Mindless Genealogies
December 19, 2008
Titus 3:8 - 11 (The Message)
8-11I want you to put your foot down. Take a firm stand on these matters so that those who have put their trust in God will concentrate on the essentials that are good for everyone. Stay away from mindless, pointless quarreling over genealogies and fine print in the law code. That gets you nowhere. Warn a quarrelsome person once or twice, but then be done with him. It's obvious that such a person is out of line, rebellious against God. By persisting in divisiveness he cuts himself off.
Healthy discussion about Bible verses is OK. When it gets into point of anger and fighting that is when it does no good. God wants us to concentrate on the essentials. If you can say that Jesus is your Lord, and if you know you will go to heaven because He died for your sins, that is good enough for me.
I say this because I used to be a member of a now defunct web site, Christ-Dot (www.christdot.com, going to it now takes you to is successor, theophiles.org). I used to try to have discussions with people there. When they found out about the churches that I went to they immediately labeled me a heritic. It did not matter that I was a beliver, I could not be one because of the mega-church that I went to, Jesus would never attend a mega-church. I tried to say we were arguing over the small stuff but they would no listen.
In the end I had to leave for a while, it made no sense to try to talk with people that would not accept me and rather than get mad at them I just left.
If you find yourself in this kind of situation, gently talk about your faith. If you still are not accepted, get out of the group. Anger is not Christian, and you will get that way.
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