Our Love for God is Seen in How Much We Love
the Person We Like the Least
~ Jeff Bauer ~the Person We Like the Least
We are living in a world that is experiencing enormous change due to immense pressure. We experience this politically as we see changes in the Congress and the Supreme Court. We experience this culturally as we see laws and mores adapt and adjust in regards to sexuality. We sometimes call this pressure 'the move toward conservatism or progressivism.'
There is also pressure being exerted upon the church from the inside and outside. But either way, the church is responding as it always has since its inception.
Today, there is an unbalanced impetus from inside the church for a theology of social justice and tolerance of other religions. The response has been a demand for biblical orthodoxy that seeks to reject the "innovative and extreme" ideas.
There has also been pressure from outside the church demanding that a modern, enlightened, and tolerant view of sexuality be employed, and if the church does not capitulate its outdated views then it must be branded as propagating hate speech and labeled hypocritical with its ideas and application of "love." This has caused a reaction toward fundamentalism. Although many understand "Fundamentalists" as 'people who have too little fun, too much dam and not enough mental;' I prefer the concept of holding to the fundamental truths of the Bible. After all, the Bible is inspired by God. (II Tim. 3:16; II Peter 1:20-21)
And that is why pressure from inside the faith or from the world outside the faith must be examined and engaged with, by speaking the truth with love. We often do one at the expense of the other. But Jesus flexed the muscles of both conviction and compassion; the conviction of God's perfect truth and compassion toward imperfect people.
Serving Him with you
Until He comes for us,
Fred