The 'true' Christian and the other

I was at an auto mechanic shop, getting the very old Parish car looked after.  Another man who was there asked me if I was the Pastor at Ebenezer - he had recognized the car [they have had it for 11 years and it was used when they got it].  I told him that my wife was the Pastor, that we had recently come to Guyana, that we would be staying here for two years.  He asked if I were a Pastor, also; no, I am not.  'But you are a churchman?' he asked.  'Yes, of course,' I replied.
  I felt like I should have been on the dark side of a confessional, because he proceeded to tell me that although he was 63 years old and had five children, that he had never married.  If he thought that might surprise me or produce some stronger reaction, it did not - absent fathers are a fact of life everywhere, even if they are perhaps more prevalent in Guyana than in North America.
   Then he told me that he had a girlfriend [a Christian girl], but that they were having some difficulties.  I listened:  He is a Christian - he believes in God and attends church, but she is a 'true' Christian, he said, and she seemed to speak a lot to him about such things as 'fornication.' I'm guessing she was not in favour of it, but considering his history, that he was of a different opinion, hence, the 'difficulties' in the relationship.  
   I didn't want to get into a theological/ethical debate over what constituted fornication, or whether there was a way out of his difficulties with this woman.  I suppose that marriage might have been the solution she was looking for, but certainly didn't seem to have much appeal to the gentleman.
   But it struck me that although he referred to himself as a Christian and even gave evidence that indicated he knew what that meant, he referred to the lady in question as a 'true' Christian. I assumed he meant that her strict moral code made her somehow more of a Christian than he. 
   We often hear the word Christian used with qualifiers: true Christian, born-again Christian, Bible-believing Christian, Evangelical Christian, Lutheran Christian.  But there are only Christians.  Now, don't get me wrong - I am a Lutheran and proud to be; whether Lutherans have a more correct notion of Christian doctrine than others might is a debatable point.  But the debate is not about who is a Christian and who isn't, or which is somehow more Christian than another.
   This brings me to the point that I find increasingly important in my life and my faith, namely, that there is one ministry [mission] for the Church [that would be the one, holy, apostolic Church] ---- Proclaim the Gospel in word and deed, or as the old Augsburg Confession says - preach the Gospel in its purity and rightly administer the Sacraments [it's from memory, so correct me if you need to, or call it a paraphrase, if you like].  
   One important thing to note in that phrase is what it does not say - it does not say we have to decide who are the true Christians and who are not; who are saved and who are going straight to Hell.  Or as I am wont to say, we are not about the business of sorting potatoes.  The mandate at the end of Matthew is to go, preach, baptize.  In John, the new command is that we love one another.  Neither of these say anything about dividing people into catagories, identifying the true Christians, or assigning eternal destinations for people.

Lutherans have often been seen by conservatives as part of the 'other' sort of Christian, because we do not have a strict moral code.  But I would submit that there is a difference between proclaiming the Gospel and teaching moralism.  But that is the topic of another posting.  For now, just know that Christians are Christians without need of qualification.  We debate morals, we debate doctrine, but it's not our job to sort potatoes -- unless, of course, you are cooking them for dinner.

Mosquito netting

I planned to write this blog right after worship on Sunday.  In the Caribbean, this is right after - so I'm good.
  Vivian delivered her first sermon on Sunday past.  She talked about mosquito netting, and sleeping under them.  It did take us awhile to get all the nuances straight - people who have lived with something all their lives sometimes don't cover all the salient points on the first go round.  By now we are doing everything properly, I think, and the number of mosquito bites is greatly reduced.
  The point of her mention of same was to point out that to the uninitiated, sleeping under a net seems to be a sort of captivity.  You are trapped inside this net in fear for your life [which considering the various sorts of infections mosquitoes carry, is no exaggeration], not being able to move or especially get up to go to the bathroom without risk.
  Galatians 5 1 For freedom Christ has set us free.   Just as the net encloses us in a freedom - freedom from mosquitoes, freedom from threat, so that our night can give is peaceful rest, so Christ encompasses our lives in freedom, so that we can serve God and neighbour.  To the uninitiated, that freedom to serve might look like slavery, but to those who are in Christ, it is true freedom.  
  So we live here, sleeping under our net - 'safe and secure from all alarms.'  We are free from mosquitoes [mostly] and also free from the need for blankets.  And secure in the Freedom of God's love.