When most folks think about homemade Christmas gifts, they think brightly knitted scarves or painted cookies or glittery Christmas ornaments. I don’t know how to knit {yet}, but in the past years I’ve done my share of Christmas gift inventing. One year, women received jars of papaya chutney and men received three dozen homemade turkey breakfast sausages. My mom received the special bonus of “papaya pepper.”
Did you know that, if you do it right, the seeds of the papaya can be used as a substitute for black pepper that is enzyme-rich and actually aids in the digestion of meat? How cool is that?
Ahem.
This year, we gave a couple of our favorite people the gift of thinking. I can tell you this, because these particular people do not read my blog.
So, how does one give thoughts to other people? Well, we came up with an idea that I hope will be successful. I’ll use an example of one particular recipient. We chose theological issues in which this person was interested. Then, we chose two or three opposing views on the issue that were still within the realm of orthodoxy. Then, I used some handy sources, such as SermonAudio, Grace to You, etc. to find MP3 downloads of sermons covering the issues from the various preselected viewpoints.
So, for instance, if you have a person in your life who is interested in eschatology, finding three sermons on Revelation 20 {one postmillenial, one amillenial, and one premillenial} from respected speakers will give them food for thought.
Most of us don’t actually explore the opposition {whoever they are} from the opposition’s viewpoint. Now, saying such a thing could get me into trouble if I used that broadly as an excuse for dabbling in whatever I was interested in.
However, if I stay within the bounds of orthodoxy when I say this, I end up having a lot more respect for those with whom I disagree. In fact, I might even decide I’m wrong.
This has happened to me before. I am a recovering dispensationalist, as I have mentioned before.
Ahem.
Thought and growth are often forged in the fires of disagreement. That is what I love about blogging as compared to journalling. I have always written, but what I never had before blogging was someone else poking holes in what I was saying. The Bible speaks of iron sharpening iron, and I believe that would happen much more readily if we didn’t all lock ourselves in isolation over nonessentials.
So.
Christmas.
This Christmas we are giving a few of those we love the chance to explore some possibilities. We do this with love, knowing that when we have done this, our knowledge of Scripture grew, for when we disagreed with someone who knew the Bible better than we did, we had to meet that challenge by finding out what the Bible actually said about the subject. We do it for fun, because we know they will enjoy learning something new.
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