For The Truth

Monday, March 29, 2010

Test post

This is a test. This blog is conducting a test of the blog posting system. This is only a test.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Music, Freedom, and Our Understanding of Evil

One of the sorrows I experience as a Christian and a pastor is the unprescribed limitations that the fellowship of believers place on themselves and others in an attempt to be holy. To have holiness as a goal for one's life is a noble desire, but often as we strive for it, we more closely resemble children practicing new grammar rules. We apply standards either we have created or that have been created by others to places or in ways that God has not prescribed in His Word. And we often do this in a way that is less than generous or loving to those with whom we share a common bond, the Spirit of the Living God. We can be so rigid in holding to doubtful doctrines, so sure in our own ability to draw clear conclusions about things not said in Scripture, and so quick to look down our noses at one another because "thus says somone other than God" who wrote some book or article or that we heard speak somewhere. Many of these rigid conclusions are not only doubtful (except when they appeal to what we want to believe), but are not even drawn from Scripture.
What I am thinking of in particular is the debate about music. So much is so strongly believed concerning what is or is not acceptable, but so little of our standards find any foundation in the Word of God.
I heard a new song today. It is a song that I woudl love to share with those whom I hold dear, my little flock whom the Lord God has entrusted to my care. But, sadly, I cannot. Because we are sheep, because we are frail and broken, we create rigid laws and standards not from God's Word. Laws that isolate us from each other and rob us of the liberty we have in Christ to worship Him in spirit and in truth.
My heart sorrows at the restraints that we have fashioned for ourselves, and the yoke that we place on others, that stifles our worship and joy we would otherwise share.