A friend was recently told by a pastor that she couldn’t become a member of my church unless she was baptized by immersion………she had been sprinkled……….. but sprinkling doesn’t count.
Another friend is gay………many churches are are not receptive to him.
Both of these things trouble me. In both cases the rules are pushing somebody away from Christ.
So…..I’ve been looking at the “rules”………and how we use them.
Arguing over the rules is a huge cause of strife. It is a source of divisiveness within the Christian faith. It is also at the heart of open hostility between Christians and the LGBT community. Arguably, it is one of the biggest problems that we, as Christians, face. It divides us internally. Even worse, it drives non-christians away from us…….away from God.
How do we, both Christians and non-Christians, handle this?
There are a great many rules/laws/ideas that we must deal with. They form a spectrum from foundational ideas that we cannot abandon or negotiate to ideas/rules that are meaningless today. We tend to draw lines dividing the list of rules/ideas into important ones that are non-negotiable, ones that we can discuss, and unimportant ones that we don’t worry too much about.
Let me begin by clarifying my perspective. I think that my job is to market Christianity to the unchurched. As such, I worry about any rule/idea that puts a wall between the seeker, the unchurched, the committed atheist, and God.
So…… what does this spectrum of ideas look like. Beginning with foundational/non-negotiable and going to unimportant.
God as creator
The divinity of Christ
The resurrection of Christ
The holy spirit lives in Christians
Salvation by grace
Love God/ Love your neighbor
The 10 commandments
Abortion is murder
Premarital sex is prohibited
Baptism must be by immersion
Male/Male and female/female sex is prohibited
Pornography is bad
Welcome the soujourner(immigrants)
Social security/ Medicare/Medicaid/welfare
Gun control
Legal recreational drugs(including alchohol)
Equality of the sexes
Things you cannot eat
Things you cannot wear
Things you cannot say
Places you cannot go
Don’t boil a baby goat in its mother’s milk (Exodus 23:19)
Please don’t complain about the list………it’s mine……..and it’s nowhere near complete. Furthermore, the details of the list are not the point.
How do we deal with the list? Pretty basic. We fight for the non-negotiable, we discuss the discussable and we ignore the unimportant. So far so good. So how do we get into so much trouble? We get into trouble when we draw the lines dividing up the list. We damn people to hell over this. We drive a wedge between God and the unchurched over this. And we allow ourselves to believe that we are better than the other guy……. because we have more rules on our “non-negotiable” list.
There has to be a better way.
I will focus on the line between non-negotiable and discussable, because this is where we get into the most trouble.
The free thinker, some would say liberal, might say that nothing is foundational/non-negotiable. The legalist, some world say conservative, might say it’s all non-negotiable.
It seems to me that where that line is drawn may be different for different people. FWIW……I have noticed an unmistakable trend. We all tend to draw the line so that the non-negotiable items do not interfere with the way that we want to live. This is either human nature or hypocrisy. The line also moves depending on where we are in our walk. A mature Christian may draw the line low on the list. A non-Christian or a new Christian might draw the line higher on the list.
As for me, I want as many people in paradise as possible. To alienate a non-Christian or even worse, a seeker over a discussable idea is self defeating. On the other hand, you can draw the line so high on the list that you stop being a Christian. “If you don’t stand for something……… you’ll fall for anything”.
I have come to the conclusion that where I draw the line should depend on who I’m dealing with and what I’m trying to accomplish.
As for my personal use…… today….. in this broken world……. with my limited perspective………. I will draw the line somewhere above many of the old testament household restrictions. In my dealings with others……especially with seekers…….I will draw the line just below “Love God/Love your neighbor “. Below this line I will not push the rules/ideas so hard as to alienate others. Below this line, my guideline will be relationship before rules…… love before legalism.
You will have to decide where to draw the line for yourself. In the end, we will get the answer……. to this delimma and many more……. straight from God.
But, the point here is this…… To beat somebody else up over a rule and in the process drive them away from God…….is not “winning” the argument.