On Principle

    I love governing principles. They beat rules anytime. “Love the Lord your God with all your....” is a great governing principles. “Love your neighbor as yourself” really goes well with the first. As a matter of fact, a close reading of the Gospels would lead you to believe that Jesus was a huge fan of governing principles as is indicated by His, “but I say unto you” comments of Matthew 5. The more that I think about it, even the parables were about governing principles. The beauty of principles is that they are true anytime and anywhere.
    One of the things that I love about principles is that you don’t have to know all of the details of a particular discipline to benefit. If I understand the basics of physics, I don’t have to know what an ‘m’ or a ‘v’ or a ‘c’ stands for in a particular equation to know that “what goes up must come down”. If I understand the basics of geometry, I don’t have to be able to recite all of the theorems proving that the square of a hypotenuse is equal to the sums of the square of the other two sides to know that the ladder I’m using has to be longer than the wall its against. I only wished that my physics and geometry professors had appreciated my appreciation for the principles of their disciplines! I never got an ‘A’ on principles although I was acquainted with the principals.
    What’s really cool is that principles apply to everything, including reaching unchurched people and planting churches. Since Bill Hybels and Rick Warren planted Willow Creek and Saddleback, there have been thousands of wanna be church planters who have tried to copy them. There have now been thousands of failures with only one Willow Creek and Saddleback. Why? Replicating practices does not equal to replicating principles, therefore will not replicate success. Having attended their conferences way-back-when, I remember them learning to say, “Do not try this at home.” More churches were blown up than thrown up or grown up by attempted replication. The mega successes that do exist are because others understand the principles behind their effectiveness.
    “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink” is a great church planting principle. It also happens to be a great principle for dealing with pagans or hard core atheists. We are enduring another advent-holiday-merry-whatever season and another round of victim-minded-believer rants. We can’t pray in school. We can’t post the Ten Commandments. We can’t call them “Christmas Trees”. We can’t wa, wa, wa... A neutral observer could easily reach the conclusion that the Jesus solution to every issue is forced conformity to our way of thinking, especially on non-believers. Geneva revisited. Compulsion does not equal to conversion. Simply getting all of the horses to line up at the same watering hole doesn’t prove anything other than their rear ends are all pointing in the same direction.
    It was in an attempt to answer my brother-in-laws question, “What’s this about you and Christmas?” that I realized a principle of reaching people with the Good News. Most everyone I know was exposed to some form of Jesus-based-teaching growing up, but walk away from it. The well-intentioned efforts of family, friends and God-fearing people attempting to compel them to at least practice faith even if they didn’t believe it, didn’t do anything positive to attract them to it. Rubbing someone’s nose in creamed spinach isn’t going to alter their gag reflex if they don’t like it. If we really believe that “no one comes except the Spirit draws”, we can go about our business of praying, celebrating and preaching without sounding like victims of a cultural war. Winners attract admirers while whiners attract scorn. Sounds like a great principle!