"How is it then, brethren? whenever you come together each of you has a psalm, a teaching a tongue, a revelation, or an interpretation. Let all thee be done for edification." 1 Cor. 14:26
The Olive Garden restaurant has a slogan saying: "When you're here your family!" I look upon the church body as the body of Christ and my family unit as my church family, as you might say, even in a family, there is diversity and people are not all clones of their parents the children do not necessarily take after their parents as chips off the old block, but are individuals and we celebrate that individuality. There is once a song that goes, "He ain't heavy. He's my brother!" We all stand up for our brother no matter what and do not let someone bully or pick on our brother because he's a brother. It's alright if we do but not somebody else as they say. Christians are one unit because they're one in the Spirit, not one politically agreed or socially agreed some concept of that word is not a club or a sorority fraternity type of thing but a unity of organism, not that organization and that's a very important point.
They say that in America "We celebrate our differences," and our diversity is our strength too. We are a pluralistic society multicultural coexisting in harmony. This also goes through the church the more diverse the members the stronger it must be. If only certain people and certain doctrines were there and no one could just dare disagree then the church would be weakened and might even lead to a cult.
The concept of being a protestant is that you can say this I dissent I disagree I protest. We are not slaves to church dogma but have individual responsibility as well as the privilege to read our own Bibles to interpret them as we see God open them up to us. We need to search out the scriptures and see what these things are so that the pastor says as the noble Thessalonians did. We must learn to create community and we do this by loving one another. We love people into the kingdom we don't scare them into the kingdom with scare tactics or threats or shove the Bible down their throats. We simply do good deeds and see that our testimony speaks for itself but we must not jeopardize our testimony by sin so we must be careful of how we act and live out our faith. The faith we have is the faith we show, in other words. A real church has the active presence of Christ you can sense Christ moving through the spirit because there is love in the body.
There is a spiritual wellness when people practice their own gifting because they realize they are there for a purpose. Each one has something from the Lord to share to give to others we all have a place in the body. A healthy body of Christ is when all members participate we are not jealous of one another and we realize our need for one another We are friends in the church in the sense that we probably would not be friends otherwise it's because Christ is the one who unites us and this will be in place in heaven there's neither Jew nor Gentile slave nor free male nor female we're all one in Christ.
As the Holy Spirit works in the body, it says we are all baptized into the body by one Spirit. It doesn't matter what gift we have as long as we have the Spirit that operates through us. The spirit of the matter in which we practice it is that that is important. It is too bad that some people hold things against Christ because Christians do not live up to specs or par and do not meet their expectations. Atheists like to poke fun at Christians and think we are hypocrites there's something wrong with you and people don't necessarily judge Jesus but they judge us Christians. We ought to take note of that and realize that we do fall short.
When I realize that it's all about Christ as Jesus said the scriptures bear witness of him that he is the Spirit of prophecy, we realize that we are here for the sake of God, not for not to promote ourselves or to make a name for ourselves or to celebrate ourselves but to celebrate Jesus he is the reason we are here in body. I bemoan the fact that Gandhi said that I would be a Christian had I ever met one or it wasn't for Christians I'd become one! This is really a cynical viewpoint but that's the one that he thought that he was holy when he wasn't he was just a religious man in his own way. He had many virtues but that did make him a godly man.
We must realize that people see Christ when they see us and they judge Christ by the way we act in our daily lives we are the only gospel that some people see. When we can see the differences in our bodies our local family in Christ the church and realize we are one Spirit then we can say viva la difference. We celebrate this diversity and realize it is a sign of strength the more alike we are, the less strong we become. That means we cannot tolerate those who differ from us or it could be we're in a cult where people think they are right and everybody else is wrong or someone has a monopoly on the truth and has cornered the market of biblical truth claims. Soli Deo Gloria!
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