A favorite writer, Ella Frances Sanders, wrote these words, “Particles act in a way similar to people in large crowds, as they are constantly coming into contact with one another, jostling for room, an elbow here and a spectacular crash there.”
Our present situation is something like this.
So, I imagine myself in a crowded room with ideas, opinions, words spoken, jostling and elbowing for room, attempting to be heard. In this room, amid the shouting, the jostling, the elbowing, truth thrums her beat all awhile aware the moral question calls, patient for our awakening.
In this room, I am careful not to call opinion faith, doubt unbelief, and unbelief religion. I find knowing God, knowing His will is much harder when the loud noise of false doctrine stands between me and Him.
Looking to the crowded room, I find good people allowing modern, civic, egalitarian sensibilities to wrestle with deep, atavistic theological truths. I see good Christians using God’s word to prove. Keen to my senses is the realization no one wants to be the bad Samaritan. Have we forgotten the servant life is a separate life, an opposite life, a leading to Christ life, a life seeking to be last, a denying of self life? But in the room are so many seeking to be first, to be equal. Egalitarianism must be the first death on the road to redemption.
In this room, permission is confused with salvation, two diverging paths demanding opposite conditions. I realize permission cares not for obedience to God. I am called to be saved and redeemed, transformed through perfecting grace.
Nor can I conflate God with an idea of God for the idea must be subject only to my will. God is not a god of convenience and accommodation. My old life must be left behind. Thus, clarity tells me truth wins over opinion because the former elevates love over difference while the latter subjugates it, preferring difference over love.
From this room, I hear the siren call to love and forgive because all sins are equal. But a faith of love and forgiveness without atonement and redemption is something different altogether. I have yet to find a half faith or equal sin in God’s word. Would anyone among us risk the unforgivable sin?
Soon, if we remain in the crowded room, if we acquiesce and fall into the abyss, yielding to its temptations, the church could cease to exist, drowned by all those self-willed moralities. I do not believe this to be true. I believe God reigns, if not for the time in the hearts of men, in his greater purpose and will for eternity.
Boo Arnold wrote, “Jesus’ life-strategy is an affront to our human nature and the values of this world. We often seek our own glory hoping to achieve society’s praises. Jesus, on the other hand, surrenders his life to the will of his Father testifying to God’s goodness and God’s sovereign plan. Jesus’ success is his Father’s glory.”
“Those who have ears to hear, let them hear” (Matthew 11:15, NKJV).