The "Great Middle Section"

Robert F. Turner

Lots of folk, many of whom should know better, have the idea that if they will just stay with "the great middle section" of the church they are sure to be on the right track. They say there will always be right wings, and left wings; extremes of conservative and liberal "camps". The "middle-ground" must be the right way.

Well, there will always'be extreme ideas-- the right and the left; and they will form various "splinter groups" around WHAT? Around the truth? Not on your tin-type: They form about the great "majority opinion"-- the concensus of the "movement". But the TRUTH is not the product of a "movement" of men, but must come from God.

The Methodist church is a "movement" with a "great middle section" surrounded by ultra conservatives and ultra liberals. So is the Roman Catholic church, the Presbyterian church, and many others. Catholics say that the church produces truth, hence the slow cumbersome movement of the great -..addle section (and it is moving) may someday declare as truth something not now so recognized. Other groups are more slow to acknowledge their group (church) as the maker of truth; (Protestant founders would turn over in their graves at this) and yet this is their practice. From time to time their disciplines and manuals and confessions of faith must be changed to keep up with "the great middle section". I'm not saying anything here that you can't read almost daily in News Week, Time, etc., from knowledgeable church authorities and writers.

But the Lord's church is NOT a "social development"; it did not come into existence as a "movement" among men, with a "great middle section" that determined its original or subsequent course. It originated in the eternal mind of God (Eph. 3:9-f)and its course is determined by external authority-- "thy word is truth". (Jn. 17:17) TRUTH, of doctrine and practice exists-- but the pattern is in God's word, NOT in the practice of man. (2 Cor. 10:12-f) There are right and left wing followers, true; but their position doesn't determine the truth of God; and "the great middle section" is very likely to one or the other side of that too.

(Matt. 7:14)

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