We first discovered pluots three or four years ago when we set about to try one new fruit or vegetable a week. We have discovered many yummy treats, most too expensive to enjoy regularly or in any volume, but pluots, a cross between plums and apricots, are reasonably priced in season, and delicious.
Hybrids can be a good thing, increasing size and yield, and creating resistance to certain plant diseases. Hybrids can also be a bad thing, dulling flavor distinctions and, of course, making it impossible to save the seeds for next year, thus increasing the cost of gardening. Heirloom varieties are becoming popular for a reason.
Sometimes when we sow the seed, instead of creating “heirloom Christians,” we wind up with hybrids. The best way to avoid that is to make sure we are good old fashioned New Testament Christians ourselves, with no trace of sectarianism in us.
Do any of the mainstream “isms” show up in your language and thinking?
“Lord, we know we sin all the time.” Sounds like total depravity to me.
“I know I’m not living right, but at least I’ve been baptized.” Am I hearing once saved always saved?
“The preacher didn’t visit me in the hospital.” You did say “preacher” didn’t you? Or do you mean denominational “pastor?”
Allowing denominational practices to warp our understanding of the simple gospel can lead to all sorts of problems, not the least of which is a congregation that becomes far more like its denominational neighbors than like its first century sisters. When we expect a preacher to spend more time holding hands than holding Bible studies, when our traditions and our language show signs of various manmade doctrines instead of the simple elements found in the epistles, we need to check our bloodlines.
I pointed out how a certain activity was performed in the New Testament once, only to have someone say in a startled tone, “That would never fly here.” If it’s simply a matter of expedience, fine. After all, it is 2000 years removed. But if it’s because we’ve allowed faulty understanding from a past of bad theology to taint our thinking, it’s not.
God doesn’t want hybrid Christians, not even pluots. He wants a people who approach His word and His divine institution with pure hearts and minds, unadulterated from years of false teaching. In God’s eyes, there are no good hybrids, just defiled pedigrees.
Moreover all the chiefs of the priests, and the people, trespassed very greatly after all the abominations of the nations; and they polluted the house of Jehovah which he had hallowed in Jerusalem, 2 Chron 36:14
That he might present the church to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish, Eph 5:27.
Dene Ward
Hybrids can be a good thing, increasing size and yield, and creating resistance to certain plant diseases. Hybrids can also be a bad thing, dulling flavor distinctions and, of course, making it impossible to save the seeds for next year, thus increasing the cost of gardening. Heirloom varieties are becoming popular for a reason.
Sometimes when we sow the seed, instead of creating “heirloom Christians,” we wind up with hybrids. The best way to avoid that is to make sure we are good old fashioned New Testament Christians ourselves, with no trace of sectarianism in us.
Do any of the mainstream “isms” show up in your language and thinking?
“Lord, we know we sin all the time.” Sounds like total depravity to me.
“I know I’m not living right, but at least I’ve been baptized.” Am I hearing once saved always saved?
“The preacher didn’t visit me in the hospital.” You did say “preacher” didn’t you? Or do you mean denominational “pastor?”
Allowing denominational practices to warp our understanding of the simple gospel can lead to all sorts of problems, not the least of which is a congregation that becomes far more like its denominational neighbors than like its first century sisters. When we expect a preacher to spend more time holding hands than holding Bible studies, when our traditions and our language show signs of various manmade doctrines instead of the simple elements found in the epistles, we need to check our bloodlines.
I pointed out how a certain activity was performed in the New Testament once, only to have someone say in a startled tone, “That would never fly here.” If it’s simply a matter of expedience, fine. After all, it is 2000 years removed. But if it’s because we’ve allowed faulty understanding from a past of bad theology to taint our thinking, it’s not.
God doesn’t want hybrid Christians, not even pluots. He wants a people who approach His word and His divine institution with pure hearts and minds, unadulterated from years of false teaching. In God’s eyes, there are no good hybrids, just defiled pedigrees.
Moreover all the chiefs of the priests, and the people, trespassed very greatly after all the abominations of the nations; and they polluted the house of Jehovah which he had hallowed in Jerusalem, 2 Chron 36:14
That he might present the church to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish, Eph 5:27.
Dene Ward
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