This thread has been "swimming upstream" since it started, and that's great.
I definitely agree that we need to be looking to Jesus and returning to the source. The water is purest at its source. If we keep returning to that source, I think there is room for people who vote and people who do not, an issue that Jesus did not directly address. 9 minutes before starting this thread, Max used this same phrase in another thread
to imply that a true Christian cannot vote. I asked him how he relates to this in his own church,
which teaches that voting is an obligation for Christians:
2240 Submission to authority and co-responsibility for the common good make it morally obligatory to pay taxes, to exercise the right to vote, and to defend one's country
So I asked Max this:
I'm not asking this as an attack, but this thread is very much about how each of us approaches these things. If voting is incompatible with your faith, how do you approach this in your church?
In many of these threads, I am are wrestling with different issues, asking what the right approach is for Christians, and how to relate to that in my faith community. I see others do the same. I think MN needs to be a safe place to do that. In a thread that is doing that, I think it is helpful if people share from their own perspective, and talk about how they handle these things in their own faith community. Or if someone is not in a church, I think it's helpful if they share how they handle it in that situation.
When RZehr
introduced the phrase to us, he used it to mean moving from an MC-USA tradition to a more conservative Mennonite tradition, saying this:
I see intermediate conservative mennonites somewhat freely interact and connect with charity people, german baptists, followers of the way, ultra conservative mennonites, moderate conservative mennonites. Depending on the person not all intermediates will interact with all these groups, but I do. I consider the differences between these groups and myself mostly superficial.
If I was in an area with only one of these churches I feel like I could, with a little effort, make myself at home. I would chose any of these over a MCUSA church.
And I think that we see the same going the other way. I forget which church you are a part of now, but it appears to me that you are more comfortable crossing from MCUSA? to where you are now attending, instead of swimming upstream to a conservative Mennonite church.
MCUSA, in my opinion, has much more in common with evangelical churches than with conservative anabaptist churches. I feel like literally the only thing we have in common is the name Mennonite.
I responded to RZehr
here and
here. Temp remembered RZehr's post and quoted it with some comments, someone (presumably a moderator) deleted her post.
I agree with the people in this thread who say we should swim upstream to the real source, to Jesus and to Scripture. Some of us will do this in a plain Mennonite tradition, others will not.
I think this has ramifications for how people like me, Max, and Temp relate to each other. None of us is plain Mennonite, none of us is in the process of becoming plain Mennonite, each of us is practicing our faith in ways that plain Mennonites would not. They have grace for us here. They can discuss these differences thoughtfully. We should be able to do the same.
And if we can't, we can hardly claim to be swimming upstream.
Is it biblical? Is it Christlike? Is it loving? Is it true? How can I find out?