{"id":198,"date":"2004-09-15T23:33:23","date_gmt":"2004-09-15T23:33:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2004\/09\/missing_the_poi.shtml"},"modified":"2021-05-29T02:48:40","modified_gmt":"2021-05-29T02:48:40","slug":"missing_the_poi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2004\/09\/missing_the_poi.shtml","title":{"rendered":"Missing the Point"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I’ve mentioned before, the church I’m a part of is an offshoot of the Churches of Christ. One of the things that attracted me to this church was it’s passion for thestandards and misson of God and for the restoration of first century Christianity. They were determined to get into their Bibles and get it right<\/i>. Let’s set aside all of our preconceived notions of Christianity and look at the Bible fresh and see what it says. I learned that it said a lot of important stuff that I wasn’t aware of and that a lot of stuff that I thought it said just wasn’t there.
\nOne of the side effects of this sort of passion can be an over the top stand on docrinal issues. In other words, an attitude of “This is right and there is no way around it and if you think otherwise you’re in sin!” In the CoC’s, we are unfortunately famous for such lines in the sand. Some draw a line on musical instruments in worship, some draw one over one cup for cummunion vs. many, sone over kitchens in the church building. A nearly universal line drawn by all CoC’s is on baptism for salvation.
\nWe believe that the Bible clearly teaches that baptism is for salvation. Through it we receive the forgiveness of sin and receiving the holy spirit. There are plenty of verses to back this up, in fact I consider it God’s plan of salvation. The early Christians practiced it and it was only much later in church history (around 400 AD if memory serves) that the idea of any other kind of salvation came to be widely accepted. God wants us, no commands us, to be baptised to receive his forgiving grace.
\nBut the point of this post isn’t the ‘rightness’ of baptism. I haven’t even pointed to scriptures or adequately researched the historical things I’ve spoken about (from memory of classes I’ve been in) No, it’s about the arrogance of my CoC family. Frankly, we’ve gotten many things right. The trouble is we look down our noses at the rest of mainstream Christianity as the only ones who’ve made it and Baptism is our litmus test for your salvation. I’ve been there. In fact, my church group, the International CoC’s, took that arrogance to a new level. We looked down our noses at the rest of the CoC’s as well as mainstream Christianity. We had a lock on Christianity, we were ‘God’s modern day movement’ (yes, that’s exactly how we described ourselves.)
\nWe’ve missed the point. We’ve ‘strained out a gnat but swallowed a camel’<\/a>. Yes, baptism is an important doctrine, crucial to our slavation. Yes, we ought to teach it to everyone we study the Bible with. Yes, it is God’s plan of our forgiveness. But no, it is not the most important thing. More important than that, it’s not the <\/i>proof of one’s salvation. Even more to the point, deciding who is saved or not is not <\/i>our role. That belongs to God and God alone. God has said that he expects us to be baptised in order to fellowship with Him, but it is His perrogotive to make an exception if He so chooses. Should we count on it? No. Should we treat baptism as trivial or unnecessary? Absolutely not. It is one thing to be ignorant of God’s commands regarding baptism, it’s quite another to understand them but simply ignore them.
\nThis post springs from an interesting post <\/a>at Radical Congruency<\/a> on baptism. Aaron’s point was that it is not up to us to judge one’s salvation. We should, as Priscilla and Aquila in Acts 18, insruct other on God’s plan for baptism, but if they refuse to listen it is God’s role to decide what that rejecton means. The post lay dormant for a few months, then exploded in a flurry of comments a few days ago. Many of those new posts were judgemental, condescending and mean. What’s more, it turns out that many of these posters were not strangers from accross the country, but members of Aaron’s own congregation.<\/a> That folks who are supposedly so passionate for God can say such hurtful things – and in a ‘public’ forum to someone in their own church (would they stand up in the local mall and shout those same comments?) – tells me that perhaps they’ve missed (or forgotten) the point of Christianity.
\nAnd Aaron, in response to the pain inflicted, has decided to stop blogging for a while. What a shame.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I’ve mentioned before, the church I’m a part of is an offshoot of the Churches of Christ. One of the things that attracted me to this church was it’sRead More Missing the Point<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nMissing the Point - salguod.net<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2004\/09\/missing_the_poi.shtml\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Missing the Point - salguod.net\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As I’ve mentioned before, the church I’m a part of is an offshoot of the Churches of Christ. 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The bottom line is lots of folks do good stuff and are 'good' by any worldly standard and do so with no help at all from any church or from\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "BlogWalking"","block_context":{"text":"BlogWalking","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/blogwalking"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":319,"url":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2005\/04\/im_tired.shtml","url_meta":{"origin":198,"position":1},"title":"I’m tired …","author":"Doug Schaefer","date":"April 28, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Nothing new of significance to post, I'm just feeling pretty blah in general. Tired of trying to make a big deal of things, finding the Big Meaning in things. Work's been stressful, adding to things. 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Hat tip to Alien Soil.","rel":"","context":"In "God and Church"","block_context":{"text":"God and Church","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/god-and-church"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":123,"url":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2004\/04\/crash_helmet_ch.shtml","url_meta":{"origin":198,"position":3},"title":"Crash Helmet Christianity","author":"Doug Schaefer","date":"April 14, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"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. 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