Democracy is scary as Hell!

 Hell is other people. Nowhere is this more true than in ministry. Unfortunately, Heaven is other people, too. For an introvert like me, that is a challenging thought. For those that have a heart for ministry, it's a torturous one. 

I've known my share of pastors. Befriended them, even. I knew two pastors of small-ish churches that were not far from each other, a matter of a handful of city blocks, really. They were both around the same age, both very cool, and both really had a heart for the neighborhood they were in. I got them together for a meeting, to consider the idea of combining churches. One was the daughter church of a pretty strict church they were still meeting in the building of, the other was a storefront church. The daughter church's pastor was thinking about moving out of the building, moving away from its mother church, becoming more of a real, independent church. The storefront had partnered with the camp organization that my then spouse was working for, running afterschool programs for the local kids. The daughter church had a lot of professional parents, people that had money to spare, but no real time. The storefront had a lot of older, retired people, who didn't have a lot of money, but had a lot of time on their hands. Combining their resources, their congregations, would have meant their impact on the neighborhood would have improved. So why did they never bother to pursue the idea? Why is it one church is gone, reabsorbed into its mother church, and the other moved out of the neighborhood? Because joining together would have meant one or the other, or both, would have had to give up control.

My experience in ministry has told me one thing about people in ministry, especially pastors. In a lot of ways, pastors are like politicians. Many of them long for the position. They believe they know what's best, what the best way is to serve their communities. Many of them are afraid of giving up authority or control to someone else, because then they wouldn't have the power to take it back. Pastors are like politicians in this way: those that really want that kind of authority are likely not to be trusted with it, while those that would handle it best either don't want that kind of responsibility, or it scares them. 

But certainty that you have the right answers, that your way is the best way, is a kind of pride. One of the bad kinds of pride. The kind that either has you die the hero, or live long enough to become the villain. 

Do any of you know who Melchizedek is? His story, his legacy, was one of my favorite threads stitched throughout the Bible. It starts in Genesis, goes through Psalms, then John and Hebrews. He was a king, a contemporary of Abraham. He was also a priest of God's. After he gave Abraham a blessing, Abraham tithed to him. It was Abraham's descendants that became the peoples we think of, today, as the Jews. There were three separate roles in the Israelite theocracy that were important enough to be anointed; or especially appointed using blessed oil as a ritualistic marker. Those roles were the King, the Prophet, and the Priests. I've long been taught that the Priests were the voice of the people before God, supplicating him with sacrifices and pleas; Prophets were God's voice to the people, speaking his will into whatever situation needed addressing at the time, and the Kings were the nation's voice to the world, through military action or diplomacy or the like. In the time after Abraham, the roles were separated. The tribes of Benjamin and Levi, very specifically, had roles to play. The King descended from the tribe of Benjamin. The priests were descended from Levi. So, in the context of that structure, what made Melchizidek special was that he was both, king and priest. And in the Abrahamic context, Melchizedek's priesthood must have been greater than Levi's, because Levi was part of Abraham, and yet Abraham submitted to Melchizedek's authority. 

There's a lot to the theology surrounding Melchizedek. Ultimately, in the book of Hebrews, he was connected to Jesus. Jesus is called the High Priest of the Order of Melchizedek. It is called a royal priesthood, one that any and every follower of Jesus is a part of by association with him. Jesus has long been called to have all three of the anointed offices in God's eyes. He is the King of the Kingdom of Heaven, the High Priest, and the Prophet. We've already covered some of the priestly duties back in Good Prayer is Good Therapy, specifically intercession, or coming before God on others' behalf. What about our royal duties? 

Royalty is about executive function; decision making. In a lot of ways, it's what makes us the Body of Christ, Jesus' agents here on Earth, today. When I first started studying the royal priesthood, the priesthood of Melchizedek, I thought about authority. Members of society that have authority, like soldiers, or the police, where does that come from? It comes from whom and what they serve. They are agents of the President, agents of the nation, and that's what gives them the authority to act in the name of those things. In a monarchy, where there is a king, there are two kinds of authority that comes from royalty. The first is a family function. If you are part of the royal family, you have authority. A Queen, or Princes and Princesses, they all derive their authority from the King, in a patriarchal setup, anyway. But there are also knights. Agents of the king endowed with authority to act on his behalf, usually to enforce his will on the world. Given impunity to legal consequences to his actions as long as it furthers his master's cause. 

I used to think that Christians were like knights. We had authority to act in the world based on Jesus' authority. Mostly enforcement of his laws. But I was wrong, I see now. We are not merely agents that have been granted limited authority in Jesus' name. We are family. We are CHILDREN of the Most High, reconciled by the sacrifice of Jesus. And the authority given to a cop, because that's what a knight is, is different than the authority given to a prince or princess, isn't it? A member of the royal family has a more complete authority. They are expected to learn how to lead the people, make decisions for them on their behalf, to better their countrymen. 

We are expected to lead, to take responsibility, to make decisions. And when you realize just how many of us there are, that means politics. We all have the authority and dignity and sovereignty of Christ in us. So what's the best way to make collective decisions? Democracy. And it's not just about that sovereignty that I'm talking about that leads me to that conclusion. Democracy, when done correctly, is by nature a better form of decision making than most Republican methods. Any time pick a smaller group of people to make our decisions for us, we are lobotomizing ourselves. Obviously, when groups get big enough, sometimes it's untenable to actually have every member make choices collectively. But in those cases, our go-to methods of picking representatives, like voting for a representative, or picking the "best" ones, or even letting them buy their way into positions of power, universally means we are short-changing ourselves. 

Books like Honeybee Democracy by Thomas D. Seeley, and Democratic Reason by Helene Landemore, are good places to start as to why and how democracy can be and is the better way of making collective decisions. I've always loved the image of an insect hive or colony as a way of looking at the Body of Christ, too. I mean, you know I see the Body of Christ as a memetic, social organism. Insect hives are also social organisms. Can you imagine if a whole bee hive actually depended on one simple bee to make all of its decisions, like commonly portrayed in science fiction? No hive would survive, if the queen did all of the thinking. No, they think together, they make smart choices by doing it together, sharing the load of their decision-making. And just like collective intelligence can make insects act more like people, I think collective intelligence can make people act more like God. 

But trusting the greater mind requires giving up control. Which is scary as hell for most pastors. They know firsthand that "people are stupid." Like in the first Men in Black, K clarified. "A person is smart, people are stupid." And that's the struggle that pastors, and politicians, have. I know that fear myself. But I also know that I'd be happier as someone's lieutenant rather than the general. 

Hell IS other people. 

But so is Heaven.