Ok, for those who may not know, I was born and bred in the Church of Christ. What that means is that I'm not supposed to listen to women talk about the bible, and Piano is a four letter word with "o" as an accessory vowel. I come from a church where women can pass communion trays side-to-side, but not from front to back. These churches are autonomous, until one of them does something that the others disagree with. Clapping your hands in the worship service is permitted when someone places membership, but not when trying to keep rhythm during singing. Oh, did I mention that "Mechanical Instruments" (also known by some as "IM's", don't ask... i have no idea how that got that one backwards) are not allowed during Sunday morning worship. Yeah, I'm not clued in on that one either.
How did we get in the business of telling people what they "can't" do? The Old Testament started with the 10 commandments. Ten. That's it. Now I know that there were many things implied in those ten, but there were just ten. Then the Levites came along and added stuff about bodily discharges and mildew. *yuck!* What happened to the ten? I'll tell you what happened. Jesus came and whittled them down to two commandments.
Mark 12:28-34 (New International Version)
The Greatest Commandment
28One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?" 29"The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.[a] 30Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.'[b] 31The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'[c]There is no commandment greater than these." 32"Well said, teacher," the man replied. "You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. 33To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices." 34When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God." And from then on no one dared ask him any more questions.
So, Jesus comes to earth and brings us down to two commands and we start adding our own again. I think the part of this that amazes me the most is that we are only making things harder for ourselves. ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
5 comments:
AMEN!!! Our church is currently in discussion of adding a service with IM's. I hope we don't create a separate service. I think we can keep our family as one and do both IM and Aca. Praise to Him is Praise to Him.
I completely agree with you friend. And you KNOW I am all about that little dirty word "piano"--wish mine weren't sitting in the financial peace room wasting away. it could definitely be contributing to some kind of worship service.
Hayley,
I worshipped with it yesterday :)
I joked around one Sunday and said that I'd like to have it on stage and use IT instead of a pitch-pipe. Needless to say, I got a lot of weird looks. hehe.
In whittling it down to the two commandments, basically what Jesus was saying was, "hey, look at your heart."
Good call.
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