daily java

Daily Java: “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.” 1 John 3:16.

Nowhere does the Bible tell us that we will be judged on our doctrine, yet that is what people use as a measure. When it came to choosing between doctrine and human empathy, Jesus always chose the love route. And he says that is the measure of our following him, too.

I guess the problem is that it is so easy to use doctrine as a measure. Almost every denomination as it starts calls itself a unity movement. And tells people they want to base their unity on love.

The problem comes when the denomination has been around for a while. It begins to bureaucratize and becomes set in its ways. The desire for unity is submerged in the desire for conformity to their standards.

That is because they begin to choose their standards. And after they have chosen them, they feel the need to justify them and finally to defend them.

It really doesn’t matter whether the standards are biblical or not, they are their standards and they are proud of them.

Before long, whole committees are set up to tell who can and can’t teach those standards and entire libraries are compiled with books defending the standards. People begin to identify, not with Jesus, but with the standards. “My church doesn’t believe in…” or “my church says…”

When the church becomes the arbiter of what is right and wrong, the church has become wrong. We do not have the right biblically to set up parameters of faith or action. If the Bible doesn’t speak on it, it has to be up to our conscience. It is never up to a committee, no matter how well meaning they may be.

I suppose the pendulum swings both ways. Some churches decided too many things as orthodox in the name of purity while others let go of too much in the name of compromise.

Both are wrong.

Jesus said that the defining action of a Christian, a Christ-follower, a disciple – whatever you may call it – is love.

And that is scary to some. They feel they need parameters, they need limits. But part of our growing in Christian love is to grow beyond the need for limits. The apostle Paul was one who grew to realize that there was a world greater than anything he had seen. He came from strict Judaism to a realization that all are welcomed into God’s kingdom, no matter the race or social standing or even sex.

He wrote: “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself in love” (Galatians 5:6). Quite a statement coming from one who was “as for legalistic righteousness, faultless” (Philippians 3:6).

I grew up in a very restrictive church, one that felt obligated to tell people how to worship and when they could be saved, how to behave – several things that many churches do also. I even ministered to those churches for 20 years. When I came out into the Disciples of Christ as a pastor, I asked my area minister how to know what was DOC beliefs. He said, and I remember it to this day, “There is no one to tell you that this is orthodoxy and that is heresy.” That opened up a window into what soon became a tremendous desire to learn more.

I realize that the denomination meant it differently than I took it. he meant there is no one to tell me I am wrong and I can do whatever I want.

But I saw it as the fact that I could come to God on my own terms, and not have to depend on a denomination to tell me what I could do.

It was liberating.

A friend once told me that if he erred in his ministry, it would be on the side of love, not doctrine. I rejected that when I heard it, but soon realized that it was absolutely true.

After all, it was what Jesus did.

And he is my Lord.