Throughout my Christian life, I have experienced acceptance and belonging in church by publicly identifying as (what some would call) a ‘card-carrying’ evangelical.
On reflection, I must confess that, among fellow evangelicals, the experience that I have most enjoyed has had little to do with being perceived as sacrificially loving, or exceptionally forbearing. To be brutally honest, neither of those virtues is my strong suit. Instead, as an evangelical, I’ve been choosing the far easier task of focusing on being what I call ‘confessionally sound’.
When considered in isolation, few would object to that focus. After all, for persecuted Christians, such as Martin Luther, Deitrich Bonhoeffer and even 21st century martyrs, confessional soundness has been one of the most conspicuous and admirable hallmarks of Reformed belief.
Nevertheless, there is danger in the pursuit of apparent confessional soundness at the expense of all other virtues, such love and forbearance. For example, it can result in a total lack of remorse over directing sarcastic ad hominem remarks and put-downs towards those people whom most evangelicals no longer consider to be confessionally 'sound.'
Despite the Biblical reminder that 'we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies' (Ephesians 6:12), the guilt of this belligerent attitude towards suspected ‘traitors to the cause’ can be superficially alleviated by asserting that their humiliation is no more than a form of collateral damage that should be expected when we engage in spiritual warfare.
In my own life, I’ve seen how that focus can result in a strenuous desire to avoid being perceived by my evangelical peers as ‘unsound’, while becoming shamefully argumentative when defending my orthodox position.
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