Why do I feel as though I just stepped into a bunch of quicksand?
Another post that got me thinking about the idea of fundamentals was this one by didymus I ‘met’ didymus at Infellowship. He also came from the ICoC, but no longer worships with an ICoC church. I don’t know much about him, nor have we ever met, but because of our shared background, I feel a certain implicit bond with him.
Anyway, he refers to this article at Christianity Today. In it, the author points out the aspects of Jesus we don’t enjoy talking about. The Jesus who said only a few will enter through the narrow gate (Matthew 7:13-14), who overturned tables at the temple (Mark 11:12-19), said we must repent or perish (Luke 13:1-5) and called us to take up our own crosses (Luke 9:23-27). The article says, writing about the current talk of Jesus stirred up by the movie ‘The Passion.’:

If, in this national conversation, we do nothing more than blithely discuss Jesus and his adaptable cultural presence—well, we will have missed the real Jesus. We need to talk with biblical honesty about the One who would not only love and forgive us but also demolish all our cultural images of him.

The real Jesus was not afraid to offend, He spoke the truth. He was loving, but not sentimental. We keep silent, not wanting to ruffle feathers, too afraid to be considered judgmental. Certainly, we should not blindly trample folks with careless words and thoughts, but what good are we if we stand for nothing? Jesus was not the wet noodle that so much of Christianity is today.

Why is it that we “Christians” have to argue over the trivial? By trivial, I mean things that don’t amount to a hill of beans one way or the other. Shrode at the Thinklings brought this to the forefront of my mind when he posted about the Jehovah’s Witnesses assertion that Jesus did not die on a cross but on a stake. Now I don’t consider the JW’s a ‘Christian’ group (although other Christians might), but it illustrates the point. Why take a stand on that? It may be an interesting study, but it is ultimately of no consequence. Like arguing about what color His underpants were.
My church, part of the International Churches of Christ, has its roots in the Restoration Movement churches, which are famous for their splits over the trivial. Within the Churches of Christ (which my own ICoC split from around 1979) there are groups divided over one cup or many for communion, whether instrumental music is allowed in service or not, whether a church building should have a kitchen, and more. Not to minimize the passion of the convictions my brothers and sisters have on these issues, but none of them are of any importance. I mean, if Jesus came back today to judge us, do we really think He will care about our stance on the cross vs. stake or if we had a piano at church? In other words, if we come down on the ‘wrong’ side of any of these issues, it will not have an influence on whether we are saved or not. I’m convinced that there really isn’t a wrong side, unless doing one or the other violates your own conscience (Romans 2:14-15; 1 Corinthians 8). We can discuss and debate them but to divide over them to the point of separation is just plain foolish, and even sin (Galatians 5:19-20).
Frankly, there are more important lines in the sand to draw, and from those it seems most Christians step back citing ‘to each his own’. This seems backwards to me. We ought to fight for unity on the essentials and let the rest fall where it may. Didn’t Jesus pray for us to be unified (John 17)? Didn’t Paul urge the disciples in Corinth to be united (1 Corinthians 1)? The standards of discipleship, how we contact the blood of Christ and are forgiven, how we become saved – these are all fundamental aspects of Christianity. These are among the fundamental things that being on the wrong side of could cost us dearly in the last days.
The trick is coming together on what’s truly important. How can we agree on a list of essentials if we insist on arguing about the trivial? Well, if I had the answer to that one, I’d be one really insightful guy, which I am not. Perhaps I’m naïve, but I don’t believe that God is one to mince words, obfuscate and confuse. He doesn’t go out of the way to make it obvious, but He’s not out to make it hard to see either. So while there is no clear list in scripture of that we should hold our ground on or even a step by step salvation plan, I believe that fundamental truth is there if we are willing to see it. So are we willing? It seems to me that in order to be able to stand firmly on truth, and to be confident that we have found it, we must be willing to abandon it – everything we believe. As soon as an opinion becomes so sacred that it is unquestionable, we’ve abandoned the desire for truth in favor of comfort or stability. Frankly I think that there is a core we can look to the Bible and agree on, if we are willing to open our minds, set aside our own opinions, at least for the moment, and listen to someone else’s. If we’re not willing to be wrong, how can we be sure we’re right?
In the coming days I’ll try to put into words what I see as the fundamental things that we must stand on. I’ll cite scriptures for my thoughts. Before I do that, however, I think I’ll have to step back even further and think about how can I judge whether a certain principal is worthy of taking a stand or not. What makes it ‘fundamental’ instead of just ‘important’?
In the mean time, I’d like to encourage you to think about what is fundamental to you and why. Please, don’t list them here, write about them in your own blog (kindly trackback here or to my later posts, please). These may be controversial and we certainly won’t all agree on them. This certainly won’t be the first time this has been talked about, not even the first time it’s been blogged. What, then, do I hope to accomplish? Well, ideally we’ll come closer together or at least have more respect for the other’s opinions. The few folks I’ve gotten to know here in the blogosphere (I really think that’s a dorky word, BTW) are of a different stripe of Christianity than I. If we met be change on the street and opened the Bible, I wonder how much we’d agree on. What I don’t want to see is a continuation of the divisions that have plagued Christians or centuries. Frankly, if this starts going there I’ll just delete the posts and pretend it never happened. We can talk about more mundane things like what would Jesus drive.