Belief Is Easily Possible And Results In Endless Benefits
I’ve been a Christian for decades – more than I care to share – and I’ve spent a lot of time in church services, Bible studies, and general conversations with other Christians. The topics were always related to God, the Bible, theology, Christian living, and the like.
More recently, politics has dominated those conversations and it’s changed the perspective a lot. Now, favored political candidates are as popular as Moses and David. The opposition, of course, is worse than Pharaoh.
Participating in the electoral process is right up there with daily devotions. If you don’t vote you’re backslidden. Even worse, if you vote for the wrong candidate you’ve spurned the will of God. Blasphemous!
When the candidate of choice wins office, it’s the emotional equivalent of crossing the Red Sea!
That line of thinking is problematic. You can’t synthesize government and religion. The purpose of one is totally different to the purpose of the other. The two will never fully mesh.
The church is commissioned to evangelize the world. The government is commissioned to manage it. Neither is commissioned to make it absolutely right. They act separately and for different reasons.
We obey the church not because we have to but because it is supposed to represent the voice of wisdom and reason. Or, that’s the hope. There’s no guarantee. Several churches and church leaders (all denominations) have gone off the deep end (adultery, pedophilia, embezzlement, etc.).
Those that don’t go quite that far can still border on the moronic and we should be careful enough not to follow.
Belief Exercises Reason
No names mentioned but several years ago I came across an individual who was instructed by one of his church’s elders (the prophet) that God wanted him to marry a certain person. The church’s teaching was that elders speak directly from God so he complied.
He married the young lass and after several years of intentional effort, the relationship never gelled. It was then they realized that God had nothing to do with it.
I wasn’t involved in counseling that particular situation.
All of that is to say that obedience should be taken with a grain of salt. Instead of obeying one person or one tradition, we should learn how to ascertain collective wisdom. Speak to many people and gain a broad understanding of the issues.
There is an art or skill to learning how to do that and the discussion could be quite long but there is no space for it in this post.
From a parenting perspective, however, instead of teaching your kids to do what you say, teach them to think about the “whats” and “whys” of their choices before imposing commands. They’ll be better served in the future.
But you’ll need to be ready for the unexpected. They may choose something different to what you planned and you need to be big enough to live with that.
Back to my line of thought. [Read more…] about 12 Reasons Belief Beats Politics
