The Scarecrow Fallacy

To commit the "Scarecrow Fallacy," which I have named after the Scarecrow character in the 1939 movie the Wizard of Oz, is to mistake a diploma for knowledge or a credential for God's calling. God usually makes use of available formal education, and often acts through the organized Church's mechanisms of licensure and ordination, but has never bound himself always to do so. It is possible to have a very powerful calling from God with no formal human recognition, and also, unfortunately too common to have excellent ministry credentials and no relationship with Jesus whatsoever.

The organized Church has long followed the world’s lead in requiring formal credentials issued by other people before a member’s exercise of an Ephesians 4 gift will even be tolerated, let alone received. This has historical roots that trace to the organized Church’s need to control who was recognized to speak, which, in turn, arose from its felt need to accept many unsaved people into its earthly “membership” so that the powerful could claim to be Christians and protectors of the Church. But this also required that the gift of discernment of spirits (1 Corinthians 12:10) be suppressed because believers exercising this gift might call out powerful people who were faking their Christianity for their own purposes. (See, Early Christianity 1, items 50-52 and Early Christianity 2, items 53-60 and 14-29). It certainly would have been dangerous if a believer exercising discernment had called out the Emperor Constantine or one of his successors as a hypocrite!

In this setting, in which spiritual discernment is no longer allowed to operate, the only way to prevent dangerous schisms was to require strict credentialing (in an ancient form). That setting of suppression of discerning of spirits still exists in all present church organizations in the West, so far as I know, for roughly the same reasons it did in the Third and Fourth Centuries so the credentialing solution to it is also still used, in a somewhat more modern form. It is usually justified by referencing the proof text 2 Timothy 2:15 (which really works best for this purpose as it is worded in the King James):

Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

1 Timothy 2:15 (KJV).

“Study” in this verse is generally (and incorrectly) equated to learning facts only, something that can be done in a modern school, rather than also to studying Jesus’ way of life and relationship with his Father (discipleship). And while most would admit that mere laymen can “study” in this sense, with the help of the clergy, it has also generally been insisted by denominational organizations that non-stereotyped exercise of a spiritual gift may only be permitted by people who have “studied”–formally–until they have been “approved”–by “us.”

This leads to the rather interesting assertion that only people with the proper credentials, approved by “us,” can have any transmissible, relevant knowledge at all. The world’s, and the organized Church’s (by and large), insistence on credentials is, in this respect, very reminiscent of what the fictional Wizard of Oz told the Scarecrow toward the end of the 1939 classic movie:

“Back where I come from, we have universities, seats of great learning where men go to become great thinkers. And when they come out, they think deep thoughts — and with no more brains than you have. But! They have one thing you haven’t got! A diploma!”

The Wizard of Oz (1939),

So the Wizard “fixed” the Scarecrow’s real lack of a brain (he had only straw in his head), by giving him a diploma publicly recognizing his great intelligence. Similarly, the Wizard gave the Cowardly Lion courage by giving him a medal for bravery, and he gave the Tin Man a heart by giving him a heart-shaped pocket watch as a testimonial to his great (but nonexistent) heart. The Wizard then expressed the heart of the matter, as the world sees it, by telling the Tin Man that the proof of his heart was not how many people he loved, but how many people loved him. In other words, the reality of our individual intelligence, knowledge, courage, and compassion is found in the opinions of others–i.e., in a credential.

This is, of course, exactly the opposite of the way God does things. It is sometimes said–half-heartedly, I suspect–that God doesn’t call those who are prepared, he prepares those he calls. God calls those he chooses, and then “prepares” them for service his own way–which is not always by pursuit and receipt of formal credentials. Moses was the son of slaves, born under a death sentence as a result of an attempt at ethnic cleansing, then raised as a prince of Egypt–but he then had to renounce this earthly authority and be prepared for 40 years as a shepherd in Midian before he was ready. Hebrews 11:23-26; Exodus 2:1-3:5. In the Old Testament, God’s prophets included quite a few whose backgrounds are not stated (thus, it doesn’t appear they relied upon credentials, other than that God had called them); Isaiah, Zephaniah and Daniel, who appear to have been courtiers of royal blood rather than priests or Levites; Hosea the husband of a prostitute (who God told him to marry as a sign!) and who had no other stated qualifications; Amos the sheepherder and farmer; Habakkuk who may also have been a farmer; and at least three women (Miriam, Deborah and Huldah). Religious leadership has always found offensive God’s insistence on choosing his own spokesmen his way, often ignoring “official channels” in doing so.

Nowhere was this made more obvious than in official religion’s reaction to Jesus and his band of followers. Jesus himself was of royal blood, a son of David, as his genealogies in Matthew 1 and Luke 3 attest–but by the time of Jesus, a thousand years after David, it is statistically quite probable that almost every living Jew could trace some line of descent back to David. (Most of the religious leaders who opposed him likely knew they were also descendants of David). Jesus was raised as a carpenter–a skilled trade, but not one that would have made his family wealthy–in an obscure village in Galilee. His access to formal religious education would have been somewhat limited, and, unlike Paul–who told various people that he had studied under the sage Gamaliel–Jesus never claimed to have studied under any early forerunner of the later Rabbinic tradition. His enemies sometimes protested that he was a nobody, a person of no authority.

Jesus’ choice of disciples was equally troublesome to the authorities. His inner circle included at least six who were fishermen (Peter, Andrew, James, John, Thomas and Nathanael), one tax collector (Levi a/k/a Matthew), and one political revolutionary (Simon the “Zealot”). The only one of the twelve who appears to have come from respectable, upper-class Judean society–Judas Iscariot–was also a traitor. The backgrounds of the other two disciples from the inner Twelve are not stated–except that they were all Galileans, and thus somewhat disrespected by the Judean religious leadership. Matthew, as a tax collector, likely was well-educated–but not necessarily in the Hebrew Scriptures. Simon the “Zealot” may have had some formal education, and Judas Iscariot also probably did. There is no evidence that the other ten had extensive formal education. Yet Jesus chose them–and personally trained them for three years.

After Jesus’ death and resurrection the disciples’ lack of formal credentials caused the Sanhedrin some consternation. In Acts 3:1-4:4, Peter and John healed a paralytic who had the habit of sitting and begging in the Beautiful Gate of the Temple (and, thus, was well-known). When a crowd gathered around the healed paralytic, Peter took the opportunity to preach to them, resulting in 5,000 of the crowd being saved–and the Apostles’ arrest. When brought before the Sanhedrin the next day for trial, Peter defended himself and John by preaching to the Sanhedrin. That body’s initial reaction was to question how these “uneducated” men could have performed the miracle, and then preached as they did:

Now as they observed the confidence of Peter and John and understood that they were uneducated and untrained men, they were amazed, and began to recognize them as having been with Jesus. And seeing the man who had been healed standing with them, they had nothing to say in reply.

Acts 4:13-14 (NASB)

The Sanhedrin was stuck in our modern insistence on credentials, and could not understand how people without the right credentials could possibly know what they knew and do the miracles they did. But they also recognized the Apostles had “been with Jesus”–which is, in fact, all the training that is absolutely needed. And, though the Apostles lacked the approval of the Sanhedrin–which then forbade them to preach any more–they had the only approval they needed: Jesus had called them. “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, make your own judgment;  for we cannot stop speaking about what we have seen and heard.” Acts 4:19-20.

The Apostle Paul summarizes this line of reasoning well. Paul, it will be remembered was born of a fairly wealthy family that was able to raise him as a strict Pharisee and give him training at the feet of Gamaliel, one of the “sages” who was a forerunner of the modern Jewish Rabbinic tradition. His family had also achieved Roman citizenship, which speaks to their wealth, education and importance. Paul, as Saul of Tarsus before his conversion, was politically very well-connected, was himself likely in line to become a member of the Sanhedrin at some point in his life, and met Christ while acting on a commission from the High Priest to persecute the Christians in Damascus. This same Paul, years after his conversion, wrote:

Where is the wise person? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has God not made foolish the wisdom of the world?  For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe… For consider your calling, brothers and sisters, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the insignificant things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, so that no human may boast before God. But it is due to Him that you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, so that, just as it is written: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.”

1 Corinthians 1:20, 25-31 (NASB).

What more can be said on this subject?

I will clarify that education is important, but it can be obtained either by formal processes or by informal study and simply “being with Jesus.” I have no doubt that, in most situations involving formal leadership of human church organizations, God will use available formal education as a part of his preparation of a leader–but he has never bound himself to always do so. He retains his right to choose his vessels and prepare them outside the ordinary human ecclesiastical/educational system. And even a very good education about Christianity is worthless to a leader who has not personally “been with Jesus.” Similar things can be said about credentialing processes, including the things most groups call licensure/licensing and ordination –they have a valid purpose, but God has never committed himself to always act within them, and they are no substitute for “being with Jesus.” My knowledge of Christ and his calling for me are not things that are judged by other people’s opinions.

Knowledge is not equivalent to a diploma. The Wizard of Oz was dead wrong–he had fallen victim to the not-so-modern “Scarecrow fallacy!”

NEXT: Conclusion–Mutual Submission to Each Other Under Christ, Not a Chain of Command