1 Thessalonians 5:21 – But test everything; hold fast what is good.
We live in a world that doesn’t like to come to conclusions. Think about it for a second. Coming to a conclusion on something involves thinking, effort, eliminating options, deciding, the possibility of being wrong, inevitably disagreeing with someone, and probably the biggest factor, quite possibly having to change one’s beliefs or even have an entire paradigm shift.
As G.K. Chesterton said, “The purpose of an open mind is the same as that of an open mouth, that it might close on something.” Frankly, in a world where objective truth is an oxymoron, most people don’t care much about “closing on something.”
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1 Corinthians 8 is a passage where Paul deals with personal convictions, Christian liberty, weaker and stronger brothers, etc., specifically concerning the issue of meat offered to idols. The principles of the passage, however, are not constrained to this first century dilemma. For instance, in some smaller circles of contemporary Christianity there exists much bickering and debate over the issue of music standards. The following is 1 Corinthians 8 modified to address this specific issue (aka, I have replaced the language that refers to eating meat offered to idols to language referring to music standards; the modified wording is highlighted).
Some recent events in the “world of Christianity” have provoked some thoughts in my mind. I will get to those thoughts in a moment, but first allow me to give some background.
The first thing Fundamentalism needs to do in order to survive as historic Fundamentalism, as Fundamentalism was intended to be, is to embrace criticism. So yes, I am criticizing Fundamentalism for not taking criticism well—-we’ll see how that turns out for me. To lay out my basic thesis, Fundamentalism must become open to criticism and self-examining. Fundamentalism also needs to owe up to its failures.
What I would like to do with this article is present to you some popular Gospel clichés, as I like to call them, and provide some rather brief thoughts on each—-nothing exhaustive or too in depth, but just some thoughts to make you think about them, their use, what they seem to be saying, their accuracies and inaccuracies, etc.
Kirk E. Miller 