March 08, 2012
Second Cousin Once Removed
It seems we believers often look for ways to divide ourselves and then show
our independence. I certainly mean no disrespect to this congregation, but I
cracked up when I read their name, the Third Christian Reformed Church.
I can only imagine the history and lineage for this body of believers. The name
alone entices me to want to know more about their genealogy and if we might
somehow be related.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Gail;
-----Isolate each and everyone into a vacuum alone. Consider they have been that way since birth, not a moment of contact with anybody. How different would their thinking be! They wouldn’t even have a language in which to think and identify things. What they believe to be true or false, what they like and dislike, and even how they feel in general would be immensely different. In fact, they wouldn’t know a fraction of what they would know from living their lives in contact with others. So it’s no wonder we don’t go to Mormon churches, or Jehovah’s Witness churches. I might visit a Seventh Day Adventist Church a few times, but I would certainly not frequent it. It isn’t that I don’t believe anybody in these are saved. I just believe many of their shared ideas and concepts are wrong right down to the ways it makes them feel about things in general. And I don’t need such basic and general error seeping into what I don‘t yet completely know. There is a line across which shared error is too great for the wary person’s participation.
-----I even wonder what I’m doing at a Presbyterian church sometimes - well, actually - often. I take the Word of God very seriously. I mean, goodness, do you realize how many of His faithful servants were sawn in two, beheaded, and enormously mistreated in every way because of these messages they spoke to their fellows and wrote for us? And they faced this abuse to its bitter end because what they were saying should be taken to mean anything their readers take it to mean? “Whatever you think it says, man, that’s ok! Go ahead and think whatever you want from it while I’m over here in the corner getting sawed in two for having wrote it.” No. Not quite. It says what its Author meant it to say. And that is what it means. Whatever we take it to mean other than that is error, pure and simple. There is no, “Well, I think this,” or, “I think that, so it must mean that to me.” There is only, “I think what I am able to think, and although it’s my best thought, somewhat of it is probably wrong because I may as well have grown up in a vacuum compared to all the vastness of absolute truths I have not yet experienced, all being knowledge that is not available for correcting my own ideas.” I think that is called humility.
-----There are elements of this church I attend which get under my skin for sure. Yet it has elements done closer to the Lord’s heart than any other church I’ve enjoyed. It is that way with all the churches whose errors are on the inside of the out-of-bounds line. And I assure you, every church has its own set of shared errors. But when we start feeling too holy to be in contact with any error, too good to be known by the company of those imperfect ones or these flawed ones, we start dividing ourselves around this or that tidbit or yonder triviality. We forget that we ourselves are yet fraught with error so much that each one of us is a possible bad influence for whomever we meet in whatever church we might frequent.
-----To me it is sad to see churches dividing up and plying long, delineating titles to their newly created fellowships. I would rather see people understanding the goods and the bads about themselves and everyone else on the inside of the out-of-bounds lines. There is a certain assurance of truth about grace and mercy being applied to people who actually need it for their errors, rather than being hung on a wall like a plaque in a church quarantined from all those wrong ones as if it has today attained perfection.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
Post a Comment