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As
God's messenger, I give each of you this warning: Be honest in your estimate of
yourselves, measuring your value by how much faith God has given you. Just as
our bodies have many parts and each part has a special function, so it is with
Christ's body. We are all parts of his one body, and each of us has different
work to do. And since we are all one body in Christ, we belong to each other,
and each of us needs all the others.
(Romans 12:3-5 NLV). In
his book God and Other Famous Liberals,
Forrest Church writes: ...
when it comes to God, many, if not most, believers insist on the absolute truth
of their opinions. Their logic is as follows: If A (my belief) is correct, not-A
(everyone else's) has to be wrong ... How much better it would be if we thought
of the world as a cathedral with thousands of different windows through which
the light of God or truth shines. Some are abstract, some representational. Each
tells a story of love and death, hope and faith, truth and meaning. Some people
think that the light shines only through their own window. Fundamentalists of
the right, sure that their window is the only one through which the light
shines, may go so far as to incite their fellow worshipers to throw stones
through other people's windows. Atheists, fundamentalists of the left, observe
the bewildering variety of windows and lapse into skepticism, concluding that
there is no light. But the windows are not the light, only where the light
shines through. There is one light (one truth, one God), but it reflected
through a myriad of windows, each distinct, each different. Those who have
worshipped at one window throughout their lifetime almost always see the
refracted light more clearly and understand its meaning more deeply than do
those who flit from window to window, believing that differences don't really
matter. In religion, the discipline that comes from devotion cannot be replaced
by sophistication. But in a pluralistic world, the best we can still hope for is
the development of deep commitments to our own faith, while somehow remaining
able to acknowledge that those who believe differently may, in their own
distinctive ways, be just as close to God or truth as we are. Then we may live
as neighbors in the cathedral of the world. What
a wonderful image: the cathedral windows
of our lives with the light of God shining through each one to light our
individual ways! Our world is a kaleidoscope of races and cultures, each one
being an equal player in the great window of God's world! The Apostle Paul was
very clear about that truth in our reading today. We are all parts of the one
body, different and unique. We are all essential to the overall health of the
body. How
tragic when we fail to understand that there can be a basic fundamental
connection between every believer regardless of the colors and shapes that our
belief system requires to make this wonderful image of God’s light in the
world. When we come together around
the truth that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, crucified and risen on the third
day for our sins, much of the rest may be debated. Faith in Christ is the
essential foundation that the Church was founded when Jesus changed Simon’s
name to Peter. That same foundation ought to be enough for us as well! |
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