Summary: Disagreements – Episode #19<br> In This Episode...<br> <br> We have a special guest today. We welcome the Senior Pastor from our church, Calvary Baptist Church in Riverhead, NY, Dave Cooke.<br> <br> 01:38 – Segment 1<br> <br> The discussion gets started in that disagreements in and of themselves are not bad.<br> Iron sharpens iron is a well-known Scripture. However, that only happens when there is friction.<br> How do we handle situations in which we have disagreements? The problem of disagreements is made worse and more public by social media.<br> We will be talking about two general types of disagreement. Those that are theologically based and those that are not theologically based.<br> In theological disagreements, we cannot disagree about the essentials. You can find a deeper treatment of the essentials in our previous podcast on Theology.<br> Everything we do is in love. In everything, we need to be representing Christ and the Gospel.<br> We discuss disagreements of doctrine that lies outside orthodoxy.<br> There is a brief discussion on the Middle Ages and how they viewed orthodoxy.<br> Are disagreements different with Christians and non-Christians? Both cases, we must represent the Gospel.<br> There are three levels on disagreement in doctrinal matters:<br> <br> Essentials<br> Non-Essentials that are discussed in Scripture but are unclear.<br> Adiaphora that are not discussed in Scripture.<br> <br> <br> ”The Peacemaker” by Ken Sande lays out a view of three options during a disagreement:<br> <br> The perfect Christ Centered response.<br> Fleeing<br> Attacking.<br> <br> <br> Dave’s wife provides wisdom with “It is more important to be righteous than right.”<br> It is important to remember in all situations, we are talking to another human being.<br> <br> 21:18 – Segment 2<br> <br> We start to talk about debatable matters. In this, we need to be careful not to become too dogmatic.<br> John holds onto debatable doctrine with an open hand.<br> How do we know when it is a secondary matter?<br> Is it worth disagreeing with someone especially on social media?<br> We have a discussion on tongues as an example.<br> <br> 28:38 – Segment 3<br> <br> Nuts and bolts what are some parameters when we disagree on Facebook?<br> We need to be charitable. If it’s a Christian, we need to have the view that they are speaking out of a desire to glorify God. Ad hominem attacks are unacceptable.<br> What do we do when we see people spouting heresy?<br> <br> We have different levels of responsibility such as church family, friends, and others.<br> <br> <br> We are talking to an image bearer of God.<br> On social media, we have time to respond and we should take that time.<br> We should remember on social media who are audiences are. Our primary audience is the person to whom we are responding, but we have a secondary audience of everyone who can see it.<br> As such, we shouldn’t be so dogmatic in debatable issues.<br> <br> 39:36 – Segment 4<br> <br> The branches talk about disagreements that are not theological in nature.<br> Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure we’d talk about the 2016 election.<br> Dave wrote an excellent blog on this topic.<br> James gave his personal view on the election.<br> Dave talks about how we conduct ourselves as shown in Ephesians 4. The unity of spirit and bond of peace turned into WWE Smackdown.<br> We turn the discussion to how we should have disagreed.<br> What do we do when we are doing things right, but we are being attacked.<br> We don’t want to be contentious when we are talking to people about being contentious.<br> When things are getting contentious we can diffuse the situation by praying together.<br>
