From Kendall Harmon’s TitusOneNine:
Finish the sentence: “No place other than New York City itself suffered more grievously on 9/11 than _________. You may be surprised at the answer when you read this incredibly touching story.
The NY Times story was about a 9/11 survivors’ support group in Hoboken, NJ, that met at Trinity Episcopal Church there, facilitated by an Episcopal priest. As the group seemed to be winding down, it decided to commission and pay for a bell for the church, which will be tolled on the third anniversary next weekend.
I posted a comment on Kendall’s blog that this is a wonderful story (I add here that it demonstrates the Body of Christ in action). It’s another reminder that, even if we could conclusively resolve all our doctrinal disputes, there would still be more than enough of God’s work to do. That’s why I keep hoping we can find a way to agree to disagree for the time being, then praise God (and trust that he’ll help us figure things out eventually) and get BACK to work – together.
A conservative reader of TitusOneNine responded that my comment showed that I did not “understand what the issues are for the conservatives.” He argued that “[w]e do not agree on who Jesus is and what the meaning of his death is – and if we hold mutually exclusive views on these key areas, then we cannot get back onto harmony.”
I replied that I do understand where the conservatives are coming from; I also grieve that issues such as christology, soteriology, and scriptural authority seem to be such deal-killers for some of them. The Jesus whom the conservatives worship implied pretty clearly, in the parable of Good Samaritan, that deeds are at least as important as doctrine.
I can just imagine us saying at a hypothetical last judgment, “well, uh, yes, Lord, as a matter of fact we did see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison. But before we could really collaborate effectively in helping out, we had serious doctrinal disputes we had to settle amongst ourselves first. You understand, don’t you Lord? … Lord? … Lord?”
Leave a Reply