The Dog House

 

“Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.”

—1 Peter 4:8

When I was growing up, on the kitchen wall of our house, we had a carved wooden plague. This plague had the image of a very cute doghouse. To the side, six little wooden doggies hung from hooks. Each doggie had a label with the name of one of our family members. From time to time in order to poke fun at each other, we would place each other in the doghouse. For example, my mom would sometimes get her doggie hung in the doghouse for not making my father’s favorite kind of pie often enough.

I think many families don’t have the kind of loving, fun relationships we enjoyed. Today, society might label such families as dysfunctional. In some, a family member must earn love. In others, members have learned how to manipulate each other to get his or her own way. Some have perfectionist expectations that children, or spouses, can never reach. Still others have a workaholic parent whose time for the family gets stolen by “more important matters.”

We can also look at our society and say that, in many ways, it has become dysfunctional, too. We could say that the traits of greed, selfishness, and power have taken over our love for country and each other.

What about the church? Can a church body carry dysfunctional characteristics, as well?

I think the Apostle Paul nailed some of those dysfunctional characteristics in his writing we call the “Love Chapter,” found in 1 Corinthians 13. Paul has just spent the first twelve chapters speaking of factions, status-seeking behaviors, jealousy, and various disagreements over who might have the greatest gifts. He takes a turn in Chapter 13, when he examines the characteristics that counter all the negative examples he has just given in the previous chapters.

Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones speaks of the hypercritical spirit, or the dysfunctional spirit within the church.¹

Love “hopeth all things,” but this spirit hopes for the worst; it gets a malicious, malign satisfaction in finding faults and blemishes. It is a spirit that is always expecting them, and is almost disappointed if it does not find them; it is always on the look-out for them, and rather delights in them. There is no question about that, the hypercritical spirit is never really happy unless it finds these faults. And, of course, the result of all this is that it tends to fix attention upon matters that are indifferent and to make of them matters of vital importance.

But, the Apostle Paul here admonishes us. We should not live with this kind of spirit in the church. Recently I read these words by Lisa Igram of Biola University:²

For those us in Christ, Jesus’ self-giving, bending-down-in-mercy kind of love has become our new reality. Here, Paul exhorts us to live into this new reality, received when we agreed to Jesus’ Lordship over our lives. In our divisive political and social climate, the unity of Christ’s Body is actualized when I value those who bring a diverse perspective (1 Corinthians 12:12-30), create space for the vulnerable (1 Corinthians 8:12), learn from those I may perceive to be weak (1 Corinthians 1:27, 12:22), and give up my own ease and interests for the well-being of the whole (1 Corinthians 12).

When compared to our culture and to the dysfunctional families that comprise our culture, our church—as a part of the Body of Christ—should live in a radically different way. The Gospel of Christ, lived out in our gathering together, should shout loudly to the world around us, pointing always to our loving and forgiving Lord.

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1 Lloyd-Jones, D. Martyn. Studies in the Sermon on the Mount. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1971. Vol. 2, p. 167.

2 Igram, Lisa. The Advent Project. La Mirada, CA: Biola University Center for Christianity Culture and the Arts, December 28, 2019.