ICOMB

SAVE THE DATE FRIDAY, MAY 5, 2023

TRAINING NATIONAL LEADERS: EQUIPPING OUR PARTNERS FOR CHURCH AND MISSION

ICOMB (International Community of Mennonite Brethren) invites you to participate in a fundraising event for the global MB Church. This dinner event with international speakers will be at Bakerview Church, at 6 pm in Abbotsford, BC. For more information, contact victorw@icomb.org

Consider joining us and investing in the next generation of leaders in our global MB family.

A.

Q&R corner

This new MB Herald Digest column provides responses to questions that readers may have about CCMBC and its work collaborating with provincial MB conferences in areas of spiritual health and theology, leadership development, mission, and organizational health in order to achieve the overall mission: “To cultivate a community and culture of healthy disciple-making churches and ministries, faithfully joining Jesus in his mission.” If you would like to contribute a question, please send it to questions@mbchurches.ca

Please note that we will not be using your name in the MB Herald Digest in order to respect those who prefer anonymity. There may not be space to respond to every question—and sometimes we might not really have the ability or authority to respond to some questions (for example, those that relate more directly to one of our provincial MB conferences or to a local church leadership). We apologize in advance if we are unable to publish a response to your specific question.

Thanks, A., for your great question. It would require a much lengthier response to do this justice so thanks for your grace. First of all, all of us owe a significant debt to the scientific (and specifically medical) advances that we benefit from.

We have a better understanding of God’s beautiful world and a better understanding about how to respond to illness and disease which at this point is still part of this beautiful world. We recognize and respect that science/medicine is a God-given means to discover some of God’s truth.

But your question is obviously about more than this. If I’ve understood you correctly, you are asking about what kind of contribution medical research should have in our understanding of Christian ethics—and whether there is a point where we would (or should) revise our ethical expectations around sexuality and gender for example in light of recent research?

Our understanding of the path to “life” (physical, relational, spiritual) involves responding to God’s gracious invitation to forgiveness; the receiving of a new identity (child of God, citizen of God’s eternal Kingdom, member of the body of Christ); a release from bondage to sin, Satan, and death; and an invitation to walk in the way of Jesus within a community. This path to life has implications for everything Christians do vocationally, economically, socially, sexually, etc. As MBs, we have given first place to Scripture to hear Jesus guide us on this path to life (e.g., Article 2—“We accept the Bible as the infallible Word of God and the authoritative guide for faith and practice”). By means of our community hermeneutic, the MB Confession of Faith summarizes our understanding of God’s path to life as articulated in the Bible—from salvation itself, to participation within the church, to discipleship ethics, to the final return of Jesus. Now, if medical research were to “inform these conclusions,” the question must begin with how and to what extent? I’m assuming that part of medical research involves the measuring of agreed upon metrics (e.g., physical measurements of health/disease, length of life, reported levels of happiness/anxiety, etc.) and then making “scientific” judgments about which behaviors lead to positive outcomes and which do not. While these are valuable metrics for evaluating human behavior, it is unclear to me whether this research should lead us to fundamentally change our biblically founded understandings of Jesus’ path to life. Part of this is because our human research metrics do not seem to be closely correlated with God’s own metrics for what constitutes “life to the full” and “faithful discipleship.” Jesus called his followers to “take up their cross”— and, in response, many early disciples left secure family situations to become itinerant preachers facing opposition and persecution. Many early Christians lost economic security, became ostracised from their communities, and even died as martyrs. If medical research had studied these individuals, what would they have concluded about whether following Jesus had health benefits in comparison with those who refused to follow Jesus and stayed comfortably within their Jewish (and/ or Gentile) families? How would the parents and siblings left behind by these early Christians have experienced the family breakdowns caused by new converts essentially abandoning their biological families? Would researchers conclude that people should reconsider Jesus’ harsh words in order to avoid these negative outcomes to self and others? Science can measure certain things—but faithfulness to Jesus does not seem to be one of them.

In addition, what should Christians do if and when medical research discovers that our expectations of the Jesus’ discipleship path produce negative metrics in physical health, mental health, and/or life expectancy? At what point should we “follow the science” and change our commitments? If medical research concluded that those self-identifying as atheists, or Sikhs, or Mormons, scored better on medical research metrics, would this lead us to reconsider whether we should continue to invite people to become followers of Jesus at all? If medical research concluded that a quick divorce led to better outcomes in response to certain marital difficulties (e.g., infertility, birth of a special needs child, etc.), would this lead us to reconsider our commitments to a long-term covenantal commitment? We could obviously go on with these questions to include areas of singleness, gender identity, sexuality, sanctity of life, and so on.

It seems to me that we want to welcome medical research as one type of barometer as we seek to live faithfully toward what we believe is Jesus’ path to life. However, if we discover that medical research is reporting an increase in negative metrics for those pursuing a path we have understood as the way of Jesus, should we change the path, or consider whether other factors are at play? We must acknowledge that our church communities often fail to support individuals in difficult discipleship journeys. It may be that medical research is revealing more about our collective failure as a community rather than the nature of the ethical path itself.

To conclude, we want to hear all medical research to see what we can learn from it, but if we are going to be people who revise our ethical understandings about the path of Jesus endlessly in order to “follow the science,” then we should admit that we are replacing Scripture with a higher authority. And that “higher authority” will be subject regularly to profound changes and reversals of what is presently deemed to be true and life-giving. As a result, we will necessarily need to reflect very carefully and cautiously on medical research that is attempting to speak into all the areas of human life that make up the discipleship journey. Thanks again for your great question!

K.