Today's Devotion: John 8 (New International Version) - 3The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group 4and said to Jesus, "Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?" 6They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.
But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. 7When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her." 8Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
9At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. 10Jesus straightened up and asked her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?"
11"No one, sir," she said. "Then neither do I condemn you," Jesus declared. "Go now and leave your life of sin."

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Isn't that what we are doing when we preach schism or division in the church?

Today's Comments: And yet, sometimes we have to stand up for what we believe in, when the church is wrong. Today, I received a message from my church's Senior Warden that the Commission on Ministry has declined to elevate Micah Snell, one of our vocationers, to candidate status for priest. The message said that the letter was signed by our Diocesan Bishop and suggested that Micah's beliefs and practices were incompatible with those of the diocese. This is disturbing, considering the fact that initially the Bishop was excited with Micah's prospects and was even willing to offer him a scholarship to Oxford, if he could get in. The issues here could very well refer to his views on the ordination of women and homosexuals to the priesthood.

William Du Boise, a well known Anglican liberal stated, " Extremes always work themselves off best by freedom to work themselves out. The best expulsion of error is through the freedom permitted to it of self-exposure. Our end in view is not the licensing of error, but the ultimate best, if not only, method of eliminating error by suffering it to meet and be overcome by truth. By all means let the church guard and preserve her faith, order, and discipline, her creeds, her ministry, and her worship. But let her neither indulge the weak fear that these are really endangered or compromised by the fullest freedom conceded to and exercised by her members, nor imagine that danger or harm can be averted by the suppression or expulsion of that freedom. If our desire is to propagate error, there is no surer way than to persecute, suppress, and exclude liberty." If conservatives are being driven out of the church, where is the freedom? I suspect that this is going to have a most adverse affect on our church. We may end up losing our Biola students.