It’s these moments when you don’t realize God is doing something so big that surprises us all.
We Need These Sensitive Conversations
This video screenshot above made me sing a “hallelujah”—it’s about time! I love God’s sense of humor to bring a Catholic and an evangelical (raised Baptist) together and wreck our Christian leanings and ideals—and teach us how to love. Clearly God’s got a plan with these two as Dallas and Jonathan are igniting conversations that need to happen in the world of Christianity.
In this video they express very authentically the differences in how they experience the environment of the basilica, acknowledging the undeniable beauty of the architecture. However they are on two sides of the spectrum on their spiritual experience. To Dallas it is cold and seems (for him) to exude a far away God. But it seems, for Jonathan, it captures his heart as a memorable place.
It’s easy to see that for over 500 years, since the Reformation, there are many judgements regarding how our denominational differences impact our faith and worship practices. But the impacts exist amongst conservatives and charismatics, baptists and pentecostals, etc. Sadly, no one is exempt from pride or persecution amongst their brothers and sisters in Christ. Division over theology and how we worship in the overall body has an even greater impact because we’re called to be in One accord, “one band, one sound.” Without love, how do we represent Christ to the world when division and lack of love is not modeling Christ’s way? How do we model equality when someone is higher than another? There is a greater way, a more surrendered way, laying down what we individually deem is essential in our Christian faith. There is a common ground and a place we can all place our hope, that is Jesus—The One and only Christ.
Jesus taught us to have love for one another and He said that the world would notice when we had unity in the body of Christ. That’s why the impact of our pride is so great and we need a revival of the heart and a revival of true repentance—a real turning back to Jesus and the Gospel of Christ. Unity happens in the spirit of brotherly love, and in agreement in who Christ, The Savior, The Messiah really is.
The brotherly love that we see between these two, even with disagreements in theology and styles of worship is so gracefully displayed. Holy Spirit is more than capable of setting us all straight on how to follow Christ rightly, but let’s admit that our pride and our religious spirit often keeps us from hearing. And sometimes we hold on to the “religion” of our faith more than the God of our faith. Sometimes we forget about the Holy Spirit and we don’t keep our own house clean. I hope Dallas and Jonathan keep having these sensitive conversations. We believe God is using The Chosen to wake us all up and repent for our lack of love.
Watch it directly on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzUX8V1W_e4