Thinking Outside The Box ... Religiously

We all agree being able to “think outside the box” is a good trait for a person to have. But what does that mean in religion?Matt 13:15 talks about people who can’t think outside the box in religion when it says – “For this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.” In religion those who can’t “think outside the box” are those who say they go by the Bible but really and truly judge what is right and wrong, what is good and bad, by what the people of the church they are a part of believe and practice. They just don’t have enough gumption to run contrary to the church they are apart of even when the scriptures clearly dictate they should. They judge how faithful someone is by how much that someone conforms to the Christians around them, even though their profession is that they make such judgment based upon how much someone conforms to the word of God.I think we have a first century example of such. Evidently the Jewish brotherhood’s “box of thinking” was that the promised Messiah was to be a physical king, someone to lead them out of Roman bondage (John 6:15). Jesus tried to make it clear His kingdom was “not of this world” (John 18:36), but for the most part, Jews could not “think outside the box” and so rejected Christ for who He was in truth.Think back to the days of Alexander Campbell. At that time, the only ones who believed baptism needed to be “for the remission of sins” (Acts 2:38, etc.) were the Catholics who didn’t really baptize at all but only sprinkled infants. But Campbell and his colleagues were able to study the Bible for themselves, “think outside the box” so to speak, and accept what the Bible clearly taught on the purpose of baptism when almost nobody else probably in centuries had been able to - since that teaching was not the norm for the churches they were a part of.Today I am many times frustrated by Baptists’ thinking on the Once Saved Always Saved issue. It doesn’t matter how many scriptures we give them that conclusively prove a Christian can “fall from grace” (and there is such a scripture on just about every page of the Bible, e.g., Gal 5:4), they will doggedly hold onto to their view without any scriptural support whatsoever. It has been so engrained in their mind – “that is the way it is; that is the way it has to be.” They can’t “think outside the box;” they are tied to the teaching of their church no matter come what may.Even “conservative” Christians are not immune to this way of thinking. I can think of many examples, but one clear one would be the practice of knocking on doors to get Bible studies. Just a few decades ago, many Christians did that regularly to get Bible studies with non-Christians. Now if you do that, you are considered almost weird by most other Christians. It is considered good to do a personal evangelism study once in a while (Acts 8:4), or to approach people challenging their beliefs (Ezek 3:18) every now and then, but if you are bold in doing too much of that, you might be considered strange. Another example is religious debating. This scriptural practice has most definitely “gone out of style” in the Christian brotherhood in the last several decades. Scripture after scripture can be piled up (Acts 19:8-10, etc.) proving God approves of such, but most Christians won’t enthusiastically join God in approving of debates.  Instead they will say they don’t like them or they don’t do any good (Prov 14:12). What matters to them is that all “cool” brotherhood preachers shy away from participating in them – so they must be bad. Another example: Most congregations aren't considered complete unless they have a regular pulpit preacher. It’s like it is considered sinful to do it any other way. Don't people ever stop to think that the biggest name preacher of that day did secular work (Acts 18:3)?Conclusion: If continuing in Jesus’ truth (John 8:31-32) means “thinking outside the box” of our church’s standard teaching, then we must do exactly that to be freed from our sins. Abiding in the doctrine of Christ is what is required to be right with God (II John 9), not abiding in the normal behaviors of our church.