Look in the margins.........

Do you ever stop and think about why you believe the way
you do? I watched a movie a couple of nights ago that I
had saved on TIVO. It made me think about a conversation
I overheard years ago. I have thought about this matter
hundreds of times since then. I listened to a mom explain
why she and her husband were encouraging her daughter
to quit a job. The daughter had only graduated a few
months earlier and had moved to a metropolitan area and
secured the exact type of job she had worked and prepared
for throughout college. I won't go into the other details, but
I remember my husband saying when we left that he wondered
if they thought heaven was going to be segregated. The parents
had a real problem because the person their daughter was
working for was gay. I can still see the mom putting her hand
to her mouth and whispering "homosexual."

The movie I watched was moving and thought-provoking. The
priest in it was explaining to a mom why she needed to examine,
read, study, and develop her OWN thoughts about what she
believed and why. She was brought up in a staunch catholic
home and was taught that her children were doomed to hell unless
they believed as she did. I'm simplifying it somewhat, but this
gives you the general idea.

The movie was based on a true story. The book that it was based
on was a best seller. However, the story has been played out over
and over in thousands of homes. Parents tell child that they have
to believe as they do or be ostracized from the family. The mom
kicked her son out and he eventually committed suicide. She went
on to study and research and decide that she had been wrong in
what she was led to believe and very wrong for not studying God's
word on her own.

I remember one particular day when teaching Sunday school class to a
high school class. A young man attended that had never been to our
church before. He was 14 or 15 years old and I wasn't 5 or 6 years
older than him. I had studied and studied my lesson and thought I
was overly prepared. Then, this new student told why they were
visiting our church that day and asked me a question that I hadn't
studied for. He and his parents had gone to the same church for
as long as he could remember. The Sunday before the minister
preached about a scripture and said that anyone in the congregation
that was divorced was going to hell. He asked me what I thought.
I've never forgotten that day. I took a breath and opened the Bible
to the 10 commandments and started praying under my breath. I
asked God to give me the right answer and to lead me to direct this
child with the right knowledge. I'll never forgot that day. The
scriptures and words came to me in a way that would be hard to
ever duplicate. In essence, I told him that everyone sinned and
I couldn't see why this sin would be harder to forgive than any other.
None of us could "work" our way into heaven - we all fell short and
had to be forgiven.

I opened my Bible the other night when watching this movie. I started
thumbing through some of the scriptures that were mentioned in the
movie. I listened as the priest explained that some scriptures that
were taken literally were written in a time when words didn't mean the
same thing. And, he quoted scripture where there was instruction to
bring a woman who had committed adultery to be stoned to death.
On and on......... Why is it that we take some scriptures so literally
and others we seem to ignore? Why is there only the one scripture
that preachers quote when preaching on sexual orientation and
thousands with instruction to NOT JUDGE and love one another?

I don't pretend to want or need anyone to believe like I do. But, I do
sometimes think back to times in my life when I felt like God was
leading me to change my mind about something.

As I thumbed through my Bible the other night, my eyes kept falling to
the margins. I have made a habit the last 35+ years of writing the
name of the sermon, person who preached it, date, and other info in
the margins next to the scripture used in the sermon. My eyes fell
to Romans 14 and a sermon I heard about differences of opinions. It
seems to me that the scripture is pretty plain about our personal
responsibility in showing grace and forbidding judgment.

I spent hours thinking about different questions I had through the years
and how an open mind with God's word and sincere prayerful requests
for conviction led me to the beliefs I hold dear.

When in doubt.........look to the margins.