The Whistle Blower

A ‘whistle blower’ is somebody who reveals misconduct (usually among the leadership) of an organization. This person is prepared to stick out his neck for the long-term good of the organization.  In doing so, he usually risks his own reputation by the reprisals of those whose status may get damaged by the publication and those who prefer to hide the bad things to maintain the status quo.  Few people are prepared to take on such a role today, as it requires conviction, courage, and the willingness to suffer the consequences.

Over the years I had become seriously concerned about some practices and (largely informal) teachings in the Canadian Reformed churches.  Issues included: regeneration and faith, covenant promise and covenant curse, a form of Hyper-Calvinism in reaction to Arminianism, denominational pride, and an under-emphasis of mission.  Since the denominational media were strictly censored at that time, I opted for writing and publishing a book.  From the fall of 1995 to the spring of 1998, I researched these topics and wrote the book ‘Praying for Rain’.  Unfortunately there were few people interested or brave enough to think through the issues with me (although several were prepared to lecture me, especially afterwards), and very few people wanted to help me in editing my writing.  Even now I hesitate to personally thank the few who did, as most of my apparent supporters quickly abandoned me as soon as the manure hit the fan.

At the time I was a Math and Science teacher at one of the larger Canadian Reformed high schools. Already a few times earlier I had stuck out my neck by challenging some church traditions, like, “May we mow our lawn on Sunday?” and “Are the six creation days necessarily 24 hours each?”  Already three weeks prior to publication, the school board requested a copy of my manuscript as several parents in the Niagara Peninsula reportedly had complained about some things that I had said in class.  No parents had ever come to me, and no school board member had come for a personal talk about those complaints, so I expressed my regret of their obvious disregard of the Matthew 18 principle.  Nevertheless, since I was not afraid to share my views, I agreed to give them the requested document.  The board -after some searching- found two men willing to examine my manuscript to see whether the parental concerns were justified: the pastor who was the apparent ring leader of the concerned parents and a theology professor.  I never heard what those parental concerns had been.

I officially published “Praying for Rain” on the first day of spring, 1998.  I remember it felt like a winter day: perhaps it was an ominous sign.  Soon the board-appointed committee presented their report.*  In it they listed and described eight points on which I was said to deviate from the church confessions.  I wrote a rebuttal, and at a hearing, I defended it to the committee.  I gave the theologians a run for their money. The professor kept saying that, “Having the promise is the only ground for infant baptism”, so I reminded him that all who hear the Gospel receive the promise of salvation. I asked, “Don’t we agree this is insufficient ground for their baptism?”  The pastor insisted that the little children in his church were believers, too. So, I asked him why they were not admitted to the Lord’s Supper. His response: “They cannot understand the meaning.”  He should have said, “They are under the legal (alcohol) drinking age”!  In May the board had studied the issues and prepared an “acknowledgment” for me to sign.  By signing it, I would promise to never refer to my book or to any of its contents and give my unreserved agreement with a collection of (out of context) phrases from the confessions and the Church Order of 1618, 1619.  Failure to sign this document would result in immediate job termination.  Since I could not in good conscience agree that (1) the Bible demands that infants of believers MUST be baptized, and (2) the Lord’s Supper is only for Reformed believers, I was forced to take the consequences.  On Victoria Day, 1998, I was allowed to pick up my personal belongings from the school building.  The board distributed the committee report (not my rebuttal, naturally) and the “acknowledgment” to all my (former) colleagues. Several said they could not sign the latter either, but they were assured, “No need to worry. Only whistle blowers need to sign!”

During the next six weeks we had three elder visits from the church.  Each time they pressured us to voluntarily put ourselves under discipline. I did not think we were living in sin, so we did not give in to their request. Against the advice of the nearest Can. Ref. church, our consistory then proceeded to put us under discipline.  They presented me with a report that accused me of six heretical teachings.* Although I had more or less expected discipline, it was still a shock to be treated as an unbeliever.  One of our elders had just given me a glowing recommendation for my seminary studies; another had just celebrated with us the publication of my book. Although the whole experience was quite traumatic for our family, now I think, “Wow, in three months’ time, they already dropped two of the eight heresies. Within a year I might be vindicated!”

After several other elder visits on which I was told to withdraw my book, the pastor himself came for a visit. It was November 30, 1998.  Little did we realize at the time that this meeting would be a turning point.  In his introduction, our pastor assured me he was not interested in nit-picking on minor issues. Rather, he wanted to deal with my one crucial heresy.  (This should have been a great comfort to me. Somehow he had just whittled down the six heretical views to just one real issue!)  Since these events happened about fifteen years ago, I will insert a slightly edited section of my report, written shortly after the meeting.

The pastor had great objections to my written suggestion that the Spirit’s work (of ‘preparing the soil’) can precede the hearing of the Gospel.  He asked me how one could seriously love to hear the truth, even if this would condemn him as a sinner.  I related to him the story of our friend Paul K., who was urged to read the Scripture, after he had an unbearable sense of sin and misery.  I added that this also expressed in John 16.8, where Jesus tells us, that “The Spirit will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin...”  The pastor said, he disagreed with my interpretation of “the world” as those who do not know the Word.  He asked me how one can be saved.  I told him, that from a human perspective, most reject the Gospel, while some accept it as the truth (as the Parable of the seed also suggests).  Yet, from God’s perspective, some receive the gift of repentance and faith, while others are allowed to perish in their rebellion.  Apparently, it was not the answer he hoped or expected to hear.  Twice he repeated his question, and both times I repeated my response.

He was particularly concerned that I called this preparing work of the Spirit “an act of God’s grace”.  He claimed that we had different definitions of “grace”, and that my view was terribly wrong.  Arminius, he claimed, had said the same thing, and therefore it must be wrong, and I had to be wrong too.  Yet, if we look at the terms used in Scripture, we find that grace is even given to the wicked (Isaiah 26.10).  If God comes to people with the Good News, He comes with His love.  In evangelism, we can say, “God loves you!”  In proclaiming Christ, we share with them the love of Christ.  Yet, the pastor claimed that “having grace” is a matter of all or nothing: While our children get irresistible grace, most others don’t get any grace from God.  He had serious concerns with my suggestion, that this (preparatory) work of the Spirit is resistible.  Yet, Acts 7.51 tells us that in Stephen’s time the religious leaders did resist the Holy Sprit.  

I suggested that we ought to let classis (the regional convention of Canadian Reformed Churches) be the judge on this issue. At least one time earlier I had approached him about his over-reaction to Arminianism.  So, I would appeal to the regional assembly (Classical Convention) and let them decide whether I was Arminian or my pastor a Hyper-Calvinist.

The first Classis Convention of 2000 decided to appoint a committee to see whether or not my consistory was correct in putting both of us under discipline.   Three or four months later, at their next convention, it was decided that our elders were fully justified to treat us as unbelievers and to bar us from the Supper of our Lord.

Regarding the doctrinal disagreement between my pastor and me, the first Classical Convention decided that this first had to be discussed with the local church counsel.  Our consistory replied a few months later: “We are fully behind our pastor and his teaching, and we are convinced he is teaching the full Gospel and the balanced biblical truth!”  So, the second Classis convention must have appointed another committee with at least one or two professors.  I had supplied detailed references from the pastor’s sermons and his published articles.  Yet, on this case I never got an official reply.   Slowly, the reason for the lack of response became clear: They wanted to protect the pastor’s good reputation, and it would be too embarrassing that a church member without formal theological training should know better than the elders and the pastors who had studied so much. I thought I had not been treated fairly, but one senior pastor in the region told me, “You have seriously angered the leaders (in criticizing the churches and your pastor’s teaching); therefore you should not expect to get justice.”  Whistle blower’s fate! 

Yet, something had changed! After one morning service, the same professor of the Guido committee assured me “I no longer preach like that. I have learned from these affairs!”  The last thing my pastor told me was, “Well, I guess my doctrine was not perfect, but at least I am not a heretic, like you!”  Several times, a seminary professor would visit to preach in our church in an obvious attempt to restore some of the damage of unbalanced preaching. Later someone told me that at that time our pastor had to have every sermon scrutinized before he was allowed to preach.  When I heard this, I realized that it must have been a very traumatic and humiliating experience for him.  I wrote him a letter of apology for all the hardships that he had to endure because of me.  

In August, 1999 we had our only and final meeting with the church counsel.  In this meeting it became clear that, even if we were not heretics, we would still be kept under discipline for not attending all Sundays’ services.  Nevertheless, we were responsible for our children, who had suffered much under the doom and gloom of angry men and were at risk of hating forever anything related to the church.  Therefore, we had regularly visited a Reformed Baptist church, where we experienced a loving community, godly young people, and preaching that challenged the hearers to accept Christ as their personal Lord and Savior!  For the spiritual wellbeing of our children we had to say farewell to the Can. Ref. church community.  

Nevertheless, we were not prepared to get rebaptized to join the Baptist church.  So, we hoped to join one of the local churches that had separated from the CRC. Two churches rejected our request for membership. Interestingly, when their counsels met our former Can. Ref. elders, they heard nothing about my doctrinal errors or heresy.  Suddenly, my status changed from heretic to trouble maker and aggressor, or: in other words: a whistle blower like Klaas Schilder and his buddies!  (The one pastor assured me that for nonconformists there is no place in the Kingdom of God: he was the pastor of an Independent CRC!  The other pastor criticized us for not humbly accepting the verdict of our elders, but when I asked him about his CRC elders when he had rejected them, he shot venom from his mouth.) Interestingly, as the Can. Ref. churches longed to be united with such churches, “the big doctrinal smoke screen” no longer worked to their advantage.  Nobody ever thanked me for fighting the good fight for the true doctrine. “Better a good name than a pure doctrine” seems to have been the elders’ motto.  

Shortly thereafter, two true friends dared to stand up for us and challenged their own URC counsel. Their elders read my book and found no heresy therein.  We were embraced as members in good standing.  We owe our deepest gratitude to these brothers and our Lord, who gave us new hope in a new church home.  Although eventually I could not pursue ministry in that church, most of our closest friends are still in that congregation!  

It was my church counsel that used the term ‘heretical’.  When I told some Baptist friends that I had been branded a heretic, they said, “Wow, you’re just like Marten Luther!”  Then I realized that ‘heretic’ just means: one who criticizes the church’s teachings (and gets in trouble for it).  They also said that all churches need whistle blowers: Without challenges, a church will die.  They were right.  The church must be a dynamic reality: Also the Reformed church is never done reforming: this was my first lesson in the book.  When we reject the whistle blowers, like Israel which killed its prophets, we are like people who pull the batteries from their smoke alarms.  When we try fanatically to maintain the church’s status quo, our traditions and our confessions easily become our idols.  Meanwhile, we will foster a generation of hypocrites and rubber-stamps, while those who seek to personally and critically appropriate their doctrinal confessions are pushed to the church’s margins or beyond.  

* In the summer I inserted an addendum of four corrections to my book, but this never made a difference in our treatment.  All relevant documents -except those that contain my classical case against our pastor- are published at https://sites.google.com/site/pr4rain/praying-for-rain-the-book

re: comment from a sister
Already seven years ago we came to personal closure: no more spite or anger. With Joseph I would say, "You did evil, but God used it for good, even your own good."
Yet, the issues do not disappear. I started this blog when I got a request to deliver a box of copies of my old book. There are many people wrestling with such issues.
We must learn from our mistakes. I think I did: I pick my battles carefully today. I never got in trouble teaching in public school or even planting in China. I hope and trust the Can. Ref. leaders also learned through it.
Looking back, I know I was not like Jesus, as a sheep going to the slaughter. I still kicked and screamed. Yet, in the same situation today, if I were in a church that would say, "You leave us, then you leave Christ!" and "There may be flies on you guys; there ain't no flies on us!", I would still be a whistle blower for the truth.