Sunday, August 22, 2010

Can a Christian…

…not be a fundamentalist.

Short answer Yes.

Long answer YES! In fact I would beg to argue that fundamentalism is such a stretch of the Gospel that it leads to heresy. I make no apologies here but my intent is not to offend. Here is the thing. The Jews thought that they had to keep all these laws and it would bring them closer to understanding God; make them more holy.

This is where Paul (and you can read it for yourself in Galatians, Hebrews, etc.) comes in and says, hold on a second. You have become slaves to the law. You have let the law, not bring you closer to God but have let it  pull you so far away from God that you are leading others…others who think the law is the way…to become slaves to the law as well.

As (a) Christian(s) I(we) need to be careful of how many things we want to put between us and our relationship with Christ. Listen, God can tear down walls, but why build them in the first place?

Cheers!

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Interesting post Higgins! I've been thinking about this topic for the past 6 months or so and have tried to get rid of some of my self made "rules" for being a Christian. Would love to hear more about what you think...

Unknown said...

@Alyssa I honestly don't know if I have a direct answer. At least for me it's about removing distractions and focusing on Gods will. And sometimes we puts rules on God's love and that distracts us from the true nature of God. I don't know if any of that helps.

Sheila Siler said...

Hmmm. . . interesting. Perhaps there is a difference between fundamentalist and legalist? I grew up with a high dose of legalism, but have been able to set much of that to the side. And yet I would still call myself a fundamentalist . . . should we discuss the definition?

Unknown said...

@Sheila Ahh yes, I think that we have the same definition. I believe that I should have used legalism instead of fundamentalism :)

rickymccarl said...

I am a little miffed that I just saw your last comment because I had just got done writing a book about how you used the wrong term and now all that work for nothing. Oh well... I want to just caution everyone because while there is grace there is also law. There was always grace in law and law in grace. Paul tells women to cover their heads. Jesus tells us not to hate our brother. John says to keep His commandments. There is law in grace and we need to be sure not to forget that.