Before I
begin this blog post, I want to say that I am not perfect and have been very guilty
of what I am about to write about. However, as of late this has been
bothering me, so I thought I would write a blog post about it.
Recently,
Harvest had a worship night for young adults. That’s all it was, a night to
worship God with people of the 18-30 years old age range. Anyways, it being a
worship night, and because Harvest was sending a bus specifically for Tyndale
students to come and worship, I thought I would ask a few people in the halls
if they wanted to come. Most of the responses were the usual “I have homework”,
which is understandable. I have been there. However, one response from two
students at Tyndale caught me very off guard. I was explaining the event, and
how it was a night of worship, prayer, and hearing the Word of God, and one of
them stopped me mid-sentence and said: “Sorry, it’s at Harvest, and Harvest
doesn’t support women in ministry, so we don’t support Harvest.” I was so
shocked; I had to just walk away. I thought to myself – when did I invite you
to worship Harvest? I just invited you to a night to worship God, which has
nothing to do with Harvest, but rather your heart attitude of worship.
Why do we
do this? Why is it that when we hear a certain denomination does something that
is a little different from the way we think, we demonize them? By demonize, I
mean put them into a category where whenever we hear that denomination or know
someone goes there, we think less of them or the denomination. I am not talking
about heretical stuff like whether Jesus actually rose from the dead or did
miracles or Trinitarian theology, because I think that is a different story all
together. I am talking about things like spiritual gifts, charismatic movement, baptism mode, style of worship or other things that if you went to a church, they
should not affect how or even if you worship God. When did we become so
arrogant to think that because a certain denomination baptizes babies or uses
the sprinkle instead of immersion method, that God isn’t worthy to be worshiped
there? Because they do things a certain way, we can’t worship with those
people. That is basically saying that anyone who has slightly different views
on certain things can’t worship Jesus properly. That is pride at its finest,
and it needs to stop.
This kind
of behaviour is straight up causing divisions in the church. Why has it become acceptable for the eye to say to the ear, “You’re not worthy”, or for the head to say
to the feet, “You’re different, so you’re not good enough to be a part of the
same body as us”? Why is that ok? We are one body, in Christ. We are not many
bodies that make up a crowd, but rather many parts that make up one body.
This
applies to all Bible-believing denominations. We should have no problem walking
into a Baptist, Pentecostal, Anglican, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Alliance, or
Non-Denominational Bible-believing church, and worshiping Christ the same way
as if we were in our home church, without being disrespectful of the worshippers
around us, of course. But we do have a problem. Why? The differences in the
Bible-believing denominations are so small, and do not have an effect on our
salvation, so why make them points of contention?
Maybe it’s
time we stopped this nonsense. Why fight about little things, when people’s
souls are at stake? Why make enemies with our brothers and sisters, while the
real enemy mocks us because we are doing his work for him? I know this is just
a blog, and it won’t change the world, but I really just want us all to glorify
God, because He is worthy to be praised.
How do we glorify God in all of
this? Here is a big picture (forgive me, I am a dreamer). Why don’t we stop
demonizing each other, and start loving each other? If you don’t know, I’ve been
at Tyndale, a multi-denominational Christian school for the past four years.
One of the greatest things about this is that I can worship with people who
baptize differently, worship differently, speak in tongues differently, choose
different people for leadership, and do Church differently than me. And we
worship the same God! I’m not worried about if my brothers and sisters around
me do different things, because we worship the same God! Can we talk about
those things? Absolutely! Talking is a great way to both strengthen your own
beliefs, but also be open to the Holy Spirit, and where He is leading you. It
just becomes arrogance and pride when we start disliking people or
denominations because of these little differences. Brothers and sisters reading
this – let’s glorify God together, as one body, united by Christ Jesus, our
Lord.
