A Christiaan’s View of 2022 - #6
Yet, we somehow can’t stop polarizing, politicizing and picking winners and losers.
The Chasm continues to widen - we even quote The Bible to substantiate and solidify our particular points and further underline our deep convictions on the pandemic, vaccinations and Health Care restrictions and lockdowns.
We have made camps to define us and drawn lines to divide us. The carnal camps at Corinth have become contemporary once more …
I am for Fauci, I am for Freedom, I am for science, I am for Scriptures…
Are we getting too smug and too “set”, too dogmatic and too dictatorial.
We just run to our corners and come out fighting.
But is there not something wrong with all this? In the words of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians: Is there not a more excellent way?
I write this without acrimony, anger or agenda.
We are not “children playing in the street” Matthew 11:15-19
We are people of the kingdom; we are living in the Noah generation at the end of an age …
I fear that we are losing sight of the real fight!
Are we so busy climbing the ladder of persuasion, personal agenda and public opinion that we don’t realize the ladder is leaning on the wrong wall?
2022 cannot become the year that marks the Church’s worst nightmare - FRATRICIDE -
An encore of Cain and ABEL - when we sacrifice “Family” on the altar of “I’m right…You’re wrong!”
We need to look past the lockdowns. We need to take back the power that we’ve given to the vaccinations to change our views, values and virtues of grace and kindness.
The vocabulary has become too venomous, the rhetoric too recriminating …
We must reject the human tendency to create tribal identity - wear labels that are exclusive, extreme and exasperating.
Labels that will continue to divide and defeat the purpose of God’s kingdom long after the pandemic has passed.
Who stands to lose the most as a result of the rancor between Believers?
The answer differs depending on the depth in we want to explore.
On one level - the church will lose its credibility before the world.
On another level - the world will lose the central message of the Gospel - God’s love.
1 John 4:20-21
If a man says, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, that he who loveth God love his brother also.
As I close this pastoral post let me invite each of us to consider this Pauline text:
Ephesians 5:15-17 ASV
Look therefore carefully how ye walk, not as unwise, but as wise; redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Wherefore be ye not foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.
BECAUSE OF HIM
Randy B. Leavitt
Pastor