Community

I think it is easy to be like the Pharisees in Jesus' days on earth.  They tried to keep the rules to look good to their fellow man. I think of different examples recently of rule-keeping. Even in religious circles, we want to keep a list of rules so we can feel good about our selves.  God wants to change our hearts. Our righteousness comes from God, our relationship with him, not our works. Our works should be the result of a redeemed heart, not a means to get a redeemed heart. But just like so many in our history book, the Bible, we want to keep rules to feel justified. We learn in community. We gather together in our churches to hear from God. We attend Bible studies to hear from God. In a recent Bible study, we talked about interpreting the Bible by the Bible. The statement about community, about learning in community stuck with me. I kept thinking about it. It is not because I disagree but looking back over my life, I see where the different communities affected me in different ways. We want a good community. That relationship with God and his gifts to us in that relationship are so important. We need God to guide us into a relationship with him. Sometimes the influence in my life led me astray. I guess that is why I feel cautious toward community.  I started off very legalistic and even to this day feel I can become legalistic and just want to keep some rules and thereby feel good. But God wants our hearts. We need to understand and discern what we are being taught. Several examples come to mind that I keep thinking about when it comes to community. A friend that loves to talk to people about God will often ask if he can pray with them about something. In one particular incident, the man my friend was talking to said it depends on in whos name you are going to pray in. My friend stated in the name of our Lord, the one who died for our sins. In that case, no the man said, if it is not in the name of Jehovah, then it does not mean anything. My friend said he looked up Jehovah and it appears 4 times in the Old Testament. I looked in my Strong's concordance and that is what I found. God has many names in the Bible. It seems this man's community that he studies with wrote their own Bible and changed every place God is listed in the Bible to Jehovah. Now, I cannot check that because I do not have an NWT version of the Bible. I use Bible Hub and NWT is not one of the 19 versions they give. I generally use NIV or ESV most of the time myself.  This is what they learn in their community. One other time in a Sunday School class in a Baptist Church that I attended for eight years, a deacon said as he was teaching a Sunday School lesson that Mohammed was mentioned in the Bible. Immediately, I thought this is not right, I went home and checked in in my concordance. A concordance will show you everywhere a word is used in the Bible.  Mohammed was not found.  So I challenged the Deacon and even brought him my concordance, he just blew me off. This is why I am cautious in community. Some differences are OK. We can find things in the Bible to support our thought, but we do not want to make stuff up like Mohammed or change the word of God to suit us like the community did with the word Jehovah. I do not believe like I did fifty years ago as I was taught in a community when I was a child. Actually some things I still believe exactly the same, other things I have changed my belief on as I have matured. We do learn in community type settings, but I believe we do need to be careful about the community we choose. I remember talking to a former Baptist that had become a Seventh Day Adventist. The Adventist community had convinced him they were right and the Baptists were wrong. He couldn't explain it but said they showed him in the scriptures. We need to understand why we believe what we believe and articulate it and still be tolerant of those that may have a different understanding. I remember after eight years in that Baptist Church my belief on Abortion had changed. I was challenged one time on the way I was believing and thought about did I have scripture to back what I was saying. I did not. We see many churches accepting politically correct teaching that is not Bible-based. I basically believe like a Baptist but I had drifted in that area because of the influence of that particular community that had a pastor that accepted abortion in some cases.  So I have learned to be cautious even in community learning. It is good to ask questions and even challenge teachers. Then again it is necessary to be tolerant as people are in different places on their journey with God. But be persuaded on what you believe with the Bible to back you. Ask God for discernment and find a good community to learn in. God bless, LVZ.