Thursday, November 25, 2010

Unity in essentials, freedom in non-essentials

Now here is a jarring text, that nobody has paid attention to its implications or even the whole gamut of ramifications. Let us look at Mark 10: 14 - 16
13 People were bringing little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them, but the disciples rebuked them. 14 When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them,“Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. 15 Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” 16 And he took the children in his arms, placed his hands on them and blessed them.
The uncomfortable polemic, is painfully obvious - We have to become children to be received. Children don't have to become into adults to be received! This is doctrinally radical. Its counter-trend to the definition of who is an adult, and what are his privileges.

Then why are there so many bitter arguments over water? About when to immerse, and how to immerse and how much of water is to be used! The disciples rebuked people for bringing children to Jesus (13), just as today there is an entire category of denominations that do exactly the same. But Jesus welcomed the children, took them in his arms, placed his hands on them and blessed them.

We are yet to learn how to be united in essentials, in spite of the different ways we believe in non-essentials. We are yet to learn that the kingdom of God is much greater a phenomenon than our narrow-minded bigotry.

7 comments:

Pops said...

Very true! But many give non-essentials the status of essentials and miss the point completely...

This is a good post. Waiting to hear more from you!

Anonymous said...

i dont understand this particular post , please clarify to me about what this post means.

Noel Prabhuraj said...

Dear Anonymous, there is too much of a fuss on what divides us, than on what unites us. Issues such as Child-baptism vs Adult-baptism, Arminianism vs Calvinism etc... our brand of christianity is not important but allegiance to Christ is.

Anonymous said...

I understand your point on unity and allegiance.But what does 'our brand of Christianity is not imp.' mean?
Anyway, thank you for responding to my previous comment.

Noel Prabhuraj said...

Dear Anonymous, everyone has the freedom to choose their own flavour of Christianity. Our personality type, or theology or sub-culture or peer group even our stupidity sometimes determines our brand. But this should not make us bigoted, with our own superiority to the extant where we exclude the priesthood of ALL believers, irrespective of denomination. If we cannot have communion together something is wrong. After all whether it is vanilla or butterscotch ice-cream is still ice-cream!

Anonymous said...

i understand , thanks

Anonymous said...

Can you explain about "essentials" / "issues that unite us" rather than what divides us ??