I feel we are cursed to live in interesting times. The morning news and the kiwi blogs are full of a leadership challenge in the Labour party. I have seen the President of the Labour party, the chief gadfly (and another Chris) on the morning news over coffee. I’d rather look at the word.
The other passage today is from James, about controlling our tongue, something that we all fail with. As we fail to live without temptations and without falling. Let’s turn to the gospel.
1Jesus said to his disciples, “Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to anyone by whom they come! 2It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause one of these little ones to stumble. 3Be on your guard! If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive. 4And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive.”
5The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” 6The Lord replied, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.
7“Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’? 8Would you not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink’? 9Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? 10So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!’”
It is part of our duty to correct our brothers and sisters in Christ. True. But we tend to have people say instead that we cannot do this. We must not tell people the consequences of their actions. We must instead encourage them into error.
Consider this example… taking a question and correcting it.
Maybe your church does it wrong, but this sure seems like knee-jerk Team Woman rationalization and pretending that there’s some big, bad double standard:
Would you ask this of a man? Or would you see it as perfectly reasonable for a man to come home after years on the field and find a wife?
We send married couples. There is more than enough to do at home for the single people. Sending a single person off to the great wide open world, thousands of miles from his or her home church and safety net, is inviting them to sin. (It’s just what happens when you send young people abroad.)
If one doesn’t view marriage as a competition but rather a cooperative, and can humble oneself enough to realize that there’s a reason God created this institution in the way He did, then it just seems natural to practice sending missionary families. Further, you get the natural support structure of a functioning marriage when off in the strange, new, foreign world.
Then again, we believe in male deacons, male elders, older women teaching younger women apart from regular Sunday worship just like older men teaching younger men apart from regular Sunday worship, and excommunication for divorce
It is not our job to be nice or acceptable. It is our job to build each other up in righteousness. MrGreenMan (who wrote the above comment) notes that they send married couples, which allows each person to work together and keep each other away from error.
We all make mistakes. Every day we tell errors. But our brothers can stop us from remaining in them, provided we do not have such a thin skin that we cannot accept correction.