Anyway.
I've been on band tour for seven days now, and I'm sitting in my hotel room in Orlando, Florida. No, I will not be going to Disney World, apparently you can only experience the happiness and magic if you are willing to shell out $90.53. But I'm still excited to see the Epcot center on the horizon and possibly wrestle a 'Gator if the situation arises.
Up until tonight on the tour, we have stayed with a different host family each night. All being families that I did not know before, excluding Tuesday night when I had the great fortune to be able to stay with some of my favorite people, Wes and Cristal Kohring. There have been extremely wealthy families, families who may have spent their last dimes to feed us, families still rebuilding from hurricanes and other tragedies...
All this is to say that I have met a lot of different people on this trip.
Without fail, every time I meet my new host family, I start thinking of what their house must look at, whether they have pets, if they have unsecured wireless access, and so on and so forth. Most of the time that's what I am thinking about on the drive to their house. Most of the time, my imaginations, and assumptions are way off. I have started to realize that the reason for this is that I make assumptions based on my life, the houses I've been in, and the people I know. I'm in a COMPLETELY different culture from the one I call home, yet I still expect the same stereotypes to be true.
For example, one family drove me home in their $500, 200,000 mile 90's Jeep grand Cherokee, so naturally, I assumed that they would live in a small house where they were barely scraping by. Turned out they lived in a fairly large house, with one of the biggest kitchens I've ever seen, a covered pool, tons of land, a bunch of Off-Highway vehicles, and plenty of food for us to eat. They also asked me if I was afraid of dogs, so naturally I assumed they had a Rottweiler or a Pit Bull because in my past experiences, those have been the dogs that scared me the most. In reality however, they had the most docile mix of a Great Dane and a Great Pyrenees, he just happened to be the size of a small rhinoceros.
What I am trying to say is that making assumptions about things is generally a foolish practice, especially if you're in a somewhat foreign place. While it is smart to think ahead and try to plan for possible future scenarios, deciding to understand something before you've experienced it is folly.
It's the same in our churches. I can't count how many times someone has heard that I attend and even work for a Church of Christ and instantly goes either into attack mode or starts asking questions about doctrinal differences. Its the same on my end though as well, I have often let the things I have heard or thought about other churches supersede my willingness to converse with another who claims to follow Christ. While there are many differences between churches, some that each considers irreconcilable with each other, it is not fair, wise, or Godly to make assumptions about people based on the words on the sign at the building where they worship. I think often times I get caught up in the "Jerusalem only" mentality, thinking that most churches aside from the one I attend are unacceptable practices, but then I have to think back to Jesus' words to the Samaritan woman at the well;
I pray that God will make me one who worships him in spirit and in truth and rejoices in others who do the same.
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