like a new toy...

I had a kind of new thought (new to me, anyway) on the plane last week and it's taken me a while to hash it out... kind of like breaking in a new pair of sneakers or learning to use a new toy. anyway, this is a quick post to try on some ideas, see how they fit. Let me know if you think they look tacky, or clash with my pants or something.

(sorry... we're in seattle with sarah's parents, who have cable, so I've been watching a lot of shows like "what not to wear"... I now remember why we don't have cable... anyway...)

It seems that for years, people have been overstepping their roles as people; we've been putting ourselves in God's place since the very begining. Adam and Eve, Cain and Able, Moses, and right down through the ages. God says "don't eat it" we say "God really just meant we shouldn't eat it right?" God gives us a few broad commandments, we turn it into a jillion specific laws. God sends God's son, we go nutso with rites and rituals and bureaucracy.

I feel like the latest manifestation of this tendancy can been seen in places like aplogetics --places where Christians are trying to convince others of something.

Conviction, I believe, is God's job. Not ours. We can talk people to death, and do, quite often, but if God doesn't work on their heart, it's meaningless. In the same sense someone who's never heard a single evangelistic word can be "strangely warmed" and come into relationship with Jesus Christ in a transforming way.

So if our job is not to convict, what is it?

I think our job as the church is to encourage and hold accountable one another.

THAT DOES NOT MEAN saying things like "what you're doing is wrong by my standards."
I think it looks more like saying "have you really worked that out with God? You really think God is OK with that?" and then, just maybe, being willing to live with the fact that yes, I've worked out my salvation with fear and trembling and no, it does not include some of your sacred moral standards.

What that takes is trust, in two ways. One, it takes trust in others to be honest about their relationship with God and to admit to the things God is convicting them of.

It also takes trust in God to be God. WE CANNOT CONTINUE to be the Church and live as if there IS NO GOD. If there is a God, and God is real, then GOD should be the one changing peoples hearts, convicting them of their sin, shaping their belief. NOT YOU.

OK. end rant. let me know what you think. A little too close to Christian relativism? Maybe. Letting us as leaders off the hook? Yeah, I'd see that, a little. Using scripture out of context? likely. Sorry.