In your speech, yes should be yes, no should be no, because anything more than that is from the evil one (Matthew 5:37)
The poignant personal announcements of the past few days, the resignation of Bishop Zoltán Balog from the position of synod minister in order to protect the unity of his church, the exploded or manipulated back-and-forth opinions before and after this, the irresponsible emotions and seemingly responsible, but somehow yet not all Holy Spirit-coherent revelations go beyond the crisis of the church. Even in the current crisis. We have to apply to ourselves again and again the fundamental recognition of ecclesia reformata - semper reformanda (the Reformed Church must always be reformed), the truth that legitimizes our existence. For every new generation of believers, including those living and serving today.
In this fast, our Lord's gracious sign for the positive outcome of this crisis is that, in accordance with the original insights of our Reformed theology, the words of repentance and confession and renunciation are followed by the determination to repent and make amends, as well as the spirit and spiritual phase of forgiveness.
As an essential prerequisite for inner-external renewal, it is necessary that not only individual, but also communal, congregational, public church confession, apology and forgiveness, reparation, and the indispensable authenticating stamp of this spiritual process.
Otherwise, the spoken word, prayer, preaching could be considered church politics, and what is even more serious, only a political game. Today, in the light of the Spirit, we must realize that we are not in a confessional situation, but in the fasting process of penitence, which precedes and is indispensable to the status confessionist! Repentance is the conditio sine qua non of individual and church renewal! In the flow of emotional and manipulated opinions, there are voices that I perceive to be very far from God. But I also hear those that were truly conceived in humility before the Holy Spirit, and for that reason I bow down in prayer before our Lord with great gratitude.
More and more often I recognize the reality of the ancient Christian truth: in confusionem hominis - Dei providentia, i.e. in all human confusion, the overwhelming power of divine grace is hidden, as a further helping presence. Because either we live and think coram Deo, in the continuous presence of God, or we don't, and then it slips into our lives or our lives slip into dissonant, inexplicable situations.
I really miss the reflection of all this from the excited public thinking, suffering from the pressure of time or from the sensation-hungry public gluttony of events. Unfortunately, also from the majority of church statements. I am only saddened to see how incomprehensible the silence of other churches and denominations is, not in essential matters, but at least on the level of fraternal solidarity. "We are praying for you" would be enough. That's it. And that's not even enough after decades of joint ecumenical events and despite?
My Hungarian Reformed Church, as a retired pastor of our gray-haired spiritual mother, as an unretired, called servant of the Almighty, I thank the living Lord, the Head of the body of Christ, with thanksgiving that in the artificial and natural, "gracious" storm that arose around Zoltán Balog, there was also such a responsible statement that he put a lot of things in the balance. What our Lord of the Trinity had done with him over the years. For example:
In order to keep our Reformed people at home and abroad alive, develop, preserve their missions, education, faith and national consciousness, he waged a national political struggle, many times exceeding his famous maxim: " All politics, but not all politics" . And his single, serious stumble is out of proportion to the many good things he has done.
Everyone has mistakes and sins, but if we tried to judge each person's worth before God, their assigned and filled place in the national universality, then we would be absolutely dismissive and pass judgment on ourselves. And this narrowed service assessment would not only negatively affect one person, the bishop, but our entire faithful. Essentially alien to the body of Christ, the mother church, is the harsh logic of the world or legalistic Christianity. In the church, it is a sin to triumph or depict this, and sometimes to operate it.
Church Father Augustine once wrote: It is a very common thing to constantly condemn someone because people usually do not distinguish between the crime to be condemned and the perpetrator. Condemnation for a crime, but the guilty deserves forgiveness, letting him live, giving him a chance. A necessary prerequisite for all of this, a spiritual condition, is the confession of the person concerned, an apology and commitment to personal reparation, as well as the undertaking of proportionate discipline.
The commentators of today's events, the harshest voices, when, for example, the prayer given by Zoltán Balog as an introduction to the extraordinary synod session on the broadcast of one of the TV companies was called a hypocritical speech, not even noticing that it was a prayer, not a speech. Unfortunately, anger and exclusion, "Give up all your positions!" a battle cry, a passion of hatred that goes beyond all ecclesiastical legality and even minimum morality, as if we were not living in fasting, not under the guidance of the sin-forgiving Spirit of the merciful God, but as if the speakers were passing judgment on the deluded. As if usurping the sovereign God's seat of judgment, which can be filled by Him alone.
I have a message for them: those of you who do this, then take the last-minute repentant lath off the cross. Then pull the apostle Peter out from under the 2,000-year-old structure of the church, along with his denial. Or take out of the Bible the "works" of the slave killer Moses, his divine mission. Not to mention Cain's act that caused the history of fate tragedies. The merciless and the merciless, the political and ideological profiteers and character killers, the enemies of the Truth, should pay close attention to what they say, spread, and write. Our great national epidemic, the Hungarian to the Hungarian, sorry Lord, the Christian is the enemy of the Christian for the cure of public destruction.
And we should put on sackcloth in fasting humility, maybe not even symbolically, once and for all, holding a national day of repentance and prayer. Just as our great prince Gábor Bethlen held this after January 1619 as a public penitence for the sins of himself and his Transylvanian people. We have something to think about, reviewing ourselves, our heated hearts, our judgmental and demanding temperaments, and bringing the screws of other people's calculating minds before God. Knowing that our first and last option is the apologetic prayer - prima et ultima ratio - oratio! Not only during Lent, but on every new day of our church and life, given by grace.
For our renewal, for our future, for our faithful and authentic service from faith. Therefore let your yes be yes, your no's no. Anything more than that is from the evil one!
Author: Dr. Lajos Békefy Ph.D.
reformed pastor, public writer, research theologian
Photo: Himsan / Pixabay
