Yesterday at church we did a live text & email question/answer forum titled "I wish I knew." Our three pastors (Eric, Alex and yours truly) did 90-second interactions with a slew of questions from "Is suicide unforgivable?" to "Are there pets in heaven?" The varied questions from both services are available at LakeView's website, www.lakevc.org, under the "Messages" tab.
The very first question dealt with the diversity of views among denominations.
Jesus implores us to "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind" (Matt 22:37). Thinking is a divinely-sanctioned activity to be encouraged, not avoided. And that means that as we interact with the text, we might come to different conclusions on certain things. That's OK.
It's also OK to have particular preferences on
style of music
frequency of communion (not to mention whether it should be the real stuff or grape juice or grape jelly)
choice of Bible translation
whether the minister should wear a robe (I had to borrow one a few years ago at an ecumenical Thanksgiving service but its owner was over 6 feet tall. As I walked down the aisle holding my skirts I felt like Galadriel in Lord of the Rings).
etc.
Such diversity is a good thing. But sometimes folks elevate personal or even denominational preferences to the level of biblical mandates.
I have found it helpful to distinguish between more and less important matters this way:
Is it a conviction to die for?
Is it an opinion to defend?
Is it a preference to discuss?
Thinking through the differences can make your life, your faith and your friendships a whole lot easier. There's a fairly small collection of things in the first category (convictions to die for): the deity of Christ, salvation by grace through faith in Christ alone, etc. So let's not make music or dress or the year of the communion port a litmus test of orthodoxy.
As Augustine said (although the quote has also been attributed to Fred and Bob):
In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.
Almost four years ago I was standing at the back of the church as the praise run began in the second service. It was the Sunday right before the election. Someone sidled up to me:
"So, are you going to tell the church who they should be voting for?"
I laughed, thinking it was a joke. But they were deadly serious.
Hector's House! What about separation of church and state?
It's all rather confusing to this fellow from down under who, in another life, paid homage to the Queen one holiday in the year and then celebrated Guy Fawkes' attempts to blow up the Houses of Parliament on another.
So who did God want to be President last time? Who was God's man?
Was it McCain, who somewhat conveniently managed to find faith and his way back to the church in the months before the election? Or was it Obama, who'd been going to church for years but still found it almost impossible to convince skeptical conservatives? (Kind of a tall order, really, given a name that sounds like "Osama," a strong pro-abortion platform, and The Donald's persistent rumor-mongering that Obama was born on Mars or in some madrasah in Indonesia.)
The same question has come back with a vengeance again, although with a twist (and I'm not talking about getting magical mormon knickers in a knot). So who is God's man this time?
Is God's man a fiscal conservative with sons as handsome as Donny Osmond? If you answer yes don't forget that as a former LDS Bishop he also happens to believe that Jesus is not uniquely God in the flesh and that we can all evolve into godhood.
Or, is God's man the leader of a party that took out "God" from their platform and then thought better of it, forcing him back in after three unconvincing votes?
Perhaps all this talk of "God's man" is a little misguided. A little too messianic. Could it be that, despite the incredible privilege, importance and responsibility of voting, we put a little too much hope in our elected officials? I mean, to get to where they are they need both the desire to change the world and a well-stroked ego.
I'm not saying that the election is not important. Nor that the choices are insignificant. (Ok, let me tip my hand: I personally think that borrowing to spend what we don't have is a recipe for disaster. I happen to believe that life is sacred, begins at conception, and that marriage is between a man and a woman. I also realise that good people disagree with me on those issues and some think there are other "justice" issues, such as war and care for the widow and orphan, that should also be factored in.)
What I am saying is that we have an unhealthy tendency to look to a party or a person for solutions that border on salvation. Yet parties and people will always disappoint at some level. ALWAYS.
Viewed from that level, it's almost a choice between the lesser of evils.
But there is a man who is God's Man. And He will never disappoint.
For there is only one God and one Mediator who can reconcile God and humanity--the man Christ Jesus. He gave his life to purchase freedom for everyone. This is the message God gave to the world at just the right time (1 Timothy 2:5,6).
He gets my vote.
And I long for the day when He will rule and reign in righteousness, when
The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign forever and ever (Revelation 11:15).
I just learned that a friend's mom, aged 92, went home to her Savior. "It was a powerful day of graduation complete with joy, celebration, sadness, tears and a whole lot of gratefulness," he wrote. What a lot of life she's seen. What a lot of eternity awaits her. And such a contrast between the two. Yesterday I read again about some of the hate and stupidity in the world (Ahmadinejad vomitting that Israel's existence is "an insult to all humanity": http://news.yahoo.com/iran-israels-existence-insult-humanity-093922735.html) and an Islamic "intellectual" claiming that Jews consume the blood of children believing "that this brings them close to their false god, Yahweh”: http://freebeacon.com/saudi-cleric-questions-holocaust/). I wanted to despair. Admittedly, tiredness and various other challenges don't make world conflicts seem smaller, but all-defining.
Thank God for the transcendent perspective His Word provides. This morning I read these words from Isaiah 25:
On this mountain the LORD Almighty will prepare a banquet of aged wine--the best of meats and the finest of wines.
On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; he will swallow up death forever.
The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove the disgrace of his people from all the earth.
One day the days of this present earth, which "reels like a drunkard...so heavy upon it is the guilt of its rebellion" (Is 24:20), will be swallowed up by an eternity that will render all else but a faint shadow of a memory!
