Tell the Ear to Shut Up – It Needs the Eye

President Obama tried to be coy when he admonished Christians by asking which Christianity we should choose: “James Dobson’s Christianity; or Al Sharpton’s?” You mean they’re different? Maybe a better comparison would have been: “James Dobson’s, or Jeremiah Wright’s?”
But the truth is, if they’re both following Christ, and lifting Him up as Lord Almighty, then the chances are they’re both in the “body of Christ.” And the “body” has many members: eyes, ears, noses, feet… you get the picture. What part of the body is your church?
If you practice the analogy given in I Corinthians 12, you’ll have to learn to accept people of differing denominations. Our faith is still in the Lord Jesus. Be we have different functions in His body.
The apostle Paul pictures a body’s members arguing with themselves. The ear “looks” at the eye (since it has no eye, I don’t know how) and it says, “I must not be in the body, ’cause I’m not like the eye.” I don’t know how it spoke, since it has no mouth. But Paul must have been having fun trying to point out the damage done when Christian churches downplay other churches, or outright condemn them, because of denominational doctrinal differences.
Truthfully, most denominations developed doctrines of exclusivism. Such singular doctrines were essential, in the minds of the founding fathers, to preserve the uniqueness. And today, although many modern pastors may quibble privately at their own denomination’s staunch preservation of its “preservation doctrines,” they won’t do so publically.
Paul was clear about the reason we need to accept each other, even though we are dramatically different. Christ prayed that all who “believe” in Him “may be as one” (John 17:20-22). And when Paul wrote his clever piece in I Corinthians 12 about the “body” being comprised of many completely different parts, he declared that there should be “no schism in the body” (vs25).
So whether your church is the eye, or the ear, or the nose… or maybe the knee… the point is that you should simply be gald to be who you are, and not look disdainfully at other churches that you don’t understand or agree with. If they worship the Lord Jesus Christ, and they’ve received the revelation that He is Lord, they are His. And so are you. So rejoice and be happy in your faith. And let the “eye” do the same.