Recently there has been a lot of commentary regarding
on-going culture wars. Apparently there are many that believe that Christians
in America are being targeted from all sides - - from the White House to the
news media to our educational institutions.
It is very likely a cultural war has broken out and many can find ample
evidence from boycotts against retail establishments like Chic-Fil-A, Home
Depot to the recent dismissal of JavaScript inventor and Mozilla CEO Brenan
Eich.
I don’t want to fuel the fire and really don’t have a
well-formulated opinion on how wide-spread this cultural war may be. I do think we have to face-up to the origins
of the conflict and find that we Christians are partially at fault. In the words of the late cartoonist, Walt
Kelly.....
“We have met the enemy and he is us”
All too often in referring or relating to others that also call themselves Christian we choose the road of selfishness, bitterness,
arrogance and self-righteousness over the higher road of compassion, liberty,
maturity and brotherly love. Cultural
war or no cultural war, we all need to advocate an end to the civil war that
encourages denominationalism, sectarianism and divisions within the Body of
Christ. Here's the bottom line...we will never agree on all our finer points of doctrine but we can quickly become advocates
for change when we fully
embrace the essential faith.
The essential faith is the faith of the Apostles. It is the pillars of faith of the early church that was empowered on Pentecost with the coming of the Holy Spirit. It is the unshakable belief that Jesus was the Christ, the awaited Messiah. This faith brought Jew and Greek, male and female, slave and free to the realization that a relationship with God was a reality, that sins could be forgiven, that life that was truly worth living was a life centered on a relationship with a risen Christ. This was a faith that was sufficient without all of their religious questions being answered.
Advocating, sharing and preaching the essential faith and
beliefs of the church brings two things. First it brings revival. Secondly, it brings unity to the Body of
Christ as embracing the essential faith is where we find
agreement and we experience how it feels to be truly one with Christ and one with each another.
