In this clip, Cy Kellett welcomes Joe Heschmeyer to discuss whether God truly desires organized religion. Joe explains how God has consistently organized religion throughout history, culminating in the establishment of the Church by Jesus, emphasizing the importance of hierarchy and authority.
Transcript:
Caller: Does God really want organized religion? Joe?
Joe Heschmeyer: Yes, he does. And one of the ways we know this is he organized religions multiple times. I mean, he organizes the early days of Judaism and then he continues to reorganize it and develop it and the full flowering of the thing is the church. And so if you stop and think about it with the view of both the Old and New Testament, God is not of two minds. He didn’t suddenly change his mind about the way he wanted the world organized or the way he wanted his religion organized. There are certainly things that we are called to do now that we weren’t called to do in the Old Covenant and vice versa, but it’s the same divine author of both. And so if you have the view that, oh yeah, God created all this stuff, but actually that stuff was bad and Jesus had to abolish it, that seems to create a really unhealthy view of your idea of the relationship of God the Father and Jesus Son. It’s the same divine author in Judaism and in Christianity. And so that’s our first big tell that God likes organized religion. The second is that Jesus doesn’t leave behind a book, but does leave behind a church. You know, we talk about Matthew 16 a lot as Catholics. When Jesus says, upon this rock, after just naming Peter, rock upon this rock, I will build my church. We can leave aside the particular role of Peter, but there is clearly a sense in which a church has been created upon the foundation of the apostles, with Christ Jesus himself as the Cornerstone, as Ephesians 2:20 tells us. So there is a church and it is apostolic. So it’s not just a vague idea. Somewhere there’s an actual group of people who have been instructed to lead the thing, the 12 people chosen by our Lord himself in a top down structure. So if you look at the whole pattern of the New Testament, you see Jesus calling the 12 and then the 12 calling different leaders in the church and laying hands on them to give them authority. And there’s very clearly top down, visible, structured leadership from the jump. And the people who want to do their own thing are repeatedly rebuked for this in Scripture. To give just three examples, for instance, St. Paul says in Romans 10, how can they preach unless they are sent? So if you go out preaching without commission by the church, Paul’s saying, yeah, you can’t do that. Second, you’ve got Acts 15 where you have a group of people who came down preaching this heresy called judaizer heresy, without authority, and they were rebuked for it. Third, you have the references to Korah and his rebellion. Now, if you remember Korah, this is number six. Korah had been one of the Levites. And he said, you know, all of us were, you know, in Exodus, the people of Israel are referred to as a priestly people. And so he said, all of us are therefore able to offer sacrifice. We don’t need this special priesthood, so we can all do it ourselves. And he creates a schism. And so the earth has a schism, and the earth opens up and he is swallowed whole, and he and his followers are destroyed. And this is applied in the Epistle of Jude, verse 11, where he warns us not to be like those who walk in the way of Cain, who abandon themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam’s error, or who perish in Korah’s rebellion. So among a pretty short list of things that Jude tells us to watch out for is this idea of doing what Korah did, of just saying, hey, we’re all priests. We’re all, you know, we don’t need this priesthood. We can do our own thing. And so that’s very much a thing we should watch out for in the New Testament as well.
Cy Kellett: I think some people would complain that, look it, sure, Jesus had some organization, but it’s so much more legalistic, I suppose, would be the word that a complainer might use. The church is just so legalistic in its hierarchy now.
Joe Heschmeyer: So I think we should take this in two ways. One, the people who complain about legalism often have a very particular idea of how they think things ought to be done. And the minute you try to enforce how things ought to be done, that’s going to be viewed by detractors as legalism. What is often called legalism is more just like having a nuanced understanding of a thing. It’s very easy to just say, love God, love neighbor, great, we’re all on board. But as soon as you get into what does that concretely look like, then people start to disagree. And so having guidance from the church on here’s what it does and doesn’t mean to love God or love neighbor is actually really helpful and I would suggest necessary, because otherwise we’re not going to really be on the same page. We’ll be saying the same things. We’ll have radically different ideas of what that looks like. So it is really important, if we’re to be of one heart and one mind, to have some guidance from the church on this. The second thing I’d say is it is possible at times that people become too tied to the rules in a way that is unhelpful. So it’s not impossible that people have approached the church and her teaching in legalistic ways. That doesn’t disprove the nature of the case, which is Jesus created a visible church and established it and all of that. So the fact that your neighbor is sometimes a legalist doesn’t mean we just overthrow the church. That’s the kind of antinomial spirit, this spirit of just hating law and having this radical rebellion against it. And that’s something that the early Christians clearly did not stand for. That’s much more our own age of, like, we’re radical individuals and we can do everything on our own. We don’t need a church. We don’t need a government. We’re, you know, like this kind of spirit of anarchy, and that has no place in the kingdom of God.
Cy Kellett: Joe Heschmeyer is our guest. Already. All the lines full. We’re talking hierarchy and organized religion today. If you have questions along that line as lines open up, give us a call. 888-318-7884.