Some observations from this preacher of over 40 years: For at least 150 years (not all from personal experience but from reading some church history and some from personal experience), the most fierce, destructive, deadly disagreements among Christian people, in which they feel completely justified in trying to destroy each other, usually have focused on one of two things: 1) The hows that we feel comfortable with and 2) many matters that Gods word says little or nothing about. What has happened for many, many years is this: we draw circles among ourselves to include some and to exclude others. The circle that we usually draw is the circle of conforming to my understanding. All Christians I determine to be conforming to my understanding, I will put them in the approved category or in other words, they are in. All Christians I determine to be not conforming to my understanding, I will put them in the rejected category or in other words, they are out. Here is another interesting observation: our tendency is that we are very patient with those who understand less than we do and we are very skeptical and less patient with those who understand more than we do. So we draw lines and in the process we exclude each other, and Satan laughs, and God mourns.
Posted on: Tue, 08 Jul 2014 00:03:21 +0000