the G sides

My blog friend Shawn threw this down on his blog today. And I was going to comment on his blog but then I started thinking - is it really fair for me to loving critique my heritage on someone else’s blog?

I don’t think so.

First of all he is right. (Didn’t read the link did you? ha ha…it’s short, go read it then come back…)

I was in the Southern Baptist Convention on my 7th day of creation, I think (Mom - can you verify that?). I want to start off by saying that because of those “died in the wool Southern Baptists”

• I love missions (all people in all places need Jesus)
• the Bible (Jesus still speaks to us)
• giving (It’s not your money, it’s God’s)
• sharing my story (your transformed life God will use).

I became a prodigal SBC on April 15th, 2002 - my first day here at Grace Church.

Where ‘we’ have failed - in my humble opinion - is in the ‘greatest of these.’ Love. For some reason we have a hard time communicating truth with love. Let me get real specific - we flesh out love as controlling and conforming as opposed to freeing and transforming.

I was a first year seminary student at Southwestern the day Dilday was fired. It was beyond a public relations nightmare, it was ungodly. Accusations of liberalism are still thrown at the man today. Was he? I don’t know. I just know he was made out to be the spawn of Satan to the press. We were told that if he went unchecked, he would ruin the entire convention for all of eternity. (Funny…thought God was sovereign and our purpose was the kingdom, not the convention, but I digress) He was fired in the middle of the school year, chewed up and spit out.

Even if the man questioned the diety of Christ, he didn’t deserve the treatment he got.

And that reaction has been transferred over and over again - on a macro level - on issues that I’m not sure the culture is even dealing with. Stuff like - hymns or choruses? Organ or fenders? Women or men teachers? Sunday School or Life Groups? Pews or chairs? Pulpit or music stand? Ties or T-shirts?

And on the list of things that the culture is dealing with - homosexuality, abortion, reality of the spiritual world - we seemed to communicate more heat than fire, more hate and disdain than compassion, more opinions than truth wrapped in flesh and love.

And the division list just goes on and on and on.

From one who was on the inside, I got tired of dealing with the hate, anger, and emotion as opposed to lifewalking through the issues. The decree given was those in leadership had it figured out, the ‘common people’ didn’t. If there was disagreement, love meant drawing lines and choosing sides, not dialogue and charity to live with the tension.

We seemed to have misplaced “the greatest of these.”

I wonder if in the journey of protecting the truth, we forgot that Truth is a person who needs little protection.

“They will know you are mine by how you love…”