A New Spiritual Journey

[Tsathoggua]

Welcome! Good luck with your journey.

[gordie91]

First, I found it quite strange and very unsettling that I was being accused of condemning them to hell with my decision to leave and ultimately associate with another church.

From the traditional CoC perspective, God told the apostles what the laws are for the organization, worship and work of the church, who then shared these laws with the congregations they organized. As the CoC sees it, the writers did not record these laws in the letters that were passed around among the earliest congregations, but some letters do contain chastisements where the congregations were doing things wrong. The CoC has concluded that God expects subsequent generations to read the letters looking for clues as to how the earliest congregations were organized, the worship they did, and the work they did.

In the CoC view, the honest of heart will be able to look at example, commands, and necessary inferences to figure out what the earliest congregations had been told by the apostles directly. So when you leave the traditional CoC, they think it is either because (1) you no longer want to obey God, or (2) you think the CoC is not fulfilling God's mandate for the work, worship and organization of the church, and is therefore not the one true church.

They cannot get beyond this (1) or (2), which is why they feel judged by you.

Great points and absolutely what I was thinking. I understand their perspective and for me the perplexity with their rationale served to bolster my decision to finally break with them and go my way. The whole point of the matter was how they claim to have authority. They claim to rightly divide, which applies to (1), but they can not answer the basic questions - why is their interpretation the correct one and how do they know it is the correct one. The answers given do not hold up.

Typically, the comment is made that if a person is sincere and has an open heart then the person can read and understand what the will of God is which applies ultimately to (2). The problem is the idea that baptist, methodist, catholic, lutheran, presbyterian, evangelicals and the list goes on, are not sincere or have open hearts is very prideful statement to say to an average adherent of the various denominations. That type of comment is akin to telling someone in a wheel chair that if the just try harder they can wheel themselves up the steps. Compare and contrast is one thing even finding common ground, but to belittle the intentions of seemingly good hearted people is downright mean.

So in reality the honest heart is the heart that will honestly view the bible, history and doctrines the way they do. Conclusion for me, was to disengage because I was not willing and still not willing to comment about the sincerity of a person's heart and the argument was and is already settled without the allowance for any new perspective.

Thanks for pointing out the perspective, it sheds a lot of light and understanding about why I and others that leave are thought to be accusing our old church and family. Hopefully it will help as others try and cope with leaving.