Disagreements without Separation
I had a very encouraging conversation yesterday with a brother concerning Romans 14:1-15:7. We were talking about how to disagree with brothers and sisters without separating from them. Here are some points from our discussion:
- Start with our agreement, primarily in the person and work of Jesus Christ, in our common relationship to God and to one another. When we start with our agreement we can recognize that most of our disagreements are insignificant compared to the greatness and immensity of our agreements.
- When we finally discuss our disagreement, we do so as brothers and/or sisters. Thus, we treat one another with respect.
- We also hold our beliefs (even strong beliefs) with humility, recognizing that God can always teach us through our brother or sister.
- While discussing our disagreements we never say anything or do anything that would cause our brother or sister to stumble or to hinder their growth in the faith. We also regard our brother or sister as more important – even more important than showing our views to be right.
- Even if we fail to agree and even if we continue to hold our own beliefs (being convinced in our own consciences), we live in a way that honors our brother or sister.
- Even if we fail to agree, we end with a reminder of our mutual relationship to one another through Christ. If God has accepted us in Christ, then we must accept one another.
- If the brother or sister chooses to separate from us, we do not have to react by separating ourselves from him or her. We cannot choose how another persons acts toward us, but we can choose to be loving in return.
What do you think? What would you add?
(And, by the way, yes, there are disagreements that can cause us to separate. We read about some of these in Scripture. But, they are usually well beyond what usually causes us to separate from brothers and sisters.)
Your Church Is Too Small
I just received another book in the mail: Your Church Is Too Small: Why Unity in Christ’s Mission is Vital to the Future of the Church by John H. Armstrong. Here is the blurb from the back cover:
In Your Church Is Too Small, John Armstrong shows that Jesus’ vision of Christian unity is for all of God’s people across social, cultural, racial, and denominational lines.
Too often, these words of Jesus from John 17:20-21 seem like an unreachable ideal:
“I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.”
But Your Church Is Too Small encourages Christians to rely on God – Father, Son, and Spirit – as they unite in mission and demonstrate his character to a watching world. Such reliance entails both a deeper experience in the triune life of God and a connection to the church’s past.
This challenging narrative is a call to leave behind placing limits on Christ’s church – with small, fractured sectarian views – and embrace the motivating vision of a church that is unified and rooted in core orthodoxy.
I’m planning on taking part in the Your Church is Too Small blog tour, so I guess I should read this book before the one that I received over the weekend.
Child of God or not a child of God. Is there a middle place?
As far as I can tell, there are only two options: 1) I accept that someone is a child of God and I treat that person as a brother or sister in Christ, or 2) I do not accept that someone is a child of God and I treat that person as if they are not a brother or sister in Christ.
Unfortunately, denominationalism tends to teach a “middle ground†where we accept that someone is a child of God, but we don’t have to treat that person as a brother or sister in Christ.
The people that God brings into my life
God has surrounded me with some great brothers and sisters! I thought I would introduce you to two of them through something they’ve written recently on their blogs.
Jason at “Fight the Good Fight” wrote about “The Importance of Meeting Together.” First, he tells about a man he knows named Manesh who lives in a section of India that is hostile to Christians. Then, Jason says,
On Sunday we spent our meeting time talking about a trip to Ethiopia that two of our members will be taking this summer. Our discussion led to the topic of community and the privilege of meeting together. Ryan commented on Bonhoeffer’s discussion of community and meeting together and how just the very fact that we are able to meet together as a body of believers is a privilege and a blessing. And it is only by the Holy Spirit that we are able to commune together as the body of Christ. Manesh, I think, fully understands the importance of meeting together, in his case, for the sake of the Gospel, and in many ways the same is true for us. Manesh earnestly prays for the meeting to be something that influences the people around him. Are we praying for, and conducting our meetings in such a way that honors Christ, shows desire for those around us to know Christ, and cherishes the privilege of meeting together?
Very important things to think about indeed!
Also, Jonathan (who hasn’t named his blog?) wrote a post called “Information vs People.” He writes in part:
Modernists place a higher priority on information than on people. As the church has good reasons to reject post-modern sensibilities, it is also highly modern. I think the best illustration of this is the advent of denominationalism. New denominations form by a group of people leaving a denomination because that denomination has its facts about God and the Bible wrong. In essence, they forsake all of the relationships they had built in order to maintain their loyalty to the correct information. This point was made clear to me in my Baptist History class. 400 years of petty bickering and parting ways over who was more “right”.
hmmm…. loyalty to correct information. That’s a good way to put it.
I really appreciate both Jason and Jonathan and the many other people that God uses in my life every day!
Accepting others glorifies God
I thought the quote below goes along well with some of my previous posts about accepting one another (even when and especially when our beliefs differ). First, the author is commenting on this passage:
May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore welcome (accept) one another as Christ has welcomed (accepted) you, for the glory of God. (Romans 15:5-7 ESV)
Here are the comments:
There is a purpose in this unity. Paul prays that with one heart and mouth his correspondents may glorify God. There were certainly tensions in the Roman church, and the presupposition that the strong and the weak were having some difficulty in getting along with each other underlies the whole section of the letter. But when the church gives itself over to glorifying God there is a deep and satisfying unity. That is what Paul looks for….
Accept one another is surely addressed to the whole community…. The verb rendered accept means wholehearted acceptance…. Just as Christ accepted us, we are to accept other believers. When we are to accept one another, are we to say that we will not take him as a Christian brother? Our attitude to others must flow from the transformation wrought in us by Christ…. His point is that all are to accept those who differ from them. This follows well on Paul’s prayer, for “Nothing glorifies God as much as the unity of His children, which alone is in harmony with His essential will of love” (Leenhardt). And it leads well into what follows, for Paul sees the purpose of Christ’s accepting them as “the glory of God”. God’s glory was promoted when Christ received us sinners, and it is further advanced when we who are by nature sinners and wrapped up in our own concerns instead receive our brothers in Christ with warmth and love. (Leon Morris, The Epistle to the Romans (Pillar New Testament Commentary; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), p. 502-3) (italics in original)
By the way, did you notice that accepting one another in spite of differing beliefs requires the encouragement and endurance that God provides?
So, if accepting one another (even when our beliefs are different) as brothers and sisters (not distant cousins) brings glory to God, what does refusal to accept one another do?
Does acceptance make our beliefs illegitimate?
Recently, when reading about the Jewish influence on the early church, I came across this interesting paragraph:
For the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem, however, the issue [of circumcision of Gentiles] was not so clear. The inferences were obvious to them; the ramifications were potentially damaging to the Jewish traditions. That God had poured out his Spirit on the Gentiles was amazing in its own right; but the subsequent inference that the Jewish believers would be required to accept (and even have table-fellowship) with the Gentile Christians without the latter having to undergo circumcision or to observe the law brought into question the legitimacy of the Torah. (Brad Blue, “The Influence of Jewish Worship on Luke’s Presentation of the Early Church,” in Witness to the Gospel: The Theology of Acts (ed. I. Howard Marshall and David Peterson; Grand Rapids: Eerdman’s, 1998) , p. 492)
An amazing thing happened in those early years after Pentecost (as recorded by Luke in Acts). God’s Spirit began to indwell people… and not just Jews, but Gentiles as well.
Before, Jews would only interact with Gentiles when required to (for instance, the Roman army or government officials) or when the Gentiles agreed to be circumcised and keep the law. In other words, if it were up to the Jews, they would only spend time with people who were like them and who believed like them.
But, now, the Holy Spirit was indwelling uncircumcised, law-breaking Gentiles, and the ramifications of this indwelling was about to turn the Jewish-Christian’s view of the world upside down. They knew that they were required (by their common relationship to God and by the common indwelling of the Spirit) to not only spend time with these new Gentile Christians, but to treat them as brothers and sisters!
Outrageous! And, many of those Jewish Christians refused, fought, argued, kicked-and-screamed against this type of behavior. They knew exactly what this kind of acceptance meant. If the Jewish Christians accepted the Gentile Christians as brothers and sisters, then the Jewish Christians would have to admit that neither circumcision nor keeping the law were necessary for God’s acceptance.
Thousands of years of traditions and belief were about to be thrown out the window because God was accepting, saving, and indwelling Gentiles.
Now… today… what are we going to do when we recognize that God is accepting, saving, and indwelling people from different traditions and with different beliefs? Are we going to accept them? Or, are we going to refuse, fight, argue, kick-and-scream against the work that God is doing?
Can we admit that God can accept, save, and indwell people who do not have the same traditions, practices, and beliefs as us? Are we willing to admit that our traditions, practices, and beliefs are not necessary for God to accept, save, and indwell someone?
Drawing lines
I’m not interested in drawing lines between myself and other brothers and sisters in Christ… even those with whom I disagree. If our beliefs are what draw us together, then our beliefs will also separate us. However, if we are drawn together by the Spirit of God then only the Spirit can separate us, and I see no indication in Scripture that the Spirit is interested in separating brothers and sisters from one another.
We must learn to accept one another just as we are, and just as God accepts us in Jesus Christ.
Acceptance and Edification
In one of my previous posts, I wrote that Paul’s commands to the Thessalonians in 1 Thessalonians 5:9-11 to encourage and edify one another should be prompted by their shared salvation through Jesus Christ. (see my post “Salvation as the motivation for mutual edification“)
There is another interesting occurrence of edification language in Romans… specifically in Romans 14:1-15:13.
In this passage, Paul’s primary goal seems to be to instruct his readers in how to deal with differences of belief and doctrine. Paul gives two examples of differences in this passage: what someone eats or doesn’t eat (Romans 14:2-3) and whether or not someone sets aside a specific day as special to God (Romans 14:5-6). These two examples are interwoven throughout the passage.
Also, interwoven throughout the passage, we find exhortations from Paul that are not specific to these two issues, but can be applied to almost any difference of opinion between believers (for example, see Romans 14:1, Romans 14:4, Romans 14:7-9, Romans 14:10-13, Romans 14:18-19, and Romans 15:1-13). Here is Paul’s final exhortation concerning differences of belief between brothers and sisters in Christ:
We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. For Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, “The reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me.” For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God. For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God’s truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written, “Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles, and sing to your name.” And again it is said, “Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people.” And again, “Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and let all the peoples extol him.” And again Isaiah says, “The root of Jesse will come, even he who arises to rule the Gentiles; in him will the Gentiles hope.” May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. (Romans 15:1-13 ESV)
As we read, Paul ends his instructions with a reminder that Jesus Christ is our example of “bearing with” those whose faith may be weaker and who fail. Instead of judging brothers and sisters because they disagree with us, we are to serve them and accept them, just as Jesus Christ served us and just as God accepts us in Jesus Christ. If God has accepted them, then we are to accept them also.
This leads us to the two occurrences of edification language in this passage: Romans 14:19 and Romans 15:2.
Romans 14:19 follows from what was just said concerning eating different foods and observing certain days (i.e. “so then” or “therefore”). When we find that brothers and sisters have differences of opinion (even about very important issues) we are to “strive for” peace and edification. We are to seek unity with those with whom we disagree and we are to seek to help them grow towards maturity in Jesus Christ.
In the following verse – Romans 14:20 – we see that the opposite is possible if we focus on our differences and require that everyone hold to our beliefs. Instead of unity and edification, our actions can lead to destruction and stumbling.
Similarly, we find Romans 15:2 at the beginning of Paul’s final exhortation about differences of belief. He tells us to “strive to please” or even “accommodate” our neighbor with the goal of seeing him or her grow for the better. The following verse (Romans 15:3) sets our “striving to please our neighbor” in the context of Christ’s “striving to please” by accepting the reproaches that should have fallen on us. Thus, in order to help our brother or sister grow, we should be willing to be reproached even and to serve them, recognizing them as accepted by God.
How will we be able to do this? Only because God (who is the master of both perseverance and encouragement) lives with us in harmony and unity. It is only in unity (even in spite of our differences) that we can glorify God together (Romans 15:5).
When we find that we are “at odds” with brothers and sisters in Christ, Paul is saying that we have two choices: 1) we can require that the other(s) yield to our understanding which may lead us to separate ourselves from one another, or 2) we can submit to them and seek their good and their maturity even at our own expense. Paul exhorts us to the second option, which is also the example that we have been given in Jesus Christ.
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Some Thoughts on Mutual Edification:
One Bread and One Cup
Dave Black is writing about the Lord’s Supper again (Wednesday, December 30, 2009 at 3:50 pm):
I remain convinced, in an obscurantist sort of way of course (being the ultimate obscurantist), of the necessity of having one loaf of bread and one cup during the Lord’s Supper. If you will tolerate yet another reference to the sixteenth century Anabaptists, in 1541 Peter Riedemann wrote that the one loaf is formed by the grinding and mingling of many grains of wheat, and the wine exists only because many individual grapes have been crushed. “Thus, the meal … is a sign of the community of the body, in that each and every member declares himself to be of the one mind, heart and spirit of Christ.” The point is that, in the Lord’s Supper, individualism is given up for unity. Forgive me, but — isn’t that powerful?
Interestingly, churches often put emphases on the “Supper” that we can’t find in Scripture. For instance, can you find anything in Scripture that says it’s important for the bread in the Supper to be unleavened? What about only have “ordained” (whatever that means) people serve the “elements”?
No… but Scripture does say something about the one bread and one cup and the focus on unity, fellowship, and community.
Considering Mutuality – Introduction
According to one definition, mutuality is “a reciprocal relation between interdependent entities.” In fact, mutuality is directly related to a state of interdependency. For mutuality to exist between two or more individuals, the individuals involved must recognize that they depend upon one another.
Beginning a 1985 article, Leonard Swidler said:
What is the fundamental matrix within which humans must live if they are to lead mature lives? A simple, but momentous, question to which everyone has an answer, even if it is inarticulate or unconscious. In the contemporary world there are two very dominant but extremist answers abroad: individualism and collectivism. There are other, better, answers and in these reflections I want to put forward one that takes the best insights of the two extremes and puts them together in, I believe, a truly creative, humanizing way: mutuality. (“Mutuality: The Matrix for Mature Living,” Religion and Intellectual Life 3.1, Fall 1985, p. 105)
For the remainder of the article, Swidler considers mutuality from various perspectives: metaphysical, epistemological, psychological, and ethical. He concludes as follows:
How these principles of mutuality, relationality and dialogue, which are at the very foundation of our human existence, understanding and action, and hence at the core of our religiousness, are to be applied to the further building of the community of men and women is a matter of hard thinking, work and experience by many individuals and groups. Simply knowing these principles will not solve specific problems; they are myriad and unending. But knowing them should keep us from unconsciously resisting them – always to our distortion and destruction – and also provide us with starting points which orient us in the direction we need to move… (p. 119)
While Swidler’s article considers mutuality from the perspectives of metaphysics, epistemology, psychology, and ethics, for the past few years, I have been considering mutuality from a different perspective: Scripture. I have become convinced (as has Swidler according to the title of his article) that mutuality is the matrix through which Christians grow toward maturity in Jesus Christ.
In this short series that I’m calling “Considering Mutuality,” I will be considering what it would mean for the church to lead mutual lives, as opposed to independent or collectivist lives. Note, as Swidler says in the quote above, all of us relate to one another in some way, whether we are aware of it or not. For those who desire to mature in Jesus Christ, and if the way we interact with one another affects our maturity in Christ, then it is important for us to consider how we relate to one another instead of relying on our culture or personality to form our default manner of interaction.
Again, as Swidler says, this is a “a matter of hard thinking, work and experience by many individuals and groups.” I certainly don’t intend to answer all of my (or my readers’) questions concerning mutuality in this short series of posts. Instead, I hope that this series can help us all begin to ask questions concerning mutuality, and how our lives either demonstrate or hinder mutuality.
Furthermore, if you conclude – as I have – that mutuality should be a characteristic of both the individual believer and the church, I hope that this series will also help us begin to consider our own manners of interactions, and how we – individually and as a church – can begin to relate in a manner that better demonstrates our mutual relationships – our interdependence.