Keep the merry, dump the myth?

I came across this recently on Youtube. It's about Christmas, you know keep the merry thing, but don't believe about the Christ thing! I know where these guys are coming from, I do. I have been there, bought the t-shirt. In fact I have a whole closet full of them. But they are greatly myth-taken :-). It is a strange but undeniable fact of the Christian life that when you walk close to the Lord the reality of the Kingdom walks with you, and when you drift away, it all seems so unreal. And the unreality seems to be proportional to the distance you allow between you and Him.

And I do mean allow! As a brash teenager (hundreds of years ago) I told God I did not need Him, and as a consequence drifted away from what I knew to be true. During that time I thought of my earlier beliefs as naive. But then came the time when my life was so messed up, I could no longer deny that I needed help. Times like this are crossroads. We can blame others for the mess we are in, refusing to admit that we had any part in the mess, or we can take stock, fess up and return to the One who loves us so much that He died for us, so that the broken, hurting and sinful like me, can find healing and peace and hope and joy again.

Now part of this drifting away thing, is that I believe the lies. And there are usually two equal an opposite lies that are told, depending on which one you and I are most likely to believe. A victim of abuse for example can, on the one hand, believe that it's all their fault, or that their lives are messed up forever on the other. We can even blame God for allowing this or that to happen.

The thing about a good lie, is that it contains something that (for you or I) is believable, and often some of it is true. The thing about the title to this post, is that nobody has perfect theology, so at least some of the things you and I believe are wrong. Coming back to abuse, it is very clear that others do things that are wrong, and in may ways deserve our resentment. But resentment keeps us stuck, while not really punishing the offender. We need to forgive for our own sake. Forgiveness severs the power the abuser has over us. It is particularly hard if we are blaming God, since deep down we know He has done nothing wrong. However we may still feel that He has, and we will need to forgive Him in order to restore fellowship. He will sort out our confusion about these things when we have forgiven. Another problem in this area is that it is often hard to forgive is ourselves. But again, when we don't, we keep ourselves trapped in self hate!

It helps me to know that all unforgiveness is, in the end, evil. As a Christian I know this because of the severity of the Biblical teaching on this issue. To the extent that I forgive, I will be forgiven. When I come out of denial and take responsibility for my life, I start to see more clearly how much I need to be forgiven. Staying in denial keeps me from intimacy with God, from the reality of His presence that heals restores and comforts me, from the strength to do what I need to do, and the strength not to do the things that I have learned from the School of hard knocks hinder me.

I did not always believe what I now believe about the Bible. I came to it with a dawning realization that this book knows us (knows me). It knows for example that what we do and what we believe are inexorably linked (See Romans 1:18 and coming post). It knows our propensity to rationalize behaviour (Jeremiah 17:9), it knows that there are consequences to what we do, that we reap what we sow. On top of this from the school of hard knocks I discovered more and more, at a deeper and deeper level that the things Bible forbids are the things that bring negative consequences into my life.

But it's not all negative. I more and more discover that as I follow the things it commands I experience the freedom it promises. “If you continue in My Word, You will know the Truth and the Truth will set you free. If the Son shall set you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:31ff). And the more I continue, the more free I am and the more sure I am of the things I have believed. And the less I continue and follow the less sure I am of these things. When I do the things I myself believe to be wrong, then I enter the fog that in my better times I know covers the whole of humanity including yours truly when I grow lukewarm or cease to follow.

In short I have learned by experience that when God says “no,” He does it for my provision and protection. When I fall, and when I fess up to it, then I have Someone on my side to take care of my mess, to set me on my feet, to cleanse me and help me start over. This is what Christmas is all about. This is the reason for the season, this is the ground of my “merry” and the certainty of what some of you guys call the myth. If this is you then, as I said before you are greatly myth-taken and it gets worse, because in addition you are myth-ing out big time :-)!

Take away lust add intimacy

We have confused unbridled passion for love. Perhaps it is no wonder as you can scarcely go to a movie without seeing this one and that one jumping into bed together at the drop of a hat. And there is a subtle lie behind it all, and that is that this is normal and natural and good and right and healthy. In the meantime we fall out of our relationships as easily as we fall into bed. Why should this surprise us? When we are told over and over there is no difference between us and the lower animals, and when in response we behave like them, then surely it is no wonder our relationships are like theirs. I mean how long do dogs stay married?

We tell each other “I love you,” but what do we mean? Is there more to love than wanting to jump into bed with each other? Do we even know what love is? Here is one description of it: “Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.”

We confuse love with lust when we say “Because I love you I want your body.” We confuse love with passion when we say “I love you but I have needs.” We confuse love with lust when we promise to remain faithful only as long as we both shall love. We embrace true love when we say and mean that if and when I no longer feel love, I will choose to love, and I will love you.

We start to embrace true love when before we jump into bed we determine that if and when we do, we will commit to each other to push through the inevitable relationship pain that comes at the end of the honeymoon. When we do this, and when we follow through to breakthrough, we come through to the kind of relationship that we were intended to have with God and with each other, we start to come into true intimacy.

Well if he (she) would love me like that, then I would respond the same way. Maybe, but it's hard when all you get (give) is “I, me, my.” We need help to get started (I do), and when we get started we need help to continue (I do). And that help is freely available, but we have to stop putting up walls against it (more than I do).

Someone described intimacy as “into me see.” It may sound scarey to let another do that, but we will not experience true intimacy while we hide who we are from each other, behind the high and defensive walls. The walls may keep some of the bad out, but they also keep the good out, and they keep our pain and baggage and fear intact inside the walls.

And we get stuck in responding the same old, same old way. We know that the World is a scarey place and, when we have been hurt, we can be reluctant to let anyone in again. What we need is a safe place to start, and the safest place is God. Not necessarily the God you encountered in Church nor in those who call themselves Christian but do not exhibit Christ like qualities. And this has been and is me at times, but Christ is the one to whom I turned, and He is the One who has been faithful and enabled me to love again. Indeed the Scriptures tell us “We love, because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19 NIV). Our ability to love at all comes because there is one who initiated love, and that is God. He is the source, the essence, the motivation, the first and the last, the author and finisher of love. True intimacy starts when we stop fighting Him, turn to Him in repentance, receive His forgiveness and grace and strength, His hope and joy, His peace and love. God so loved the World that He gave His only Son that whosoever in this undeserving world should turn to Him in this way should find all of these things in Him. It starts with intimacy with Him, it continues with intimacy with Him and it will end with intimacy with Him. This is the essence of eternal life to know the Father the only true God, and Jesus Christ the Son He sent (John 17:3).

If you want to pray: Father, please reveal Your Son in me. Show me the walls that I have erected to keep You out, and what I need to do to let You in. Give me what I need to love and live again. Help me to be the person You call me to be as I draw near to You, and become more like You in Your extravagant healing love. Flow through me, in Christ's name Amen.

Does Science disprove Atheism?

I am of course aware that this question is usually aimed at religious faith, rather than at atheism, but from my point of view this question makes more sense. It's not that long ago (less than a hundred years) that Christians were being mocked for believing that the universe had a beginning. Even Einstein was among those who initially believed that the universe was always there. This in spite of the fact that one of the things that put the last nail in the coffin of the “steady state” theory of the universe, was his own theory of relativity. His initial reaction to big bang theory was that it did not make sense. He was later persuaded of it it's truth (around the 1930's), but many in the Scientific community were sill skeptical! In fact it was not until the 1960's that the matter was finally considered settled.

Progress in this area came only as telescopes got larger and technology improved. As part of this process, it was discovered that the Universe is expanding, and that some galaxies are retreating from the earth at speeds exceeding 100 million miles an hour. What allowed Scientists to measure this, is the phenomenon commonly referred to as the red shift. This is similar to the doppler effect which most of us have observed when the noise of an oncoming vehicle changes pitch as it passes us in the street. This change in pitch has to do with the shift in the received wave length of sound as the source moves away from us. Red shift has to do with the change in wavelength of a moving source of light as it moves away. The faster the retreat, the greater the red shift (the redder the light in the spectrum of light being received). Part of what makes this discovery so compelling is the fact that it was predicted from one of the solutions to Einsteins' equations (discovered by another). Initially highly skeptical, Einstein was finally persuaded that the universe is indeed expanding by photographic evidence of the red shift, provided by Edwin Hubble and his compatriot.

So once we knew that the universe is expanding, the next thing to do was to trace it all back in space and time. It was in tracing it all back to a single miniscule point of origin that lead to the (now more fully developed) theories of the big bang. What was (and is) interesting to Bible believers is that Science was finally coming up not only with the fact of a beginning, but one that bears an uncanny resemblance to the Genesis description of the whole thing coming into being in a flash of light and energy. Robert Jastrow in an older, but still very informative book (God and the astronomers), rather amusingly describes all this as the Scientist, having scaled the mountain of ignorance, is about to conquer the highest peak but then, when he pulls himself over the highest rock, is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.

So were atheist convinced? Perhaps a more pertinent question is “Can Science disprove atheism?” The fact of the matter is that some were, some are, and no doubt some will be. On the other hand the same thing can be said about theists! How to explain this? It is my observation that very few seem to be persuaded one way or the other by logic alone. One of the so called new (militant) atheists Richard Dawkins tells of being traumatized by 9/11 in the States. His conclusion is that religion was to blame. Who can argue the fact that there have been many atrocities committed in the name of God? But think on this, the last century saw more (much more) atrocities committed in the name of atheism than in religion. Dawkins would argue that it was not atheism in and of itself that was the cause of the atrocities. Maybe, maybe not, but you can't have it both ways. You can't use this argument to absolve atheism but refuse to allow the same argument to absolve religion. Surely Christ has the right answer when He tells us that the problem begins in the heart of man (or woman, I would not want to offend the ladies by excluding them :-) Matthew 15:18,19).

So what has this to do with the question at hand? What I am saying is that we seem to make up our minds for one reason or another, but not primarily based on logic. We may have been offended by those who use God to justify this or that. Or we may see all religious people as hypocrites, or we may have had very positive experiences from some who name the name of Christ. What happens then is that our World view informs our logic. I asked a friend what it would take for him to believe. He told me, and I then asked him if that happened would he really believe. He thought a bit then told me “No, I would find some other reason to explain it.” But let's be honest, this attitude is found on both sides of the theist- atheist divide! Please don't confuse me with the facts, I know what I believe!

So, can we never expect to persuade others from either side, is it all hopeless? My answer is no, but it is not likely to happen by Science/logic/reason alone. Since the essence of Christianity is to know God (as opposed to knowing about Him - see John 17:3), and since knowing a person has a strong component of experience, we will not become Christians without it. What was powerful to me was seeing my experience of Him described in the Scriptures, and also of having the Scriptures help me experience Him more. This is as I say a powerful combination.

But what about Science and logic, does it not have a role to play, can Science persuade someone that God exists? In my view Christianity (for that is what I profess) gives the best explanation of reality. It best explains that there was a beginning and a whole host of other things. It best explains why the Universe “”appears” to be designed, it best explains the phenomenon of a multitude of finely tuned physical constants, constants which, if changed even slightly, would no only exclude the possibility of life period, but even of the formation of stars, planets and galaxies. It best explains what Francis Schaeffer called the mannishness of man, our personality, our search for meaning, our morality. It best explains why beauty and culture and love and hope and peace and joy and the like are infinitely better than squalor and poverty and hate and war and bitterness and lying and deceit. I am told that Science with all its capabilities cannot distinguish between hate and love, anger and euphoria, between joy and fear. Perhaps, just perhaps we are more than Darwinian primates. Perhaps, just perhaps we are made in the image of the Judeo Christian God. Perhaps, just perhaps, Science without faith is blind!

Where was God when...?

He could have prevented this, He could have prevented that. If He is all powerful and all loving why would He not intervene? It can be a stumbling block. It is especially hard when we see someone we love suffering. The Psalmist had a similar problem, it bothered him. He tells us “When I tried to understand all this, it troubled me deeply until I entered the sanctuary of God ....” (Psalm 73:16,17).

The sufferings of Job can teach us something along the same lines. He probably suffered more than any of us do/have/will, and yet at the end of it all when he is no longer fighting God he declares “My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you” (Job 42:5). It was the eyes of his heart he was talking about, it was the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him (Ephesians 1:17,18). This knowledge is not intellectual knowledge, it is the intimate mother love of the baby on the breast. It is the mother heart of God experienced. It is the feeling of security, the feeling that in spite of it all, it's going to be alright, that I can get through this because I am loved and accepted and comforted and healed. It is knowing that somehow God is in control. It is the surrender of Peter when asked if he was offended “Where shall I go Lord, You have the words of eternal life?” (John 6:68).

I came to see this in a new way recently when I learned that someone I love and respect had suffered a devastating blow in her personal life. It is far too easy to give theologically correct answers to the problem of suffering when you are far removed from the situation, but mere logic will not satisfy. We cry out “Why?” and “Why me?” And even if we do not acknowledge it we are crying out to God. I have this picture of me and Him, He with His arms around me, and me pummelling His chest with my fists in frustration and pain. Finally I surrender sobbing. I have entered the sanctuary, and His mercy and grace and peace overtake me and I am comforted.

Paul prays for the Ephesians that they would know the the width and length and depth and heigh of the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge (Ephesians 3:18,19). It makes no sense in logic. How can you know something that surpasses knowledge? What I do know is that when I am real with Him, He is real with me. He meets me where I am “at,” even when where I am at may not be where I should be. My intellectual understanding is limited, but I know when I am loved, and I know the love of Christ is real. I have experience the truth of the Scripture which says “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you” (James 4:8).

If you want to pray: God, I need you, please meet me where I am and draw me deeper into your unfathomable love. Heal me and I will be healed. In Jesus name, Amen.

Not invested in the truth or falsity of Evolution

It is clear to me that by selective breeding you can, over time, breed dogs or horses with longer or shorter noses. Whether everything evolved from a single cell seems to me to be a lot less likely that it was thought to be at the time of Darwin. Part of this is that the big bang theory and the theory of relativity seems to fit the facts more closely than the view that the universe always existed, or that it was trillions if not quadrillions of years old.

Those thoughts/estimates of the age of the universe were thought to be necessary for Darwinian evolution to have taken place. The lack of progress in the anticipated discovery of transitional forms in the fossil record, the fact of the (relatively) rapid appearance of new species in the so called “Cambrian explosion,” as well as the discovery that life is far more complex than we ever thought it to be, all weaken the evolutionary hypotheses. But don't expect the theory to disappear any time soon. The point, as Thomas Kuhn explains in his book “The Structure of Scientific Revolution,” is that the Scientific community is often very resistant to throwing out popular theories, even in the face of contrary evidence. It wasn't only the Church that resisted Galileo’s view that the earth went round the sun (rather than the other way round), it was many of the Scientists of his day. But it doesn't (didn't) matter in any case, at least not from a theological perspective.

I mean if I were to come to you and say “The earth goes round the sun therefore God does not exist,” you would I think look at me with bewilderment. Likewise when Newton discovered the law of gravity, he did not immediately renounce his (profound) faith. So why not? Well, Newton was sensible enough to realize that the discovery of a Scientific mechanism, or law, does not immediately rule out the possibility of the existence of a law giver, or a designer of the mechanism, be it evolution or big bang theories or whatever.

I am not entirely sure why so many Christians seem to be so threatened by the theories (yes plural) of the big bang. I suspect however, that it is this very same confusion, and that they have bought into the lie that a Scientific description of a mechanism somehow or other disproves the existence of a creator. The atheist who insists on empirical evidence for his (or her) views, and cites science as having proved God's non-existence needs to ask himself (herself) such questions as “If the big bang is correct, then what is the cause of it?” You cannot hold the Scientific principle of cause and effect in a closed system and not ask for the cause of the mechanism, in this case the cause of the big bang. At least you should not!

And there are many other questions that need to be asked. For example “Where does intelligence come from?” or “If it all came into being by chance, why would it make any sense to expect laws that explain things?” Why would we expect methodical study of the universe to reveal its secrets? It is surely significant that Science really only took off in cultures where there was a strong belief in an intelligent creator being. The point is that it is only with the “hypothesis” of an intelligent creator that we would expect that which is created to be intelligible!

So in the end these things have become non-issues for me. The point is that firstly I am not at all sure what parts (for example) of the theories of evolution are true. I am not as sure about what is true and what is not as many on both sides of the equation would have us believe. But secondly what I do believe is anything that turns out to be true will be nothing more than a description of the mechanism He employed (set in motion?). To say it another way, I am not invested in the truth of falsity of the various forms of the theory of evolution. My faith does not rise or fall on these issues. On the other hand I do have enough confidence in the Scientific method to believe that in the end the truth will prevail on any particular issue. It just might take a long time for that to happen, however. And in the meantime since the existence of a moral God tends to put a damper on some of the things we might want to do, I am also sure we will find other ways to try to explain away His existence.

My prayers are powerful

Does this describe how you feel about your prayer life? Here's the rub, if this is not how you feel, then it's likely not true. The Bible tells us “The prayer of a righteous man or woman is powerful and effective” (James 5:16). You may answer “Well the true rub here is that I am not righteous!” However if you belong to Christ then you are the righteousness of God in Him (2 Corinthians 5:21).

The context of the James quotation is important. The first part of verse 16 reads “Confess your sins one to another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed.” There are three things here that I want to mention. Firstly the healing of which James is speaking, while it certainly includes physical healing (verse 14 and 15), also has to do with healing of the heart, mind and emotions. Jesus tells us that His mandate includes the healing of broken hearts (Luke 4:21 and context, see also Isaiah 61: 1). Now part of this involves believing what He says about us. We are the righteousness of God, we are saints, we are qualified to be inheritors of the Kingdom of God (Colossians 1:12).

So part of the healing we are promised is that we will progressively know who we are in Christ, precious sons and daughters of the living God. But secondly the context is about walking in the light, and in particular about that aspect of walking in the light that has to do with confessing our sins. When we do this, God is faithful to forgive us our sins, and He is faithful to cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). If we are not doing this regularly, we will not be walking in the light, and we will not feel cleansed, we will not feel the joy of repentance and we will not have confidence before Him in our prayer life. In fact when we have known and unconfessed sin in our lives, He will not hear us (Isaiah 59:2).

So if we are to be powerful in prayer, we need to know who we are, and we need to keep short accounts with with God. But this brings me to the third thing that I see in this context, the confession also has to be to one other! This can be very scarey. If your experience is anything like mine, you will have confessed to others and it has either become the subject of gossip, or it has come back to you as accusation! This is not healing! We need to be wise here, and we need to find a safe place. It will probably start with finding someone who you can trust, someone who will keep your confidences and not judge you, and someone who will pray for you (and you for them – still in verse 16). Not all fellowships are safe, but it is imperative that we find a place (or places) that are safe. We are deeply into what true fellowship means here. It has to do with being real, it has to do with being honest and humble enough to realize that “in many things we all fail,” and that “all have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God” (James 3:2; Romans 3:23).

To put all this another way, it is about living at the foot of the cross. It is about living in the perspective of what He needed to do for us and what He has done and continues to do for us. It is about knowing that He loves us unconditionally. It is about knowing who we are in Him, about recognizing Him in each other and treating each other accordingly. It is about walking in the light. It is about knowing our authority in Him. It is about knowing that when, to the best of our ability we are doing all this, that our prayers are powerful.

But know the enemy will test this in you. He will whisper in your ear that you are not worthy. As did Jesus, we need use the Word of God. We need to tell him and tell ourselves “I am the righteousness of God in Him.” Then we need to tell ourselves “My prayers are powerful.” We need to keep saying it until we believe it, and then we need to keep saying it because we believe it, and because it is true! And we need to pray!

God, Science and Genesis 1:1a.

I have found that most of those who call Christians stupid for believing the Bible, know very little about it, and may never even have read it. Either that, or they will take their own interpretation of this or that verse and then slam us for believing that interpretation. Its called setting up a straw man, you know those who are easy to tear down! And I have seen this perpetrated on the very first phrase of the very first verse of the very first book of the Bible. Well I guess it saves having to read it :).

Genesis 1:1(a) says “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, .....” An atheistic “sermon” I heard from one of the militant atheists started by interpreting this to be saying that the heavens and the earth were created at the same time. And (the sermon continues) since Science tells us that the earth was formed way after the heavens were formed, way, way after, then whole thing should be thrown out from the very beginning. But surely we need to ask if this reading of the text is correct, if this what was intended to be communicated, if this is the point and focus of what is being said.

If you ask a man wearing yellow tinted glasses what colour a zebra is (assuming he has never seen one before) you are likely to be told 'yellow and black', or if the glasses were red tinted, the observed colours would likely be pink and black. The point I am making is that if we are to understand Scripture correctly there are a number of things we need to take into account. In particular we must be careful that we do not read the text with our 21st Century glasses (which can easily distort what is being said), and with our presuppositions firmly in place (i.e. we all know that God does not exist, right?). There are many many difficulties in understanding and interpreting Scripture. For instance, the distance between us and the writers of the Hebrew Scriptures is enormous in both time and culture. And while this is not the place to go into this in detail we do, we need in the first instance to understand how the early readers would have understood the text. If our interpretation is correct, it would need to have made sense to those to whom it was first written.

So let's come back to our phrase “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, ...” How would this have been understood by the first readers of this phrase? Let me suggest several things, firstly they would understand that there was a beginning, that the heavens and the earth were not always there. It is surely interesting to note that for a long time many Scientists were saying that the cosmos was indeed always there, and at that time such people laughed at the Biblical statement that there was a beginning. These days virtually nobody believes this (various forms of the Big Bang theory hold the day). Secondly this phrase states that there is a being, identified here as “God,” who is outside of space, time and matter, and who created the said space, time and matter out of nothing. As I have said elsewhere, once you admit a beginning, the logical options are very few, in fact there are only two. Either “In the beginning someone or something outside of space time and matter created everything that is out of nothing,” or “In the beginning nothing created everything that is out of nothing.” If we are to be consistent with the Scientific principle of cause and effect, and if there was beginning, then one or the other of these two options has to be true. To me the first option is much more believable (though this is not how I came to believe). And I have to say that it seems to me to be more than a tad ridiculous to laugh at those of us who believe the first view, since the second view can only be held by faith, and that by a faith that is not only without a scrap of empirical evidence to support it, but a faith that contradicts the law of cause and effect!

I want to be clear that at this point of the argument, the logic does not necessarily point to the Judeo Christian God as the only option for the creator. That is an entirely separate argument. Along these lines, it is interesting to me to note the case of the famous (almost life long) atheist Anthony Flew. Flew, though he became a theist towards the end of his life, did not become a Christian. Among other things what lead him to the conclusion that some form of god existed, was the incredible complexity of life. Life is so complex that he could no longer believe that it all happened by chance. He became a theist, but got no further than that!

So to recap, the phrase we are discussing here is saying that there was a beginning, there is a creator and this creator created everything that is out of nothing. In relation to our skeptics interpretation, we can (hypothetically) ask our ancient reader if he understood this to be also saying that the heavens and the earth were created at the same time. But I am not sure it is a valid question to ask him (or her). If you stand at the bottom of a mountain range looking up, the question of whether the peek you see over the the top of the first rise is the same mountain, is in many ways an unfair question. You do not have enough information to answer it. With respect to the skeptics question, I want to say firstly that I don't think it is a question that would have occurred to our first reader. He would have no frame of reference to ask it, and in any case he would not have had enough information from this phrase alone to answer the question. On the other hand the rest of Genesis 1 clearly points to their being stages of the earth's development. And in Genesis 2:4 the entire period that encompassed the stages in Genesis 1 is telescoped into a single period there. So why would it be unreasonable to think that the stages of the creation of the heavens and the earth would not similarly be telescope in Genesis 1:1. What I am saying is that to insist that Genesis 1:1 precludes stages of development is to read a lot more into the text than is really there.

Unfortunately many Christians do similar types of exposition of texts when they want to prove a point that the text may not support. It is called Eisegesis, which is reading into the text (Greek “eis” means “into”), as opposed to exegesis which means "to lead out" of the text. Eisegesis is defined as the process of interpreting a text or portion of text in such a way that it introduces one's own presuppositions, agendas, and/or biases into and onto the text. When people complain to me that “You can make the Bible say anything you want.” I usually answer “Yes, and using exactly the same rules you need to use to do this, I can make the dictionary say the very same thing. And since I realized this, I have stopped using the dictionary” :-). Thank the Lord for spellchecker!

So where am I going with this? What I am saying is that things may not be as black and white as some (on both sides of the divide) would have us believe. Nobody has all the truth, not one of us has arrived. We will not arrive at the truth by calling one another names. When we label one another as stupid or hieratic, we shut down communication. For the Christian we are to be Ambassadors for Christ, we are to be eager to preserve unity, we are to respect all who are made in the image of God and that means everyone. It seems to me that we have a ways to go!