Together with Love in Christ 2005, and an apology.
Hello all:
My family and I had the opportunity to attend the annual mass worship service between churches of Christ yesterday. It was a great experience, even though I whined the other day about not all of the churches being there.
Dr. Dennis Lynn, the President of Cascade College, my alma mater, was the em cee for the event. Mike Amour from Texas was the speaker for the worship.
Both Dr. Lynn and Mr. Amour spoke about the need for unity in the churches of Christ, as well as the need to not “speculate” about what other people and churches are doing.
The message really touched my heart. I’ve been guilty of speculating, and I will do my best not to do that anymore. I hope that you will all keep me to that. I want to apologize to any of you that I’ve hurt along the way.
While I am pretty conversative in the church, and I am what many of you would call a “true believer” in many of our doctrines, and even in our hermuntic, using this blog and reading the blogs of others has really helped me see that those in the church that are more liberal than I have a place at the table.
I praise the Lord for showing me this, and for using many of you like Greg Kendall-Ball, Travis Stanley and Gabe Peterson to do His work in this regard.
-Clarke
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October 31st, 2005 at 14:06
Clarke, I appreciate your comments. I know we may disagree on many things, you you strike me as a sincere, kind, devoted follower of Christ who strives to do what God has called him to do. I appreciate the way you struggle with the issues, and are open to hearing all sides. I greatly appreciate your blog posts and the conversations we have had. Maybe one day we will be able to meet face to face.
Thanks, brother.
October 31st, 2005 at 14:47
Hey Clarke,
It’s interesting that you bring up the topic of hermeneutics. That seems to be a central issue in many if not all of the major doctrinal controversies. I’ve been in several conversations recently related to the question of hermeneutics. Naturally, differing hermeneutics lead to different conclusions, so having a sound and consistent hermeneutic is of fundamental importance.
That being said, how should one decide which hermeneutic to use? If I evaluate a hermeneutic based on whether or not I like the conclusions to which it leads, then I am following my own wisdom rather than listening to God.
If choosing the correct hermeneutic is crucial to my salvation, then wouldn’t God give us instruction on that?
I am no expert on hermeneutics. But as someone who has thought about this for quite awhile, it seems to me that the Bible is designed to be understood in a less formal way. Elementary teachings are plain on their face value. Other teachings we understand in new light as we meditate on them in the context of real life experiences. Different people will learn from the scriptures at different rates and in different sequences. At any point in time we will have arrived at different subsets of the truth, mingled with different sets of misunderstandings and ignorance. It seems to me that this has to be anticipated as normal. It must not be contrary to what Jesus prayed for in John 17, and what Paul admonished for in 1 Cor 1.
If God had wanted to give us a checklist he certainly could have done so. Instead he seems to want us to wrestle with discovering his will over the course of our lives.
Peter admonished his readers of the peril of distorting Paul’s teachings (as well as the other scriptures). He did not rebuke people for finding them hard to understand. Maybe there is a hint of a hermeneutic there…the hermeneutic of the onion?
Alan