Inauguration Day Thoughts

I have friends who are Muslim, Hindi, Sikh, Catholic, Protestant, Pentecostal, Hispanic, African-American, Asian, gay, straight, bisexual, transgendered, and probably some other identities of which I am not even aware. Some have lived under great oppression, some still do. Some live with family histories that include horrible stories of how they were treated. America isn't a Christian church or even a Christian nation, it's a free country. I grew up here in Greenville where people who weren't "like us" were treated as if they had no right to be treated with dignity, no right to live in my neighborhood, no right to belong here. Somehow, our mindset was that this land was our land - not your land, that God shed His grace on me - not thee, that all men are created equal - excluding you. That's the South where I was raised. That is not America, and I will continually point out the good that is among us and decry the evil that cloaks itself in religion or in tradition. That evil causes division and is founded on a baseless pride. I have no right to be proud to be a white Southern male Christian if my sister has to hide the fact that she is an immigrant Sikh. I do not believe this only applies to my region or my generation. We are all susceptible to these thoughts unless we learn to love our neighbor as ourselves.

You're Different

I recently heard of a church that would not participate in a community service project with other churches because of their differences.  They reasoned that to work alongside people who held a differing doctrinal belief would indicate they were approving what they considered false teachings.

The Bible is not silent on this issue. It's right there in the book of Galatians where Paul recounts his early years of ministry.  Peter and the other original apostles were of Jewish background and were straining to believe that God would offer grace to Gentiles. Having passed that hurdle, some of them insisted that Gentile believers had to follow the Jewish customs and laws. Paul persuaded them that to do so would be to add constraints to the free grace God was offering. In fact, he said that living in Christ should even free the Jewish believers from that bondage.

They finally came to an agreement that Peter was called to minister to the Jews, and Paul was called to minister to the Gentiles and that they would do so without loading each other down with unrealistic - or ungraceful - expectations.

Paul writes, "All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I had been eager to do all along." Galatians 2:10 (TNIV)

That's our problem. We focus so much on our differences that we keep each other from doing what makes our hearts sing. I want to help people. I want to show them the love of Jesus. I want to help them walk closer to God. In order to do so, I'm going to focus on THAT rather than wasting my time pointing out how different you are from me. Chances are we're much more alike once our focus shifts. Let's try it.

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