"Mark and Avoid"
A Facebook friend recently posted a link that just about set my hair on fire. "Music to Avoid", the picture was titled, with the name of a contemporary Christian artist underneath. "Here is our latest post where we have put together links to resources and videos showing why certain popular 'teachers' and/or Christian artists should be marked and avoided."
Marked and avoided.
Y'ALL.
I am all about being careful what we put into our minds. Yes, we need to pay attention to what we are listening to and singing at church on Sundays -- or anytime and anywhere. We need to be Berean in examining the teaching we hear from the pulpit or anywhere (see Acts 17). Yes. Do this. But am I the only one troubled by that phrase "mark and avoid"?
Just like the people making the Mark And Avoid list. And just like me.
Lord knows I don't get everything right. I pray every time I post something here that if I'm messed up in my thinking in a way that's going to mess someone else up that the Lord completely blinds everyone's eyes to what I have to say. And I've had some posts with surprisingly few hits that made me wonder if the Lord was taking me up on that request.
But friends have told me that God has spoken to them through words I've written here, which is such an awesome thing. I do think I have good stuff to say once in a while. And I probably have some strikeouts, too. How unfortunate would it be if, after posting one of those strikeouts, I had been labeled as one to be "marked and avoided."
A friend told me a while back that he reads Philippians 4 ("Whatever is true, whatever is noble . . . think about those things") as a call to look for what's good in whatever he is watching/reading/etc. That was eye-opening to me. Given my particular religious background, I've always heard that as a call to refrain from ever looking at anything NOT true and noble and so forth.
Which, of course, sounds like the Mark And Avoid people.
Jesus told this great story once (he told a lot of them). A guy was sowing wheat in his field -- good wheat seed like a good farmer does. But apparently this good farmer had an enemy with a grudge against him who snuck out during the night to the farmer's field and planted a bunch of seed for tares -- a destructive weed that looks a lot like wheat when it is young. The farmer would not be able to tell what happened until the crop had grown for a while.
So, the day comes when his workers tell him, "Dude, there are tares in your wheat field!" And the farmer says, "Agghh . . . yeah, I know who did this." The workers offer to pull up all the tares, but the farmer says, "No, you might damage the good wheat when you do that. Just let them grow together for now. When it's time to harvest, pull up the tares first and get rid of them."
(As somebody summarized this story for me recently, "Just love everyone. I'll sort 'em out later." Love that.)
I want to re-examine this story with the Mark And Avoid crowd and see if there's more to glean here than the obvious. Perhaps we all need to be reminded that damage can be done to the good wheat (good songs, good teaching, good blog posts, good people) by being too zealous about ridding the field of tares. And that tares can be very hard to distinguish from good wheat, especially early in their growth cycle.
AND that all of our lives are riddled with tares. With stuff that is completely wrong . . . and with right stuff that we are seeing wrongly . . . and with huge gaps in perspective and information. We are walking Swiss cheese, every one of us.
Again, I know we need to be watchful and discerning. Maybe I overreacted to the "mark and avoid" phrase. But let's be real: if we avoided everyone who gets it wrong sometimes, we'd be lonely, lonely people.
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