Contending with my own Berean Spirit

I am having issues with my own willingness to submit, or rather support, teachings I don't see as biblical. I am eager to learn but I don't always agree, especially when it comes to the doctrines regarding that authority. I don't think it is spiritual pride because it is never an issue submitting when I am wrong. It only is an issue when I am right and know that I am right.

Spiritual pride exists without reference to right or wrong though. It exists without reference one being in authority vs. not. It has a more organic source. It exists in reference to humility in being right or wrong, even for leaders. I still have not learned to balance or understand this berean aspect. I find I have disagreements and cannot always be on board for teaching or being teachable since I have formed conclusions.

Let us reason together though, it is not sin. I don't want to be critical for the sake of being critical but I do want to test and hold fast to that which is good.

This shows most drastically in my understanding of ecclesialogy and community. It has started to cause a little bit of sin but the sin isn't in disagreeing and making it known. I see problems in areas like the right use of sacrements (mostly resolved), Worship, covenant theology within the sacrements, lack of a care structure among certain ministries, the support of courtship vs. its reality, and the top-down view of submission without grass roots accountability. (I want a presby.) This last one causes pride to become an issue when I am told to submit to church leaders. Or that leaders submit themselves. Or I must submission to anything. It gets colored in the wrong light of the world and the authoritarian nature that the world places on submission.

Only God is the Lord of my conscience. I can only submit as I see that it is towards the Lord, as those leaders follow the Lord. What do I do when I don't see that though. I am not always in a place to see it either. We all, pastors included, are afflicted by differing degrees of spiritual blindness. Yet, the body of Christ isn't a giant tongue and giant ear either. I guess the only thing I owe towards leaders is love, humility, and an eagerness to test my conviction when I disagree on particulars, not submission against my conscience. Those are the only bonds I have to cultivate.

Spiritual blindness

Its a funny thing being blind. I feel I have just got over a long stretch of it. I was blind emotional and spiritually to the truth behind a sin. I sat in that sin for 7 years as a christian before things started to change at the beginning of this year. Looking back I don't think I could have even fought that sin as I aught. I will take none of the 1 Cor 10 crap on it. I could not resist it in my heart. I am not going to be a pharisee and say oh... it's ok. It's still sin. There is no Arminian idea of grace where God supported me such that I had to decide myself if I would sin and could thus resist. That is blatently false. Yet, I am what I am. Even if that means I am responsible but unable to change.

Now for 1 Cor 10. I believe it only talks to unbelief and idolatry. It does not talk to the moment but only to the inevitablity of change as well as the impossiblity of apostacy. God is still in the process of opening eyes even for christians. I see things that were once lying in darkness as it become midday in my heart. My sin was beyond the deceitfulness of most hearts and most sins. It eluded discovery until God highlighted the solution. I've been searching for the question though. What I should have asked about my sin that I didn't. It was 180 degrees from what I expected. God is so kind and so gracious that I am left to repent in ashes.