Lent Day 14: The Dissonant Chorus, the Letter to the Church at Pergamum

OK, so this is probably going to end up being uploaded on Friday, thanks to an internet issue [thanks a bunch Comcast]. It would have originally been uploaded Thursday shortly after midnight, but Mary is in Florida and it is harder to write blogs when it’s just me and Henry. In the end it all works out because this blog is going to be enhanced by a Facebook conversation I had a little while ago.

You see, today we find ourselves in the third letter to the churches found in Revelation, this time the letter to the Church at Pergamum (2:12-17). Now the problem with this church is that there is disunity within. Some people are still following close to Jesus and his teachings. Others follow the teaching of Balaam who convinced Balak to eat food sacrificed to idols. In addition there are some who follow the ways of the Nicolatians. So we have a church divided against itself.

You don’t have to go very far into our collective societal history to remember what Abraham Lincoln said about a house divided [though that was a quote from Jesus (Matthew 12:25, Mark 3:25), but we should also remember that Jesus spoke about internal division in other places as well (Matthew 6:23-25). Jesus was talking about our internal lives, but it can easily transfer to any organism or organization. The fact of the matter is that you can not serve two masters.

What does this have to do with a conversation I had a little while ago? Well nothing, and yet… I've already touched on Fred Phelps in a previous blog, but I feel the need to bring him up again. This time I do not wish to focus on him as an individual [may God in death show him the love that he denied others in life, and more than likely didn't have in his own life either] but rather as a symptom, to a larger issue.

The issue being, what is a Christian?

The fact of the matter is that it is very hard to find more than a few people who will agree on any particular definition. I kind of hate that I have to keep bringing it up, but there are more than 30,000 different denominations that claim Jesus. And each of those 30,000 are made up of an unknown amount of actual believers. With this diverse body is a ridiculously diverse amount of opinions. And what do those differing opinions amount to?

Not a lot, because to a large majority of the outside world when one Christian talks every Christian talks. Which means when one Christian (Fred Phelps) talks about God hates fags, we all speak in unison to a lot of people. When one person (Ken Ham) talks about the dinosaurs living with humanity, we all speak in unison. When one Southern Baptist talks about women being unfit to be pastors, we all speak in unison. When one author (or two) talk about a rapture and a tribulation, we all speak in unison.

Which couldn't be further from the truth, but as I, and many others, have stated, it is about perception.
I chose those four examples because I am against EVERY SINGLE ONE. I do not believe that God hates gay people. I do not believe that dinosaurs roamed the earth anywhere in the vicinity of human beings. I do believe that there is neither male nor female but that we are all equal in the eyes of God, therefore a woman is at least as equally prepared to be a pastor as a man, some even more so.  And I do not believe in a rapture or a tribulation or any of a multitude of, in my opinion, malarkey that people pull out of the last book of the Bible.

We do not all have the same opinion nor the same voice. There are days I would like to scream that from the mountains, instead I type it hear and hope it reverberates.

A person cannot serve two masters.

A house divided cannot stand.

And a church with a billion different voices has a hard time being heard over the roar of its own voice.

Peace and Love,
Pastor K