Daily Archives: January 23, 2006

The nature of sinfulness

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The reading for today at the One Year Bible Blog includes Matthew 15:1-28. He calls the church leaders “onto the carpet” so to speak for so burying the word of God in rules and regulations that it’s virtually unrecognisable. To me, it’s very clear that he’s saying that what you do is not nearly as important as why you do it. He’s not giving free license, of course, but …

18 But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. 19 For out of the heart comes evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. 20 These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile. (NRSV)

I think it further instructive that he complains about the Pharasees encourage people not to honor their mother and father, if it builds up the temple coffers. Yet he also, at another point, tells people to leave mother and father, take up their cross, and follow him. (At least, I think that’s how it reads. That general idea, anyway) So, in essence, he’s encouraging the very thing he charges the Pharasees with! I think this further supports the idea that the intent, much more so than any individual act, is what defines sinfulness.

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An applicable article

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I found this article in my monitoring of posts related to emerging church. However, I think a lot of what’s being said could easliy be applied to the current debate over what’s going on right now regarding Eklektos, the Harbour, and SBTC. (Sorry to those of you who read this who aren’t local to me, and have no idea what this is about)
From the article:

First and foremost, you need to understand that we do not define the emerging church based on theology. This may seem odd, but we who will admit to being part of the emerging church do not feel the need to shy away from the movement when one person makes a theological statement we completely disagree with. Some critics have called us evasive because of this, but I believe the emerging church is not evasive as much as it is held together by things other than theology.

The most common thread is a belief that the current structure of church is broken. For some, that means making changes to the current church structure. For others, like myself, the desire to see new structures for the local church come forth drives us into action and participation in the emerging church movement.

My guess is that, theologically, the author of this post would be a lot closer to the members of the SBTC, and Randy, than they would be to me. I definitely fall under that dread category of “liberal.” But I also think that he’d be interested in frank, but respectful, debate on the issue. Something that, with a few exceptions, has been sorely lacking up till now.
Randy and I disagree on quite a bit from a theological perspective. But I have a great deal of respect for him, as I think he does for me. He’s willing to challenge me, and be challenged by me, without resorting to name calling and shunning.

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Absolute knowledge of righteousness?

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Following a rather convoluted chain of links, I happend upon a post from Friday by Bob Carlton at The Corner, referring to an article in the New York Times by Charles Marsh entitled “Wayward Christian Soldiers.” The key sentence here for me, at least as it relates to our recent conflict here in Baytown surrounding Faith Harbour, Eklektos, and SBTC, is this:

The Hebrew prophets might call us to repentance, but repentance is a tough demand for a people utterly convinced of their righteousness.

Now, I don’t claim to belong to the same evangelical “camp” as Mr. Marsh, so it may not be appropriate for me to be bringing this up. But I personally find it refreshing to find a self-avowed conservative expressing this sort of opinion. With a very few exceptions, most of the conservatives that I’ve known are so convinced of their own “inside track” to God’s Truth that they’re closed off to any other position.

There’s nothing wrong with believing, to the core of your being, that your convictions are right. In fact, that’s pretty much the definition of a conviction. But I think it the hight of hubris to be absolutely closed to the idea that those convictions might need to be altered at some point in time. I may be biased by the fact that this is my wife speaking, but I think that both sides of this debate could use a healthy dose of the humility and vulnerability shown by her post.

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