By: Pastor David Grousnick

A. J. Jacobs is an American journalist and guinea pig who write books based on plunge experiences. Once he joined Mensa and read all thirty-two volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica to see what it would be like to be “The Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World (2004).

In another plunge experience he decided only to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about everything in life. That project had the title I Think You’re Fat (2007), which kind of says it all about how that project went.

AJ Jacobs continues to write plunge books today, but one is particularly interesting to me. The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible (2007), which “chronicles his experiment to live for one year according to all the moral codes expressed in the Bible.

One of the witticisms of Jacobs in this book mentions that part of his challenge in living as a Jew and not just following the 10 Commandments but keeping all 613 Commandments (248 Positive Commandments, 365 Negative Commandments) was that his relationship to the Jewish faith was “about the same as that of Olive Garden to an Italian restaurant.”

Wow! How many people are Christian in about the same way that Olive Garden is an Italian restaurant? How many churches are Christian in about the same way that Olive Garden is an Italian restaurant, or Taco Bell is a Mexican restaurant, or Colonel Sanders is a southern cooking restaurant?…

A small rural church one time had a major dispute about where the pies should be placed in the kitchen prior to serving them for the annual turkey supper. One woman actually left the church because several newcomers to the church had convinced the rest of the women working in the kitchen that it would be more efficient to put the pies on the counter beside the sink instead of the counter next to the refrigerator.

“It’s not the right way to do it”, she said. “We’ve never done it that way before, and I am not going to be part of doing it that way now. I won’t have any part of that kind of thing. Those new people are going to ruin this church. They don’t know anything. They aren’t even from around here.”

Sound familiar to anyone?

The apostle John came up to Jesus one day. “Jesus”, he said, “We saw someone casting out demons in your name. We tried to stop him because we don’t know who he is; we tried to stop him because he’s not one of us.”

“It’s a fearful thing,” writes Dr. Barclay, “for any person or any church to think that they have a monopoly on salvation.”

And G. Johnstone Jeffrey commented, “See that you do not deny the name of Christian to another because he or she is not wearing your label – denominational, ecclesiastical, or theological.”

Christian tolerance invites us to sit down together and assess our beliefs and doctrines by the kind of people they produce, by what these do for human need, and how really limited our little ideas are in the face of Christian truth. Bare intolerance has no place in Christian thinking for, as Dr. Barclay commented further, “Every person in need has a claim upon us because every person is dear to Christ.”

An old man named Calvin had lived a good life as a farmer for years. One day an evangelist came to the community and asked Calvin what denomination he was.

Calvin answered the question like this: “When my grain gets ready for selling, I can take it to town by any one of three roads – the river road, the dirt road, or the highway. But when I get my grain to town and go to the buyer to sell him what I have, he never asks, ˜Calvin, which road did you take to get your grain to town?’ What he does do is ask me if my grain is any good.”

Is your grain good – the grain of your discipleship? That’s all that really matters. When we get to Heaven we will probably find some Roman Catholics, Baptists, Presbyterians and a whole bunch of other folks. And they’ll be just as surprised to see us as we will to see them.

But we will all belong to just one fellowship. Let’s call it the Fellowship of the Bearers of Cold Water. We will all be people who have lived out our discipleship through acts of kindness to others.

There is a time-honored story about a pastor who was supposedly a great lover of children. One day he looked at the sidewalk leading up to his house that had been freshly poured. Some youngsters were playing in it and leaving footprints in the fresh cement. He rushed out and yelled at the children.

Someone said to him; “Well pastor, we thought you liked children.”

He said, “Yes, I love them in the abstract but not in the concrete.”

Our world is looking for concrete demonstrations of Christian love in action.

Have a great weekend!

David Grousnick, is the Pastor at the First Christian Church in Artesia.