Agreeing to Disagree in matters that Don't Matter

The church is answering questions no one is asking!

As we started preparing for Freedom House TV which we launched 2 weeks ago, we put together a promo video and this was one of our points in our opening rant. (check it out at freedomhousetv.com)

In the middle ages, one of the Big questions the church played around with was "could God create a rock so big that he couldn't pick it up?". Theologians spent countless hours debating this "life changing" query.

Now in our post-modern age of enlightenment we have made great strides towards really important dialogue. Or have we? Now our internal dialogue revolves around denominational distinctives that have little (if any) salvific effects. Topics like baptism, tongues, escatology, celebration of certain days (like Hallowe'en), drinking, blah, blah, blah fill our calendars with endless talk points, but at what expense?

Romans 14 speaks to these issues with clarity and certainty. You should take the time to read it for yourself, but let me quickly sum up what you will read. Regarding disputable matters, each person should inform themselves on what they believe, act on that belief with conviction AND respond with grace to allow others around them to act on these issues how it fits their personal convictions. Ultimately we agree to disagree in matters that don't matter.

AND in these grey areas - where there is no direct Biblical directive to "definitely do this" or "definitely do that" - we DO NOT judge our brothers on how they interpret each issue.

WOW - that is good teaching!

Do you think it's possible we have missed the whole point of why the church exists? It can't be to continually arguing about barely significant issues, can it?

Well, there's good news and bad news. The bad news is that after almost 30 years of involvement with people and ministry, I have experienced more chats about these or similar topics than I care to mention. The good news is that I see a new breed of believer that really wants to hit the big issues and bring resolve - issues like poverty, human trafficking, world hunger, etc - and what God expects our response to these needs to be. Issues that bring division in the church, like pride and judgement are being displaced by what really matters so we can be "salt and light" and a blessing to our cities.

I'm not suggesting this will be easy - it's much easier sitting back in our respective religious corners and throw our critical jabs at each other. But we've seen from the past that this is not just unproductive, it is detrimental.

This new breed of believer is both an idealistic dreamer and a hard-working pragmatist. And they are the type of people BIG THINKING people love to hang with. Search them out and do life together and as you do you will start answering questions everyone is asking!