Many of us have been engulfed in maintaining that specifics are important. Some will insist that identifying the two witnesses in the book of Revelation is crucial to the message of Preterism. Some simply don’t care who the two witnesses were. Others insist that knowing the exact day and hour when the Old Covenant was fulfilled is key to validating Preterism. These arguments appear to be remnants of twenty-year-old theological arguments that have somehow made it into year 2005. During modernism, clear-cut positions on any side of an argument were a necessary requirement. If you were just an inch or so over the line, you could be a liberal or a conservative, and that could ruin your life or your career. This worked fine during Christianity’s war against liberalism and atheism. We’ve won those battles. The problem is that in a post-modern world, the lines are nowhere to be found. Even without the lines being visible, many Preterists continue to see things in black and white, even when their own children are wearing gray shades. Instead of learning to adapt, we often grab our paintbrush and we quickly color issues in whatever our favorite color is. Anyone wearing the wrong color socks that don’t match his outfit is either a heretic or a liberal (perhaps a conservative in some circles).

Let me remind everyone that not everything about liberalism is bad or evil. While for years conservatives used the Bible to justify slavery, liberals courageously fought against it and persuaded many millions of this terrible injustice. Many women have been abused and treated terribly at the hands of “conservative Christians.” Many conservatives have no regards for taking care of our environment and preserving it for our descendants while heathen liberals are on fire in their zeal to protect nature. Some conservatives read the Bible and the Creation story in such a literal way that they ignore all common sense and scientific facts that seem to contradict their beliefs. By the same token, liberals turn the creation story into some scientific experiment which eventually becomes some universal metaphor for man’s wisdom at the expense of Bible’s accuracy and literalism.

Today, Preterists are again taking a hard line on many of these same issues, failing to learn from the past. It’s seems to be OK to bash Catholics because after all they are wrong about so many things, so they cannot possibly have the ability to subscribe to Preterism. The same goes for Orthodox Christians, who seem to be overzealous with painting the walls of their church buildings and be less concerned with theological matters. Oh boy, and discussions about Universalism should only consist of whispers in dark alleys. After all, Universalists are irrevocably lost to God because hey, we can’t have everyone be saved! That would never cross God's mind! That’s heresy, and as the true followers of Christ, we can refuse to even speak on the same podium as anyone who professes a hint of Universal salvation. And could we even attempt to put a Calvinist and an Arminianist in the same room? Forget it!

Folks, where is Christ’s grace in all of this? There is more to people thank just theology. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately sometimes) many of us have strong and stubborn beliefs about many things. Just because the beliefs are strong, they are not necessarily in accordance with reality. Let’s take our Dispensationalist friends for example. They have what we consider to be very warped views of the Apocalypse, the Resurrection and its timing. Does that make them any less of God’s children in His eyes? What about the Mormons, with their belief that God is a person of flesh and blood like you and I, that he lives on some planet somewhere where he regularly mates with his many wives. Does their view of God make them any less valuable in His eyes? What about asking the taboo question: does their view of God invalidate the redeeming work of Christ as it pertains to them? Will God say “I reject you Mormons because you believe that I have a physical body and because you think Joseph Smith was an inspired prophet?” Or could it be that God thinks the whole thing is really stupid and chuckles over it once in a while saying, “I can’t believe these people actually think I have wives!”

Could it be that in our own excitement over discovering truth, or at least what we think is truth right now, we got a little overzealous and regressed back into a time and place where things are our way or the highway? Does it really matter if some Christians like to paint the interior of their church buildings with beautiful paintings and use these paintings to better relate to God, prayer and meditation? Does it matter that partial-preterists reject every gracious hand extended to them by us, and meet us with mockery and disgust? Does it matter that some choose to meet and pray in magnificent cathedrals while others use their living rooms? Does it really matter if some see God’s grace and salvation permeating every corner of the universe while others see it as applying to only specifically chosen people? Does it matter if some believe salvation comes through baptism alone? Does it ultimately matter if some have the courage to ask what do we need to be saved from anymore?