Kirk - I'm still unclear by what "being in communion" means. What are the practical consequences? Apart from marriage. I'd like to know how differently you'd treat athiests, vs Lutherians, vs other saved Christians.
Atheists - let me change this to a muslim to make it easier to understand.
For a muslim, we would not let them say a prayer or pray with them in any way they belive in a different God. We certainly wouldn't give them communion.
Other Christians we would pray with but not commune with them. We would not let them preach in our church either.
Other Lutherans we would typically commune and pray. However there are excpetions. Non-confessional Lutheranism reaches such a broad amount of people. For example my church is technically non-confessional, yet in many confessional Lutheran churchs I'm allowed to commune, because after speaking with the pastor he belives that I am at one with him and the church on faith and doctrine.
However there are many far more liberal non-confessional Lutherans that the very same pastor might not commune.
Also there are some confessional Lutherans I would prefer not commune. (Although they wouldn't want to commune with us anyways.) A small few confessional Lutherans while they confess "One holy catholic and apostolic church" they do not practice it as they refuse to pray with other Christians. I reject divisions to such and extent because it in practice rejects the idea of one holy catholic and apostolic church"
But everyone is in sin, whether they believe in the right doctorines or not. Would you be in communion with a professing Lutherian who attends your church but sees nothing wrong with lying regularly?
Its impossible to know what everyone belives. However the church doctrine is clear. It is his sin if he communes and does not accept our doctrine that lying is not ok. However if we know he belives this we won't give him communion because it would be harmful to him.
How about with a newly-converted Lutherian who hasn't yet gotten to grips with all the Lutherian doctrines?
Basic Lutheran doctrines should be learned in a catechism class of some sort before Lutherans are communed IMO. Some Lutherans might disagree with me on this. But in order to commune a person should have some training in what communion is, as well as the basic tenents of the Christian faith and the Lutheran tradition.
It does matter for certain things, e.g. the teaching/misleading of others.
It doesn't matter for my relationship with that person.
Thats the same with us. We arn't going to stop loving people just because they are of a different doctrine.
Even if I know a gay man who truly believes the Bible, yet he's still a practicing homosexual because he honestly doesn't think it's wrong - I'd treat him primarily as a brother and friend. Maybe I'd try to explain to him why he's doing wrong, if it would be constructive. But I'd feel as spiritually close to him as I would to any other member of the church.
But see thats the difference, there are different levels of spiritual closeness. Communion litterally says that we are one together in this church. However said homosexual is to be loved and accepted as a child of God. BUT his doctrine is false and therefore he can not receive communion, because he is not at one with us in doctrine.
However if said homosexual realizes that homosexual activity is sin and agrees with us on all other major points of doctrine, he can receive communion with the rest of us. Because he is at one with us spritually in faith and doctrine.
But so is every sin! Every lie or angry thought! The purpose of Christ's coming is that we cannot hope to life up to God's standard. We can only try as hard as we can. If someone has searched her heart and the scriptures, thought long and hard, prayed, and come to a different set of doctrines than you - she has done her best, and I don't believe God would be offended by that.
God is offended by every sin hon. Just because we all sin and we do it a lot doesn't mean God isn't offended by it.
So we avoid sin as much as we can. We try to avoid lying or being angry with people. We keep a check on our temper. In just the same way we try to get doctrine right in every sense of the word.
Getting doctrine wrong is a sin, just like lying is a sin. Just because all of us have lied doesn't mean its totally cool to just accept false doctrines.
