Friday, August 21, 2009
Flaws
Just to keep thinking about the question of leaving your church in a way which is, frankly, more substantive than throwing rocks at people who probably don't like you and whom you probably don't like, let's think about this for the weekend:
Are there any important flaws in your theology? If you say "no" to that question I have two suggestions for you which I think you have never considered:
[1] You have probably not considered your theology very significantly if you can't see any inconsistencies in it. That doesn't mean you're a heretic or an idiot: it just means that maybe you should think harder about the things you think are important -- especially when you say they are important enough to split from your local church over.
[2] Someone else of the same stripe could, without some deeper consideration, use those flaws you yourself cannot see in your theology to name you as a reason to leave your church. Someone might fault you for your inexplicable inability to connect the Abrahamic covenant to the New Covenant; someone else might find your view of the history of the world a little too-simply diagrammed, or perhaps not robustly diagramed, and thereby expell you from orthodoxy for adding to or subtracting from Scripture.
And I say this to point something out to you: while there is no question that you shouldn't join or stay joined to a Mormon church or a rank Pelagian cult like Unitarianism, you yourself are not actually a prize catch in the theological sea. You're a smelly little sinner who is getting fished out of your stinky little pond by a fisherman who has chosen to save you out of His love and kindness and not because your are some kind of Rainbow Fish or a prize-winning theological Sea Bass.
It shouldn't be a surprize that you're in a fishbowl now with other smelly little fish. But it should cause you to rejoice -- and love the ones the fisherman has saved with you. Together.
Be in the Fisherman's fishbowl with his school of fish on His day this week, and thank Him that you're His smelly little fish. And so are they.
Are there any important flaws in your theology? If you say "no" to that question I have two suggestions for you which I think you have never considered:
[1] You have probably not considered your theology very significantly if you can't see any inconsistencies in it. That doesn't mean you're a heretic or an idiot: it just means that maybe you should think harder about the things you think are important -- especially when you say they are important enough to split from your local church over.
[2] Someone else of the same stripe could, without some deeper consideration, use those flaws you yourself cannot see in your theology to name you as a reason to leave your church. Someone might fault you for your inexplicable inability to connect the Abrahamic covenant to the New Covenant; someone else might find your view of the history of the world a little too-simply diagrammed, or perhaps not robustly diagramed, and thereby expell you from orthodoxy for adding to or subtracting from Scripture.
And I say this to point something out to you: while there is no question that you shouldn't join or stay joined to a Mormon church or a rank Pelagian cult like Unitarianism, you yourself are not actually a prize catch in the theological sea. You're a smelly little sinner who is getting fished out of your stinky little pond by a fisherman who has chosen to save you out of His love and kindness and not because your are some kind of Rainbow Fish or a prize-winning theological Sea Bass.
It shouldn't be a surprize that you're in a fishbowl now with other smelly little fish. But it should cause you to rejoice -- and love the ones the fisherman has saved with you. Together.
Be in the Fisherman's fishbowl with his school of fish on His day this week, and thank Him that you're His smelly little fish. And so are they.