Mincing Words

In the past couple of weeks, I have watched a few videos on the subject of Jesus and Religion.  One is by a guy who says he loves Jesus and hates religion.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IAhDGYlpqY Then, I have watched some that are responses to his rant.  One is from a Catholic priest, one is Lutheran, then I read a response to his rant from an Orthodox priest. I also watched a couple videos in response that make little or no sense.  I liked the responses of the Lutheran http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwetTNAGC44 and the Catholic Priest http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ru_tC4fv6FE

Now my beloved wife tells me that people are misunderstanding the guy.  That he says "religion" as a metaphor for all that is evil in the church. I am not certain. I do think that if this guy is ranting about the evil present in the church, and not the church as a whole, he suffers from the same thing I do.

I sometimes say things that do not come across the way I want them to, or think that they will.  If we want to be taken seriously, we need to be careful of what we say and especially, of how we say it.

Anyway, the guy has a few good points, and he has a few points that are contentious.  I will leave it up to you to watch and decide what you think. The following  is what I think.

• I think if we are going to portray ourselves as experts/poets, we should ensure we are clear on our defiinitions.
• I think we should extend grace to others, and not require perfect doctrine. (by this I do not mean that we should allow false doctrine to go unchallenged, but there are many things that are left up to individuals to decide for themselves, and these we should not quibble over.) --statement in ( ) added 2/5/12
• I think we need to remember that Jesus founded a church, and said there would be false teachers and false Christs that we would need to watch out for.  The question is wise discernment of who is and who is not false.  In the Old Testament, God said the test of a prophet is 100% accuracy when they claim to speak for Him!

• Romans 14 says that we are all responsible to our Lord. Perhaps we should remember that He is the boss!

The bottom line is that we live in a fallen world, society is made up of people and people are inherently evil. So there will be flaws even in the church.  So maybe the rant about religion is a good thing.  It has gotten people thinking, it has people talking.  Let's all let this bring us closer together, not tear us apart.