Things I Think
1. The final blow that will end society as we know it will be the the withholding of grace from any who differ with or offend us. A common people cannot live together without a common grace…
2. Grace creates room for compromise and tolerance for the common good…without it, all that remains are agendas and enemies…
3. Without a common grace we all become either warriors or victims , without wanting to choose either role…
4. For many years our divisions have been into large groups…Democrats vs. Republicans, conservatives vs. liberals, not to speak of all the ecclesiastical divisions. Now, our divisions are within the divisions, subdividing into even smaller units with no grace for those who refuse to divide with them. Everyone will have a voice, no one will really have a voice, and even minimal unity will be made impossible…
5. The abortion issue has taught the culture that the right to life is negotiable, that death is acceptable for some “higher” good…and so we all will be in danger of being “aborted” for some groups vision of what is “good”…
6. I can say with practiced glibness that “Jesus is the answer”, but we all differ on the answers we get from Jesus…
7. The latest example of all this has been watching the MacArthur and James White groups attack some leaders of the SBC. All of these men have far more in common than what they differ on, yet a graceless campaign to impugn the other rages on. The end will be more division, more splits, and a weakened witness of Jesus Christ to the world…
8. When we would rather (metaphorically) stand over the fallen body of a brother proclaiming our righteousness, than stand with a brother in grace and unity we have betrayed the faith and our time to fall will come…
9. By the time we realize that in winning these battles we’ve lost the real war…we will spend decades trying to replace all that’s been lost…and the world we’ve been called to bring to Christ will have suffered immeasurably…
10. May God grant me repentance for wanting to “defeat” my brethren…
Re: thought number 8:
Common is the desire to “win” arguments, to “defeat our enemies in 120 characters” (twitter), to get the last word in, and to belittle those who are different (in appearance and in belief) from us. I was just looking at a few health-related videos on YouTube yesterday and the comments amongst those who disagreed about something, that at the end of the day doesn’t amount to jack squat, was appalling. Name calling and expletives were flying. In the church, we exchanged weapons like expletives with weapons such as judgement, questioning the salvation of those who we don’t agree with, and flinging around labels such as “liberal”. More than a few times I have had to bite my tongue here and on other blogs, but sometimes I am not always so successful at that.
A gentle answer turns away wrath.
Hey, where have I read that before?
Dan,
It’s tough these days to respond properly and try to think and speak gracefully…harder for me than most.
I’m just starting to see what the “always nuclear” option is producing…
The TV drones on here during the day…. The commercials as well as any “talk” show operate under a cloud of disdain… disdain for anyone and anything that runs counter to what they are selling… I can’t/don’t want to identify with the women that are promoted there and on the political stage as strong – they aren’t that. They are devious and conniving to the brink of psychotic.
I think that the average church goer just mirrors the social structure. Somewhere along the way a healthy fear of an absolute, holy God has given way to phony pretense.
I know what a strong and gracious woman and an honest, God fearing and gracious man are. I grew up in their home.
Would tough times bring the nation around again? I don’t know…. sadly….
Regarding MacArthur and James White, we need to show them grace too. I’m not sure who they are attacking in SBC and why but sometimes the most challenging folks to be gracious to are those that are not as ecumenical as ourselves.
Grace is an awful thing for the lot of us. The people who deserve it the least are the ones on whom God lavishes it.
I find more in common with Joe Rogan and Ben Shapiro these days then most christian churches (my current one excepted, Bill). We thought being salt and light was building a Moral Majority. Now that comes down to *how* you abort the baby…
Re: #1
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-justine-saccos-life.html
Old news but shows the need for grace and what destroyed lives (semi destroyed) look like.
When I think of grace, I think of mercy at the same time….
Lyrics to a song I heard once –
“Grace keeps giving me
things I don’t deserve.
Mercy keeps withholding
things I do.”
(Wayne Watson)