1. Lose the persecution complex
2. Lose the tribalism
3. Lose the demand for doctrinal uniformity
4. Lose the tendency to rely on transitional objects rather than God
5. Lose the desire and practice of over-identification with Christian culture.
Or written in a positive manner
1. Recognize that being vulnerable and choosing to love others attracts people - being defensive drives people away.
2. God loves everyone. We need to recognize that classifying ourselves into groups and clubs and churches, by definition, divides the body of Christ. Hospitals are not divided; neither should the people of the Great Physician.
3. Christians should be known for their love, not their doctrine. It is the difference between an artist and someone who paints by numbers. Uneducated people often mistake artists like Van Gogh and Monet as freewheeling geniuses who never needed to know anything about painting to create their masterpieces - nothing could be farther from the truth - both were steeped in the mechanics of painting, which allowed them to transcend them. We need to understand scripture and doctrine so we can transcend it and start loving like Van Gogh painted.
4. The Bible is not God. We need to focus on Him, not a snapshot of Him. Love and Prayer are scripture in action
5. We need to live in the world. Christianity is loving people in a common manner, not hiding behind weird Christian cultural language, customs, and rejection of modern thought - this is related to tribalism, but it goes beyond it. We do it because we are afraid of no longer being special and different based on our own ideas about identity rather than the identity God set up for us, which is love. It is in essence, burying our treasure because we do not trust our master. Tribalism relies on the norms of the group - keeping every customs as an eternal form of identity (the fifties ideal of the house wife is an example). Over-identification is one step further - it is internalizing human group norms, which manifests as fundamentalism. It is human and fear-based.
2. Lose the tribalism
3. Lose the demand for doctrinal uniformity
4. Lose the tendency to rely on transitional objects rather than God
5. Lose the desire and practice of over-identification with Christian culture.
Or written in a positive manner
1. Recognize that being vulnerable and choosing to love others attracts people - being defensive drives people away.
2. God loves everyone. We need to recognize that classifying ourselves into groups and clubs and churches, by definition, divides the body of Christ. Hospitals are not divided; neither should the people of the Great Physician.
3. Christians should be known for their love, not their doctrine. It is the difference between an artist and someone who paints by numbers. Uneducated people often mistake artists like Van Gogh and Monet as freewheeling geniuses who never needed to know anything about painting to create their masterpieces - nothing could be farther from the truth - both were steeped in the mechanics of painting, which allowed them to transcend them. We need to understand scripture and doctrine so we can transcend it and start loving like Van Gogh painted.
4. The Bible is not God. We need to focus on Him, not a snapshot of Him. Love and Prayer are scripture in action
5. We need to live in the world. Christianity is loving people in a common manner, not hiding behind weird Christian cultural language, customs, and rejection of modern thought - this is related to tribalism, but it goes beyond it. We do it because we are afraid of no longer being special and different based on our own ideas about identity rather than the identity God set up for us, which is love. It is in essence, burying our treasure because we do not trust our master. Tribalism relies on the norms of the group - keeping every customs as an eternal form of identity (the fifties ideal of the house wife is an example). Over-identification is one step further - it is internalizing human group norms, which manifests as fundamentalism. It is human and fear-based.
