Educating Ourselves Out of the Kingdom

I recently spoke at a Junior High retreat where I was responsible for communicating the gopsel message to a group of teenagers. By the end of the retreat there was an opportunity to say yes to the gospel (pretty standard formula) and many responded.

Often times, at retreats like these someone will tell those who made "first time decisions" that if they died tomorrow they would now go to heaven. This statement is made assuming that they do not stop following Jesus or believing that he is Lord. This is the context into which I was first introduced into the Kingdom of God and while I have my own issues with it, I do not deny that this kind of experience affected the outcome of my life completely and totally.

Flash forward to adulthood.

We now have huge divisions in the Church over sexuality (especially the Episcopal tradition). We even find ourselves saying that those who believe that same-sex unions are valid and God ordained are not Christians and do not follow Jesus anymore. The funny thing is, many of them probably came into the Church much like those kids this weekend and much like me. When they told us we were going to heaven as long as we continued to follow Jesus, it wasn't dependent upon our interpretation of passages in Leviticus or Romans about sexuality, it was on our interpretation of certain passages in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (and some less controversial passages in Romans).

I am finding a discrepancy in the reasoning of the Evangelical tradition that tells a seventh grader, "if you were to die tomorrow you would go to heaven," and then tells them when they are adults, "you think homosexuality is okay so you cannot be a Christian, you clearly do not believe in the authority of scripture or Jesus." What about the verses in Leviticus about wearing clothes of two materials or those in Corinthinas and Timothy about women in ministry? How can we be so quick to cast people out of the church when they have not renounced Jesus or his forgiveness on account of his death and resurrection? Are there not things we do now that we will find out later were sinful even though we thought the Bible was okay with it? Does that mean we no longer love Jesus and that we can no longer be part of the same church or serve under their authority if they happen to be a bishop?

If this is the way we are going to handle the church entrusted to us, maybe those evangelical retreats need to be long enough to make sure new believers know every correct interpretation of the scriptures before they leave the building. Since this is not possible by any means, should we then start telling them that they need to make sure they come up with the right interpretation as they study the scriptures and walk through life lest they run the risk of educating themselves out of the Kingdom?

We need to trust that God is in control of his church and that those who faithfully follow him will be led into all truth. Otherwise we are lost.