This past Friday I went to a Winter jam concert ( so totally awesome!!). In case you don't know what that is, it's a concert where between 5-8 christian bands all perform on the same night. I saw Newsboys, Third day, Tenth Avenue North, Fireflight, Sidewalk Prophets,Newsong, and Robert Pierre this year. Anyway, After Tenth Avenue North finished playing one of their songs (I think it was Hold My Heart. Scroll down to the bottom and listen to it from my playlist) The lead singer started talking a little bit about his background. Here's how I remember it.
"I need to be honest with you all tonight. I'm still recovering from growing up inside a christian school. When I was growing up it wasn't about enjoying God and living life for him; it was about being a better christian because if you didn't do such and such you weren't a good christian. It was all about being a "good" christian. All that we tried to do was know more than the other person to where we could prove them wrong if we didn't agree with what they said....
That was really thought provoking for me. I came from a legalistic background also; so it's easy for me to relate to what he was saying. We were to the point that we wouldn't listen to any music besides hymns, my sisters only wore skirts, and it was wrong to eat processed foods of any kind.
We were also judging people that did wear pants, ate processed foods, and listened to contemporary christian music. Now it says in the bible that we are not supposed to judge unless we wanted to be judged ourselves. Our excuse was that we were just stating the truth. It never registered that people didn't ask to hear about what we deemed "truth". I seriously needed to keep my mouth shut and just let other people think differently from me. I was the definition of pride back then. I am still trying to get over that but I do struggle with it on a consistent basis. We left that church because of an insignificant doctrinal difference and started going to a church where the 3 pastors were the definition of humility. I have learned so much and hope to learn a ton more. An encouragement to everybody - stay humble and don't follow my example. Sorry, I kinda got carried away. Hopefully through all my jumbled mess of words you caught something.
Hope this is worth something. - David
Hey David,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the reminder. We are all on a journey. Some of us are on different paths, some of us take short cuts, detours, or the scenic route, yet most of us are heading for the same goal. God has us each were we are capable of being at each point in our life; which is often very different from the person traveling next to us. We can only love each other along the way, in 'spite' of the differences, to encourage one another to continue on in faith, and not judge.
Great post!
-Kerry