English translation of Sevgi ve hizmet içermeyen yaklaşımlar neye hizmet ediyor?, from the author’s Miras archive. From Miras issue 18. References to contemporary debates belong to the original writing period. Scripture passages are rendered from the Turkish source.
A church administration lacking confidence approaches its members through control and pressure rather than divine love and unifying grace. Defending Christ’s righteousness does not mean continually teaching people what not to do and becoming an instrument of judgment at every step they take.
The church is a shared space of life. From the first moment someone who believes in Christ enters it, the church becomes the center of active and profound change across many areas of their life. Why? What places the church at the center of a believer’s life and creates an ongoing relationship at its different stages?
According to Scripture, the church already has such a role. It is Christ’s body, the fullness of the one who fills everything in every way (Ephesians 1:23). Living as part of that body, worshiping and growing together, and ultimately fulfilling its appointed purpose together are important parts of a believer’s life. But how do we understand and experience this in daily life? What follows from being part of the body? Let us first consider the meaning of shared life and the responsibility each member carries for another’s good.
I believe it is more useful to ask the question in reverse. What does being part of the body not mean? What should its consequences not be? These two questions can deepen our understanding through a negative approach, because “what we must not do” governs much of our daily behavior. Many of us live under continual supervision and questioning. The problems we most often encounter are the burdens communal life places upon us—and, equally, the burdens we place upon others.
That is why I believe asking how things should not be may be more useful here than asking how they should be. Two problems emerge: control and the distortion of discipline. Through a supposed discipline that seeks to control people culturally, socially, and relationally, the church loses its true role and becomes a center of pressure. Church leaders who lack confidence can turn toward control and coercion rather than divine love and unifying grace. One source of this insecurity is a lack of knowledge.
We now live in an age of social media, the internet, and technology. Progress is faster than we can imagine, and the church is deeply affected. Our young people face sociocultural crossfire. Their habits and accumulated experiences conflict with some things taught for years as Christian truths. Often these “truths” concern ways of living as a Christian rather than the faith itself.
Considering the stages through which the church has passed during more than two thousand years, we can see efforts to govern it through a selective, backward-looking compilation of ideas. On one side are those who reject inherited experience and recognize no Christian experience beyond the Protestant Reformation. On the other are excessively traditional churches that try to cut the church off from every innovative initiative.
Beyond these two approaches, both unable to connect with the dynamics of our time, I believe there is a stream that can value both freedom and tradition. It can hold openness to individual freedom together with faithfulness to the foundational teachings of the faith. When these are not held together, a crisis of intensifying conflict becomes inevitable. Much of that conflict arises among people seeking hope while crushed beneath the watchful eyes of legalism. Refusing to hear their objections risks marginalizing the church.
Recently, we have witnessed new debates about churches’ positions on social issues. A familiar character appears in these discussions. This person can emerge from either extreme: excessive traditionalism or hostility to tradition. Their most obvious characteristic is following, harassing, and judging people while supposedly defending Christian righteousness.
This character becomes the pointing finger of a church that avoids renewal. Their mistake is to search for sin in every circumstance and impose their familiar understanding as absolute truth. Here we encounter the answer to what the church, as a body, is not. First of all, it is not a judgment bench open twenty-four hours a day.
Do you think we have left behind the days when people believed eating chocolate increased lust and was sinful, or when even going to the cinema was regarded as shameful? Perhaps this mindset no longer operates so sharply, but it continues attacking lives from different directions. It swings its sharp and deadly sword over us through the films we watch, the music we hear, the books we read, and our understanding of enjoyment.
According to this mentality, Christian hearts must be protected by wise and experienced people like themselves. They must discipline the church and act as a signpost for all Christians. This attitude reaches the point where they consider it their duty to shake the same finger even at people outside their own congregations, supposedly to set them straight.
This is not the church. This is not leadership. Defending Christ’s righteousness does not mean constantly teaching people what not to do and becoming an instrument of judgment at every step. Looking for idolatry, witchcraft, and evil spirits beneath every popular concept becomes an attack upon the freedom of the Christian being judged.
Of course, I am not saying every aspect of modern life should be blessed and accepted. Nor am I ignoring Christians’ moral responsibility. But I cannot accept subjecting Christian individuals to spiritual oppression through hierarchy. An approach without love and service turns the church into an instrument of unjust judgment. Even people with obvious sins can be won through an approach that seeks their good rather than control.
Looking at the Bible to produce rules through a rigidly literal reading; interpreting a popular singer’s hand gesture as a sign that they are a prophet of a religion directed by evil spirits; searching every piece of music and every element of cultural heritage for demons and witches—this produces a strange “religiosity” that would make even the Middle Ages envious.
The church is not such a thing.