Doug’s sermon tonight on learning when to say yes and when to say no made me think about some things. In particular, the stuff about people who are compliant, and the people who are controlling. I believe that I’m more of a person who is naturally compliant, and tends to say no when the situation finally makes me upset or angry. Grr… that would have been nice to know a couple of months ago. But at the same time, I now understand why things happened the way they did, and I can now accept it much better. Hurray, more peace.
Sadly enough, I was one of those people who raised their hands when Doug said, “Would all the compliant people raise their hands.” Oh well… I have learned how to say no to people when they ask me to do some sort of computer work, when I know I won’t be able to get it done.
I don’t think I’ll change too much. I kind of like being compliant; it fits well with my very non-competitive nature. Although, I’ll look out for the anger so it doesn’t build up–I’ll try to address when I see it happening in a situation. I’ll try to figure out the stuff that’s really important to me, and what stuff I can allow for some compliance–does that make any sense? Sometimes being compliant can be a lot of fun. I know I’m weird.
On a completely unrelated topic… I’ve been thinking about something someone said to me. She said that people who smoke and drink should not be allowed to join the church. My first thought was, so why choose two things that you don’t struggle with? So I was kind of drawing the conclusion that sinners should be allowed to join the church, or how else would I be able to join? But then when I tried substituting different sins into the sentence, such as:
Murderers shouldn’t be allowed to join the church…
Liars shouldn’t be allowed to join the church…
Adulterers shouldn’t be allowed to join the church…
Drunkards shouldn’t be allowed to join the church…
Idol worshippers shouldn’t be allowed to join the church…
Gossipers shouldn’t be allowed to join the church…
I kind of realized that none of these people–including myself–should join the church. Like common, would a gossiper be beneficial to your community? Murderers, drunkards, idol worshipers, adulterers, gossipers, will all destroy a community of believers.
So who should join the church? I think broken people should join the church. People who are broken over their sin and require healing. People who lower themselves and admit their dependence on God, who will then lift those people up. I’m a broken person, so therefore I joined the church.
This idea seems to get complicated though when you introduce the emerging church idea that non-believers can participate in community. Now there can be non-broken people in the community, or do non-broken people even stick around? Do those people just leave? Or should the distinction really be between broken people, and unbroken people? Lets create a community of broken people.
Finally, I’ll end on this thought. We hear a lot about how as Christians we should never judge the world (outsiders), point fingers and wave signs condemning them for their lack of morals and sin. There’s nothing wrong with this idea, however, I wonder if we take this idea to the extreme where we stop judging christians and believers (insiders). Judging is probably the wrong word to use, but I’m thinking about 1 Corinthians 5:12-13. I think the reason for why Paul said this is given in 1 Corinthians 5:6-8. I’ll point out that Paul is talking about: sexual sin, greed, idol worship, abusiveness, drunkenness, and swindling.
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