Gossip 'bout the neighbors--right out where they can hear

When I read people's thoughts about their own experiences, their descriptions of their faith and practice and what it's like behind the hedges they maintain between themselves and other Friends I usually learn something and almost always feel some kind of connection between them and me.

It almost seems, sometimes, like holes are appearing in those hedges and that they may, some way in the future time, be coming down.

I mourn when I read some of the stuff in this post and most of the comments attached to it--in which Friends talk about "my" experiences, "my" faith and practice and "my" domain of the Society.  Can they really believe this twisted caricature of me? It's stunning in its chauvinistic and patronizing historical inaccuracy. In this caricature, hurtful and sure to firmly seat wedges driven long ago, is the story, in epitome, of how our Society became the small and insignificant sect it is.

Our religious "parents" forfeited Quaker peculiarity, making themselves completely comfortable in a self-righteous, notionally divided house they built for us to inherit.

We sometimes look quite like we share that comfort in the same kind of "meantime"  world of strife, sniping and factions that our religious "grandparents" were called to reconcile by allowing themselves to be made perfected, matured and fit for that particular purpose.

If we can't talk about others in edifying and constructive ways, saying things that will build them up and that will help connect them to us and us to them as we work out our salvation together, then maybe we should just talk about ourselves--or perhaps wait, and listen.

"Question:  But if I do not presently see that service in a thing that the rest of my brethren [sic] agree in?  In this case what is my duty, and theirs?

"Answer.  It is thy duty to wait upon God in silence and in patience, and as thou abide in the simplicity of Truth thou wilt receive an understanding with the rest of thy brethren [sic] about the thing doubted.  And it is their duty, whilst thou behavest thyself in meekness, to bear with thee, and carry themselves tenderly and lovingly towards thee."

          "True Spiritual Liberty," William Penn, 1681

         (condensed by Lewis Benson), Tract Association of Friends

Authority

I found this interesting example of "speck" and "beam" blindspot:

Some people, particularly Quakers, Pentecostals and some other sects that claim to hear direct revelation from God on a daily basis, would list experience as a means by which to know doctrine, but I would disagree, and so would a lot of Protestants. There's just no way to judge another person's subjective experience and I think that the credibility of that method falls apart by the demonstrable fact that different individuals, even in the same denomination and the same church, often hear wildly contradictory things from "God".

On the other the hand, dismissing direct revelation because different people come forward with different "truths" and claim such revelation as source and authority for them does not reveal a weakness of this authority that is not also a weakness of Biblical authority.  

Those who have looked to the Bible as the primary authority have come forward with all kinds of very subjective "readings" and "parsings" about the will, character, nature and plans of God from scripture.  The denominational landscape was, in fact, created by equally wild "contradictory things from 'God.'"  The inability to develop a unified, consistent Protestantism is due to the Bible being an often opaque, vague and even contradictory source of guidance.

Furthermore, in practical terms of living a Christian life, attempts to resolve the wildly contradictory things about God resulting from parsing the supreme Biblical authority have involved a good deal of innocent blood soaking into the ground and a good deal of further far fetched parsing to justify the killing. 

In terms of the righteous Christian (and Jewish) living to which we are all, it is written, exhorted by Jesus and others depicted in the Bible, and by those to whom authorship of its books are attributed, it is hard to say that those who hold this Book as the supreme authority have had better outcomes than those who place that authority in direct revelation from God.  Quakers, for one example, never made a martyr of anyone who disagreed with what they claimed to have heard from God.  Biblical authority was, however, that upon which  Protestant Boston hanged Quakers.   Which best exemplified loving one's enemies?

Placing the outcomes of sola scriptura, and those of direct revelation, on the continuum between the "fruits of the spirit" and the "works of the flesh" (Galatians 5) may be a useful exercise in further considering these rival claims to authority over us.