Passion v. Love

I took a class in seminary one summer that surveyed the gospels in a week. All four of them. It was intense. There were two professors that shared the class, one of which had come from the DTS extension in Daytona, Florida. This same summer, a group of guys visited the church Misha and I attended who were seminary students as well. I discovered that they had followed their favorite prof from Daytona to Dallas, just to take even more classes from him. So I thought it would be great to go visit them at their apartment, since that’s what good Baptists do. It’s called “visitation”.

This particular prof is a free grace guy, as evidenced by his followers’ desire to get the gospel right. I had rarely met anyone as passionate as these guys, even at seminary. They were a rare breed of students who had the right answers and had set out to make sure the world was corrected. Ok, so they aren’t so rare, but their passion was remarkable. Misha and I spent a couple of hours with them one evening, during which time we learned every statement our pastor had made that betrayed his legalism, and how we must be heretics because we attended that church.

Did I mention that they were passionate?

Misha and I left the apartment feeling like we had been horse-whipped. And we do not remember that encounter fondly. For me, it’s partly because I do not have that kind of passion about many things. I think I might be a little bit jealous. To be willing to follow a teacher 1,100 miles to learn from him, to be so convinced of something and be willing to defend it to the death, to seek intellectual battle like they did are still foreign practices for me. I just don’t get that excited about much.

The other reason I don’t remember our encounter with positive feelings is that I felt that the goal of these guys was to destroy me. I was a legalist, and they were going to take me down. Or that’s how it felt. The fact is that I was not a legalist, but I was working through some contradictory messages I was receiving from pastors and professors, and I was seeking the truth. What I did not want to do is go back to that apartment and spend another 2 hours hearing about all the ways I was wrong.

Passion v. Love.

What I’ve come to realize is that Passion, while necessary and desirable, makes for a lot of loud noise without love. Isn’t that what the first part of I Corinthians 13 is all about? I can speak with knowledge, power, and accuracy, but if I do not have love, I am nothing but a clanging cymbal from which people flee.

Over the last few years I have been growing in passion and confidence about a few things, especially the gospel. I’ve even been seeking out conversations that pit the intellectual reliability of free grace against all forms of legalism. But what I want to always be the hallmark of my presentation is passion tempered by love. I don’t ever want a conversation with me to feel like a horse-whipping. There just might be something to this “truth in love” thing.

BOLD

The only revolution I’ve ever experienced personally is the complete takeover of everything tech. If it’s digital, it must be better. Since I’ve been alive, we’ve gone from Beta to VHS to DVD to Bluray. From 8 Tracks to Cassette Tapes to CDs to iPods. From Typewriter to Desktop to Laptop. From Floppy Disc to CD to External Hard Drive to those little things you can lose down a sink drain. I still don’t know what to call them. Stick Drive? Thumb Drive?

So I can relate to someone being a little bit evangelical about their new technological device. Youth ministers do it all the time. I sometimes think we get together to show off our newest tech toys. The first iPad I ever saw was at a Youth Conference in Dallas. As was my first iPhone and my first Bluetooth headset. Actually Bluetooth was introduced to me in seminary... in a youth ministry class.

What I notice about cultural revolutions is that when they become widespread they become commonplace. When they become commonplace they become less exciting. Do you remember when MTV was born? Have you seen MTV lately?

We get used to new and exciting things. That’s just the way it goes.

I’ve been reading about a revolution that I would have loved to experience. My daily Scripture readings have led me to Acts, and even though I’m only through the first 6 chapters, I am so pumped up by what I’m reading that I look at my own life and think, “What’s the DEAL?” How did I ever get so bored in my experience of Christianity? How did it get so commonplace?

I try to imagine what the church under Peter and James and John must have been like, but I think that because of my Southern-American upbringing, I fall short. Christianity is so commonplace, such a part of our culture, I don’t think I can get the full picture of what was happening. I have been lulled to sleep by tolerance and social justice, distracted by technology and the appearance of our building. As important as some of those things are, Acts demonstrates that they are pointless and empty without the bold and selfless and loving declaration of the truth of the Gospel.

The revolution in the church today is not American churches growing bigger and bigger and spending more and more money on themselves. It’s not a social/political agenda. It’s individuals motivated by their love for Christ and their desire to share the gospel who start homeless ministries, go into prisons, give up a week of their summer to serve others, start their own small groups with non-church friends so they can share Christ’s love with regular people who might not experience it otherwise.

We have created a culture in America where Christianity is commonplace. Yet when you talk to an individual, even in Texas, who has caught on to the passionate pursuit of Christ and who is being bold and selfless in their declaration of the Gospel, there is no more exciting time than right now. I can almost see Peter and John speaking in the square after they had been threatened and told to stop. I can almost see Stephen serving with wisdom and grace and confounding the philosophers at the expense of his life.

I would love to see more and more of those kinds of people in Corsicana, and it would thrill me to death if these were the kind of people we are bringing up at Believers Bible Church.