Friday, April 24, 2015

I've been thinking about labels.   We hear them all the time:  Liberal, Evangelical, feminist etc...  It makes me think.   Would I like to be in a box all the time?   Everything I say or think fits into that box?   I don't think so.    I think it is part of the problem, especially here in the US.  If you say you are a Conservative everything you think has to fit in that "box".   If you are Liberal everything you think has to fit into that "box".   It creates more and more division and extremism.    What is wrong with looking at every issue on it's merits and shock horror it might not fit into the traditional view that your party might have?   Free thinking is disappearing engulfed by constant indoctrination of the biased media.

The label that I have the hardest time coming to terms with is "Conservative Christian".   Why?   To me the two words just do not work together.   A definition of a Conservative is: Keeping to traditional values, not changing .   Back in Christ's days they were called Pharisee's.   Ultimately my problem with the term is that Christians are called to grow, mature throughout the Sanctification process to Holiness.   By definition this is a changing process.  A thoughtful process.   A process of acceptance and love.   This may means one changes one views in a "right wing way" or a "left wing way".   There is nothing wrong with that as long as it is done with a view to the teaching of Christ.   

I fear in the modern, Church in 2015 we have lost this and are looking more and more like the legalistic Hebrew religion of the time of Christ.

-Richard