True Respect

True respect between people requires an ability for them to disagree without damaging the relationship. We can have fellowship with people who we do not agree with on every point.

There are many essentials in the Christian faith, but there are many non-essentials where we may have liberty. In relationships with respect we can have fellowship with those whom with we disagree in non-essentials.

Too often we find we or others cannot have respectful dialogue or fellowship with those who disagree with us in non-essentials. Often an over zealousness to defend the Christian faith on non-essential issues is a sign of a weak faith.

A weak faith often cannot distinguish what is important or not important in faith. It cannot grasp that not all truth is worth fighting over. Too often we see minor debates over the small meaning of this or that verse become overblown issues.

There are certain over arching essential principles where there must be unity, but there are a massive number of important but minor key ideas in Christianity where we can respectfully disagree with others whom we have complete fellowship because the issues are minor and of not much consequence.

Christianity is about finding what God finds important. If God finds the poor, justice in the public sphere, missions, heaven and hell important then we must find these things important important (and God does find all of these things important).

Keeping Focus in Christianity

Christianity has a core and a periphery. All truth is important, but not all truth is essential.

It is often forgotten in many churches what is of absolute importance and what while important is not essential. Our concern for the purity of the church should be more focused on what is of absolute importance than what is at the edge.

Often what is at the edge of Christianity dominates the discussion. Concerns about style in music or method of distributing the Lord's super or exact details of how this or that should look in the church dominate. All of these things are good and well, but they are always at the side.

The church's focus should always be at the heart of Christianity--the good news of the offer of grace to sinners because of Christ's perfect life, death, and resurrection. If we get the center of Christianity right everything else will fall into place.

It is our union with the risen Jesus which makes people better. Too often we see people trying to improve the behavior of their church by preaching law day in and day out.

Often the problem of behavior in church is not a failure to understand law, but to really grasp grace. It is grace which shows us the greatness of the love of God for us. Often we cannot truly grasp how far we are from righteousness until we see what perfect love is and perfect love does.

Often it is more grace that transforms us than law. We try to faithfully live out law because of and only because of grace.

Making Time for What Matters

We always make time for what is important to us in life. Often we say that this or that things is important but we never do it.

Maybe the whole thing would take a weekend or a few hours. When asked we say it is important to us.

Maybe it is. But over time we never get around to it. You see we are rarely as busy as we like to claim. Especially over the long term.

We often find that we excuse ourselves in life or hide our priorities from ourselves by saying we do not have time.

It is of course good to relax and take time for ourselves. This is the biblical idea behind Sabbath. Man should not work without rest. That is not God's intent.

But often we convince ourselves that we believe things are important to us that are not. We over emphasize our busyness to disguise from ourselves what we do not find important.

You see we know what we should find important and if it is not important to us it is uncomfortable because our heart is revealed. So we excuse ourselves by saying we are too busy. This or that always comes in the way.

In the end over the long term our use of time expresses our heart. Some of us are extremely busy, but we always make time for what is important to us.

If it is truly important you make time for it.

What the Bible Means

The bible says many things which are simple to understand. Often the greatest difficulty understanding the bible is that we wish to fit scripture into our theological system rather than create a theological system around scripture.

The issue which makes theology difficult is that scripture is highly rational and also highly paradoxical. Throughout the bible there is a large amount of rational argumentation appealing to reason. There are also many paradoxes and tensions in scripture.

You see at many times especially in the teaching of Jesus ideas held in tension. There is no contradiction in scripture, but the nature of reality is that many truths are a balance between two extremes which are errors.

We often get scripture wrong because we expend massive effort to simplify it's teaching into a rational system with no tension or paradox. Scripture actually is far easier to understand on its own terms: a system of highly rational belief which also has many tensions and paradoxes within.

It is always the call to wisdom which appears in scripture. You see there is a great nuance to life. You cannot go out and live ethically based on a set of rules without thought and prayer and discernment.

We are often such poor readers of scripture because we come to scripture to learn. We have a certain way we learn. And we fit scripture into our patterns of learning.

Rather we need to first come to scripture to learn how to learn. We must base our efforts to learn around the way in which the bible wishes to instruct us. The bible often does not like easy answers to certain questions, so we must too not like easy answers to questions.

What the bible finds important we must find important. Where the bible offers liberty we must offer liberty. You see the bible is right even when we think it is wrong. We must seek understanding by faith.