In “other” Words: Who and What is Leading YOU?

“Faith never knows where it is being led, but it loves and knows the One who is lead­ing.“
~ Oswald Chambers ~I tried to write this post last week, but as I men­tioned in my Thank­ful Thurs­day entry, Blog­ger then sent it to the abyss.

I’ve been work­ing on it ever since and dare say that it is the most dif­fi­cult writ­ing I have done in a long, long time. But I also feel that it is per­haps the most impor­tant writ­ing I have done in a long, long time.

Why am I telling you this? Because I want you to demon­strate a for­giv­ing and char­i­ta­ble spirit as you read because my efforts are surely less than per­fect, but heart-felt nonethe­less.I start by ask­ing you to pause for a moment, take a deep breath and ask your­self if you, as a per­son of faith, can ever imag­ine your­self writ­ing any of the fol­low­ing to or about a fel­low blog­ger and pro­fessed Chris­t­ian:

[B]oth [posts] were so full of such bit­ter­ness, poor logic, and bad the­ol­ogy that I really didn’t peruse her entire blog. I didn’t want to.

The fruits of the Spirit are “love, joy, peace, patience, good­ness, kind­ness, gen­tle­ness, and self-control.” I find lit­tle of that in what she chooses to show in her writ­ings. I fear that if she tested the Spirit that she says is guid­ing her, that it would prove to be of Satan, not of God.

And I am not uninformed…to this day, I have read three of her posts all telling the same story, and know­ing Scrip­ture, it is clear that her stance is unscrip­tural, unlutheran, and not Chris­t­ian in the least — and full of bit­ter­ness and superficiality.
I am sick of to death of imma­ture “Chris­tians” who would sac­ri­fice the fel­low­ship of all believ­ers because they are hurt by what some­one SAID to them, when peo­ple are dying for their faith, enslaved for their faith, and per­se­cuted for their faith,daily. Grow up.My prayers that the real Holy Spirit some­day brings her to true faith and repen­tance still stand.Those are just four very short excerpts from much longer e-mails, posts and com­ments writ­ten to and about me by a female blog­ger who pro­fesses the name of Christ Jesus. More specif­i­cally, the woman claims to be the wife of a cur­rently employed pastor.To sum­ma­rize, this is what she said to/about me:

1. I am bit­ter.
2. I am illog­i­cal.
3. I am the­o­log­i­cally illit­er­ate.
4. I am fol­low­ing Satan, not the Divine.
5. I am not a Chris­t­ian. In fact, she essen­tially told me that twice: First by telling me that my “stance” is not founded upon Chris­t­ian prin­ci­ples and again by refer­ring to me as a “Chris­t­ian,” using quo­ta­tion marks to indi­cate her belief that I am not really a Chris­t­ian.
6. I have no true faith.
7. I have not repented for what­ever sins I have, in her esti­ma­tion, committed.

Whew! That’s quite an inven­tory of shortcomings.

What have you con­cluded? Could or would you ever say or write such state­ments to or about another human being? If so, under what cir­cum­stances can you imag­ine your­self doing so? If not, why not? What would pre­clude you from mak­ing such remarks? Per­sonal char­ac­ter­is­tics such as shy­ness? Insuf­fi­cient con­fi­dence in your Scrip­tural prowess? Or …?

I invite and will wel­come your can­did feedback.

I cre­ated this blog shortly after I was com­pelled to leave the insti­tu­tional church upon reach­ing the painful and ugly real­iza­tion that evil was dwelling in that con­gre­ga­tion and fuel­ing the behav­ior of the pas­tor and some of those who fol­lowed him and did his bid­ding. Writ­ing was and is a ther­a­peu­tic mech­a­nism by which to eval­u­ate, clar­ify and give voice to my feel­ings and opin­ions … and con­tinue the process of empow­er­ment I began when I found the courage to turn my back on orga­nized reli­gion, finally acknowl­edg­ing my life­long per­cep­tion and under­stand­ing of myself as a very square peg try­ing by any means pos­si­ble to fit into a decid­edly round hole.

I did not start blog­ging to win a pop­u­lar­ity con­test. I don’t aspire to hav­ing the most heav­ily traf­ficked blog on the Inter­net or win­ning any awards. I’m extremely grate­ful that any­one at all reads what I write.

I have had the plea­sure of inter­act­ing with many other blog­gers who declare them­selves to be peo­ple of faith and thor­oughly enjoy read­ing what those folks have to say each week. I am enriched by their pres­ence here in cyberspace.

I haven’t posted much in the past week because, although I stated pub­licly that I had no inten­tion of giv­ing up blog­ging about my faith and spir­i­tu­al­ity, in pri­vate, I have been con­tem­plat­ing just that. How­ever, as usual, the Holy Spirit isn’t hav­ing it and has told me sev­eral times by dif­fer­ent means that I am meant to forge on.

One of those mech­a­nisms was Rob Witham’s elo­quent post, “Reli­gious Tol­er­ance as Chris­t­ian Value.” The text upon which he based his arti­cle, Romans 14:1–13, spoke vol­umes to me (as did this week’s quote) –

Wel­come those who are weak in faith, but not for the pur­pose of quar­rel­ing over opin­ions … Who are you to pass judg­ment on ser­vants of another? It is before their own lord that they stand or fall. And they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand … Let us there­fore no longer pass judg­ment on one another, but resolve instead never to put a stum­bling block or hin­drance in the way of another.

I do not always suc­ceed, obvi­ously, but I try each day to live my live in con­for­mity with these guidelines:

But I say to you who hear, love your ene­mies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mis­treat you. Who­ever hits you on the cheek, offer him the other also; … Treat oth­ers the same way you want them to treat you. If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sin­ners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sin­ners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sin­ners lend to sin­ners in order to receive back the same amount. But love your ene­mies, and do good, and lend, expect­ing noth­ing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He Him­self is kind to ungrate­ful and evil men. Be mer­ci­ful, just as your Father is mer­ci­ful.Do not judge, and you will not be judged; and do not con­demn, and you will not be con­demned; par­don, and you will be pardoned.

Luke 6:27–37

When I responded to the poster in ques­tion, I was admit­tedly angry. She deleted my entire com­ment from her blog, but part of what I said to her was this:

You have no right to make such state­ments about other Chris­tians. None. When you do so, you demon­strate to the athe­ists and agnos­tics of the world why they should have noth­ing to do with so-called ‘God-fearing Chris­tians’ who are inca­pable of dis­play­ing love and accep­tance to each other, not to men­tion degrad­ing the name of the Sav­ior you claim to wor­ship. SHAME ON YOU.

She left only her own com­ments on her blog for oth­ers to read, includ­ing this passage:

God does give us the right and the respon­si­bil­ity to judge things accord­ing to Scrip­ture, just not to think that our works are more right­eous than those others.“For there are many insub­or­di­nate, both the talk­ers and deceivers … whose mouths must be stopped who sub­vert whole house­holds, teach­ing things which they ought not for the sake of dis­hon­est gain. One of them, a prophet of their own said “Cre­tans are always liars, evil beasts, and lazy glut­tons.” (Sounds a lot how you describe Chris­tians who actu­ally believe what Scrip­ture teaches about the church)

“This tes­ti­mony is true. There­fore, rebuke them sharply that they may be sound in the faith, not giv­ing heed to Jew­ish fables and com­mand­ments of men who turn from the truth. To the pure all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbe­liev­ing noth­ing is pure; but even their mind and con­science are defiled. They pro­fess to know God but in works they deny Him, being abom­inable, dis­obe­di­ent, and dis­qual­i­fied for every good work.” Titus 1:10–16

The Bible must be read and cited con­sis­tent with its his­tor­i­cal and the­o­log­i­cal con­text. So let’s exam­ine the verse quoted by the pastor’s wife.

Paul’s let­ter to Titus par­al­lels his mes­sage in 1 Tim­o­thy. Titus was a Greek whom Paul him­self con­verted (Titus 1:4). Paul sent him on a mis­sion to Corinth and, when he returned, sent him back to help the Corinthian con­gre­ga­tion col­lect offer­ings for the poor in Jerusalem. When Paul was released after being impris­oned in Rome for the first time, he put Titus in charge of the church on Crete (Titus 1:5) and the last infor­ma­tion known about him is that he went to Dal­ma­tia, pre­sum­ably to do fur­ther mis­sion work (2 Tim­o­thy 4:10).

Titus is referred to by Bible schol­ars as a “Pas­toral” book, addressed to Titus to pre­pare him for his respon­si­bil­i­ties run­ning the church. It is not entirely clear why, hav­ing just seen Titus and pre­sum­ably hav­ing dis­cussed these mat­ters in per­son, he felt it nec­es­sary to write him with such detailed infor­ma­tion con­cern­ing qual­i­fi­ca­tions for those in the church who would hold offices and posi­tions of lead­er­ship. Some schol­ars spec­u­late that the let­ters were meant to strengthen Titus and Timothy’s posi­tion as his per­sonal rep­re­sen­ta­tives, exem­pli­fied by sug­ges­tions in Titus that the work­ing con­di­tions on Crete were less than ideal. The let­ters are con­sid­ered prac­ti­cal in their approach in com­par­i­son to Paul’s the­o­log­i­cal treatises.

The first third of the let­ter to Titus dealt with “insub­or­di­nate per­sons, empty talk­ers and Judaiz­ing deceivers who upset whole fam­i­lies and taught their here­sies merely to make money.” Specif­i­cally, they claimed to be teach­ers of the Law, but did not under­stand its true mean­ing and its role in the life of Chris­tians. Among the issues about which false teach­ing had been prac­ticed were cir­cum­ci­sion, mar­riage and the eat­ing of cer­tain foods. In par­tic­u­lar, the first chap­ter of Titus was intended to impart advice about the req­ui­site qual­i­fi­ca­tions for bish­ops, elders and deacons.

Paul’s words to Titus were never intended to be used by one Chris­t­ian as a sword with which to attack and tear down another Chris­t­ian. More impor­tantly, they were never meant to jus­tify an ad hominem attack upon another Christian.

And if you exam­ine the words of the pastor’s wife care­fully, you will see that all she has done is attack me on the most per­sonal lev­els, see­ing fit to ques­tion my faith, my abil­ity to dis­cern mes­sages from spir­its and demons, whether or not I have a con­trite heart and, indeed, my very belief in Jesus Christ.

She could have dis­agreed with my view­points, inter­pre­ta­tions of Scrip­ture, faith prac­tices and writ­ings on sub­ject top­ics by engag­ing in civil dis­course, informed intel­lec­tual debate, rea­soned dis­cus­sion, but she chose not to. In fact, I extended a spe­cial invi­ta­tion to her. I e-mailed her my post announc­ing “Guest Blog­gers on the Hori­zon,” reach­ing out to her to ask that she par­tic­i­pate so that we could engage in a mean­ing­ful dia­logue here. Pre­dictably, she declined, cit­ing time fac­tors even though I made clear that guests can sub­mit arti­cles they have already pub­lished on their own blogs. (She said: “I have a blog, I don’t have enough time to post on my blog. That being the case, I’m not going to post on some­one else’s. I hope that it is a good expe­ri­ence for you.”)

The pastor’s wife made one cor­rect state­ment, but then failed to behave in con­for­mity with it: “God does give us the right and the respon­si­bil­ity to judge things accord­ing to Scrip­ture” [empha­sis added]. Things.

The Divine does not give us the right to judge other human beings.

I did not know when I started this blog where my faith would lead me. But I know who and what takes the lead in all aspects of my life, includ­ing my writ­ing here. I know. And the Divine knows. That’s all that mat­ters.

I have no idea what the pastor’s wife hoped to accom­plish with her hate­ful words. Did she think that she could change my mind about some aspect of faith dis­cussed here? Or was she try­ing to reas­sure her­self? I’ll never know what moti­vated her.

What I do know is that her behav­ior strength­ened and fur­ther solid­i­fied my faith, my con­vic­tions, my belief is the cor­rect­ness of my choices. When we are tested, we grow more stead­fast and determined.

On the Hori­zon was envi­sioned and founded to be a safe place to exchange view­points. It was con­ceived and launched in response to close-mindedness; con­strained, con­ven­tional and lim­ited think­ing; and the sys­tem­atic exclu­sion of per­sons who refused to go along with “group think,” instead espous­ing their own rea­soned opin­ions. It will be noth­ing less.

I don’t know where my faith will take me from here. Per­haps I am writ­ing in a vac­uum and no one is read­ing my words. Per­haps you will not return after read­ing this arti­cle. Per­haps you nod­ding your head in agree­ment as you read this, but will not reach out and leave a com­ment. None of that really mat­ters because it is the Holy Spirit’s voice that I hear and, at least for now, it is say­ing “Carry on, faith­ful ser­vant.” So that is what I plan to do. I hope that you will join me.

“Let us there­fore no longer pass judg­ment on one another, but resolve instead never to put a stum­bling block or hin­drance in the way of another.”

Track­posted to Perri Nelson’s Web­site, The Vir­tu­ous Repub­lic, Big Dog’s Weblog, The Amboy Times, Lean­ing Straight Up, Pur­su­ing Holi­ness, Ade­line and Hazel, Pet’s Gar­den Blog, Rightlinx, third world county, Woman Honor Thy­self, stikN­stein… has no mercy, Pirate’s Cove, Nuke’s news and views, The Pink Flamingo, Church and State, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, , The Ran­dom Yak, A Blog For All, 123beta, guer­rilla radio, DeMe­di­a­cratic Nation, Maggie’s Note­book, Adam’s Blog, Weblog­gin, Cao’s Blog, MY Vast Right Wing Con­spir­acy, Phas­tidio.net, The Bull­win­kle Blog, Col­lo­quium, Con­ser­v­a­tive Cat, Jo’s Café, Diary of the Mad Pigeon, Fault­line USA, The Crazy Rants of Saman­tha Burns, The World Accord­ing to Carl, Blue Star Chron­i­cles, Gulf Coast Hur­ri­cane Tracker, and Gone Hol­ly­wood, thanks to Link­fest Haven Deluxe.

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