White Knuckles

Fear can cause us so much pain. Psalm 37:8 tells us "Cease from anger and forsake wrath; Do not fret; it leads only to evildoing."

I think fear is a major cause of sin. We fear rejection, so we lie. We fear losing, so we hoard. We fear the wounding of our pride, so we don't hold our tongue when we should. I believe some Pentecostals are afraid of losing their heritage, their doctrine on speaking in tongues, and it keeps us from being united with the entire body of Christ. I think this fear is why so many Pentecostals look on other denominations with suspicion and arrogance (arrogance being a wall to protect the ego).


I was always a little afraid of Baptists growing up. I was taught that they didn't "preach the whole bible". And yet other times I looked at them with a certain measure of pity, thinking, "Well, I hope they make it to heaven." I think this line of thought that I and many other Pentecostals (particularly COG) grew up with stems from the persecution of the church in its infancy. The Methodist and Baptist churches that the early Pentecostals came from did not look favorably on this new movement. I think for this reason the church put up walls to protect itself from the animosity as well as the doctrines of other denominations. It did not, and does not, want to allow itself to be informed by other traditions, fearing the corruption of it's own doctrine. This is much to our detriment.

W e have much to learn from other traditions. And I believe the high points of Pentecostalism could be of benefit to other traditions. We need to at least do our part and let down our guard towards other denominations (truth has nothing to fear) and attempt to interact with other parts of the body of Christ, not trying to convert Catholics or Baptists to our faith but just interacting in humble dialogue, willing to learn from members of our family in Christ. If we realize that in most cases we agree on much more than we disagree on, that speaking in tongues, while important, is not essential to faith in Christ (1 Corinthians 14:5-19), then I believe through the unifying power of the Holy Spirit some beautiful dialogue could occur and maybe, just maybe, we'd start to function more like a body.

dig it.

(Note: I try not to input a whole lot of scripture into my blogs. I'm very uncomfortable using scripture to back up my arguments. I guess I felt it safe to do so this time.)