Part 2
If you have not read last week’s devotion, you might want to check it out (or review it). This is a continuation of the same theme and it might not make sense without a quick revisiting of last week…
…So the only way to properly look at ourselves and the world around us is by looking at the Word before looking at ourselves and others. If we know the Word, we will not put things in it that are not there. We will not take our pet peeves and create verses to support them. We will be able to see what things are breaking God’s Word and what things are just breaking our hearts. We won’t let irritations become foundations to our beliefs. Secondly, we need to check our own behavior to see if it could adversely affect others. Is what we are doing so important that we would risk another person in the process? If our actions can hurt others who are less mature in the faith, maybe the deed is not worth doing. Lastly, we should be slow to judge others. When we impose our list of personal dislikes onto others in relation to spirituality, it is wrong.
Can we look at murder and say that it is spiritually wrong? Yes, scripture plainly states that it is. Can we say that playing electric guitar for worship songs is spiritually wrong? No, I am pretty sure that is not in the Bible. Can we not like certain things? Sure, but we can’t build false doctrines on these things. We can’t condemn someone to eternal fire because they don’t do everything we do. We should not stumble ourselves or others, bottom line.
I heard a story one time about a man, we will call him Ed, who hated long hair on a man, so much so, he questioned whether a man with long hair could even be saved. While out of town he visited a church and met a man in the lobby that had his hair pulled back into a long pony tail. He had an immediate dislike for the man, who he had assumed was immature in the Lord (if he was in the Lord at all). When the service began, the pastor called the man with long hair forward and thanked him for playing Jesus in the Easter play the week before. Ed squirmed a little in his seat. The pastor then spoke of how the man had lost his sister to cancer and had agreed to grow out his hair for the play if people would pledge so much per inch for the local cancer center. The pastor had him lean his head back and measured his hair. It was 14 inches long. With all the pledges from the church and community, the man raised almost $15,000 for the center. That day Ed was changed. Whenever he found himself judging others for inconsequential things, we would close his eyes and picture the man with his head tilted back, hair being measured, and instead of being critical Ed would measure his own actions against the Word of God.
So let’s not make doctrinal mountains out of spiritual molehills. There have been church splits and even family splits over things that don’t matter. We get upset at little things and turn our backs on the big. That seems to be the norm in every part of the world right now. We pick and choose what to be enraged about and what to be accepting of, and we most often choose wrong. Look at some of our own country’s stances on world issues. We picket because of a single shooting of an individual, but accept the killing of thouseands of innocents in the womb. We change laws to give women in our country free birth control, but ignore that over 90% of women in some countries go through forced mutilation. We get all bent out of shape if we don’t give more than equal rights to homosexuals, but in some countries that we support homosexuals are being executed daily. I could go on and on to show the unbalanced views that exist in this world.
Unfortunately, we do much of the same in the church. We get upset at the attire that someone wears to our church and then listen with glee to a dynamic pastor on TV who blasphemes the Word of God but does it with charisma. There is a pastor named Mark Driscoll who started what was called the Mars Church about ten years ago. He is a good speaker and I listened to a few of his sermons quite a few years back. I even subscribed to his podcast which was one of the most popular on iTunes. One day while driving I listened to a sermon on his thoughts on sanctification and I was blown away by what he said. As soon as I got home, I unsubscribed to his podcast and erased everything I had by him on my iPod. What he said was completely unbiblical and crass on top of that. Yet he had and continued to have a loyal following of thousands and had hundreds of churches in his network. That was until a few years ago when it all came tumbling down. A whole lot of his weak theological beliefs, questionable personal decisions, shady economic moves, and unethical behaviors were exposed and he was asked to step down under a very dark cloud. Yet, he still has his followers. Many have jumped on the anti-bandwagon, but many of those are the same ones who accepted his teaching for years and just didn’t listen to it. Pastor Driscoll once told one of his elders to step down because his “fatness” embarrassed him and the church. He was worried about the “fatness” of others rather than the “leanness” of his preaching.
Here is the point of this. Pastor Driscoll has been way off from the beginning, but he snookered even well-known pastors into supporting his efforts because his efforts were “cool.” He was a hip new pastor who was bringing in numbers. His church growth and church planting was on fire. Unfortunately, much of what he said about the word needed to be tossed in the fire. Yet, people flocked behind him. Many of those people probably had really strong feelings about the stilted services of the past. Their new approach to worship was the “right way” and the funky ways of old were not only passé, but probably unbiblical. His was the new blue-jean worship leader that brought in enthusiasm and fervor. So people accepted him and rejected the Word. Now everyone is in repair mode. My point? We should spend more time worrying about truth than we do about peripherals that mean little in the kingdom.
So let’s not get our spiritual undies in a knot over what doesn’t even matter at the expense of what really does matter. The truth of God’s word matters. There was a Methodist church that split over the color of the pews. A Methodist church which accepts every liberal cause and slant in today’s society. A Methodist church which has homosexual pastors and will not allow the blood to mentioned in their hymnals. A Methodist church which is on the cutting edge of every anti-spiritual activist cause and has founder John Wesley spinning in his grave. That same Methodist church is worried about the color of its pews.
We need to prioritize our lives and especially our spiritual lives. 2 Timothy 3:16 tells us that, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.” Only the scripture should be our standard for how we look at the world. When we get caught up in the petty it will almost always be at the cost of the important. As Christians we should take stands for Truth and Christ is Truth. It is too exhausting to get caught up in the minor and we won’t have enough strength to take on the major.