It’s been a long day and I’ve been wrestling with some fairly monumental questions.
Of course, they feel big–the universe to me–but they’re most likely just the same old questions everyone faces. It’s like seeing the Rockies. If you live there, you don’t always consider their magnitude; when you round the knoll and see them on the midwestern horizon for the first time, they are colossal.
But the mountains disperse into a fog and the questions are almost as hard to phrase as they are to answer.
Very near to my thoughts are exchanges with my friends. I think of my parents and their heartfelt orthodoxy. I think of my wife and her childlike faith, questioning nothing. I think of Jeremy and his brash logical clarity. I think of Andy and his challenge to all things traditional. I think of Chris, mixing dunamos and integrity with nonconformism. I think of Angela and her figurative approach to the Scriptures. I think of Kinsey honest heart and mischievous adventuring. I think of Mike and his single-minded passion. I think of Sarah Eliza and her childlikeness laced with adult intellectualism. I think of Renee and her age-defying sobriety. I think of Dave and his duality, sometimes standing strong, sometimes raging. I think of Drew and his sincere love for people.
I feel a very strong connection to each in his own way, though all run the gamut of Christian thought. What I’m wrestling with is something as old as the Garden–the knowledge of good and evil. These people–you–mean a great deal to me, but you are not always right. We can talk great circles around the blogosphere and leave our message in the clouds, but there is a standard that exists beyond the words and beyond the comments that we will one day answer to.
I struggle often when I read a post or talk on the phone with people I love, because I’ve always tried to hold my life to the standard of God’s Word. So if I read or hear something from a friend that conflicts with God’s Word, I am faced with several thoughts.
First, I want my conversation to be governed by love. No matter how great the offense, we are to speak the truth in love. This is the conversational application of the golden rule.
Of course, this bring about my first dilemma. 1 Corinthians tells us that patience is a characteristic of love, and the key to being patient is understanding the experiences of the person being loved. So often I sympathize with a person to the point of never dealing with something that needs to be dealt with. This “dealing with” is an essential part of keeping integrity in the body of Christ. I know, I know, we’ve been crying unity for a while now, let’s not forget the other ‘-ity’ word: purity. Jill mentioned that this is iron sharpening iron, but most times when that happens, sparks fly. So we often just shut up, pat a back in the name of Christian love and let the weeds continue to grow.
Secondly, how do you respond to a person who has forsaken some vital parts of what it means to be a Christian? Luther spent a long time trying to bring healing, but in the end, he managed to split the church down the middle. We can be awfully hard on fundamentalists for being hardliners, but we’re going to have to deal with the situation at some point, or risk losing the very meaning of being a Christian (is that already gone?) Do we just become politically correct moralists or do we go for broke and become religious fanatics? What if you choose door#1 and I choose door#2? Surely these things affect the very foundation of the world; how can we pretend to get along without so firm a foundation?
Well, it’s already taken me two hours just to frame my question, and I’m afraid I haven’t done a very good job of it. I’m sure the answer won’t come overnight.
