a land where geese could not only speak but were in the habit of waddling to church every Sunday.

The presiding gander would honk eloquent sermons about the high goal of their Creator and such motivational topics as God’s generous gift to these fowl – wings. With the aid of these feathery appendages, the geese were told, they could “fly away to distant regions, blessed climes, where properly they were at home, for here they were only strangers.” It was indeed exciting for the geese to gather on Sunday morns; at their sacred meetings they would, in their ecstasy, curtsy and bow and undoubtedly send feathers flying about the sanctuary.

“And so it was every Sunday,” writes Kierkegaard. But a strange phenomenon repeated itself weekly, for after the geese had enjoyed the fellowship of the congregation, worshipped the great Goose God in the sky, and heard an outstanding message, they would adjourn and, muses Kierkegaard, “Each would waddle home to his own affairs.” And to the delight of hungry humans everywhere they “throve and were well liked, became plump and delicate – and then were eaten…and that was the end of it.”

Theology, without action, kills. Or as James so aptly put it, “Faith without works is dead.”

Dr. Matt Friedeman, Ph.D. is Professor of Evangelism and Christian Education at Wesley Biblical Seminary. He resides in Jackson, Mississippi with his wife, Mary, and their six children.