Published: August 14, 2008 08:29 pm            

The Joy Lady: People say all kinds of things about Jesus

My husband was once the minister of a small church in central Nebraska. It was a town of 630 people. (There was an elderly woman who actually kept an accurate account based on births, deaths, and those who left town. I’m not sure, but I think she referred to the latter group as deserters.) This town was 30 miles in any direction from any town of any size. That meant we had one grocery store, one gas station, one variety store (owned by the same family for three generations), one motel (with four guest rooms), one movie theater (open only on Friday and Saturday), one school (for K-12, of course), and one restaurant (open only for breakfast and lunch and always closed on Sunday). Oh yeah, I forgot – there were four taverns.

But also in this small town were six churches. Six different denominations of people met in six small buildings on six street corners in six areas of town. Although we rubbed shoulders all week long in our little not-so-thriving metropolis, when it came to church, we tended to stick with our own kind, if you know what I mean.

While we lived in that small town, I struck up a good friendship with April. Her husband was the pastor at one of those “other” churches. We had many similarities, not the least of which was that we loved to laugh. In fact, our laughing once got us in some very serious trouble and major personal humiliation while singing at a funeral — but that’s another story for another time.

April came to my house early one morning in need of coffee, doughnuts and sympathy — in that order. It seems her sister was getting a divorce and April was wishing she could go home to talk to her, hug her, or maybe just cry with her. I asked why her sister no longer wanted to be married, and April said, “They are divorcing because of religious differences.” “Really? What kind of religious differences?” I wondered. “The worst kind of religious differences. He thought he was God and she knew he wasn’t.”

We are miles and miles and years and years removed from that small town. But in some ways, things are much the same every where we go. There are churches of all kinds of denominations on just about every street corner. This group doesn’t associate with that group. Those churches over there won’t have anything to do with these churches over here. We’ve got lots of religious differences, all right.

We have about a blue million “flavors” of churches, and even within denominations we have religious differences. There’s Free/United Methodist, American/General/Southern Baptist, Disciples of Christ/Church of Christ/Christian Church, Missouri Synod/Wisconsin Synod/ECLA Lutheran. Then there’s that whole Protestant/Catholic/Jew difference. It goes on and on and on, ad nauseam. No wonder the world looks at the church and shakes its head in disgust when those who call themselves Christians can’t seem to get along with each other.

Have we put God in a box that is decorated with practices and preferences and traditions that have little or nothing to do with Scripture? When we do that, are we ignoring the teachings of Christ concerning His church? Do we become more concerned with how we worship rather than why we worship?

If we worship Him in spirit and in truth (John 4:24), we know that God’s Son, Jesus, said of Himself, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6). If we know that, we also know that Jesus also said, “If you hold to My teaching, you are really My disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free,” (John 8:32). If we know those things, we will understand 1 Corinthians 1:18: “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

People say all kinds of things about Jesus: He was merely a good teacher, He wasn’t really the Son of God, He didn’t really die on the cross to save us from our sins. But there will come a day when, no matter what we believe, Jesus will ask, like He asked Peter in Matthew 16:15,16: “What about you? Who do you say I am?” May we respond, like Simon Peter did: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

And may we worship in a church that professes the same.

Verna Davis may be reached at www.TheJoyLady.com.

        

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