In or out . . . who knows?

Virtually every human being wants to be part of a group. There are people who prefer solitude above everything else, but they are very much in the minority. We want to know we are “in.” There is not much wrong with the desire to be included but we cannot lose sight of the reality for some to be “in” there are others who must be “out.”

The “in or out” issue is not a problem when you are playing a team game. For those moments the world is broken into two groups, your team, and their team and it is important to know who is on (or “in”) your team. Defining yourself as part of the group wearing green and black versus the team wearing red is a good thing on the football pitch. It becomes a problem when we find ourselves defining everything by who is in and who is not.

For religious people, this can devolve into a very unhelpful situation where we spend any amount of time trying to determine who is “in” God’s favour or who is going to “get into” heaven. If nothing else, this is none of our business and if we look at our Acts reading this week, I think we will see Peter wasn’t able to figure it out without help, so why do we think we can?

As always, let me know what you think.

“Who’s in? How can we know?” Knox Presbyterian (to download, right-click and select “Save Link As . . .”)