Johan Mau­r­er looks at one of our most-used George Fox quotes and won­ders whether we’re using it authen­ti­cal­ly: Has Christ come to teach his peo­ple himself?

I want us to use our dear­est clich­es hon­est­ly, but if they some­times seem weak­ened by overuse, the solu­tion isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly to dis­card them. Maybe we can redis­cov­er their provoca­tive con­tent and test whether the promise with­in is already being ful­filled or could once again be ful­filled in our time.

I appre­ci­ate that Johan also asks if we’re hoard­ing this insight and claim­ing it as par­tic­u­lar­ly Quak­er. One of my per­son­al tests for adopt­ing Quak­er pecu­liar­i­ties of prac­tice or belief is whether I could argue that they should be adopt­ed by oth­er Chris­tians (or even oth­er peo­ple of faith in gen­er­al) as uni­ver­sal prin­ci­ples. An atti­tude of plain­ness not based on social pres­sures or uni­forms is one I think would bring humil­i­ty and insight to any fol­low­er of Christ, for example.

That Christ has risen and is here and is ready to guide us direct­ly seems to be an obvi­ous truth – the heart of the res­ur­rec­tion and of Pen­te­cost and the apos­tles’ church plants. That some church­es insert peo­ple in between is a poten­tial dis­trac­tion but even they would, I hope, keep in mind that Christ is there with them in their steeple hous­es and in their lives.

The only oth­er take-away I have from this uni­ver­sal­i­ty test is that it cen­ters the Inward Christ and risen Jesus and not our human insti­tu­tions. This was the obvi­ous point in the 1650s as Quak­ers broke up reli­gious meet­ings and I think it still holds true. Our libraries and meet­ing­hous­es and mis­sion state­ments and staff flow­charts don’t mean any­thing if they get in the way of the pur­pose of our soci­ety, which is sim­ply to help one anoth­er set­tle down, rec­og­nize that Inward Christ, and learn the cor­po­rate skills dis­cern­ment so we can be Friends (of Jesus). The invi­ta­tion to knock on Jesus’s door is extend­ed to all, not just those of us call­ing our­selves Quaker.

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