OK, I'm going to state the obvious - bridges and walls are both necessary and both serve very different purposes. Walls divide. Bridges unite! In 1964, our family lived on Staten Island, NY. It was an exciting time for that borough of New York City. The Verrazzano Narrows bridge was finished, and for the first time, those living on the Island felt like they were a part of the city. The multiple lanes on two wide decks of that world famous bridge turned a 30+ minute ferry ride into a two minute drive. The new connection brought development (a good thing?) and Staten Island changed, almost overnight. At the same time, I saw the effect of walls. The people who moved into our neighborhood from Brooklyn thought they had moved onto country estates, despite having postage stamp sized lots. Standing on our back porch, one could see a crazy quilt of fences - stockade, picket, split rail - built around tiny backyards, fences that declared- "this is my space!"
Are you a bridge-builder or a wall-builder? Are you forming connections with others, or shutting them out?
My experience tells me that people are much more inclined to erect walls that define 'their space' than they are to build bridges. Those walls bear political names - Republican, Democrat. Those walls bear ethnic/racial names. Those walls, tragically, bear religious names. How did the best bridge-builder in history - Jesus Christ - become an excuse for people to build such high walls? I ask that question again and again. How is it that we become so attached to our backyard, "I'm a Baptist, I'm a Pentecostal, I'm Reformed, I'm Independent...." that we fail to understand that our walls that seems to shut out those who differ also lock us in from the rich fellowship we might otherwise enjoy?
Some of you are starting to feel unsettled by this line of thought, aren't you? "Why does Jerry say that? Doesn't he know we must be committed to the truth?" Yes, I value truth, but would you agree that we are all too inclined to turn our preference into a 'truth'? For a long time in my life, I thought that 'real' Christians believed in one fixed way - the way I was taught. I just assumed that to be a 'real Christian' a person had to come from the same holiness church I came from, had to sing the same songs, and had to worship in the same manner. I honestly thought that the only way to come to know Jesus was to respond to an altar call, to kneel and pray 'the sinner's prayer.' I was really surprised when I learned that both those ideas only came into being less than one hundred years ago! I was surprised, yes really I was, when I found people from very different Christian traditions talking about Jesus with genuine love, who served Him as fervently - even more fervently - than many of the people in 'my' church did. As I built bridges into their lives I was not in any way diminished. I became richer! I discovered the amazing beauty of ancient liturgies. I found myself anchored and steadied by the recitation of the Church's creeds. Those were alien concepts to a boy raised in the fiery, emotional worship style of the Pentecostal church.
Jesus told us that God's demands of us are summed up in two commandments. "You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.”" (Mark 12:30-31, NLT) Sounds like a bridge-builder to me, how about you? Was He downplaying the need for orthodoxy, for truth? No! He prefaced those remarks with a quotation of the 'heart' of the revelation of God's Person. "Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is the one and only Lord." (Mark 12:29, NLT) Not all gods are truly God.
In our desire to build bridges to others we cannot affirm all 'truth' as being true. However, we don't have to be so quick to confront others with our dogma and a challenge to choose, do we? As I read the Gospels the only people that I find Jesus throwing down a truth challenge to are those who should have known the truth- the religious teachers and leaders! To ordinary sinners, He showed love. He built a bridge into their lives and that bridge became the means for God's grace to become evident. Once He touched them with love, He called them to Truth. Something we need to understand clearly is that acceptance is not the same as affirmation! IF we are like Jesus, we will accept those who are a sinful mess, who lack understanding, who disagree with us. Once we have established a connection heart to heart, we will be able to reason together.
Peter faced a problem in the first century church. Women who came to faith in Christ began to browbeat their husbands who were not yet Believers about their need of Jesus' love. Now remember this was happening in a culture were women did not enjoy rights, where they were considered property of their husbands. So some men started to resent Christianity as being destructive of their homes and families. Here's what the Spirit inspired Peter to write to those wives who were frustrated by their husband's refusal of the faith. "Wives, in the same way be submissive to your husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, when they see the purity and reverence of your lives." (1 Peter 3:1-2, NIV) My point isn't about the role of women! It is about the power of practice, of loving behavior. This model of a woman with a pagan husband accepting him and loving him in a way that caused him to see the reality of Christ is a pattern for ALL of us in our relationship with others.
Win their hearts without words, then use that credibility to speak the truth!
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