the next few posts will not be light reading. there is much here you may not agree with. that's ok. they are my thoughts, and i don't claim to be 100% right. you are welcome to chime in to agree, disagree, or offer your own thoughts... if, through these words, i have caused you to dwell, to tarry, to think... then i will have accomplished what hoped i would with these posts.
i've been mulling over this idea for about a month now, knowing it needs to be written out - there's been much pondering and praying for words to convey what's been circling in my heart and mind. i am pressed hard to write today, so i am... but i don't really have a clue what's going to come out of these fingertips yet. nothing rehearsed, no organized thoughts... just ideas and words swirling around.
i think that most people in my world - including myself - don't realize the influence that they have on others, and that others have on them. at least, i hope that's the case... because influence is a funny thing - it can easily be used for good or bad, despite our best intentions, which points to the very real need to filter everything we say, do and/or hear through the Word of God... and sometimes that's tricky, too, because it's very easy to latch onto one verse that seems to support our viewpoint or position, but it's all too easy to twist and warp the Truth of God's Word into something that's not truth at all.
take the book of james, for example. we've been studying it for the past few weeks, so it jumps readily to mind as a good example of a bad influence. i've never liked the book of james (gasp) until we really dived in and studied it backwards and forwards. kudos to the people who prepare the material for community groups, for in my humble opinion, they have done an EXCELLENT job of taking a difficult text and making sense of it. i say "difficult" from a strictly personal viewpoint - you'd think that as much as i dislike dancing around issues that i would really dig james' refusal to 'mince words', as josh put it. my dislike for that particular book stemmed from how easily and frequently one verse can be taken out of context... and used to persecute and harm untold numbers of people over the ages. think salem. think the crusades. think of the ultra-conservative theologians or clergymen who ostracize God's children, standing on their interpretation of "truth", without taking the entire text into consideration, or the intended audience, or the context, or any of the significant factors that make God's Word beautiful and life-giving, instead of ammunition meant to kill and destroy.
i believe that we are ultimately responsible before the Lord for our words, our actions, our decisions - our lives - and will have to stand before Him one day to account for them. i believe fully in the grace of Christ, but it still makes me weak in the knees when i really think about that day. when thinking about that day, it's easier to wrap our minds around what we've done wrong in our lives (deliberate sin) than it is to really dig in and think about the less obvious aspects of our lives - motive comes readily to mind, and is perfectly in line with a discussion on influence.
to be continued...
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