Perhaps the most alarming result of 2020 is illustrated by a famous psychology experiment from the 1960s. The behavior of the subjects was so startling that the experiment was discontinued before it was completed. I’m referring to the Milgram experiments. Stanley Milgram discovered the human capacity to inflict torture on fellow human beings when directed to do so by someone in a position of authority. The parallel to 2020 is that our leaders—in government, in business, and in the church—under the spell of “experts,” were so quick to impose harm to fellow human beings with the pretense of benevolent protection. In other words, we got just a little glimpse into the depth of our moral depravity. The fallen heart of man is always bent toward control. And the mask of love is used to cover the face of evil. Tyrants justify their abuses by telling everyone it’s for their own good.

Let me say it out loud: we are all sadists at heart. And all it takes is a little jolt of fear to bring that darkness up to the surface. When God begins to loosen the cords of common grace, we start to manifest the worst parts of ourselves.

Have We Learned from Failure?

Disasters have long held a macabre fascination for me. Last week’s tragic news involves the loss of the submersible Titan which was diving on the Titanic wreck in the north Atlantic. Like the Titanic itself, there will be no single cause that resulted in the loss of the ship and her occupants. Any number of contributing factors will eventually be identified, and it is almost an axiom of disasters that with hindsight they were preventable with a minimum of time and cost. The paradox of prevention is that we could have prevented failure if we had only known when and how the system was going to fail. Complex systems all fail in the long run because the number of failure pathways is incalculable. The best remedy is to design systems that are robust so that they fail in a way that limits the damage and avoids catastrophe. There must also be mechanisms of detection and correction. Church government must follow the same principles.

After the cascade of failures in 2020, it’s apparent that the Protestant church needs to be more robust—in her theology and in her practice. She needs to remember from whence she came—a tradition born of men like Luther and Calvin and Knox, courageously standing against abusive authorities and confidently declaring the supremacy of Christ speaking through the authority of scripture. If the church again totters like a wooden idol, it is almost certainly because she has neglected the principle of sola scriptura.

The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men. (from WCF 1.6)

The Supreme Judge, by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture. (WCF 1.10)

The church’s clumsy response to the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns is not a matter of indifference—the kind of offenses or errors in judgment that are best ignored rather than dwelt upon, as if we might have chosen an unfortunate color for the carpet in the sanctuary but we can all learn to live with it. No. The matters we’re discussing here are quite grave—“touching holy things” as Peter Van Doodewaard likened it to Uzza carelessly touching the ark of the covenant. Anything that so deeply affects the life and ministry of the church in her worship and in her witness must be a matter for reflection and repentance. Nearly every church made the same mistakes—and most still have a hangover in the form of streaming church service as an alternative to gathered worship in the Lord’s sanctuary. But like David, whose desire to bring the ark to Jerusalem was only realized after returning to the commandments of God, we too can rejoice and give thanks that a tragedy of our own making brought us back to faithfulness in the word of God.

And the sons of the Levites carried the ark of God on their shoulders with the poles thereon, as Moses had commanded according to the word of Yahweh. (1 Chr 15:15 LSB, with emphasis)

Thus all Israel was bringing up the ark of the covenant of Yahweh with shouting, and with sound of the horn, with trumpets, with loud-sounding cymbals, with harps, and lyres. (1 Chr 15:28 LSB)

And so we still urgently need to understand the institutional authority structures that God has established and how they are intended to work together for the good of society according to scripture. None of them are absolute. But all are necessary for a properly functioning society. The church particularly must understand her role as an authority that rejects interference from the state in matters of worship.

I will close with an anecdote that helps illustrate the importance of gathering together for worship. After initially closing the doors to its congregation, Grace Community Church began to spontaneously reconvene, and a short time afterward, when it became well-known that the doors were open again, most of the church came back and hundreds of new people showed up for the first time. More visitors continued to attend in the weeks and months afterward. They came to GCC when their own churches remained closed. Isn’t it interesting? No one had to explain to them the importance of gathering on the Lord’s day with the people of God. And even John MacArthur made the salient point more than a year later:

Zoom church is not Church. It’s not Church. It’s watching TV. There’s nothing about that that fulfills the biblical definition of coming together. (Oct 31, 2021)

How right he was.

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If you would like to learn more about my work, I would encourage you to read Theses for Recovering Ecclesiastical Authority and listen to my SermonAudio messages under the series title, “Biblical Authority Structures.”

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Dr. J.R. Dickens is a lay leader in the Presbyterian church and a visiting professor of apologetics at New Geneva Theological Seminary in Colorado Springs.