What I do know about The Church in the New Testament is that it is referred to as a body (1 Corinthians 12), specifically the Bride of Christ (Ephesians 5, 2 Corinthians and numerous places in Revelation). I want to quote here 1 Corinthians 12:14-26:
For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.The eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of you," nor again the head to the feet, "I have no need of you." On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.
The Church has done a bad job of observing the wisdom in this text and it will, probably, continue to do a bad job of it...for not only is it in our sinful nature—to resent each other, to hold grudges for wrongdoing, for not wanting to forgive, for not wanting to compromise one's pride—but also because it is legitimately very difficult to work together and validate someone else's beliefs which may be near contradictory to your own. In my youthful, general glance across the scene of churches, there are innumerable churches, denominations, organizations and agencies that are all advancing The Kingdom in some manner or another (o this I'm sure), but are split and divided and hold and preach animosity towards each other —whether it be through the refusal to work with others or actual explicit sermons. Many if not most denominations will actually say that salvation can only be attained through their cultural, traditional and exclusive perspective of the gospel and they will claim the exclusive favor of God. To be sure, it's hard to be united with each other when TRUTH is on the line but each denomination has gifts. One may be very good at service, another may be very good at theology, another may be very good at healthcare...but they are divided. Hand refuses to acknowledge the eyes and feet will act as if they are cut off from the ears. The body is broken. The bride of Christ is a hypochondriac and is beset with mental illness and an overreactive, self-harming immune system. Lord have mercy on The Church for she knows not who she is, she does not acknowledge her own beauty or the value in each part--let alone her whole.
Sorry, I'm finding it hard to focus. Again, if this were a paper I'd just continue to freewrite with the knowledge that I'd edit it out and separate it for something else later ...maybe. Again, I don't have that luxury right now.
Maybe this will be a series of posts on this subject since I'm part of the postmodern generation and I like "conversations" as opposed to declarations. Or maybe I'm also just living out my relational tendencies by wanting this to be a conversation—since I learn better using the socratic method.
I recently finished A Theology as Big as the City by Ray Bakke. It was good and harmoniously relevant to where I am. I should devote a separate post to discussing it exclusively. I liked the book because it tied together the need for a holistic/complete conception, acknowledgement and embodiment of what the Gospel, of what the Good News, looks like.
Before Bakke's book, five books before actually, I read Compassion, Justice and the Christian Life: Rethinking Ministry to the Poor by Robert Lupton where he describes an encounter he had at a classroom at a Christian University. He asked the students what the "number-one mandate for followers of Christ?" and the immediate response was "Evangelize!". Lupton pushed back a little and challenged them if that was really Jesus' greatest concern. Someone said it was to make disciples. Finally someone says, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul and strength and you shall love your neighbor as yourself...On this hangs all the law and the prophets."
Lupton then challenged the students and asked them, if Christ identified these as most important for his followers--and for everyone, why did Christian universities not have classes like "Neighboring 101". A student counter-challenged Lupton and asked him if he believed in a literal heaven and literal hell with the argument that if we "believe that either eternal bliss or eternal damnation awaits every person after death, then the most loving act is to present the truth of the gospel to as many people as possible and thus save them from everlasting destruction." In response to this very common argument, I've heard it said before as well...that "the problem, of course, is that it leads towards viewing others as souls instead of people. And we opt for rescuing souls over loving neighbors, compassionate acts can soon degenerate into evangelism techniques; pressing human needs depreciate in importance, and the spirit becomes the only thing worth caring for. Thus, the powerful leaven of unconditional, sacrificial love is diminished in society and the wounded are left beside the road. When we skip over the Great Commandment on the way to fulfilling the Great Commission, we do great harm to the authenticity of the faith."
In John Perkins's With Justice For All indeed touches upon the gap between the preaching of the gospel and the immediate, "now" ramifications of the gospel. (I'm in no way summarizing anything John says but you'll just have to trust me, since the book is ...somewhere in my room, that I'm summarizing the subtle implicit messages he makes) The gospel is not only good news in the sense that it frees us from eternal separation from God, it also frees us to have a relationship with God now and it frees us to love our neighbors right now. Love that is tangible and love that is action. Not just good ideas, but real physical changes to our personal lives and our physical environmental and systemic conditions.
So yeah, back to Bakke. His chapter 18 is titled When Truth & Love Collide and he begins the chapter by looking at Barnabus and Paul's disagreement over what to do with Mark (the guy who's attributed with the Gospel of Mark) when, on his first mission trip as he accompanies Barnabus and Paul he abandons them due to the difficulty. Paul is harsh, however Barnabus treats Mark with grace and gives him a second chance. He uses this as a small launching point to discuss the division of truth and love in churches that occurred first in North Africa and then, as the church grew and expanded, the rest of the world. Bakke writes.
For more than three decades I've watched as today's version of "love" and "truth" churches compete for members and influence. It is very sad, but I understand that it happens. I have made the vow to never disparage any church or its leadership in public, be it liberal or conservative. For whether true or not, Satan has a nasty habit of using such talks to further divide Christ's already fractured body and discredit the gospel in our city of mostly unchurched folks. (page 150)
The division, and the hypocrisy exposed by this division is the reason why many of my peers and individuals from my generation are leaving both traditional forms of church and The Church, en mass (as discussed in the book UnChristian).
Bakke's refusal to publicly attack a fellow Christian/church...is both heartening (it's a message, an idea and an element of character rarely observed these days) and...controversial! One immediately jumps to "But then, where is the line?? Where does Truth stop and begin?". Personally it's an exercise I'm going to try and work at since it's damn near impossible for me, it'll be good and I know that it will challenge me to grow in my conception of grace, love...and perhaps even my understanding of what "truth" is (...can truth be true, without love?).
All of this is just a prelude to what I would like to discuss in a future post (part 2) regarding my attendance of four difference conferences: Intervarsity's Urbana Conference of 2009, Jesus Radicals conference of August 2011, Christian Community Development Association National Conference Indianapolis 2011, and the Newbigin panels on Church Mission in San Francisco where N.T. Wright spoke in November. Before I write the next post and explain how this all ties into my experiences at these conferences/lectures, I'd like to ask my reader some questions:
1) Which is more important? Truth and integrity of the gospel...or love, sacrificial agape love? Are they mutually exclusive? Or are they one and the same?
2) Where have you seen division between truth and love in your Christian life, where do you see it in The [royal] Church?
3) How are you apart of the problem? How do you get in the way of God's mysterious truth and overbearing love in your treatment of others both self-proclaimed Christians (yes, perhaps even Mormons!) and non-Christians? How can you be more loving? How can you let God's truth penetrate your life more?
4) How can you stand in the gap between divisions between churches? How can God use you to be the blood and nerve systems of the body to hold things together? What kind of attitude is necessary to adopt in the simultaneous confessional acknowledgement of truth and embodiment of a self-sacrificing, servant-Master like love?
in grace&peace,
in solidarity and unity,
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