We probably disagree (and that's okay!!)

Featuring a brief journey into Middle Earth

Yesterday’s weeds are today’s centerpiece. Time and perspective are everything.

Dear perfectionists, 

I hope this article finds you well, and offers some welcome encouragement from one of your own. 

Here’s the deal: I have fought battles with perfectionism for as long as I can remember. Since childhood, I’ve shed countless tears of frustration because I felt overwhelmed by an important task, or made a mistake, or felt like I disappointed someone I loved. It’s an ugly vice, but one I’m quite familiar with at this point. 

And, unsurprisingly, these tendencies have snaked their way into my faith as well, often manifesting in the form of fear. 

Fear that I wasn’t saved. 

Fear that my baptism didn’t count. 

Fear that I was reading my Bible the wrong way. 

Fear that I’ve got something wrong. 

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If you’ve been in the faith for a while, you know that the Christian walk does not follow a predictable path. 

Whether you seek it out or not, there will come a day that you’re going to find yourself in unfamiliar territory. I’m reminded of the meandering paths of Middle Earth illustrated in the Lord of the Rings series, alive with the excitement—and fear—of the unknown that awaits the travelers. 

Though you may try to stick to the known, predictable paths of the Shire, you’ll soon find yourself in Sam Gamgee’s shoes, acutely aware that, “If I take one more step, it’ll be the farthest away from home I’ve ever been.” 

By “home,” in this case, I’m simply referring to the sense of comfort and familiarity that you likely derive from your worldview, whatever that may be. It is almost guaranteed that, at some point, something will happen that challenges that worldview—In fact, these challenges may even come from sources that you believed to be aligned with yourself. These are the most alarming kinds of challenges, because they undermine assumptions that you probably didn’t even realize you’d made. Sometimes they can feel a bit like an earthquake, and certainly they can function as such, likely revealing weaknesses in the structures you and others around you have built. 

Or at least, that’s been my experience. It’s disconcerting, to say the least, to realize that 1) your personal brand of faith may not work for everyone—even fellow believers—and 2) you may hold a belief that isn’t actually warranted for some reason or another. Though jarring at first, I am coming to expect these moments more often as I pursue the command to “love the Lord with all my mind.” 

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Here’s what I want you to know: 

In the course of sharing my journey with faith, I will almost definitely come to some conclusions that you wouldn’t. 

In fact, I’ll probably make statements that I myself don’t even agree with 6 months or 6 years down the road. 

That doesn’t mean that every belief is up for debate, though. Certain tenets are foundational to the faith, and I won’t budge on them—things like Christ’s atoning death and resurrection from the dead, or the Trinity. 

But, if you start digging into these and other tenets of the Christian faith, doctrinal differences quickly arrive. How, exactly, was Christ’s death atoning? What’s the proper role of baptism? How do you interpret apocalyptic literature in the Bible? 

This, of course, is why there are thousands of Christian denominations worldwide. We simply don’t all agree on every doctrinal principle or theological interpretation—and that’s a good thing. 

As I seek knowledge in the pursuit of deepening my faith, I often come face-to-face with challenges to beliefs I didn’t even know I held. Typically when this happens, I am inclined to get defensive, like a cornered animal. Simply put, it’s a heck of a lot easier to stubbornly oppose anything that sounds different from what I thought was true than to consider that I might just need to reexamine my original belief.¹

At this stage, I am earnestly trying to get to know God the Father, a loving, personal God who wants to know his children. For too long, I have been afraid of “getting it wrong,” of presenting God with anything less than perfection. It’s not totally without foundation, for we serve a God that is as righteous and just as he is loving and merciful. 

It’s not difficult for me to believe in God’s justice. It’s harder for me to accept his grace. 

It’s easy to get caught up in the fear that, if we don’t serve God perfectly, we’ll be found lacking in his sight. It’s a terrifying prospect. 

Praise the Lord—it’s not reality. 

Your salvation does not depend on a perfect interpretation of theology and doctrine. 

You can be reconciled to God whether or not you believe in the rapture, or have strong opinions about which atonement theory is best, or observe Lent. 

That’s because your salvation—your right standing with the perfect, holy God—has been sealed by Christ’s sacrifice. Once you’ve become a child of God, no misunderstanding can undo that. 

All this to say…If we do disagree, please don’t throw the baby (this newsletter) out with the bathwater (by unsubscribing). Leave me a comment, or send me an email, because I genuinely want to talk with you about it. Or, just give it 6 months—one of us might just come around to the other’s point of view. 

Now, LMK:

Tell me about a time you changed your mind about something. What caused you to change? What was the process like? Is this common or rare for you? I want to know!

A recommendation & a request:

I finished C.S. Lewis’ “The Screwtape Letters” earlier this week, and I can’t recommend it enough. I’ll spare you the full summary here (because I’ll be publishing about it soon), but it was thoroughly entertaining while being thought provoking.

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1. In a later article, I'll talk about what it means to entertain and evaluate new ideas to decide whether or not they fit into my belief system. It's an iterative process, to say the least.