“Perception is what you interpret - it is your understanding of a given situation, person, or object. It is the meaning you assign to any given stimulus. Perspective is your point of view - it's the lens you see the world through and determines how you view yourself, others, and everything else around you.”[1]
I’ve been thinking a lot about perceptions d perspective lately. So many of our actions and attitudes derive from one or the other. Perception is most often the result of perspective. We interpret a thing the way we see the thing.
Pastors today are forced to make decisions whether to open their services illegally, remain totally compliant to government mandates, or attempt some sort of combination. I find that the decisions they make have a great deal to do with perspective and that with perception.
Recently I spoke with a pastor who says he’s had it with government orders and he’s opening his church to services. He explained to me that “we expect our missionaries to go to foreign fields and break the law for the sake of the gospel. Why should we do less?” Frankly, I didn’t respond. But I did begin to think. In my experience, from my perspective, the last thing anyone has ever expected of our missionaries is that they would break the law. From my perspective missionaries take great pains to obey the laws of the lands they seek to minister. They go to open countries. They get their support from the U.S. so as not to be a drain on the mission field’s economy. They often dress like the culture of the mission field. I have heard of a few missionaries who have been shady in the dealings with governments[2] but, from my perspective, those missionaries are always marginalized by the majority of missionaries.
I spoke with a pastor just the other day about our Anabaptist forebears, as I consider what I know of them to aide me in my own decisions. His response was, “I don’t mean to be argumentative, but wouldn’t we dismiss the Anabaptists as not good Baptists?” From his perspective, complying with governments as the Protestants and most Baptists in the U.S. do has worked out well. Why would we want to consider the Anabaptist doctrine of separation of church and state? He would like to return to Pre-COVID19 practice because, in his perspective, it’s worked well. My perspective is slightly different. I tend to agree with old B.R. Lakin who, in the 1950’s I think said that churches in America could be successful doing what they are doing without God. Whether he actually said it, I am not sure. I’m taking the word of a preacher from his day. What I am sure of is that nothing in church has improved since then.
My perspective gives me the perception that this would be a grand time for God to bring revival.
Marvin McKenzie
In the fields (praying)
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