Had a great visit over coffee with R. Love that guy.
Apparently the whole review thing arises because there are several people (like M and M2) who don’t like that I am not preaching the sectarian doctrines of our denomination. (Never mind that I am just preaching through a book and those sacred cows have not even been addressed.)
At one point R asked me, “So what do we do with the weaker brother?”
I asked him to clarify who he meant.
“The ones whose dogma are rattled by the preaching through Mark.”
I said, “We just keep rattling them until they crucify us.”
He was taken back. But our conversation went to the way such dogmatic people treat people who don’t fit their mold. R’s own children fell into that category. The dogma police run those people off. They greet them at the door with dogmatic questions and follow them home to quiz them further.
If someone doesn’t fit, they show them the door.
I say that causes more damage than the rattling of any legalistic foundation.
R agreed.
Let the temple walls fall down and let the resurrected Jesus be raised in its place.
What are those poor folk gonna do when they get to Heaven and find they have to spend eternity with a bunch of people who got the dogmatic points “wrong”??? Go chew God out for His mistakes???
Yep.
Those people are the ones who were willing to crucify my family to keep evil silenced. Only it wasn’t the evil they silenced but the innocent. It is not legal dogmas that have kept my daughter from suicide but LOVE. It was their very dogmas in conjunction with abuse and rape that almost killed her, that tried quite hard to get my husband, S fired, and will likely end in a very messy division in this church. They don’t get it. They never have and they are uncomfortable with the fact that JESUS came for us messy people! HE came in LOVE and COMPASSION, HE granted freedom, mercy and GRACE. Something these guys will never understand, because they DON’T WANT TO. Not because they can’t.
Grace… Very hard to dispense… and hard to receive.