Meeting Together Today
I have some friends who no longer attend church. They follow Jesus, but they don’t want anything to do with the organized church. Mike talked about how he can understand. Every church is imperfect because it’s made of imperfect people.
But, does our framework for understanding limit the author’s meaning here? We can go crazy in isolation. God created us to need each other. But up until 100 years ago, we couldn’t interact with one another without being in the same place at the same time. Sure, you could write letters and send them by snail-mail. Most of the New Testament are letters to people who were not nearby. But the interaction was low, participation was minimal. For most of human history, unless people were together, in the same room, they couldn’t interact very well.
Today, that’s not the case at all. We have video conferencing capabilities. We can interact, face-to-face, with people all over the world. Imagine what technology can do to your ability to interact with others, to stimulate one another to love and good deeds.
But watch out that you don’t create a global echo chamber, either. Remember yesterday we talked about how this stimulation isn’t always pleasant. When a horse took a spur, it hurt. We need relationships with others where we challenge and where we are challenged, we encourage and we are encouraged, we inspire and we can be inspired. Video interaction isn’t easy for many, especially when we need to invite other viewpoints. But fight the temptation to build an echo chamber. If everyone you interact with every day thinks just like you do, then you’ll never be provoked or stimulated. (See yesterday’s episode.)
We need to interact with others. We need to give encouragement and we need to receive correction, reproof and training in righteousness so that we may be equipped for every good work (2 Timothy 3:17).
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