Heresy and error

I have to admit that I got myself pretty worked up when I saw this article at Presence on a church in Denver that has a sign saying "JEWS KILLED THE LORD JESUS" outside. I had a terribly long post, detailing how the church violated the letter of Matthew 10:16 and the spirit of Romans 9:1-5.

And then I stopped myself and decided to go to the church's website and see if they had anything to say in their defense. Give them the benefit of the doubt and all that.

As of the last time I checked, they had nothing on the website to defend themselves. But, I did learn something interesting: they are United Pentecostal. To most people, that doesn't mean much, but it's actually pretty important because the United Pentecostal denomination denies the doctrine of the Trinity.

The doctrine of the Trinity is one of the precious few doctrines that has united Protestants, Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and Anglo-Catholics. The details of it were hammered out in the first couple of centuries of Christian history through a great deal of argument and dispute, but the result is one of the defining marks over the last two millennia of what it means to be a Christian.

In a sense, then, this church is no more representative of Christian thought and belief than the Mormon or Jehovah's Witnesses churches are. Just because someone takes a label upon themselves doesn't mean they actually are what they say (or think) they are. I can call myself a Martian all I want (which is none), but I'm still (happily) an Earthling.

That leaves me not sure how to rebuke them. I can't effectively chew them out for being inconsistent with and unfaithful to the Bible, because they already are. I guess I'm going to have to just chew them out for being generally blind, insensitive and unloving and hope they see the error of their ways very soon.

And pray that no more of this idiocy occurs.

February 26, 2004 05:09 PM
One Comment

Interesting. I figured it was something like that. For the record, I'm not really under the assumption that most Christian's hold Jews responsible. I give most more credit than that. But I will admit that, while in the past, this question seemed inconsequential to me, the advent of the film has led me to wonder what the real story is. But as a rule, I put more stock in experience than in text (or film).

Pondered by Greg at February 26, 2004 07:10 PM