Category Archives: Theology

Broken

8/4/2022 Rev. Karen Fitz La Barge

I was very sad when I heard the news.  It was another couple calling it quits and breaking up. Their relationship was beyond all repair.  Instead of love and acceptance of faults no matter what happened to them; it was promises broken again and again and their mutual trust completely shattered.  Instead of having each other’s back and sharing life’s burdens, everything had become about protecting themselves from each other.  The cracks from this broken relationship will not only leave permanent scars on their own lives, but also on the hearts of their two young children. It is they who will bear the biggest heartache as their parents determine that they are better off apart rather than being together.  –Like a ceramic bowl that is dropped and broken, for this family, things will never be the same again.
                    In Japan, there is a long tradition of making beautiful pottery, a tradition that goes back thousands of years.  And it is in Japan that the art of Kintsugi was created and still is practiced. Kintsugi is the Japanese art of fixing broken pottery with a lacquer resin mixed with powdered gold, silver or platinum. — Instead of throwing away a piece of pottery that has gotten broken, all of the parts are saved and it is carefully repaired with the expensive lacquer. The cracks, instead of being viewed as permanent ugly flaws, are highlighted and the cracks themselves become beautiful patterns, flaring uniquely across the surface of the piece. 
         The philosophy behind Kintsugi is that the breakage and the repair become part of the history of the object, something to highlight in memory and beauty rather than to disguise. When it first became popular in the 15th century, collectors became so enthralled by this new technique that they were accused of deliberately breaking valuable ceramic pieces, just so that they could be made even more valuable by adding seams of gold to them. 
In our own lives, we could learn something from Kintsugi. All people are broken in big and little ways and with the broken shards of their lives they often cut and hurt other people.  But with God’s gentle loving help; all of our broken lives can be carefully put back together again.  Even when we are completely broken into pieces by life, when we can do nothing but lie shattered on the floor, we can know that we are still loved and valued by God.  As we go through God’s process of repair, a new and awesome creation will be the result. The scars on our hearts become seams of gold where the history of our hurts are documented, but there is beauty in the surviving. May the love of God repair all of us as we gather our broken pieces and hand them over to our Maker for repair over and over again. Amen.

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Don’t Worry, Trust Jesus

By Rev. Karen Fitz La Barge, 5/9/2022

Sing with me now:

In every life we have some trouble: But when you worry you make it double,
Don’t worry, beeeee happy.  Don’t worry, be happy now.

The 1988 song by Bobby McFarrin became an immediate sensation after being introduced as part of the soundtrack of the movie, Cocktail.  The song, made without instrumentation, was composed by layering tracks of various sounds all made by McFerrin voice. It rocketed to number one near the end of 1988.  Consequently, in 1989, it was awarded three Grammys for Song of the Year, Record of the Year as well as Best Male Pop Vocal Performance.

While Don’t Worry, Be Happy is an undeniably catchy song, the philosophy in it has been lambasted for its oversimplification of human psychology and the way that we humans deal with anxiety.  –Our brains are not made up of a bank of simple toggle switches where we can consciously turn off our worry switch and then just turn on another switch for happiness. Getting a handle on all of our human worries requires more work than that.  It requires some purposeful thought. It requires a change in our thinking and our behaviors as well our decision making.

Jesus addresses human worry in Matthew 6:25-34. “Don’t worry about what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear.”  Jesus describes how God provides food and drink for the birds and how God clothes the flowers in the fields to be dressed in splendor, far better than a king. Jesus then reminds us that we are much more valuable to God than birds or flowers. This is an example of the first step of how we humans get a handle on our worries.  We need to change our perspective.  There are several different ways to do this.  Initially, we can to remind ourselves that we are not alone in our lives, that we are children of God and part of God’s family and that together we will be able to handle whatever happens.  Additionally, we also need to ask ourselves if this thing that we are worried about is actually very likely or if it is really would be the worst thing that could ever happen to us.  Are we just imagining something to be much worse than it actually is?  And finally, we need to remind ourselves that this life is not the end of our existence. There is an eternal life in heaven that we are bound for.  We all have a ticket for eternity that does not have our date or time of departure on it.  Will this thing we are all worried about here on earth actually matter in eternity?

The second step in dealing with worry is that we need to change our behaviors. Jesus tells us to work for God’s kingdom on earth and follow God’s way of right living and many of the things that we worry about will naturally fall into place. We are to love God and all of our neighbors while loving ourselves. While this may seem simple, it is a lifetime of work to begin to accomplish this successfully.  Lovingly caring for other people and ourselves is a great guide for all of our every day decisions.

The last step in successfully dealing with human worry is to compartmentalize it.  Jesus advocates for this practice when he concludes in Matthew 6:34, Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”  While we still need to plan for the future and prepare for the things that we can control, there is no use in us worrying about the rest of our future troubles.  With God and our community with us, with right living and loving intentions, we should be confident that we will be able to handle all tomorrow’s troubles when they will come in the future.  –Because all those troubles we are worried about may not even show up tomorrow at all.

While it still is a major oversimplification; I think a better way for us to deal with all of our life’s troubles is to:   Don’t Worry….Trust Jesus.

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Strangers As Friends

Strangers as Friends 3/26/2022
Rev. Karen Fitz La Barge, North Kent Presbyterian Church

The images are haunting. Since the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, 3.7 million Ukrainians have fled their country for their lives. 10 million Ukrainian people are displaced inside Ukraine, searching for safety from the fighting and the shelling of civilian buildings. Today, we are witnessing the biggest European refugee crisis since WWII. Most of the people who are fleeing Ukraine are women and children. There are
stories of families crossing the Ukrainian border together only to have the men kiss their wives and children goodbye and then turn around to head back into Ukraine in order to defend their homes and neighborhoods.

My friend, the Rev. Scott Parmenter from Allegan Baptist is currently serving as the pastor at the International Christian Fellowship Church in Warsaw, Poland. He and his congregation have turned their church building into a refugee housing center. There has been a steady stream of refugees walking through their doors. But because of the
destruction, it is not always possible for these people to ever go back home. Pastor Scott writes: “The look in their eyes, I don’t think I will ever forget. They’re blank; they’re empty. When you give them something, they’re grateful, but very little emotion because they’re just in shock, I think, over what’s happened to them.”

Over 40 times in the Bible we are encouraged to care for the immigrant, the
stranger in our midst. As followers of Jesus, we are specifically instructed to take in, welcome and to take care of those strangers who are immigrants, refugees, those who are homeless. We are reminded that just as the children of Israel were starving and found food and welcome in the land of Egypt, so too we are obligated to welcome the stranger as friends.
The United States has recently announced that they will temporarily take in 100,000 Ukrainian refugees. To immigrate permanently, the refugees would need to apply for asylum, a difficult and complex government system that is widely considered to already be overstretched. Locally, Bethany Christian Services is searching for churches and organizations that can volunteer to help refugee families adjust to living in the U.S. They need volunteers’ help to find apartments and to outfit them with necessities, as well as people to meet refugees at the airport, folks to teach refugees
how to use our public transportation services, and often people to serve as tutors to help refugees learn English as a second language. There is also a program called New Neighbor where you commit to a three-month friendship with a refugee family to help serve as a cultural advisor to help them to navigate the customs and expectations of life in the Grand Rapids area. I wonder what it would look like if every church in the Rockford area committed themselves to helping one refugee family? While we certainly would save the lives of people who are fleeing for their lives, how would our lives and our faith be changed if we actually had the courage to welcome these strangers as friends? After all, Matthew 25 reminds us that what we do for the least of these refugees is what we do for Jesus. Are
we ready to step up and follow Jesus’ instructions to us? I pray that we are.

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Restoration!

Restoration!  2/14/2022  Rev. Karen Fitz La Barge

There is a British television show on Netflix called, “The Repair Shop”. 

filmed at an open air museum, in an old thatched roof barn from the late 17th or 18th century.  Inside the barn is a regular cast of expert craftspeople and specialists. 

          In series 2, episode 4, the specialist stuffed toy restorers, Amanda Middleditch and Julie Tachell are shocked when a 1930’s stuffed lamb is brought in by it’s owner.  Made by a British toymaker called “Mary Thought” the toy restorers remarked that the stuffed animal was originally a beautiful quality piece of workmanship because the lamb had a multitude of intricate pieces.  But their delight at seeing the stuffed animal’s head come out of the shopping bag was immediately turned to horror and dismay when the remains of the lamb was put on the work table.  The body of the stuffed lamb was completely gone.  Only the stomach panel remained attaching the head and the four legs of the once cherished child’s toy.  Ann Bailey, the 74 year old owner of the lamb explained that the toy lamb had been given to her when she was one year old. She treasured the toy her whole life long.  But a couple of decades ago, her Irish setter puppies had gotten a hold of the lamb and they had ripped the toy apart. –Ann seemed rather embarrassed that her dogs had destroyed the antique, and she did not seem hopeful at all as she left the stuffed animal with the soft toy specialists.

          The two seamstresses very carefully started to disassemble the lamb stitch by stitch.  By carefully measuring the still remaining stomach panel, the two women back figured the approximate dimensions of the back and sides of the lamb parts that were missing and they designed a custom pattern that would integrate well with the remaining parts.  Once they had everything pulled apart, they carefully and delicately washed and dried all of the antique pieces and then they created a felt backing for all of the pieces, old and new, and did a test fit to make sure that everything would fit together.  The final step was to sew together the lamb integrating the old pieces of cleaned fabric with a new fabric that they had found that matched exceptionally well.  A new wire frame was added to give the lamb the structure to be able to stand up and they carefully stuffed the toy so that it would be firm and plump but still soft enough to be hugged.  The two craftswomen finished off their restoration by replacing the yellow buttercup that used to be in the lamb’s mouth and by putting a beautiful new blue ribbon around the creamy white lamb’s neck. 

          When Ann Bailey came back to retrieve her lamb she had great hopes for what she would find, but she was not prepared to see her lamb completely restored with a classic blue ribbon around it’s neck.  “It’s amazing! It almost looks real!” She cried. And she reached out and grabbed and hugged her old childhood lamb hard, rubbing the lambs face against her cheek.  Her smile lit up her face and for a moment you could see the little girl that she once was, peeking through in the joy in her eyes and her smile.  As the two master craftswomen detailed all of their careful repairs to the owner, she admired every detail of her old lamb friend.  One of the last scenes of Ann Bailey is of her leaving the antique barn with her completely restored lamb under her arm.  Wearing a pretty spring green dress and white sweater, the grandmother actually skips a few steps with her lamb in her hands, lost in the memories of how she used to play with her cherished childhood friend.  Her treasured and cherished stuffed lamb that had been ripped apart had been born again into a new life.

          Many of us are like that antique stuffed lamb.   We are covered with grime and the dirt from our frail lives and all of the mistakes that we have made in the past.  We show the wear of our years and some of us have had our souls ripped apart by the dogs of trouble that have hounded us.  But that is not the end of our story.  We are not some antique that sits forgotten in a corner.  We are the beloved children of God and if we will allow it, God is waiting for our permission to take us apart completely to wash us and to repair us and to put us back together again.  May that God who loves us fill us all with joy, hope, love and peace and may we skip like a child again with the filling of the Holy Spirit. So be it. Amen. 

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Shedding

January 01, 2022
Shedding by  Rev. Karen Fitz La Barge

Eph 4:22 – 24 You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires;to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

The week after Christmas seemed to me to be a good time to go through ALL of my clothes and to get organized!  In the fall, I had gone through all of my sweaters and I had given several boxes of them away. The result was that my sweaters were still all nicely organized and neatly stored on shelves in my closet. This winter I could easily find and wear my favorite sweaters and cardigans. I really liked that.

But unfortunately, it had been a very long time since I had done a complete reassessment of all of the other clothing items that I owned. As I started getting into the project, I was shocked at just how many items I had crammed into the hanging part of my closet. There were even some shirts in there that were not actually hanging up any more. They had slipped off their hangers and were now just wedged in between the other shirts!

 In addition to the closet, I also have a tall dresser that was packed full of clothes.  My husband then reminded me that I also had four big black totes of items that I had stored away in the attic, and that there were a bunch of, “Summer” things that I had tucked into the back of the front hall closet. –It was all embarrassingly obvious that I had stored away far too much.  This project was not going to be a one-day task!

As I went through every single item, trying on each one, I was often distracted by how many of the items brought back memories. I found the linen jacket with the decorative coral trim that I had bought for a job interview in 2006, and the elegant black and white jacket that I wore when I was ordained as a Minister of Word and Sacrament in 2005.  Digging deep into the black storage totes from the attic, I found the sweatshirts that I wore when I worked for the American Red Cross in the 1990’s.  Along with the sweatshirts, I also found the 1980’s pleat fronted brown houndstooth patterned pants that I had purchased in a thrift store!


While some of the items that I found during my project still fit my body and still looked great, I often had to ask myself if that item was really still “me” anymore.  –I had to assess who I was now and where I was now and what sort of clothes I wanted and needed to keep and utilize.  While I decided that keeping a few of the stranger items on hand for costuming purposes was ok, I still had to make a lot of decisions about letting go of who I was in the past in order to make some room for who I am becoming in the future.  

Sorting through all of my clothes was much like the type of spiritual assessments that we frequently do at the beginning of the year.  As the new year begins, we should ask ourselves who we are now, and who do we want to be in 2022?  We may question our priorities and our relationships, and if we are honest with ourselves, we may take the time to do a little thinking about the actual purpose of our lives here on this planet.

 Who are you in 2022?  Are you today making the decisions and living the life that you want to be remembered for at your funeral? What are your relationships with God and with other people like? Are you part of a church community that is working on spreading the love of Jesus and making this world a better place for others?

As we stride into 2022, with all of its many challenges; today I invite you to shed the things about your life that you want to leave in the past and to make room in your life for the stuff that really matters today. –You may just find that some things in your life do not fit you anymore.  You don’t need to hang on to those things. Just say goodbye and let them go. Then open your heart to all the new adventures that God has in store for you. They may just look great on you.

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Who Are You When No One is Watching?

Who are you when no one is watching?           Rev. Karen Fitz La Barge

       I have never been on the “Dark Web.” The internet that we all typically use every day is the “Clear Web”, the websites that we access with our Chrome, Firefox or Bing search engines. Below that, with much more data is the “Deep Web”, where all of our photos, files and all the data from Netflix and Hulu are stored and accessed through paid portals.  But there are still many other websites that exist that are more difficult to access.  These are called the “Dark Web” –the internet sites that you only can interact with anonymously.  Humans are, well, entirely human.  We like to do what we want to do; and we never want any bad consequences for it.   The “Dark Web”, I am told, has a seemingly endless network of groups of completely anonymous people, some of which are behaving very badly. On the “Dark Web”, there is apparently a marketplace where illegal drugs and guns are sold. The necrophiliacs have created an online community, as well as those who identify themselves as cannibals.  There are websites where you can procure a human organ or even buy a whole live human person as part of the human trafficking network.  Pedophilia, incest and rape images and videos are some of the terrible things that are sold by broken people on the “Dark Web.”  This extensive anonymous playground is something that has never existed in our history before.

          The “Dark Web” is THE real world experiment in answering our question for today:  What would you do online if you were guaranteed to be completely anonymous?  Would you be very evil?  Or would you use that immense power of anonymity to do much good?  What kind of person are you when no one is watching?  What would you do if your parents, your family, your spouse or your boss would never ever know?  Would you anonymously do some good in the world, never receiving or getting any credit for the work that you put in to do it? Or would you selfishly focus on yourself and fulfilling your own wants and desires?  

        If we are Christians, I hope that we all would choose to do good.  Following Jesus is something that transforms us as we learn to become people who do as much good as possible because of our own personal transformation by Jesus Christ. We do good because we actually become better people, not because our pastors or parents are watching us and making us do it.  And that does not just mean our actions in the real world, it also means our actions online, anonymous or otherwise. 

       All humans are born broken, wanting to do what we want and to have what we want without any consequences; but through loving instruction and the power of the Holy Spirit, we all can be transformed into people of love.  Within the internet, there is great power.  Not just to create communities of depravity that do real evil, but there is also the power to create communities that band together to do good and to work for justice in the world. May we all choose to be transformed by Christ and to become a force for good in this world, even when no one is watching. Amen. 

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Lift Every Voice

“Lift Every Voice and Sing”  An Anthem for All
  Rev Karen Fitz La Barge

On February 12, 1900, at the segregated Edwin M. Stanton School in Jacksonville, Florida, preparations were being made to commemorate the birthday of President Abraham Lincoln.  The school was charged with anticipation because Booker T Washington, the American educator, author, orator and advisor to Presidents was to visit the campus.

The principal for the school was James Weldon Johnson.  Wanting a song that would rise to the significance of the day, Johnson crafted a poem that not only celebrated the freedom from slavery but pointed to the hope for a better future dawning for African American people. James brother, John Rosamond Johnson composed the music for the poem.  The song was met with great acclaim on that day of its debut, sung by a chorus of five hundred school children.

Shortly afterwards, James and John Johnson moved away from their Jacksonville, Florida school to New York, and the song passed out of their minds.  But the school children of Jacksonville kept singing it; they went off to other schools and sang it.  Some became teachers and they taught it to other school children.  Within twenty years the song was being sung all over the south and it was also catching on in other parts of the country.  

In 1917 James Weldon Johnson began to work for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and in 1919, the organization adopted Johnson’s song, Lift Every Voice and Sing as their anthem. This song has served as a cry for liberation and affirmation for all African Americans, especially those who have been misused and abused. But it also speaks to all of us who have been through the struggle of a global pandemic. The first stanza opens with a command to optimism, praise and freedom. The second stanza reminds us to never forget what has been overcome in the past. The final stanza looks toward the future and advocates that American challenges be met with perseverance, faith, courage and trust in God.

Lift every voice and sing,  Till earth and heaven ring, Ring with the harmonies of Liberty.
Let our rejoicing rise, High as the listening skies, Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun, Let us march on till victory is won.

Stony the road we trod, Bitter the chastening rod, Felt in the days when hope unborn had died
Yet with a steady beat, Have not our weary feet, Come to the place for which our fathers sighed? We have come over a way that with tears has been watered
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered
Out from the gloomy past, Till now we stand at last, Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years, God of our silent tears, Thou who has brought us thus far on the way
Thou who has by Thy might, Led us into the light, Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee
Shadowed beneath Thy hand, May we forever stand, True to our God, True to our native land.
This Fourth of July as we give thanks to God for our nation, let us open our hearts and minds to the stories of all Americans.  Not only those who have lost someone to the pandemic of Covid-19, but also those who have suffered and still continue to suffer from racism and discrimination in our country.  Our God will lead us all forward together into the light if we stay on God’s path of love and acceptance for all of God’s children. May it be so.

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Love Your Enemies

Love Your Enemies          by Rev. Karen Fitz La Barge   2.15.2021
              On Valentine’s Day weekend, the Senate concluded the second impeachment trial of Donald J. Trump, the 45th president of the United States.  As the votes of “guilty” or “not guilty” were coming in, the political division in our country was obvious.  It is no secret that these two politically opposed sides have often thought and fought as if though they were enemies and not fellow Americans. This is not a new occurrence. Our country has been bitterly divided before. 

              President Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address spoke to a different but also extremely divisive American context: “With malice towards none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds.” 

There is no question that our nation is wounded right now. We all have friends, relatives and neighbors who have contracted Covid-19.  Many families are struggling economically and homelessness and depression are at epic levels.  In order for us to bind our nations wounds and begin to heal, we as Christians must each commit ourselves to do something that Jesus commanded us to do.  We are to love our enemies (Matthew 5:43-48).

Yes, I am talking about Democrats loving Republicans and Republicans loving Democrats. Loving those neighbors while loving yourself. This does not mean that you cannot speak up and hold people accountable for their actions of evil.  This is not about giving up on the principles of justice and freedom and equality that we hold so dear.  You can still be opposed to the evil actions themselves, while loving the person committing the evil acts.  The old adage of “Hate the sin, love the sinner” applies here. 

But if you seek to love your enemy, if you truly wish to follow in the way of Jesus, you must remove any internal violence of the spirit toward, “Those people.”  To quote Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “If you hate your enemies, you have no way to redeem and to transform your enemies. But if you love your enemies, you will discover that at the very root of love is the power of redemption.The underlying principle to remember, the thing that makes loving your enemies work, is a commitment to the practice of agape, or self-sacrificial love.  –The kind of love that a mother has to sacrifice herself for her child; the kind of love that seeks good will and happiness and peace for all people, not just for yourself and your tribe. This is the kind of self-sacrificial love that Jesus has for us when he suffered and died for each and every one of us.  This is how we, as Christians are called to live. This is how we are to create community, even in our times of great division. So, let us begin. Amen.

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What Did You GIVE this Christmas?

What did you GIVE this Christmas? 12/7/2020 Rev. Karen Fitz La Barge

There once was a man who was poor in coin, but rich with the gift of three daughters.  As the years went on with the man barely making enough to feed and clothe his family, he knew the usual way of things was for his daughters to find husbands and marry.  But unfortunately, the custom at the time was to provide your daughter with a dowry to both entice a prospective groom and to provide some sort of financial security for the new couple.  Without a vineyard or an orchard or even a cow to give away as a dowry, the poor man knew that the unfortunate financial future of his girls was for them to either be sold as slaves or to turn to prostitution, futures that would break any man’s heart for the daughters that he loved.  Fortunately, the good bishop of Myra heard about this sad situation, and one night, he went for a walk past the poor man’s house.  The bishop suddenly paused and then he threw a bag of gold coins through a window. The gold landed in a stocking that had been washed and hung up to dry.  In the morning, the girl found the very generous but anonymous gift in her sock and she was overjoyed. Her father was relieved at this turn of fortune and soon his daughter was happily married. With worry, the father looked at his two remaining daughters, wondering what their fates would be. But the poor man needed not to fret.  Twice more, generous dowries of gold found their way through the open window to land in the girl’s shoes or stockings. While Bishop Nicholas never revealed that it was he who had provided the secret gifts, the people reasoned out that he was the only suspect with the knowledge, the means and the temperament to do such a generous thing. 

          Nicholas was born around 270 AD in Patara in Asia Minor, now the southern coast of Turkey.  His parents were wealthy Christians, but they died in an epidemic while Nicholas was very young.  Raised by his uncle who was an Abbot, Nicholas, even though he had inherited his parent’s vast wealth, tried to live out his faith by helping the poor. He was a just young monk when he was elected to become the Bishop of Myra.  Ancient documents tell us that Nicholas participated in the historic council of Nicaea in 325 AD, and there are records of his significant role in unifying the theology of the early church.  Nicholas was a Bishop who was very involved in the lives of the people.  He was instrumental in commuting the sentences of people in jail and also in defending the falsely accused.  He especially delighted in being generous anonymously.

After his death, the Catholic Church declared him a Saint and established December 6th as his feast day.  For centuries around the world, children would put out their shoes on the night December 5th hoping for gifts and sweets to be placed in their shoes in memory of St. Nicholas generosity.

            This Christmas season, instead of focusing on what we are going to GET for Christmas, we instead should focus on what we are going to GIVE. Instead of just buying luxuries for our families, will we help our neighbors who need even basic life necessities?  Because Jesus Christ came to this earth as a baby and generously gave up everything for us, we too are called this Christmas to generously give. May our perspective change this season as we each ask ourselves, “What did you GIVE this Christmas?”

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How Liberal and Conservative Christians Can Dialogue

How Liberal and Conservative Christians Can Dialogue
by Rev. Karen Fitz La Barge, 10/15/2020

It is no secret that political disagreements often break apart our relationships, families and churches. Christians are human and our passionately held beliefs can boil over with emotions that can easily crush our attempts to love our neighbors with self-sacrificial love. Is there any way that Christians with very different beliefs can still dialogue with each other?

Eph. 4:29-32 has some advice for us: Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. 30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. 31 Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. 32 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

The first step in being able to dialogue is to forgive other person for having a belief that you disagree with. Truly forgive them and try to have some empathy as to how they came to such an understanding of the world.  The goal is for you to be able to set aside your rage and anger at their having an opposing world view. This is a substitute for your slanderous thinking that the others are stupid or brainwashed or gullible.  Any put downs, threats and name calling should not be in your mind and certainly should never come out of your mouth. 

The next step is to open your own mind and try to follow the logic of the other person’s reasoning. If you believed the same facts that they do would you come to the same conclusions? If not, then perhaps you can kindly and gently point out where their logic falls apart and help them come to a more reasoned out position.  There are good arguments and there are poor arguments based on reason alone. Try to talk about the strength and weakness of their position based on logic and not about their belief in a particular fact being true or false.

While logical reasoning and discourse about the strength of a particular argument can be illuminating and create a good dialogue, often it is not helpful when people are arguing with completely different sets of facts. This is where much of our discourse has broken down in recent years. The only way forward from this is to begin again by starting with the basic facts that both sides can agree on, and then agreeing on the sources that you both will accept as truth. This, and an honest commitment to love and to care for each other’s well being will go a long way towards building up a community where trust and honest dialogue about ideas can again give glory to God. Amen 

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