I was at the Christian bookstore the other day and picked up this book called "Free To Disagree" by John Wecks. The subtitle, "Moving Beyond the Arguments Over Christian Liberty" was more so what caught my eye. As I read through it this past week it made me aware of so many situations that are avoided because we want to avoid conflict, when there is a perfectly Biblical way to deal with these areas. The author calls them "neutral issues." They are issues like length of hair, style of dress, food and drink, and types of recreation. He says so many good things but what I think he really wants to get across to the reader is that there are so many issues that are neutral, even to God, yet we as believers put way too much of our focus on them. Churches split because they can't decide on style of worship, fellow believers judge one another because one feels it is OK to dance and the other does not. All this is going on while many of the church members are gossiping and having affairs. I realized how often I find myself angry towards, or judging people in my own church body for things like music, drinks, clothing style, and communicating style. I really need to become more aware of the difference between issues which are neutral and issues which are taught clearly in the Bible. The biggest thing is that when we discuss neutral issues we have to not allow ourselves to become angry just because someone else doesn't hold the same opinion as us. There are many things that, as a believer, I am free to participate in although I must take into consideration the weaker believer who may be caused to stumble by my doing something which is completely fine with my conscience. It was a challenging and enlightening book, I highlighted a ton of things which means I still only retained maybe 3% of the whole book but it was so good!
So about that belly dancing class I've been wanting to sign up for...:) hehe
2 comments:
HAHA actually when I took my biking class at Amway, I could chose between that or a belly dancing class! Of all things for Amway's fitness facility to offer! I thought that was funny, so that's what brought it to mind;)
that book sounds like it has a lot of good stuff in it. i keep thinking about the one part i read when i was flipping thru it, where it made a good point that being "offended" means being deeply hurt (physically or emotionally) by someone's actions, and the way people use it these days is incorrect. so many people like to say "well that offends me, so don't do it", especially regarding what you mentioned - drinking, dancing, style of worship, etc...where really, it's not offending them. they just don't like it. but it doesn't truly offend them.
good stuff. but my break time ended so i gotta go.
~jen~
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