Galatians 2:1-10
Andy and I have been looking for a church in Winston-Salem,
and the process is awful. I hate
it. I was actually talking to a friend
about it yesterday, and she made such a great point. She said, “Don’t you feel terrible when you
are trying to find a church? I mean, you
are essentially church shopping – making judgments and evaluating
programs. It makes you feel awful.” This friend perfectly put into words what I
hate about the process of finding a new church.
It does make me feel terrible. We
have visited four different churches now as we have been here a month, and
honestly, it is clear they all have a heart for God and love the Lord. I can see they are full of wonderful, sincere
people. None of them have had quite the
things I’ve wanted in a community, but all of them would be places we could
find the Lord and meet Christian friends, so the fact that we are still
weighing pros and cons and looking feels terrible!
This week, Andy and I had a lunch date where we discussed
our church search again. There is a
certain denomination in Winston that gets recommended over and over. I’m usually not picky about
denominations. My mom’s family is mostly
Catholic, I was raised Methodist but basically grew up going to Baptist
programs and youth group, and our church in Charlotte was
non-denominational. But the denomination
that has been recommended consistently to us is one that I struggle with. It is a denomination that absolutely embraces
freedom in Christ and is known to be much less conservative than other
Christian denominations. Additionally,
there are some pieces of their doctrine concerning the salvation experience
that I don’t believe are necessarily Biblically wrong, but just don’t match up
to how I interpret the Bible. Neither
issue is critical to the gospel message.
I completely understand the reasons freedom is practiced so liberally
and the scripture used to support the lifestyle, and I also understand their
views on salvation and why, according to the word, they believe those
things. I just feel like a fish out of
water when I think about adopting those views for myself.
Andy and I talked about the possibility of joining this type
of church. In fact, one of the churches
I liked most in our search happens to be part of the denomination, so I was
working hard to keep my mind open to going in a different direction with our
church search. As we weighed pros and
cons, though, I think it just became more and more clear to me that the way I
practice my faith and the way I want to raise Daniel to practice his, probably
won’t match well with the beliefs in this denomination. It is crazy because it is a denomination that
holds tightly to scripture and is very analytical about God’s word and
intentional to practice it well. Nothing
they believe is inconsistent with the Bible.
We just go about our practice differently, and while I can have unity
with these believers, I don’t think I can raise my child in the denomination
and feel at home.
The differences I have with members of this denomination are
like the differences between the Jewish and Gentile Christians. In Galatians 2:1-10, Paul is showing the
unity he has with the Jewish Christian leaders, John, Peter, and James. He is illustrating this point to the
Galatians to show them that the Jewish legalizers, who were trying to convince
the Galatians to follow Jewish law, were false teachers. He wants the Galatians to understand that
even the Jewish leaders in the Christian church did not believe Gentiles (or
anyone) had to practice Jewish law to be saved.
Both the Jewish Christian leaders and the leaders in the Gentile church
(Paul and Barnabas) agreed that salvation was found only in Jesus. However, they both worked with groups of
people who needed the message to be delivered and practiced differently – and
they were ok with that.
The Jewish Christians had followed centuries of laws to find
unity with God. They needed to hear that
those laws and traditions were no longer necessary to have communion with God,
but they also needed to be free to practice traditions that helped them feel close to God. So, if being circumcised, or praying several specific
prayers daily, or practicing particular habits at the temple helped them feel
God’s presence, they needed to know that was ok. On the other hand, the Gentiles, who had
never practiced strict laws, needed to know that coming to Christ was easy and
that there weren’t a million things they had to do or not do. They needed to know that they only had to
believe in Jesus to be saved. The
background and history of each of these groups needed to be recognized and not
discounted as the gospel was shared with them.
Coming to Christ needed to mean that they didn’t lose who they were but
were allowed to live more freely as themselves.
What is awesome about this passage is that both groups of
leaders can easily see that the other is preaching truth, encourage one another
in that truth, and be comfortable to walk their separate ways. They don’t spend their time arguing about who
is doing it right or who is practicing it wrong. They see, instead, that they are united where
it matters.
I think it is important to remember unity today, too. It becomes so easy to judge other believers
or other churches and evaluate what we think they are doing right or wrong, but
the truth is that there are a lot of right ways. On the other hand, I think it is perfectly ok
for us to acknowledge that, while there are
a lot of right ways, every way doesn’t have to be right for us. The Jewish people were not called to be
Gentiles and the Gentiles were not called to be Jews – that is not what
Christianity meant for either group. So,
as Andy and I continue our church search, I want to be able to see the
beautiful unity I share with all the groups we visit, but I also want to give
myself grace to go where God calls me and to recognize that if I feel uncomfortable
with certain practices, that is ok, too.
No comments:
Post a Comment