Somethings never change, or do they?
In my brief time surfing around and reading opinions of people ranging from hard-boiled atheists, evolutionists, witches, satanists, mormons, premods, mods, postmods, evangelical extremists, theologians, mormons, jehovah's witnesses, the list stretches beyond my ability to find cute little boxes to put people in. A bad habit, and let's just say it is one I intend to attempt to address with this thread.
At the core of people there is this thing called doubt. Not knowing for sure. The inability to be sure about stuff eats at some, and others seem to find reasons to hang onto their doubts, or rationalize, philosophize or whatever crazy things us humans do to get rid of the stuff that keeps us up, or no longer keeps us up at night.
It is incredible that no matter how tough we maybe on the outside, we might have all the appropriate terminology down pat, and be able to debate everyone, till eventually we are all alone, with our victory and a handful of followers that devoutly agree with our opinions.
Truth is though people change. St Augustine had the courage to actually examine all his great thoughts, and wrote a book called, 'Retractions'...in which he examined his theology and thoughts and made a public declaration of his erroneous ones as well. Now that is very mature. He was willing to expose his hard-core beliefs to his own personal judgement. Wow! Not many are willing to do that. It is easier to settle with yesterdays old bread, which would have helped you none if you were in the desert with Moses, unless it was the day before the Sabbath rest.
Talking of rests, there is a wonderful rest in Christ which we are encouraged to strive to enter into. Is that not strange request. Sort of like asking one to force oneself to go to sleep. I am not sure if such a thing can be accomplished. But these are spiritual truths, and as believers in Jesus, we are no longer in the infancy of our blind and deaf and dumb minds, we have come to the Rock, which is Christ, to the Mediator of a better Covenant.
I know there are many things that don't seem to change. Christians still complain about not getting the victory over certain sins, as I mentioned 'doubts' still have a way of recurring, and well though we are able to announce boldly to the world that we are SAVED, we sometime fall so badly before others that the word SAVED, might better be pronounced SLAVED.
We are free, yes but not completely, we build a little and it comes tumbling down, we are being weened of our self dominated reality, and are simultaneously experiencing the new life springing up within. It is a crazy situation to be in, and to those around us, they cannot testify to any noticeable change. The truth is...WE ARE CHANGING...for the resurrection power of Jesus Christ is at work in our lives, in our bodies and our minds.
We may argue about whether or not we are going to get into the Kingdom if we don't endure, we might develop a complete doctrine explaining why we need to do certian things to gaurantee our exceptance, or we might take the oppossite side and as many Roman Catholics and Mormons accuse us of being couch evangelicals, or easybelievism, or some other name to denote that we aught not to live by faith alone, but we need to add something to it to gaurantee our entrance into the Kingdom of God. Oh that argument it has never stopped, and wierd that it comes not only from without, but from within. Instead of letting it rest and trusting God for one another, we are at each others heels doing the job that is not meant for Christians to do. To sew seeds of doubt.
There are more important matters that genuinely bring change, and they are things like praying together and getting serious about reaching out to the world that is watching and wondering what on earth is the church up to again. It is in Church History, we love to ARGUE, that I am sad to say is something that never, seems to change. Argue, argue, argue...if we did suddenly one day agree about what needs to be done to reach out, I am positive that the world would fall over backwards in absolute shock, the devil would head for of in the opposite direction, for we would be doing the one thing he does not expect.
But, is it possible, can believers really lay down their doctrinal differences and let the petty things alone, the controversial stuff alone, and concentrate on what really matters.
What really matters. Think about it. What is the one thing that really, really matters ?