Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Overconcerned with Not Majoring on the Minors?

I taught a class at our church during the month of August. It was called "My Conviction Could Beat Up Your Conviction."
It was all about being gracious toward others when we disagree on non-essential matters of the Christian faith. It was a clever revisiting of the long-used expression: Don't Major on the Minors. It was a wonderful class. There was a lot of response; positive and negative, liberating and frustrating, calm and heated. It was beneficial to many, though, to consider how we interact with people even if we genuinely believe they are incorrect in things that God says are on the lesser scale of importance.
Is it possible of my generation, though, that we are so concerned with this principle (not majoring on the minors) that we overdo it? Are we so laid-back and desiring peace that we cheapen things that should be further on the MAJOR scale? Are we following a Jesus-like model of grace, or are we just lazy and accomodating? Hmmm. Maybe we need to not give ourselves too much credit for being gracious if we are just indulging the flesh and not being bold.
I am not saying that we need to swing back to fighting about all kinds of gray areas. I am saying that we have something good here, in that we seem to be revisiting what is major and what is not. Still, we could easily fall off the other side of the horse and end up standing for nothing. That is equally terrifying as it would be to fight and kill for the wrong thing.

Which side are you leaning on?

2 Comments:

At 9:55 AM, Blogger Sarah said...

Hey Dan, interesting thoughts. Daren and I were just talking about this subject b/c our pastor was talking about being forgiving and welcoming back sinners. Daren said, "I don't know if that's the problem of many American Christians, especially the ones at our church." Our church is very young and one of the pastors loves to focus forgiveness and peace and not on dealing with sin. Anyway, interesting discussion.

 
At 1:46 PM, Blogger Dan Franklin said...

Good thought to both of you. I heard one pastor pose the question, "Can we really offer true forgiveness if we do not acknowledge the horror of sin.?"

 

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