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VOW
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AND I AM GRIEVED
(Before each plenary session of the General Assembly, time is given to the Commissioners and Advisory Delegates to speak their minds on any subject of their choosing. The following one-minute speech was offered by Commissioner Gerrit Dawson from the Presbytery of Western North Carolina. It was delivered after the vote was taken to refer the matter of Christ's Lordship, and before the debate on Ordination Standards. It is reprinted here with his permission.) In the early years of the church, Rome was the most multicultural society the world had known. Their success lay in allowing conquered peoples to retain their religions. You could believe anything you wanted, worship any way you wished as long as once a year you joined your fellow citizens in walking by a bowl of incense, picking up a pinch, throwing it in the fire, and mumbling "Caesar is Lord." You didn't even have to believe it, so long as you followed the ritual. But the Christians couldn't do it. For them, Jesus, and, Jesus alone is Lord. They could not deny that, no matter how harmless the ritual seemed to be. And so they were persecuted. Who is the 21st century Caesar? It is the cultural understanding that you can believe whatever you want to believe as long as you don't say, "And this is the one truth." To say Casesar is Lord means not making any universal truth claim. As long as you do that, there will be no quarrel with you. Yesterday, I couldn't stop crying. I wept in the morning, the afternoon and the night. For in our lack of nerve, our lack of resolve that led to a failure to profess a clear and clarion statement that Jesus, and Jesus alone is the singular saving Lord, we said instead, "Casear is Lord." And I am grieved.
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