Search This Blog

Monday, January 08, 2007

"The answer is blowing in the wind"

I see all kinds of Christians. Many act in ways that are different from the way I interpret the Bible. I have struggled in the past with this. I know how to be tolerant of others' viewpoints. That's not the struggle. What about the people who decide to come against me in one arena or another other than religion. What about the person who asks me to support him in an election by writing a letter to the editor (which I did) and then turns around about a month and a half later to tell me how offensive my interpretation of prophecy is. To me there is a disparity. Or what about the person who attends a Christian church but decides to ensure that I get no money in the work place as a part of a budget I am supposed to oversee because he wants to see my programs fail. To me there is a disparity.

I don't know what to think about these 2 situations when I read John 3.8.

8 The wind blows wherever it wishes; you hear the sound it makes, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going. It is like that with everyone who is born of the Spirit.

What was the Teacher trying to say? I can't judge others because I can't see their spirits which have been born again? Or I can't tell when God has moved in someone else's spirit since I don't have the big picture? Or I should be able to judge another's spirit if I hear the sound of a spirit?
Or this is a corollary passage to the one Paul writes about the fruits of the spirit because one should see evidence of the blowing of the wind?

In the passage, Nicodemus didn't understand about a second birth. I guess I don't understand either since I think a second birth ought to relate to actions that are consistent with decent intents and motives from those who have the sound of the wind in their lives. In the park in the morning, I will try to feel the wind on my face in hopes that illumination can happen about the "wind passage."

No comments: