Insightful Musings on theScriptures

by

Raymond P. Sparre
Northwest University class of '67

Good day, dear ones.

It just stopped being morning. About the time I finished up the composition below, talked about it a lot with Becki, it was after 9am…and Thano, with his two boys, were chafing to get off to the Blueberry Pancake Breakfast at Mulino Airport. So we took off before I was able to send it. Fun to see the broad range of small aircraft that flew in for the event. Old cars and rods were on display too.

Now we’re about to run off to another feed…a BBQ with a trucking company that I’ve done a lot of work for. These kinds of eating meetings are violations of my chosen diet. I guess I’m on a binge. There’s even the BBQ Cookoff at Clark Park. Maybe I could jog to the Park and back…then run into town for chocolate sundaes.

Have a good rest of your Saturday…or whatever day you get this.

Love, Dad/Ray.

There is, in my opinion, a large measure of personal opinion and cultural bias in Paul’s treatment of man/woman relationships, head coverings, and hair length as presented in this passage (vv. 2-16). He gives room for discussion, debate, and even contention (v. 16). He actually invites it when he commands, “Judge for yourselves” (v. 13). It only makes sense to me that if we’re going to do that, we will end up with a huge volume of opinion—flowing from both right reasoning and wrong reasoning—and reasoning in between. But even though there is so much risk of drifting off course in our judgments and thought patterns, I think it’s still a good and healthy matter to judge for ourselves. Why? Because that very exercise, if done with honesty and careful effort, makes use of the most wonderful gift of God-likeness that He has vested in man—a thinker—a living and amazing CPU (Central Processing Unit)—that critiques and processes the data given and makes judgments and choices accordingly. Animals can’t do that—not in the same measure and degree. I worry that far too few human recipients of this special gift use it properly and learn to really think for themselves—but rather allow others to think for them, and simply adopt their judgments and conclusions.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could land on a simpler recipe for life where all we had to deal with was absolute right and absolute wrong—with both positions being universally obvious and understood? Then again, it would likely be very boring. But flowing out of that wish we may find ourselves chafing with the way things are and complain, “Why does there need to be such a spectrum of opinion in the Body of Christ? Why do we need to have Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, and Presbyterians? Why can’t we all just read our Bibles, draw the same conclusions, get together in perfect unity—and be just like me?!?!” I think we’ve just exposed the source of diversity.

Once again, it’s helpful to remember that our unity cannot be based on uniformity, but on our united pursuit of a HEART AFTER GOD. That’s an arrangement that allows unity amidst diversity. That oft-repeated conclusion assists me greatly. It helps me to accept that guy who sat in front of me in church on Sunday, worshipping, even though he’s wearing a stupid baseball cap the whole time—a violation of my traditional background, and Paul’s angle in this passage. (I’ll admit to being rather “old school.”) It helps me to rejoice at God’s grace in the life of that guy over there with arms raised in praise to God—even though those arms are covered with stupid tattoos. It helps me endure some of the modern church music that seems to lack so much depth—and familiarity. And it helps me to enjoy rich fellowship with members of a group whose women must have un-cut long hair and a little bonnet on their heads so as to comply with Paul’s cultural bias as presented in today’s reading—which I tend to regard as silly. Without this essential bond of unity, all we have left is a big contentious chaotic pile of #%&*!@+--another way to describe religion that is void of a HEART AFTER GOD!