Now I'm scared. AFter posting that rant about profound thoughts, I now have to live up to the bar I just set! *laughs* Okay, I can do this! Profound thoughts...
Ryan and his wife had me over to dinner and a movie on Friday. After the movie we started talking about all sorts of different subjects. Ryan thinks deeply and we have some very interesting conversations. One of the concepts/ideas/things we talked about was whether you had to agree with everything a person believed in order to receive knowledge or ministry from them.
One of the examples I was playing devil's advocate with was what if I was a pastor who didn't think abortion was wrong, say in the first trimestor. Would you be able to receive my ministry once you found out about it? Or another example would be that I'm Baptist or Lutheran or whateve and don't believe in the gifts of the Spirit, yet I have a great grasp of the Bible, etc. Can you receive a teaching from me? How about if I didn't believe in a literal 6 day creation? Or take C.S. Lewis - I have heard that he was a Theistic Evolutionist. Now in his case, we don't know how much brain power he put into researching that and from what I know, it really doesn't permiate his writings. Just because I don't believe in Theistic Evolution doesn't mean I have to throw out everything he says.
So can we apply that to the pro-choice pastor? The liberal preacher? Where do we draw the line?
With the abortion issue, I would have some problems sitting under a pastor who didn't believe in the sanctity of life. After discussing it with him and if I discover he won't consider other views, I'd be leaning towards leaving his church.
My focus in discussing this is more to draw a line and know where the line is going to be, than to say that such and such is wrong. What are the issues that you can let go and what are the ones that totally discredit a person from speaking into your life? I've had to start thinking about this with all the different viewpoints I receive here in college. I have my standards and even if they are crossed I can weed out the good from the bad.
So there's my profound thought for the day or week or such.
Ryan and his wife had me over to dinner and a movie on Friday. After the movie we started talking about all sorts of different subjects. Ryan thinks deeply and we have some very interesting conversations. One of the concepts/ideas/things we talked about was whether you had to agree with everything a person believed in order to receive knowledge or ministry from them.
One of the examples I was playing devil's advocate with was what if I was a pastor who didn't think abortion was wrong, say in the first trimestor. Would you be able to receive my ministry once you found out about it? Or another example would be that I'm Baptist or Lutheran or whateve and don't believe in the gifts of the Spirit, yet I have a great grasp of the Bible, etc. Can you receive a teaching from me? How about if I didn't believe in a literal 6 day creation? Or take C.S. Lewis - I have heard that he was a Theistic Evolutionist. Now in his case, we don't know how much brain power he put into researching that and from what I know, it really doesn't permiate his writings. Just because I don't believe in Theistic Evolution doesn't mean I have to throw out everything he says.
So can we apply that to the pro-choice pastor? The liberal preacher? Where do we draw the line?
With the abortion issue, I would have some problems sitting under a pastor who didn't believe in the sanctity of life. After discussing it with him and if I discover he won't consider other views, I'd be leaning towards leaving his church.
My focus in discussing this is more to draw a line and know where the line is going to be, than to say that such and such is wrong. What are the issues that you can let go and what are the ones that totally discredit a person from speaking into your life? I've had to start thinking about this with all the different viewpoints I receive here in college. I have my standards and even if they are crossed I can weed out the good from the bad.
So there's my profound thought for the day or week or such.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home