Open my eyes to see the wonderful truths in your instructions. (Psalm 119:18)To a lot of people I am a liberal. And to a lot of people I am a flaming conservative. It depends on who you talk to. And oddly enough, you can be both.
Those who think I am liberal react to the fact that I do not accept things theological as cut and dried. I feel there is always “an other hand”. They get mad when I question their interpretation or when I do not agree with them. As one man in a church I pastored in Houston told me, “When you came I thought you were smart. But now that you are disagreeing with me, I don’t think so anymore.” When I mentioned that one did not have to speak in tongues to be godly it made another church angry. Another had a translation that was from God and all others were from the devil. Another had a certain kind of music. Another ---.
To those people I did not accept their way of looking at things so they considered me liberal. The fact that I could see both sides of an opinion was too much for them. I read things and was willing to discuss rather than accept. One young man who was a preacher near me in the Bootheel of Missouri, when I told him I was going to move, said, “Oh, no! Where will I go to talk liberal?” He had no one else in the denomination to discuss things with freely like he did with me.
And it scared people to know that I questioned what to them was cut and dried. To them all of the interpretations of the gospel had been given over 100 years ago and there was no further need to question. When I did, it scared them and made them angry.
But, on the other hand, to those who are strongly modern liberals in the church, I am a flaming conservative. I believe in the reality of God and the virgin birth. I believe in literal six days of creation. I believe in the bodily resurrection from the dead and the inspiration of the Scriptures. To them I am a horribly, irretrievably knuckle-dragging arch conservative.
Those people cannot believe that anyone who reads and thinks can possibly believe in absolutes. And I do believe in absolutes. I just do not always choose as absolute what others choose as absolute. There are things that I cannot see a Christian as doing without, certain beliefs that have to be there to really be a follower of Christ. That resurrection, the virgin birth, the scriptures – those have to be there or it is all worthless.
But the things we do, the methodology of our worship and our belief is not absolute. As long as you accept the grace of Jesus and his Lordship in your life, you are a Christian. Deny that and you have denied the very basic part of our faith and rendered it worthless.
But the stuff – worship, speaking in tongues, the translation you use, the music you sing, the way you pray, the way you preach – all that is unimportant. The service to God is what matters.
God does not live in the stuff, he lives in the heart. And when the heart is his, the stuff will be taken care of, whether those around like it or not.
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