In one of the comments on yesterday’s post, Bobby Ross talked about being called on to define the terms liberal and conservative as regards the church.
I’m sorry I wasn’t there, because I could have made the task easier. The definitions are quite simple: A liberal allows things I think are wrong, a conservative thinks things are wrong which I choose to allow.
This definition is simple because my opinion is that of openmindedness and reason, of careful, objective study. My opinion is that of sound doctrine and veracity. If you disagree with me, you have rejected the truth and strayed into error, be it on the left or on the right. You are unsound. Should you continue in your ways, you will be guilty of willful disobedience.
You have been warned.
Tim,
I think your definition is accurate. It’s hard to believe anyone would take issue with it, seeing you have asserted yourself so confidently. LOL
Me thinks if more of us would just ‘simply” focus on our spirit and God’s Spirit being intertwined and focus on “our” relationship with Him and let the church be the result, instead of the church being the cause of who we are or where we stand doctrinally , all would be well with our souls.
How do you say in Greek, Do not get the cart in front of the horse?
Grace and peace, Clay
There you go again, being more conservative than me! :)
Liberals are always trying to redefine things to fit their worldview.
/sarcasm
I am convinced the biggest mistake we made was to think we needed to restore the church. Restore the church?
What we actually needed to do was to restore “MY” spiritual relationship with God the Father, God the Son and their Holy Spirit. Get that correct and let us EACH exude the fruit of the Spirit,
Love
Joy
Peace
Patience
kindness
Goodness
Gentleness
Faithfulness
and Self Control.
Do that and preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified and don’t sweat
the small stuff, sweat the BIG STUFF, remember to Love God and neighbor as one self.
The unattractive thing concerning this paradigm is that it is all spiritual with little concern for the “righteous” acts of our religious flesh that prompts accolades of men.
I know, I know this paradigm will remove one man, telling other men what they MUST believe about religious stufff and self righteous physical acts that must be performed to Nadab and Abihu precision every Sunday.
Romans 12
A Living Sacrifice
1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
Grace and peace, Clay
You liberal…conservative :-).
Thanks to all who have commented. I’m just enjoying your thoughts, with nothing profound to add.
Grace and peace,
Tim Archer
How about: a liberal is one who disagrees with me – a conservative is cone who doesn’t agree with me. If I draw my circle too tightly, there will be no one in it but me.
My definitions were:
Conservative: anyone who wants the church to look like what it looked like when they were 10.
Liberal: anyone who wants the church to look more like something around them that isn’t church.
Yours are more concise.
It is interesting that I just read/watched the following:
http://godgrown.net/blog/2009/11/14/the-secret-rules-of-liberals-and-conservatives/
Great post, interesting comments indeed.
Tim,
Don’t you think an array of labels we use are equally unhelpful? Pharisaical? Sound? Grace-oriented? Their party markers more than they are content-rich, wouldn’t you agree? i wonder if we shouldn’t stop worry about where ideas came from and just weigh their contents.
–Guy
It’s my belief that labels keep us from considering people as individuals, which also keeps us from having to consider their ideas. We can lump them in with something else that we’ve already rejected.
Grace and peace,
Tim Archer
That definition always worked for me!
As long as we’re careful to distinguish true theological Liberalism (the school of thought that rejected inspiration, incarnation, physical resurrection, the miraculous, et al) from the discussion, I’d totally agree with this definition. That kind of Liberal has a solid core definition.
The way we use these labels in most contemporary discourse is indeed lazy and pejorative. We must take care to distinguish label from identity, and stick with using the latter. For example, ‘Christian’ is often a label pasted on any number of things for any number of reasons. Yet, I am a Christian – that is at the core of my identity. How we work this out is challenging, but necessary, I think.