Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Should the Church Tolerate Diversity? | Questions You're Asking | Philippians 3.20

Episode Date: August 13, 2020

Politics is taking over religion's role in society. How is it affecting the church? How should the church and Christians respond? Get insights from https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/staff/keith-simon/ (Pastors Keith Simon) and https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/staff/patrick-miller/ (Patrick Miller) as they share what have learned as we continue our series on answering https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcast-series/questions-youre-asking/ (Questions You're Asking). Interested in more content like this? Scroll down for more resources and related episodes, including https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/what-does-a-christian-look-like-learning-to-follow-jesus-luke-6/ (What Does a Christian Look Like?) and https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/why-we-need-a-king-learning-to-follow-jesus-luke-19-28-44/ (Why We Need a King) from our last series on https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcast-series/how-to-follow-jesus/ (Learning to Follow Jesus). Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. To learn more, visit our https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/ (website) and follow us on https://www.facebook.com/TenMinuteBibleTalks (Facebook), https://www.instagram.com/thecrossingcomo/ (Instagram), and https://twitter.com/thecrossingcomo (Twitter) @TheCrossingCOMO and @TenMinuteBibleTalks.  Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. And I'm Keith Simon. If you don't like diversity, I've got some bad news for you. You probably won't like heaven. Now, you may think you understand what I'm saying, but you probably don't because I think that intolerance is on the rise. It doesn't matter if you're on the left or you're on the right. intolerance is becoming an incredibly prevalent, almost universal experience in our culture.

So there's one kind of intolerance that I think most people would agree we don't want anything to do with. I don't know many people personally who would say that they're for racism or therefore sexism, that they don't want to be around people who have a different gender than them, or that they don't want to be around people who have a different race than them. But there's a lot of other forms of intolerance which are becoming incredibly prevalent. There's a kind of tolerance that we appreciate and we applaud. and that our country thrives on. And that's the kind of tolerance that says that everybody can have a seat at the table and be a part of the discussion.

And that we respect other people's views and we listen to them and learn from them, even if we're not persuaded by them, even if we don't hold those views. That people are tolerant when they allow other voices, voices they disagree with. So, for example, the ACLU used to say that even if we disagree with the Ku Klux clan, and they most assuredly did, which of course we do to disagree with the clan, they would fight, the ACLU would fight for the clan's right to walk down the street, to march, to protest. That was the idea of tolerance. But somewhere along the way, tolerance changed, and tolerance meant you have to agree with me, and that if you say things that make me uncomfortable or that hurt me, that means that I should not listen to you or respect you and argue against you,

but instead try to shut you down, try to shut you up. So there's a guy who wrote a book a few years ago I read. The title kind of says it all, the intolerance of tolerance, that we've become so tolerant that we're intolerant, unwilling to listen to people who disagree with us, all in the name of tolerance. So let's get some concrete examples of this. Any study that you read out there will point out that at a big university's,

public universities, private universities, conservative professors are on the decline by significant number. And check out what Nicholas Christoph, this is a guy who's a progressive thinker, a progressive leader. This is what he said. He said universities are the bedrock of progressive values. But the one kind of diversity that universities disregard is ideological and religious. We're fine with people who don't look like us as long as they think like us.

We'll have a great diversity of people. Well, you don't have to look like me. You don't have to be like me. But the one thing we need to have in common is we need to think the same way. We need to have the same ideology. And we will not tolerate people who do not share our ideology. This is most easily seen in politics where people are unwilling to dialogue with those that they disagree with. Instead, we separate, go to our own separate camps and listen to the news feeds that confirm our biases, our prior convictions. But it's also seen in how we shut people down. Cancel culture happens on both the left and the right as we try to shut up those people who we don't want to hear. Now, look, that's bad for our country on any number of levels, but it is really bad for Christians to participate in this. Because what happens is we end up getting more disciples by the culture, more disciples by the news media than we do Jesus. And we take that same kind of intolerance of people that we don't like, people that we don't like, people that

but we disagree with, and we bring it into the church. And all of a sudden, we stop wanting to be in a church with people who have really different viewpoints on politics or cultural issues than we do. Again, most people are happy with a diversity in the church if it means that people don't look like me. But a lot of people I know are becoming increasingly unhappy or not okay with the idea that there might be people at the church who do not think like me, who do not share my exact values or my exact politics. And I will not tolerate those kinds of thoughts or those kinds of people being here. We'll even start calling them names. We'll call them false teachers. We'll do anything to make sure that those people aren't around me and my family. And that's becoming a bigger problem because

more than ever, we know what other people think. Because now what's happening is people are watching what others post on their Facebook or social media accounts. And they're saying, look, I can't believe that that person believe school should reopen or shouldn't reopen. I can't believe that this person supports this political issue or that issue. I can't believe that this person posted Black Lives Matter or refuses to post Black Lives Matter or maybe posts all lives matter. I can't believe that and they get frustrated and angry that their co-believers, their co-Christians, have such different views than they do. So again, it, goes back to where I started. If you don't like diversity, yes, even diversity of thought,

you are not going to like heaven. I've got bad news for you. If you don't like gospel music, there are going to be people in heaven who like gospel music. If you don't like the Eagles, they're going to be people in heaven who like the Eagles. If you don't like women who preach, I got bad news for it. There's going to be women preachers in heaven. And if you don't like people who would never listen to a woman preach, I got bad news for you. They're going to be there too. There's going to be Republicans in heaven. There's going to be Democrats in heaven. There's going to be an incredible diversity of people in heaven. And if the church is supposed to be bringing heaven on earth, shouldn't we look the same way?

Yeah, so in the book of Revelation, it says that we will be with people from every tongue, tribe, and nation. And I think one of the ideas we're supposed to walk away from that is that the diversity that we have here on earth will remain with us. At least some of that diversity will remain with us in heaven, that we may speak different languages, that we will look different than other people in heaven. But that process of getting from where we are now to heaven when we are all unified around Jesus, despite our differences, that is a process where God's kingdom comes to earth. God's kingdom comes in our life slowly.

And so what we have to do as a church is say, and I don't just mean our church, I mean the church broad, Christians have to say that we are comfortable, We are okay. We embrace the messiness of having people in our church that worship the same God that are following Jesus together, who have different convictions on political or social issues than we do. It doesn't mean that everybody's right. We're not preaching relativism here. We're not saying, well, everybody's right. Everybody's entitled to their own opinion and they're all equally good. What we are saying, though, is that Christians are in process and nobody's quite got it all figured out. And the main thing that we're about is helping each other follow hard after Jesus. And it's going to be okay if there are people in our church who have different views than we do.

And we've got to be okay with that. If everybody has to agree with us, we are going to go to a very, very small church. The Church of Keith. Well, because that's about it. It makes me think of that Robert Bella book where he talks about Sheilaism. So Sheila is this woman who he met that had kind of made up her own religion. And so she went to the church of Sheilaism. But that's kind of a parallel to what we're talking about.

If everybody has to agree with us, we're going to have a small church. Maybe it'll be a liberal church, maybe it'll be a conservative church, but it will be a church of one, a church of you. I hope you enjoy it. So we kind of laugh as pastors sometimes because it feels like we can't win. It doesn't matter what we say. We're going to offend someone on the left. we're going to offend someone on the right, and we're trying to be faithful to the Bible. Now,

we don't know everything either, and we don't pretend to. But what it's highlighted for us is that in our nation, especially as we become more polarized, politics really have become the new religion. In fact, I'll go a step further. I think that there are a lot of people whose political and partisan identity transcends. It is more important to them than their identity in Jesus. They are a Republican before they are a member of Jesus' kingdom. They are a Democrat before they are a part of Jesus's kingdom. Their political identity, again, is above their walk with God. In fact, what happens is that people now listen to a sermon or read a Christian book or whatever it is they're doing. They hear that sermon. They read that book through the political lens, through the

cultural lens that they have adopted. And so they hear, and I'm using quotation marks around the word here, you say things that you never said. The call for racial justice now is interpreted to mean that somehow you're against police officers. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, where in the world did we ever say that? Nobody here believes that. And so the consequence of being disciples by the culture is that you can't even read the Bible for what it says anymore. I had a guy, a great guy. In fact, it was more than one person who said in our service after the George Floyd killing that we had used the word oppress, and they thought that that was unfortunate. And so I just said to him, I said, here's the deal. Why don't you go to Biblegateway.com, put a press in the search bar and tell me what you find.

And again, this is a great guy, and he did it. And he sent me back in email and saying, man, I just saw all kinds of verses in the Bible that use the word oppression. And here's some that really stood out to me that I really liked. And the point he got is that the word oppression is a biblical word. And to hear it first as a commentary on social issues of our day is wrong. First, we need to hear what Jesus says about oppression, that he has come to set free the captives. Then we can take that truth and apply it to the issues that our culture is dealing with. Philippians 320 says, but our citizenship is in heaven. If right now we could stop and just get that beat into our own heads, our citizenship is in heaven.

I am not a U.S. citizen first. I am a citizen of heaven first. I am not a Democrat first. I am a citizen of heaven first. If you get things in the right order, my guess is you are going to start feeling a lot more comfortable being in a place that has a diversity of ideas. If you're able to say, look, my chief allegiance is to King Jesus and his cause in the world, then you're going to feel comfortable being around people who disagree with you.

Maybe you're really conservative, and you're around someone who's very progressive. Well, if you're saying, look, my main cause in the world is proclaiming King Jesus and helping you, my progressive friend, to come to know him and to walk with him and to be with him, it's not to convince you of my politics or the other way around. If King Jesus is your chief allegiance, that's not going to be super challenging to do. But if your chief allegiance is to the elephant or to the donkey, you're never going to be able to share Jesus with people who disagree with you. Because that's not really what you're sharing. It's not really what you're about. You're about your politics first and Jesus second. And just to keep building on that, I think that how we handle ourselves in this area says a lot about what kind of king that Jesus is. In the ancient Near East, a great king was known as someone who could bring harmony among a diverse set of people. And that's true. of Jesus. When we call Jesus our king, what we are saying is that he isn't just the king of

Republicans or Democrats or even Christians, but that he's the king of the whole world. And one of the things that testifies to the greatness of King Jesus is that he is able to bring harmony among Christians, among his followers, who are diverse in a lot of ways. They may look different, they may speak different languages, they may come from different family lives, they may have different political views, but they are bringing their life under the lordship of Jesus. And when we learn to love our neighbor, even our neighbor who is of a different political persuasion than us, we testify to the greatness of King Jesus. We demonstrate that he is a king who is worthy of your life. Some of the greatest kings of the ancient world, if you were living in the time of Jesus,

people, if you said, hey, who are some of the greatest leaders who've ever lived, they would have said people like Cyrus the Great, a Persian king who ruled over and an empire which had a massive diversity of language, of nations, of politics, religions. Another example would be Alexander of Macedon, the exact same thing, and actually even larger empire than Cyrus is, again, over a huge diversity. Or they might go to the first Caesar's, to Augustus, and they'd say, see, look at the diversity that he ruled over, and they would point out, look at the peace they were able to bring, and the harmony they were able to bring among these people. And Paul wanted people to know, King Jesus is exactly like those kings. With one

exception. He doesn't bring his peace with death, with war, with murder. He brings his peace by laying down his own life. And so one of Paul's biggest missions, if you read his letters carefully, you will just see it all over the place is to produce harmony among different people. Galatians 328. This is just one of countless examples. He says, there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free. There is neither male nor female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. He's not saying that when you follow Jesus, those things simply disappear. He's saying that when you follow Jesus, those aspects of your identity are relativized. They become so secondary compared to the primary thing, which is Jesus, that it's almost as though they don't exist. This is a radical way of making

harmony. And when a church actually has this kind of people, people who look different, who think different, and yet they love each other and they respect each other, and they walk alongside each other, it's going to show to our world, wow, there is something special about Jesus, especially today because you do not see that anywhere else. You will not see it in your newspapers. You won't see it in Congress. You won't see it at universities. You're probably not going to see it in businesses. The church might be the one last place where there can be a diversity of people and a diversity of thought. So if we're going to be a part of a church that has a diversity of people and diversity of thought, how do we get there? And I think one of the things it requires us to do is be

humble. We're not saying that you can't have strong opinions. We're not saying that you can't be well informed. In fact, both of those are great qualities to have. Read widely. Understand your view, but also understand your opponent's view. Understand those who disagree with you. But here's the key is you can't be defined by your politics. So they've asked surveys over the years about whether you would rather have your child marry someone of a different faith or a different race or a different political party, can I go down the list, different social class. And what they're finding today is that a lot of Christians would rather have their child marry a person of the same political persuasion instead of the same faith. That political persuasion is so powerful that they would prefer them to be a

Republican or a Democrat more than a Christian. Now, that's insanity, people. Absolutely. It's, insane. And yet, that's where we are. So what do Christians do? Well, Christians are humble. That doesn't mean you can have strong opinions. You can have strong, well-informed opinions, but to be humble means that I know that I don't have it all figured out and that I am still in the process of learning. A Christian should be patient. A Christian should know that they're in process and then other people are in process too and that you don't have to box people in. You're not quick to be a person who says, that is a bad person because they disagree with me. If we're thinking Christianly about diversity, we are open to new information. We're open to changing our mind. We're open to new

experiences because we know that we don't have it all figured out. We don't have a corner on truth. I think that a Christian should also be selfless. And in today's culture, selflessness might look like saying this. My politics do not trump other people's salvation. In other words, I'm willing to set aside my political opinions for the sake of you knowing and walking with Jesus. Romans 15, Paul writes this. He says, but we who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the week and not just please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his own good to build him up. For even Christ did not please himself. This is part of what it looks like to follow Jesus, is to be like him. He laid down his life for our sake. He didn't pick his comfort, his life over our own.

He picked us in our comfort. This is what it looks like in a church. I think one other thing that Christians need to be is we need to be wise. I can imagine someone listening to this and accusing Keith and I of being flagrant relativists, which would make me laugh because you obviously do not know me. No, what we are saying is this is what a wise Christian does. A wise Christian knows what the essentials are. They are able to say these are the hard, central truths of what it means to follow Jesus. And on these things, we must agree if we were going to call ourselves followers of Jesus. That would be things like Jesus is God. Jesus is king. Jesus really did come and die from our sins, and he's going to return and make all things new. Those are central facts of our faith, which we

must agree upon. But a wise Christian knows that there are things we can move outward from there that we might have disagreements over. There might be theological disagreements, and even outside of that, political disagreements. And because I'm a humble person who knows that I don't know everything, I'm willing to let other people bring their ideas to the table and my ideas to the table. And trust that if we have a good dialogue, we both might change a little bit. We both might come to new conclusions. I think I had a huge advantage in life in that I was raised by a family that was involved in politics and a family that valued discussion. My parents would have political people in our house all the time, legislators, judges,

governors. It just was the kind of house where people would have debates and discuss issues in a friendly environment. In our dinner table, I was able to have whatever political view I wanted, whether it agreed with my parents was not important. But what it was important is that I had to be able to defend it, to explain it, to give some sort of rational defense for it. And one of the things that I grew up loving was being around people who have different opinions than I do. If you follow my reading list of magazines and newspapers and journals and even books, I tend to read people I disagree with more than people I agree with because I enjoy the back and forth. And I feel like Patrick just said, I am sharpened by it. And sometimes I change my mind and come to completely different conclusions.

So I love that environment. And I know that's not everybody's experience, not everybody was raised in that kind of family. People have their own story. But I really want to go to a church where as we approach political season, we are able to have conversations with each other about issues done in a loving, intelligent, kind way. I don't want to go to a church where everybody agrees with me on theology or on politics or on cultural issues like should we or should we not have school in the middle of a pandemic. I want to go to a church where there's diversity of opinion, but we all. all have this in common. We want to follow Jesus, and we want to grow in our knowledge of him, and we want our lives and our politics and everything else to be conformed to the image of Christ.

Now, notice I didn't say conform to the image of me. I said conform to the image of Jesus. And I'm afraid that right now we're in a point in time where a lot of people want to go to a church of many mees, people like them, people they feel comfortable with, people they agree, agree with. And they've rewritten that verse, conform to the image of me, conform to the image of my political party. But it's conformed to the image of Jesus. I know both progressives and conservatives who, and I probably shouldn't even use this term, but I'm going to use it anyways, who I would call fragile progressives and fragile conservatives. And what I mean is they cannot bear or being around anyone who could possibly disagree with them. And in fact, when they're around someone who

disagrees with them. It shatters them, and they see that person in the worst possible light. I don't think that's how Jesus responded to people who were different than him. We don't see him go into the red quarter and reach out to Mary Magdalene and say, well, I've never been a prostitute before, and we might have some disagreements on sexual ethics right now and just shatters and thinks she's the worst person. No, he reaches out to her. He builds a relationship with her. He sets her free from oppression, and she's transformed. That's how real relationships work. They happen over time. It happens in a process. And if you don't want to be patient with people who are with you, you're just going to end up at a church which participates in either progressive or conservative cancel culture. We will have no one who disagrees with us be a part of this church. And if you want to, you can see the exit.

And that's even crazier when the cancel culture is on things that the Bible is not super clear on. I think the thing I'd leave you with is this. Are you being disciples more by the news media or Jesus? more by a political podcast or political news shows or journals, articles that you read, or by the Bible. Who's discipling you? Who's shaping your worldview? Who's shaping your thoughts? What do you love? Who do you love?

Jesus or being right? And are you sure you're right? Jesus is the true king of the world. It's not worth trading him in so that you can. get high marks from the culture. Don't trade Jesus in just so you can have the approval of some political party, just so that you can be on the right side of history, whatever that is in your mind. Jesus is the best thing you got in your life.

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