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