Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Who Is a Christian?

Carrie writes a blog called “Of Christian Women,” which is linked here. I tried to leave a comment on this entry, but I couldn’t because I have joined the Beta Blogger world, and Carrie has not done that yet. You can’t go back and forth between Blogger and Beta Blogger worlds, apparently.

This is part of the interesting entry that Carrie wrote today:

There were some commenters in my post on assurance who are still unconvinced of the permanence of salvation. I wonder how many verses it would take to convince them.

Unfortunately, no matter how many verses I post or how many arguments I make, there are simply people who do not “get it”. Up until now I think I assumed that people who don’t “get it” had never read the Bible, but clearly there are people who know their Bible and yet still miss the boat on the basic Gospel message. And these people come in all kinds of flavors. You will see the academic scholarly types on some Discovery Channel show who have a PhD in New Testament studies but clearly don’t understand the Gospel message.

How do I know this? Because they always have some weird theory to downplay the facts of the Bible. Some way to explain away God.

What I wanted to write to her in a comment was this:

I believe that much debating and arguing over doctrine is a basic distraction from our calling as Christians. I believe we are called to love each other and to be one body in Christ. In John 17:20-23, Jesus prayed that all his believers might be one, “Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” He prayed that we might come to complete unity in him.

Argument is popular today; it gives us an adrenalin rush and is intellectually stimulating. But I can testify that it is not possible to browbeat someone into accepting Christ. The Holy Spirit does it, through gentle prodding and leading. We are supposed to sow the seeds, and he waters them.

We are responsible to point out the truth in love. But we are not responsible for what people do with that truth.

5 comments:

Barbara said...

I'm disappointed in beta-blogger when I chose layouts, to get the labels.Didn't realize it would cost me so much - comments on other sites, and also Haloscan's trackbacks, which I used all the time.

But, I agree with you on your answer to 'arguing' about the Word. I've been down that road so many times. They grill you until you feel like you are a 'burned hamburger', trying to get you to come over to their side of believing. I love II Tim 2:15. Nobody else is going to make my path to God - it's between HIM and ME.

Tyson said...

Ah, but argumentative controversy is what makes one's blog popular!

;-P

Judy Callarman, Scrabble Has-Been said...

Yes, therein lies the appeal, I fear.

I sensed a little hurt in one of her commentors (or however you spell that)when she had been pretty direct about saying that Catholics have false doctrines--that's in this linked entry. It seems to me that such talk is mostly divisive. As such, it serves little good purpose, in my opinion.

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