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{"id":5014,"date":"2008-12-12T00:30:02","date_gmt":"2008-12-12T05:30:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/community\/jesuscreed\/2008\/12\/12\/friday-is-for-friends-99\/"},"modified":"2008-12-12T00:30:02","modified_gmt":"2008-12-12T05:30:02","slug":"friday-is-for-friends-99","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2008\/12\/12\/friday-is-for-friends-99\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday is for Friends"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The Third way knows the difference between essentials and non-essentials and lets the Way be shaped by the essentials. In the second chp of Adam Hamilton\u2019s\u00a0 Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White: Thoughts on Religion, Morality, and Politics<\/a><\/strong><\/em> we hear an appeal for Christians to focus on essentials.<\/p>\n

To permit non-essentials to shape our concerns, our relations, and our reputations is, to use the words of Jesus, to \u201cstrain gnats.\u201d Hamilton here speaks of Matthew 23:34: \u201cYou strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!\u201d Whether we think of the Pope\u2019s statement about non-RC churches being defective, the American Episcopal leaders forcing their own way, the neo-Fundamentalists elevating women in ministry to a central idea, and the neo-Reformed contending that only the Reformed are truly faithful \u2026 we could go on \u2026 each of these somehow makes non-essentials the essential thing and each makes the non-essential what divides Christians from Christians. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Question of the day: What would be your top <strike>give<\/strike> five \u201cessential beliefs\u201d of the Christian faith? Is the Apostles\u2019 Creed enough for you? What else might you want to add? Anything to subtract?<\/b><\/p>\n

Adam Hamilton asks this question: \u201cWhat if all 224 million Christians in America were actually working together to shape a nation that looks like Jesus\u2019 vision of the kingdom of God, where poverty does not exist, where people practice justice, where love of neighbor is universally practiced? But this will never happen. We are too busy \u2018straining gnats\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

$\"ApostlesCreed.jpg\"$ <\/a><\/span>What we need is discernment to see again and again what is essential about our faith and to see what is non-essential. This requires a firm grip on the essentials and a loose grip on the non-essentials. Sure, we will argue at times on the essentials \u2026 but surely we can begin with the classic creeds and the core gospel we believe.<\/p>\n

Hamilton\u2019s plea is for humility, beginning with this: \u201cthe hope for the future of Christianity will be found, in part, in our willingness to accept that no one of us has all the truth\u201d (13). What is needed, he explains, is humility \u2014 humility about our own claims, about the legitimacy of the claims of others, and about it being God who has the truth.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"