No Silver Bullets – Donna Marsh

In stressful times, everyone wishes for a silver bullet:  one simple way out of a difficult mess, one thing to do to resolve interlocking problems.  Every parent of a troubled teen searches desperately for one mentor or one school that will get the beloved child back on track.  In troubled marriages, the couple often searches for one life change that will renew their relationship—a new city, they think, maybe a new baby (heavens, no) or a new job.  As their pastors and friends, we know that there are no silver bullets in these situations, only much hard work to be done.

Yet we in the Church pine for silver bullets of our own.  If only we could get our doctrine right, we would reclaim the voice of Gospel truth.  If only we could make the world see a compelling witness for justice, people would flock to join our cause.  If only we could find the right institutional framework, the Church would be liberated from its bureaucratic bondage and freed for missional enterprise.  If only we could have the rightbi-partisan conversation the right way, unity would spring forth anew.  If only everyone who walked in the doors of a church felt affirmed, surely they would embrace and follow Jesus Christ.

It’s not that simple.  Consider just two pieces of anecdotal evidence.  At a recent memorial service, I spoke with an elder from one of the Washington area’s most respected evangelical congregations.  This church’s doctrine, and its internal and external moral stances are, by the standards of its peers, pure as the driven snow.  They switched denominations long ago and thus have not been plagued by the PC(USA) for decades.  They also just trimmed 1,000 people from their rolls and are cutting major programs.

Lest any schadenfreude ensue, my presbytery is littered with the carcasses and dying remnants of congregations who have been standard bearers of progressive theology and politics for decades.  They have marched and protested and lived out their values by quietly or not so quietly rendering their own authoritative interpretations of the Book of Order for years.  And they are losing their voices, literally and figuratively.

Yet we serve a God who is fiercely alive, radically redemptive, powerfully present and rapidly building a vibrant global Church.  Under present circumstances, I begrudge no one leaving the PC(USA) to make a home in another part of that Church.  The body of Christ is a big place.

While their departure is a loss in many ways, for the sake of the Kingdom, I pray that those who leave the PC(USA) will find faithful, healthy community and that that they will succeed in forming countless new disciples of Jesus Christ.  But I doubt they have found a silver bullet that will make that job easy.

I also doubt that the outcomes of this summer’s General Assembly represent a silver bullet for the victors.  Advocates of Christian marriage for gay couples and proponents of divestment “won” a church that is now more just, more loving, and a more faithful witness in their eyes.  Now what?  Will Gen-Xers, Millenials et al. suddenly flock to the church like moths to a flame?  Were these issues really the barrier between them and becoming followers of Jesus?  Time will tell.

As those who are staying in the PC(USA) attempt to move forward from this point, some feel that the silver bullet for our present situation is tolerance.  If the left and the right can simply tolerate each other, then perhaps we can ignore our profound theological differences, and live warily ever after in our own silos.   That will only work until we can’t tolerate each other anymore.  One of my favorite Internet memes is “Things Jesus Never Said.”  One thing Jesus never said is “Tolerate one another.”  Jesus said, “Love one another,” which is much harder.

Others pin their hopes for the PC(USA) on dialogue, which can be summarized as tolerance with roundtable conversation and food.  That’s not a bad start, but it is not a silver bullet that will lead to radical reconciliation, or lasting peace, unity and purity in the Church.  It is process driven rather than results driven.

A final, favored silver bullet is to “embrace diversity.”  This is tolerance on steroids.  It’s tolerance wrapped in dialogue and affirmation, notable for the occasional theological mixer at a presbytery meeting, just as awkward as a middle school dance and equally useless for relationship building.  The oversimplification of this approach is that it takes our differences at face value, expects us to name them rather than to think critically about them, and asks us to celebrate rather than to bridge the gaps.

On the left and the right, it is time to let go of our yearning for simple, one-dimensional solutions to the Church’s present problems.  It is time to embrace complex solutions.  This is going to be hard work.

Do you know the origin of the expression “silver bullet”?  It comes from a superstition, specifically the belief that supernatural beings such as werewolves (!), could be killed with a silver bullet.  The belief in silver bullet solutions is itself a superstition, at least in the life of the Church.   Our reality is centered in the Gospel, which is both stunningly simple and infinitely complex in all of its dimensions.  Living out a redeemed life in the body of Christ is never stunningly simple.  It is always complex.

In Sunday School, when in doubt, the answer to the question is always “Jesus,” right?  Yet even the central, necessary solution of regrounding ourselves and our churches in the person and work of Jesus Christ will not be simple.  It will require recommitment to biblical preaching and teaching, vast amounts of prayer and new humility.

The way forward will require beating our single-issue swords into plowshares that tend to the integrity of the Church’s worship and doctrine and mission and witness.

Embracing complex solutions will mean going beyond embracing diversity to face the inconvenient truth that not everyone is right all of the time, and seeking truth together outside of the legislative context.   It will mean seriously engaging the tensions inherent in Scripture and Reformed theology.  It will mean slowly rebuilding long-lost trust, and building relationships that are deep enough and sustained enough to express unity without papering over differences.

In the past, this sort of engagement has often been fostered in presbytery or denominational settings.  That is, frankly, the opposite of what I mean to suggest now.  Investing time and money in centralized, structured institutional processes is one of the old, failed silver bullets.  The complex solution for a complex church in complex times will involve much more loosely structured grassroots connectionalism, some virtual and some in person. In any case, the road ahead will not be easy.  I do not know whether the PC(USA) or any of its sister Presbyterian bodies will succeed in the long term.  There are no silver bullets.  There is a cross at the heart of our faith, and the difficult way of the cross for Jesus’ followers.  That is enough.

The Rev. Donna Marsh is an Associate Pastor at the National Presbyterian Church in Washington, DC.  She is a graduate of Smith College and Princeton Theological Seminary, and serves on the seminary’s Alumni Association Executive Council. She was recently elected to the board of the Fellowship of Presbyterians.