welcome to the story.

This is from my online class. Its a different topic than what we were discussing last time and so far, no one has said anything idiotic. The question was posted by the professor, "What is the significance of the connection between believers' faith in Christ Jesus and their love for their fellow believers or saints?", and the dialogue is as follows. Me: I have a question that I'd like to bounce off you guys pertaining to this topic. We all know that almost every believer in the world holds to a little different view of theology or doctrine. Becaues of this, there are going to be some obvious "differences" in theological and doctrinal thinking. In the midst of these differences, how can we maintain unity in love and Spirit even when we do not have unity in doctrines? I ask this because in my brief experiences with others "different" than me, I find myself becoming critical and not maintaining UNITY OF LOVE AND SPIRIT because of the disUNITY in theology different than my own. Does that make sense? How do we as believers begin to have a Unity of Love and maintain Unity in the Spirit when sometimes we are not Unified in doctrine? Mr. Herndon writes: I think I understand what you are saying, I too find myself getting offensive towards others who may hold some different doctrinal views. Of coarse more than not though I am trying to listen to what they have to say, because I am unsure at times where I stand. Dr. Davis in class the other day was talking about a young guy about my age who told him "Doc. I disagree with some of what Charles Ryrie's believes," and in turn Dr. Davis told the young gentleman "You don't know enough to disagree with Ryrie!" Now, I do not believe that being young I can't have an opinion, I just try to remember to be humble. This is where I am having problems lately, I have read a lot about evolution and the different theory's held by well meaning theologians, who try and conform the Bible to fit science, and inside it really upsets me, and I can go off on a tangent and preach forever on why they are wrong, and usually do not stop to listen to what they have to say. That's all I am going to say about that particular issue, because that is not my purpose of this response. What I want people to gain from that little aside is that I think we all have tendencies to have disdain for fellow believers who do not fall in line with our doctrinal beliefs. Before I get to much deeper in let me say that there are some doctrines (teachings) that leave no room for disagreement, for example, there is One God, and Jesus is the Son of God, and the Holy Spirit is are guide and comforter and they together are one essence, existing in three persons, then there is one I think we forget, and that is the greatest command which is to Love the Lord our God and second to love are neighbor as yourself. As it says in 1 John 4:8, if one does not love they do not know God, who is love, or in 2:9, the Bible tells us we cannot claim to be in the light if we harbor hatred for our brother, even in our hearts. The Pharisee's were very legalistic, they "knew" all their doctrines, but Jesus came and let us know that real sin begins in our thoughts and hearts, this well before they ever reach actions. So to not love others begins in our minds and hearts. The Bible also tells us that having love for others is a sign that God dwells in us. So I said all of this to answer the question how do we maintain the unity of love when we have differences? I can't answer that really for you, except to say that we make the choice to love or not to love. Some people we instantly click with and loving them is easy, but these are not the people we need to work at loving. Jesus' dying for us was the ultimate act of love, yet it did not come easy for Him or without pain or despair (a good image here for me is that Jesus prayed for this cup to be removed from Him, and was overcome with such stress that he sweat blood or has sweat like blood, depending on who you talk too :) So sometimes we may have to work at love, and we should approach every situation and every person with humility and to be ready to show them love. This is not an accepting of all ideas, boy could that get us in trouble, nor do I mean to say we cannot disagree, I only mean to say that we can share opinions and disagree, in and with love. And I believe that being able to love someone who we disagree with is a sure sign that we are baring fruit of the Holy Spirit. So to me it is not so much of how, but why we should have UNITY OF LOVE AND SPIRIT! I guess you could even say it is commanded of us. We do not have to be unified in doctrine to share and fellowship with each other and infact I think an illustration can be drawn from Luke 22:24 when the dispute arose among the disciples of who was the greatest, I believe a good application here is we are the disciples arguing and bickering, and notice that Jesus tells them they should not be arguing over who is greatest. To be the greatest is to be humble and to serve, as Jesus was humble and served. Furthermore when we do argue whether about a doctrine or some other issue we should not let the sun go down on that argument (Eph. 4:25-27.) We are called to model are lives after Christ and live as He lived. We will never accomplish His amount of perfection and love, but that does not mean we do not still try. So I might have just chased rabbits here, but hopefully I gave something useful to you and all who read this, if you are having problems with maintaining UNITY OF LOVE, but just because our doctrines are different does not mean we cannot love or are allowed, or excused from love. I think too our ability to love others correlates with how well we walk with Christ. Also if we cannot be friends with and love those who are "different" than us, or people who have different opinions form us, could we even have any friends or relationships at all? Who is just like me? Or who is just like you in every aspect? God requires of us to have UNITY OF LOVE, and he will not put more on us than we can handle. We must just remember to have temperance (which is a fruit of the spirit)when dealing with others who may not have the same views as you or me. Me: I agree with you that there are some core teachings that there has to be unity of doctrine on. These "beliefs" are absolutely essential to providing us with the framework for understanding God. As much as I hate to use cheesy illustrations, I think of it like this. I think there are some fundamental and core doctrines that set up a framework or a border to the puzzle. This "pieces" of the puzzle are the boarder. There are alot of these pieces in my opinion. In my opinion, God as triune, grace through faith, an incarnational Christ, dual natures of Christ, and the sufficency of the cross, among others. These core "pieces" make up the border of the puzzle for understanding God. To me these pieces are black and white and pretty concrete. But there are some grey areas, some middle pieces of the puzzle that aren't so definite. The topics of election, free will, how the gospel is contextualized, styles of worship, and some issues like this are not so clear cut. I understand what you were saying Mr. Herndon, and that makes perfect sense, I just think sadly that doesn't happen. When "respected" leaders within the Baptist church fight over grey issues, it makes me wonder what unifies us? The spirit of love or "right" doctrines? Example, Adrian Rogers won't let Al Moehler preach at his church because Moehler is a Calvinist and Rogers is free will. What unifies them, love or doctrine? And when "unrespected" leaders in the emerging church fight over grey issues, it also makes me wonder what unifies us? The spirit of love or "right" doctrines and practice? Example, when I personally become bitter towards someone who doesn't adapt and change their methods of communicating the gospel to a new context like "I do it". What unifies me and someone else, love or doctrine/practice? Does that make sense? So to go back to the original post by Dr. Vines, how does my faith in God relate to my love for others? Is my faith in a God big enough to supercede these grey issues in the middle of the puzzle, so that I can genuinely love those who disagree with me? Realizing that they might be right and I might be wrong in these grey areas. How do we keep from having an all inclusive, relative attitude towards every new "doctrinal grey area"? I don't know. I guess alot of this is just my way of talking out some of the frustrations I've been experiencing. I just thought it was pertinent to the original post by Dr. Vines. It's kind of a rabbit trail though. Harold Nwadeyi writes: My name is Harold, I have read you�re question. It is true that we do feel so how when someone do not agree with us in our theology or doctrine. I have few things to say about that; theology is the study of the WORD OF GOD not the WORD OF GOD ITSELF. When different people study, they will gain different insight and different understanding about their study. Now their insight and understanding, is not what should unite us in the unity of love and spirit rather the WORD OF GOD ITSELF should unite us in the unity of love and spirit. As long as we have the same true GOD and HIS SON in our heart, and believe in his teaching, that says to love one another in spirit and in truth. Josh the bottom line is that we all have the same assurance, that JESUS CHRIST is our LORD and SAVIOR. People will have different interpretation and understanding and all we can do is to pray and ask GOD to bring all of us to HIS understanding of the scripture. Me: To quote: "People will have different interpretations and understanding and all we can do is to pray and ask GOD to bring all of us to HIS understanding of the scripture." What happens then when 4 people study the same passage and come out with 4 different "doctrinal beliefs"? When I ask God to illuminate my study and my reading, and you do the same exact thing, and another one of our friends does the same thing, how then do we arrive at different conclusions? And when we arrive at these different conclusions, how do we maintain a spirit of love and unity? I agree that it is not the word (the Bible) that unifies us in love, but the Word (the incarnational Christ) that unifies us in love. But for example we could both study the passages in 1 Corinthians regarding spiritual gifts, and we could both come to different conclusions about the role of certain spiritual gifts in the church age. This is obviously seen by 2 different groups who have interpreted this Scripture differently, Baptists and Pentecostals. Well if it is true what you said, that Christ unifies us in love, and not doctrine, then how come we are not unified with our Pentecostal brothers and sisters? Or with our Presbyterian brothers and sisters? Or our Episcopalian brothers and sisters? Or even our own brothers and sisters as Southern Baptists? Do you see what I'm getting at? There are so many divisions that are based on differences in interpretation. These divisions are obviously caused by DISUNITY IN DOCTRINE. How then do we maintain a spirit of love and unity with others in the midst of these differences? What everyone says sounds good, but I've very rarely seen what you're saying fleshed out in action. If what you said was practiced, then we wouldn't have so many divisions. We would be unified in Spirit and in love with our brothers and sisters across denominational and cultural lines. Eli Sanders writes: because Baptists will ride "first class" in the rapture and the rest of us will ride "coach".... in this worldview, the Baptist hermeneutical persuasion is the most accurate. LOL William Herndon writes: It would be nice if there were not so many divisons in the church, but I do not think the actions of others should stop us from loving and attempting to have unity. If everyone you meet is negative and unwilling to love you because of your doctrinal difference that still should not stop us from loving them and being there friends and being in Unity with them. To sum up what Harold said, and the words of some song I heard, "If you love Chirst, you belong with me (as brothers/Sisters). WWJD, is a popular saying, but your right "how often do we see that fleshed out" unfortunetly it is rarely fleshed out, yet even still we should try to love other and be unified with others wheter or not they want to love us or not. Me: I agree wholeheartedly with you Mr. Herndon. Actions or beliefs of others should never keep us from loving them. To quote you: "Yet even still we should try to love others and be unified with others whether or not they want to love us or not." I agree with what you're saying, but I'm not so much talking about others not wanting to love us so much as I am talking about "us" not wanting to love them. I'm just going to be brutally honest and ask everybody in this forum a question, "How many non-Southern Baptist friends do you have? How many times have you partnerred with another denomination for ministry? How many times have you picked up a book that wasn't written by someone that was Southern Baptitst? How many close friends do you have, that you go to for advice, that you share meals with, that you encourage, who are not Southern Baptist? Better yet, can anyone remember the last time they prayed with someone from another denomination?" And once a year doesn't count for any of those questions. And I'm asking these same questions of myself. Do you see what I'm getting at? We say its love that unifies us, but in all reality its usually doctrine that unifies us. Thats inverted from what Scripture teaches us. If our faith is in a huge God, then we are going to love those and be unified in Spirit with those who hold to different doctrinal views. Realizing that as much as we think that other denonimations doctrinal beliefs are borderline apostasy, they probably think the same about us. But if our faith is in a small God, who only thinks and acts like WE DO, then we are not going to love those and be unified in Spirit with those who hold to different doctrinal views.