Jesus wants to save Christians

I'm aware some authors or publishing house or whatever stole the above title, which was going to be the title of the book i've been working on for a few years now.

In any case, i've been thinking about it more recently.

Today i went to the student dining hall for lunch with a friend.
The table behind us was speaking loudly enough for us to overhear them clearly, much more clearly than we would have appreciated. As such, it was difficult to ignore their conversation, the kind of conversation i've been managing to avoid since i've returned to campus here (it's been intentional).

"Moody is definitely more dispensational; you don't know what you're talking about."
"No-- you don't get it! Dallas falls under these points of understanding the different dispensations. Here, look at this..."
"No; that's not right. Well, what about other theological issues? To what degree are they Calvinists?"
"Well, I heard..."


And they went on.

And i sat there, thinking of how enjoyable these conversations used to be back... oh... when i was in high school.
By the time I graduated, I was over it and assumed that the rest of the world was, too.
By the time I began my schooling here, I was much more concerned with an end to war, poverty and hunger than the battles of heresy, name-calling and systematic definitions.

I visited the student dining room less and less, as the arguments about calvinism and dispensations grew hollow in my head, and the self-righteous declarations of who God is began to stink of pomposity. When I was labeled a liberal for believing we were supposed to care for those who couldn't care for themselves, for the weak and the poor and the hungry, when i was dismissed as "emergent" because i didn't believe that the world could be fixed by right thinking, but that we actually needed to go and love people, when every conversation would find someone who wanted to argue, who wanted to be right, who wanted to tear down... the dining room because a place of headaches. I found other ways to eat, or to skip a meal, rather than sitting through there.

This semester, i'd made it through the whole 4 months of school, having sat in the dining room only during breakfasts (where it's quiet and beautiful), except for today's lunch experiment.

sadly, the conversations haven't changed.

i believe that Jesus wants to save Christians, that he wants to save us from ourselves. from our self-righteousness and easy judgments and labeling and heresies and from all the wrong ways we've thought about him.
He wants to save us closer to himself.