I'm not a fan of families washing their proverbial dirty linen in public – outsiders don't need to hear unkind words and such like, especially when they are spoken in the heat of an argument.
However, it's not really a secret that in Northern Ireland, a lot of people in a lot of churches are suspicious of the people who go to other churches. Sadly, some churches have even made their name for rubbishing others as being somehow 'less Christian' than them. It's all quite sad.
We were sat in the home of a nice Dutch family a few weeks ago discussing this very thing, which is apparently a problem in the Netherlands too. An American who was there had come across the same thing happening in the States. You could take any person in any of those churches and ask them to sign up to the Apostles' Creed but they'll tell you the guy in the next-door church is a heathen because of some very minor issue of how the people in one building have decided to do things – whether it be how to dress in church, how often to have Communion, etc. We agree on 99% of things but fight over the 1%, in public, and don't stop to think what the on-looking world might think of it all.
Yet there we were in that home of that nice Dutch family (with some nice Americans and another nice person from NI) and we were discussing John 9 and 10. In the passage, certain Pharisees had decided Jesus did not fit into their pre-defined theology so had concluded he was either a raving lunatic or in league with the Devil. We all had (slightly) differing views, due to our different national and denominational backgrounds but nobody called anybody a heretic or a madman. We discussed our differences like grown-ups and learnt from each other. Nobody seemed to be afraid of raising a different perspective, for fear of being scolded!
We'll miss this aspect of life here.
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Enjoying your blog...
ReplyDeleteJohn 20"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: 23I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
Love is the test... willingness to make room for other people's differences, even sins, because we have been loved, and so love with the same grace.