On Standards, Liberty,
and the Aurea Mediocritas
"What I mean is that each of you says, “I
belong to Paul,” or “I belong to Apollos,”
or “I belong to Cephas,” or “I belong to Christ.”
Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you?
Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?
(1 Corinthians 1:12-13)
A sermon by Siegfried S. Johnson on the Second Sunday after Pentecost, June 10, 2007
Ours is a standardized world. A pair of khakis with 32 inch inseam and 36 inch waist will fit just about the same whether made by Dockers or by Farah. A Panasonic phone will plug into the jacks in your home just as snugly as a phone from A. T. & T. A new CD from the smallest label in Sweden will sound as sharp in your car stereo as the latest release from Sony. Video games will run just as well on a Dell as on an IBM. It’s called global standardization, without which there would be no mass production, no mass communication, nothing vaguely resembling a modern economy.
According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology there are now over 800,000 global standards. That’s nearly a million established global technological standards! Now, that may not sound amazing to you, until you realize that we only have to go back a century and a half to find an American economy powered by industries which had essentially no technological standards.
Step into my time machine. Let’s travel back 143 years to a very significant day in American and world history, April 21, 1864. Arriving in the past, we gather at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia to hear a speech by a machinist named William Sellers. This was the day that the economy of the world had its Kitty Hawk, the day when science, technology, and the American economy would take wing and soar into a new world of unlimited potential. William Sellers speech? Well, it was all about the humble screw.
Think this sermon’s dry so far? Listen to the title of his historic speech, “On a Uniform System of Screw Threads.” Advocating the adoption of a national standard, Sellers said, “In this country, no organized attempt has as yet been made to establish any system, each manufacturer having adopted whatever his judgment may have dictated as the best, or as the most convenient for himself.” American screws, nuts, and bolts were custom made with no guarantee that those made by shops on different streets, let alone different cities, would be the same. Sellers realized the end of the hand-tooled machine age was nigh and that to continue without standards would retard the economic progress of America. The tool industry’s adoption of a standard, beginning with the screw, was to the last half of the 19th century what computer and information technology has been to the last half of the 20th century — the country’s most important driver of technological innovation.
Standards seem so completely normal to us today that it’s hard to imagine a time without them. But many machinists in that day viewed standardization as a threat. Seeing themselves as craftsmen, they naturally regarded standardization as the first step down a slippery slope toward mediocrity. Still, Sellers’ ideas won the day, and historians of technology point to his speech as a watershed moment in American history, noting that had the screw not been standardized the entire course of the American economy might look vastly different.
Today there are myriad governmental and quasi-governmental agencies dedicated to establishing and preserving standards. Technological standards give us the ability to speak the same language. 2% milkfat. 24 karat. 1.6 gallons per flush. 3 ½ inch floppy. 8 ½ by 11 paper. #2 lead pencil. 33 1/3 rpm. Four-year degree. Three-ring binder. 20/20 vision. USDA Prime. 87 octane. QWERTY. These are but a handful of the thousands upon thousands of standards that touch our lives daily, making life easier, neater, safer, more profitable, and more enjoyable.
Perhaps you’ve guessed where I’m going. At the decree of the Bishop all sermons will henceforth be standardized, sent out on Tuesdays from the Conference office in Little Rock with the requirement that all clergy preach the same sermon, word for word, thread by thread. I’m kidding, of course. Like those machinists from the Civil War era, preachers would feel threatened by such standardization, sensing that our ability to be innovative has been sacrificed in a search for a conformity which would most surely bring mediocrity.
No, this sermon has nothing to say about preaching, but much to say about the church. The church has always been about this enterprise of defining our standards -- doctrinal and theological standards, as well as moral and social standards. These things define who we are. What things are absolutely necessary for one to be a part of the church? What things are essential? In what things must we all look alike, sound alike, and think alike, behave alike? Conversely, what things are left to liberty? In what is it okay for us not to look alike, sound alike, believe alike, behave alike?
Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth is an appropriate place to begin. Perhaps no New Testament Church struggled more with this issue of standards. Last November Sherry and I were offered a trip to trace out the Journeys of Paul. It was a first for us, a trip we will have the joy of repeating next March with several from Mountain Home. One of the most memorable moments was standing among the ruins of Corinth, walking through the ruins of the ancient marketplace. I gathered the group together and offered an impromptu devotional about how Paul addressed the divisions within the ancient Christian community that lived, worked, and played here. I focused on 1 Corinthans 8 and the question the church faced about eating meat offered to idols. There was no standardized opinion with respect to this practice. Some opted for strict prohibition. Others leaned toward liberty, feeling that there is nothing wrong with taking advantage of bargain prices. Paul steered into a middle road which he saw paved with love. There is nothing inherently wrong with eating such meat, he suggested, but said that he would not flaunt his liberty, choosing to abstain from what offends the “weaker” conscience of other Christ followers. “Take care that this liberty of yours does not become a stumbling block to the weak.” Somehow, he sought to develop a dialogue that found love of one another as a basis for behavior.
What is the line between not-to-be-compromised Standards and okay-to-be-compromised Liberties? The church has always known this tension between conformity to standards on the one hand, and expression of liberty on the other. Which articles of our faith are standards upon which agreement is prerequisite? My list of standards may not be a duplicate of yours, but the search for a certain baseline which we all share is vital, for just as technological standards allow us to speak the same language, so do theological standards allow the church to speak the same language. Consider the threads of this statement of theological essentials.
Jesus is the Christ,
the Son of God
who died for our sins,
was raised the third day,
upon whom we must believe,
confessing with repentance
our need of salvation,
accepting the free gift of God.
Let’s say our church adopts this simple statement of faith and its eight threads as our standard. Would we find agreement among other faith communities? Would another church erase some of the threads making up this standard? Would another expand on this, adding a few more?
Aurea Mediocritas is a Latin phrase meaning “The Golden Middle.” I think it uniquely appropriate in this discussion, for finding that Golden Middle between standards and liberty will keep us from the excesses both of fundamentalism and liberalism. With massive theological standardization we run the peril of becoming fundamentalists on the order of the theologically obese Pharisees of Jesus’ day, or the Taliban and Islamic fundamentalism of our own day, a day in which death decrees are given to those who question these massive standards.
In his book A Gentle Thunder, Max Lucado pokes a bit of fun at those who are all standards and no liberty.
Some time ago I came upon a fellow on a trip who was carrying a Bible.
“Are you a believer?” I asked him.
“Yes,” he said excitedly.
I’ve learned you can’t be too careful.
“Virgin birth?” I asked.
“I accept it.”
“Deity of Jesus?”
“No doubt.”
“Death of Christ on the cross?”
“He died for all people.”
Could it be that I was face to face with a Christian? Perhaps. Nonetheless I continued my checklist.
“Status of man.”
“Sinner in need of grace.”
“Definition of grace.”
“God doing for man what man can’t do.”
“Return of Christ?”
“Imminent.”
“Bible?”
“Inspired.”
“The church?”
“The body of Christ.”
I started getting excited. “Conservative or liberal?”
He was getting interested too. “Conservative.”
My heart began to beat faster.
“Heritage?”
“Southern Congregationalist Holy Son of God Dispensationalist Triune Convention.”
That was mine!
“Branch?”
“Pre-millennial, post-trib, non-charismatic, King James, one-cup communion.”
My eyes misted. I had only one other question.
“Is your pulpit wooden or fiberglass?”
“Fiberglass,” he responded.
I withdrew my hand and stiffened my neck. “Heretic!” I said and walked away.
Lucado is playfully showing how fundamentalism can degenerate into a hair-splitting mentality with a concentration on minutiae that misses the larger picture. Yet, the opposite extreme, excessive tolerance, exposes the Christian community to a different sort of peril, that of eroding any standardized structure of belief and practice in favor of tolerance of anything and everything. This, in effect, reduces a faith community to something less than the New Testament Church, an assembly of the Unknowing gathered to celebrate the Unknowable. This goes against the grain of church history, for we are a creedal people with a standard of faith. We have a canon, an accepted touchstone which allows us to speak the same language. God help us to discover the Aurea Mediocritas.
Odd, this paradox. In things mechanical and technological, massive standardization (beginning with the humble screw) is an exciting lunge forward into a world of unlimited potential. Conversely, in things spiritual, excessive theological standardization leads to the opposite of progress, to separation and division, to a certain stagnation of mind and soul.
Bottom line? Standards and Liberty are not enemies, but are inseparable, each impoverished without the other. God grant us the wisdom to find the Aurea Mediocritas, the Golden Middle.
Dr. Paul Wilbur sent an e-mail to me some time back, written by a United Methodist Bishop and called The Methodist Middle. As Methodism approaches another General Conference next Spring, the tension between Standards and Liberty will, as always, be central to the debate about defining, in our Book of Discipline, who we are. I want to share a few paragraphs, in closing, of The Methodist Middle:
“I want to affirm the Methodist Middle, the great middle ground of middle-of-the-road United Methodist laity and clergy who are not part of either the vocal ‘right’ or ‘left’ groups that seem to be making all the news these days . . . those in the Methodist Middle value doctrine, but they do not use it like a club to beat their opponents (such as the far right do), not do they simply choose to ignore doctrine when it interferes with their personal preferences (like those on the far left do). Those in the Methodist Middle value Scripture, but they are not for biblical literalism, nor do they simply ignore Scripture when it fails to support their personal preferences . . . Unlike the far right and the far left, they do not believe that they have the only answers to every issue that confronts us today . . . Those in the Methodist Middle are NOT in the middle-of-the-road trying to avoid issues. They are trying to find a Third Path by centering their life and faith on Jesus Christ, and they believe in the continuing presence of the Holy Spirit to guide and direct their lives and their church . . . Are you part of the Methodist Middle? I am, and I believe that 70 to 90 percent of all United Methodists are. Perhaps it is time for the Methodist Middle to be heard.”
Sources and notes:
“A Case Study in the Power of Standards,” by James Surowiecki, in WIRED, January 2002. This excellent article provided me with the first spark of inspiration for this sermon. My first objective was to discover in this story a way to illustrate the need of unity in the church. Eventually, though, I was made to see that the positive effects of standardization in technology stand in vivid contrast to the negative, very ugly effects of excessive standardization in theology. Finding the Golden Mean between standardization and liberty in things of the spirit and soul ultimately became my aim, it becoming clear that either without the other is full of danger.
Karen Armstrong, The Battle for God, Balantine Books, 2000. Armstrong contrasts our search of logos (a future-oriented, reason- and scientific-based learning) and mythos (a past-oriented, canonical-based learning). It seems to me that when mythos provides us with liberty in thinking and logos with standards, we have the sort of technological standardization that is future-oriented, positive, and prosperous. Conversely, when mythos provides us with our standards and logos is left to the realm of liberty, we have a past-oriented learning that threatens to be regressive, potentially becoming a Taliban-like fundamentalism suspicious of science and reason.
“Focus,” an introductory essay by Rob Baker and Ellen Draper, co- editors of PARABOLA, Volume 16, Number 4, (Winter 1991, The Golden Mean). I owe to this essay the phrase Aurea Mediocritas as “the way of wisdom and safety between extremes.”
Max Lucado, A Gentle Thunder, Word, 1995, page 139.