All believers need other believers. They pray for us and cheer us on in our most troublesome spiritual battles. In the good and bad, they love us and are there for us. They are not just like family, they indeed are our family. But like every family, problems exist.
My hope in this post is simply to sound an alarm on the dangers of one such problem, though you may be caught off guard by the fact that I have labeled a good thing problematic. This good thing I speak of is known as "Christian influence." It may seem at first scandalous that a pastor has used the word "danger" to describe "Christian influence." Yet, I cannot think of a more accurate word to describe a persistant problem currently ravaging believers within evangelical circles. Let me explain.
First and foremost, I am in no way saying that ALL Christian influence is dangerous. This conclusion is the farthest thing from my mind. However, I do believe that there is a certain type of Christian influence that is divisive and spiritually hazardous. Unfortunately, this type of influence has become more and more widespread in recent years. How can anything that is influencial in a Christian manner be dangerous? Doesn't the New Testament echo the fact that Christians need to and indeed should influence other Christians? Ephesians 4:25 says "Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another" (ESV). Certainly this is Christian influence at its richest and most healthy. When brothers and sisters in Christ confront one another in love and speak the truth, such bold realness is always good. Yet, somehow we evangelical believers have managed to change this good thing into a horrid thing.
How does this happen? Well, it begins with a scriptural slight-of-hand. We may not know we have done it, but nevertheless we do it. Here is what happens. We take a precious nugget of biblical treasure like "speak the truth in love" and we switch it for "speak our conviction in love." Did you catch the trickery? Now our convictions may well be good and helpful but in many cases they are not biblical mandates. But we still pass off these convictions as biblical mandates. Whether it be the regulative principle of worship, alchohol consumption, homeschooling, or any other wildly held conviction, we take them and make them biblical mandates. Then we "influence" other believers to embrace these convictions as biblical mandates. The resulting consequences are often tragic and extremely detrimental to the body of Christ. Here are just a few of the injurious results.
We Point Believers To Slavery, Not FreedomIt is entirely okay and wonderful for you to be a supporter of the regulative principle of worship or to be a homeschooler. But have you passed off these convictions as law and/or chided other believers for holding to different views? This has placed unnecessary yokes around many a neck. Neither of these two things are uniequivocally mandated in scripture. Therefore other believers are free in Christ to not be supporters of the regulative principle of worship or homeschooling or anything else that may be our conviction but not biblical mandate.
Our Convictions Become Precarious WedgesWhen our convictions become law, it is only a matter of time until we seek out fellow likeminded "law-abiders" and completely ostracize anyone (even another believer) who does not believe as we do. How many churches that are predominately made up of homeschooling families really welcome families that send their children to public school? Or how many churches that are made up predominately of families where the children go to public school are welcoming to families that homeschool? No matter how this ugliness is sliced, we must call it what it is. Conviction has trumped unity. Friends this should never be! Our convictions must never drive a wedge between us and another believer. A believer who consumes wine without getting drunk ought to be able to worship next to a teetotaling brother. Any other alternative is tragic and should be avoided at all costs.
Convictions are okay and acceptable but we should never encourage the brethren to view these convictions as biblical mandate. To do so is to influence our brothers and sisters in Christ in such a way that sucks the Gospel life out of our freedom in Christ and our unity. Let us live as the free people Christ has made us and guard against anything that would seek to seperate us from one another.
