Lunacy in Unity
Helen Bourne draws the line
I believe in miracles. I believe that the sick can be healed, the blind can have sight, and the dead can be raised. These things are in the Bible, and I believe that they actually happened, and can still happen. However, there is one miracle I have trouble believing in, and this is that Christians could ever have something that could be considered unity.
Perhaps it is partly the fault of extremists who use Christianity for their own agenda, such as some televangelists, white supremacists, and anyone who uses Christianity merely to look good. After all, we are eager not to be associated with people who abuse the message that we follow, and it leads us to distrust anyone who is not ‘one of us’. However, the discordance between Christians cannot be blamed solely on a desire to prevent harmful messages being given a Christian tint, since most of the divisions between Christians are not informed, sensible separations but rather caused by rumour, ignorance, and pettiness. Allow me to elaborate…
Christians share the beliefs that God is our Father and Lord; none of us are perfect; God loves us all; Jesus is our Saviour and the Son of God; and we can all have a relationship with God. Furthermore, the most important things we can do are to love God wholly, and to love others completely, even if we don’t like them! I would argue that, after these beliefs, anything else is peripheral. We are united in that we are children of God: not because we’ve done anything great; but because God loves us and God made us. However, I’ve never known brothers and sisters who could quarrel so much.
Part of the trouble is that we all forget the above beliefs, sometimes we doubt them, and sometimes we find ourselves making something else more important. At times like this, we can hurt people by letting our obsession over a smaller part of scripture overwhelm our love for them and our love for God. Arguments happen, people disagree, and the next thing you know, there’s been another ugly split. Such quarrels can happen over confusing, ambiguous or controversial parts of scripture, such as over whether women can preach or whether gay people can join the clergy. Even more tragically, they can happen over stylistic differences, such as whether we should sing songs by Charles Wesley or Matt Redman, whether cheering for Jesus is raucous frivolity or a valid form of praise, whether prayer is done with hands together or in the air. These may be important things to discuss in the context, but I feel that Christians often neglect to approach them with the right attitude.
Because discordance doesn’t come from God, it’s surprisingly easy to assume that a person who brings discordance is not a ‘real Christian’. Not only is this a bad attitude, it doesn’t account for those who are merely voicing a conflict that is already there. One should never confuse opposition with correction.
Conflicts are exacerbated by one side or both refusing to believe that they themselves may be part of the problem. When one side or both are convinced their own view is the right, God-given one, stubbornness can cause divisions. The conviction that we are utterly right can prevent us from being able to talk about the problem, in gentleness and love, with those opposing us. Even worse, we assume that because people don’t agree with us on peripheral views, or are even having problems with the bigger issues, that they are no longer our brothers and sisters and we have no obligation to help and to discuss the problem.
The most tragic form of conflict, in my opinion, occurs when the split has been in place so long that either side has practically forgotten why they quarrelled in the first place, but has perpetuated the division with rumours and ignorance. When neither ‘side’ has spoken to the other for a long time, they end up assuming that whatever the other side does is suspicious and probably unchristian even though they actually have no evidence for the fact. This terrible, ignorant division will persist until someone rejects the long accepted ‘truths’ and actually talks to the other side.
And this is what is so sad about divisions between Christians: they could be resolved so easily if we would overcome our pride and actually talk together with love. Jesus tells us that “If your brother sins, rebuke him and if he repents, forgive him” (Luke 17:3); he doesn’t tell us to warn everyone else away from the sinning brother and yet not bother to talk to the person in question. He also says “sins” rather than “mildly annoys” or “disagrees with you” — we cannot claim the moral high ground for everything that another Christian does that we don’t like. Instead, we should talk and pray over the problem, loving other Christians as our brothers and sisters, rather than being automatically suspicious that they aren’t ‘proper Christians.’
In truth, there are no ‘sides’ — we are all on God’s side. Any ‘sides’ in an argument are our invention, rather than God’s, and if we put our denomination or affiliation before our Christianity, I would argue that we are guilty of idolatry. Paul cautions the believers of Corinth in 1 Corinthians 3, for some saying “I follow Paul” and others saying “I follow Apollos” when “What after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe — as the Lord assigned each to his task.” We are guilty of a similar mistake when we consider the fact that we are Anglican, Catholic, Methodist, Evangelical, Christian Union, Christian Focus, or Cathsoc, as more important than whether we love God above all else and whether we love each other.
Even though my faith in the miracle of Christian unity is somewhat lacking, I hope that I can have a small part in it nonetheless. I don’t want to argue against fighting genuinely harmful and wrong theology. In fact, I would argue for it, which is exactly why I find dividing over petty issues so awful. We should talk to each other, and, even more than that, we should listen to each other.