Beside the Point

Spirituality Column No. 73
April 1, 2008
Current! In Carmel (IN) newspaper

Beside the Point
By Bob Walters

Since today is April 1, naturally I Googled “April Fool’s Day” to find out whether it has some traditional, hidden or even spurious religious etymology.

It doesn’t, really, unless you want to count the fact that in 1582 Pope Gregory XIII declared in force the new Gregorian Calendar which, throughout the Holy Roman Empire, standardized January 1 as the start of the new year instead of at the end of March. This replaced the old Julian Calendar and the big joke was to fool people into thinking April 1 was still the start of the New Year. A tradition was born.

Ha ha. But seriously, much of the Western world already had January 1 as New Year’s.

Still, maybe today is a good day to contemplate the foolish things we do in our faith; the things we do that make us take our focus off our relationship with Christ.

Non-foolishness is to understand one thing: it’s all about Him, Jesus Christ. When we focus on anything but Him, we very quickly start counting deeds, and when we count deeds, our human nature insists we keep score, and when we keep score … well, it gets foolish.

I don’t know how one can possibly keep score against God.

Christians in the same pews of the same churches will wrestle mightily over definitions of Bible words, over which version of the Bible is best, over how the Spirit comes and goes and resides, over which songs to sing and how to sing them, over communion practice, over worshipping with dance, over table decorations at the ladies’ retreat, over the inextricability of salvation (can you lose it?), who is called to be saved, who is going to Heaven, who is going to Hell, whether Genesis 1-2-3 can possibly be accurate …

The list is not necessarily foolish, but beside the point. The point is, fighting about this stuff is foolish.

Christ loves each of us in our uniqueness, so anything that prevents us from loving other believers in their uniqueness seems, well, foolish.

Shall we endeavor to discern the truth? Of course; lies are Satan’s weapon.

But keep it about Jesus, not about keeping score.

That’s the wise thing to do.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) thinks judgment is one of the great gifts God gives any of us. We just need to not try to do God’s job for Him.





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