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On February 15th, 2013, Dave Wainscott posted this quote from the ex Pope:
"As he said in his 1996 book, “Salt of the Earth,” a smaller but purer church may be necessary. Maybe we are facing a new and different kind of epoch in the church’s history, where Christianity will again be characterized more by the mustard seed, where it will exist in small, seemingly insignificant groups that nonetheless live an intensive struggle against evil and bring good into the world-that let God in."
Here is my reply:
I don't begrudge wisdom, even when it comes from sinners. Wisdom is still wisdom even if it's as small as a mustard seed in a haystack.
God knocked down the Tower of Babel for good reason, nothing good was to come from it. David' s small body and his pure faith in God knocked down the mighty Goliath. Small and pure is the narrow path. The political power of Mega Churches and strict adherence to a National Religion seek to force the masses on a solitary wide path that is both built and controlled by Man. If smaller and purer is a "new and different kind of epoch" it's only because Man has been fallible the whole time.
The analogy of the mustard seed is a good one because it speaks of the small and pure but the fallibility of Man is that once he has a seed, he seeks to control it. There's no argument that planting, watering, and pruning are all good things but in his zeal to see his seed grow to fruition, he deems everything else a weed.
Weed- "a valueless plant growing wild, especially one that grows on cultivated ground to the exclusion or injury of the desired crop", "any undesirable or troublesome plant, especially one that grows profusely where it is not wanted"
To me this very personal because I am a weed who found it's self grown near cultivated ground. To God, I am not valueless, I am neither undesired nor troublesome and most importantly, I am not insignificant. If we believe a smaller purer Body of Christ has more strength then we need to widen our definition of "good" to include those "things" that God has already let in.
~it's self~ was a grammatical typo but I'm sticking with it because "It" calls to mind the way we devoid weeds of having any value or worth.
