position: god doesn’t care a whit about about the grammar rules of whichever particular language you write in.
respect is shown by expressing a kingdom heart in a way that uplifts, rather than tears down.
by truly caring more for your neighbor’s best interests than your own.
this does not mean submitting to the prideful, destructive or downright meaningless traditions of your neighbor — to do so is NOT in their best interest, and only allows them to continue in their mistaken notion of what living in the eternal kingdom is about.
insisting that “god” or “jesus” must be capitalized strikes me as similar to stuff the pharisees pulled.
making a “rule” out of a custom, until it became a “law” — and somehow wormed its way into being enforceable by social pressure to the point that few dare question it.
i mean, seriously, we are talking about grammar here.
i think any reasonable person must conclude that god does not care, at all, whether we press the shift-key when typing the first letter of a pronoun referring to him.
what he cares about is how we live.
how we take care of widows and orphans. how we disciple those who look to us for wisdom.
how our very lives and the way we love on those around us reflect the character of jesus christ so much that they are drawn to him.
now, we humans like rules.
we pretend not to, but we love them.
we are constantly taking what jesus said, and making rules out of them.
we like to see if we have divorced, or looked at a naked chick, or said, “raca!”, and if not, hey! we’re doing okay!
but jesus never meant for any of those things to be “rules for getting into heaven” but rather illustrations of how, in some situations, a kingdom heart is likely to react, sometimes.
there are situations where the trouble of not capitalizing is not worth the rucus it’d cause (like at many of our grandparents’ churches), and times when it is (like here).
all of life is this way.
listening to the spirit, and having a heart that is more interested in the needs of your neighbor than your own selfish wants, we are able to discern how to navigate in this kingdom of god that we live in, and the situations can allow for all kinds of things.
apparently, according to ecclesiastes, there’s even a time to kill, though i plan to error on the side of caution on that one (!)
this capitalization thing is a rule that has been made, as a way to “see if we are OK or not”.
it’s a silly thing, and it has nothing to do with the kingdom, and yet we all know how people are.
people are funny about this stuff!
again, it all boils down to love for god, and love for people.