Monday, December 5, 2011

Church Pickets

Yesterday while reading the Toronto Star, I was drawn to one particular front-page story. A story involving the Covenant Reformed Church in Toronto. Some of my relatives were once members of this church, and I sometimes went with them to Sunday service at this church when visiting them back in the 1960's.

Here's the story: Love thy neighbour, protest thy neighbour, be sued by thy neighbour

In a nutshell, one church member, Jack van Halteren has a business dispute with Gary DeBoer. In order to try to resolve the dispute, van Halteren went to his church for help. You might wonder, why would someone involve their church in a business dispute? Van Halteren justified his action by quoting from the Bible. Matthew 18:15-17 in particular:

15 “If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. 16 But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ 17 If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector."

Unfortunately, when the church was not helpful to van Halteren, he decided on a rather provocative next step: Picketing his church. Frankly, I'm not sure what passage in the Bible supports that action, but the result has been legal action against van Halteren, including a $500,000 lawsuit by the church and another $1,000,000 lawsuit from DeBoer.

Clearly, van Halteren would have saved himself a lot of grief and expense if he had just hired a lawyer to try to settle his dispute, instead of turning to the Bible for help.

There are other cases of people picketing churches. For more than a decade, one man has been picketing the Unitarian Church of Montreal. In 1992, a member of that church underwent a "profound revelatory experience of God which revealed that the total solar eclipse 'Eye of God' is a 'Sign in the Heavens' that symbolizes God's divine omniscience". He told his fellow church members of his revelation. However, he was so insistent in the preaching of his new-found religion, that eventually he was ex-communicated by the church. Since then, he has made it his mission in life to protest and picket that church. You can read about him in this story from 2000: Cops arrest religious visionary

What drives people to take such action? Is it a profound belief that they, and they alone, are privy to God's truth? How can you reason with people who truly, sincerely believe that they totally understand God's will?

I've often been struck by the variety of beliefs within all of the major religions. Over the past two thousand years, the history of Christianity is chock full of schisms, splits, and secessions. The Covenant Reformed Church acknowledges the schisms in their own history on their website: A Short History of the Reformed Churches. And every time there's a schism, both sides believe fervently in the absolute correctness of their side.

Cheers! Hans