I think the Atlanta Journal/Constitutionwould do the world great service to publish this letter in your Saturday section on Faith and Values, for it clearly delineates the contrast of the Gentile and Jewish Christians (technical terms), which is hardly even recognized yet, and through that the problem of their coexistence and then finally a scripturally based solution:

Some Christians come to Christ as gentiles, following the lead of Paul, i.e., we stand spiritually at his cross outside the city in the garbage dump and cry out, like the thief next to him, “remember us,” and he replies that we shall be with him in paradise. We have no law. We have in its place our commitment to the embodiment within us of the Golden Rule vis-à-vis all people, and the Lord’s Friendship Rule for interactions with other Christians. When we eat his flesh (in the communion) we are anticipating the transformation of our flesh such that we will come to love doing good. When we drink his blood we are rejecting scripture as a law book and embracing it as a history and source of life eternal which we now ourselves also possess in faith, and by virtue of which we are justified before God. For the Lord’s blood is now our blood and his life is now our life, and we are alive in him, and in him alone.

A call to the churches who hold to supplemental rules of scripture or church: let the gentiles go free into their own churches and accept their unions as Christian units--call them monasteries if you will--and only forbid them to do what you do not permit yourselves to do among yourselves, e.g., no blood sausage, but then only when among you.

When visiting these non-Gentile churches the gentile Christians must look upon such rules as local manners and act accordingly, not for their own conscience, but rather for the sake of the conscience of one who is weaker in faith and whose peace of mind is dependent upon compliance with certain externally imposed rules.

Romans 14 gives the Christian community the solution to this problem and for the interactions between the stronger in faith and the weaker in faith it is as much valid today as it was then.

Remember that only two things actually ever amazed Jesus: that his own people, who knew him best, rejected him, and then also that the gentiles, the outsiders, accepted him with a faith that shamed Israel.