 Presbyterian Leaders’ Forum 
A Message from the PLC Chair As a member of the legal profession, it is my duty to uphold and honor the law. As Christians, our duty is much greater – we are called to love God’s law. Loving the law is a subject worthy of discussion among Presbyterians today. Society in general and even some church leaders have relegated the Ten Commandments to the “ten suggestions,” mere guides rather than God’s law. Some now suggest that obedience to our church constitution is only a matter of “local option.” That theme lies at the heart of a “covenant,” now being circulated by supporters of Amendment A following its decisive rejection by the presbyteries of this denomination. Presbyterians who insist that God’s law is still applicable to our lives are called “Pharisees” and those who expect their ordained leaders to be faithful to constitutional standards are dismissed as “witch hunters.” Such antinomian notions reflect the mood of modern culture and are the spawn of an ancient malady. Scripture describes it: “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21: 25). This centuries-old observation applies to the New Israel and to the current plight of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). The Bible reminds us that, far from being a burden, the law is a gift of God. Prior to the gift of the Ten Commandments, Israel was hardly more than a rag-tag movement of fugitives who, having escaped from Egypt, wandered in the wilderness, anxious, aimless, and afraid. It was God’s law that gave them their focus, established their values, and helped to make them a people. “Once you were no people,” says Scripture, “but now you are the people of God …” (I Peter 2:10). The decline of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has been indisputably documented. We have lost more than a million members since 1965 (22,000 last year alone). Replacing scriptural and constitutional authority with the mantras of “inclusiveness” and “experience,” we have turned our backs on God’s revealed Word. In a real and pathetic sense, we Presbyterians have lost an authentic understanding of who we are. We are fast becoming “no people.” Any truth can be pushed to such an extreme that it becomes a falsehood. A love of the law, tainted by our sinful pride, can be easily twisted into narrow, confining, spirit-killing legalism. History warns us that in another time and place, this may surface as a distortion that the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) will need to correct. But not today. Today we, like Israel in the wilderness, must discover the gift of God’s law, not as slaves despising the fact that we have lost our personal autonomy, but as a people who find within our God-given order that gracious space within which we can live and love and serve our Lord.
Robert L. Howard, Chair |
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The Presbyterian Layman, May/June 1998 contents |
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