A Ramble About Unification

Have you ever had one of those eureka moments? One of those moments of insight which seems to bring everything together, and suddenly the problem which you've constantly had in the back of your head churning away just resolves itself, and then you wonder why, when the answer was so simple, that it didn't present itself to you before?

I kind of had a moment like that this morning as I was cooking breakfast. I was frying up some potatoes, onions and eggs in a wok, with the intent of adding rice and diced tomatoes. At the time I was thnking of a conversation I had just had with my daughter the night before. We were discussing a book which had been given to us by the church we had been attending, and now because of what that book revealed about the church's beliefs chose to no longer attend. I had told her that I didn't want her to read that book, and was now having to explain why. I very rarely forbid my kids from reading different books from different faiths, and so my forbidding her to do so was very out of place. As a result, we had a very long conversation.

I had told my kids last night a simple truth; being right isn't nearly as important as being compassionate. Loving one another is what Jesus taught and commanded His disciples to do. Throughout his epistles, St. Paul continuously hammers home the need for fellow disciples to keep their “knowledge” to themselves and be tolerant of differences of practice and opinion and to practice love for one another. One of the worst things in his mind was to see a local church torn apart by sectarianism and factions. “Is Christ divided?” He asks the Corinthians.

A divided church is the norm today. It's the rule and not the exception. In many ways, the rampant factionalism of different sects, denominations, and independent churches is the nightmare which St. Paul was trying to prevent in the Corinthian church. It's an embarrassment to Christ, and no movement, no new church or doctrine or theology has been able to slow it down, but only makes it worse.

The worse part about it is when the different churches and denominations refuse to accept fellow disciples from other churches or denominations as fellow disciples and Christians. It is a mockery of Jesus Christ when a fellow baptized believer comes into a church and is told that, not only may he not take part in the holy communion, but he is forever condemned to hell unless he repents and joins that church, not because of any specific sin or lack of devotion on his part, but because he was not originally baptized in that church. Such was the case with the aforementioned book which I wouldn't allow my daughter to read, and the reason why we no longer attend that church.

Why is the church so divided? In a nutshell, it's so I can be right, and you wrong, or vice-versa. It's because our sin disorder, the spiritual illness (as opposed to mental or physical) which we all share, feeds on “this is right and that is wrong” with those things being designated right and wrong often completely arbitrary and capricious. The most basic proof of this was that the first thing human beings decided was “morally wrong” was being naked in spite of the fact that every other creature on the planet was and remains naked and this is how God, who declared His creation good as it was, created us.

St. Paul wrote that “all things are lawful for me, but not all things are edifying. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.” That is, nothing is “wrong” for him to do, but not everything is helpful and there are a great many things which are harmful, both to himself and to others. St. Paul knew and wrote in this passage and in Romans chapter seven that it is when we designate something “right” and something else “wrong” that the sin disorder becomes active. It feeds on it and becomes stronger. When we have to be “right”, we are actually feeding the disorder.

So, what was my eureka moment this morning? It is simply this, denominationalism and sectarianism will themselves cease and fail on their own if we adhere to the principle that being compassionate is more important than being right, and focus on our own discipleship instead of enforcing our theologies on others. When we all only focus on our own practice of faith and relationship with God through Christ, remembering that love is more important than being right, then the Church will be unified, and not before.

Why is this? Because denominationalism and sectarianism can only exist when we keep those barriers and divisions between ourselves. If we count them as no longer important enough to defend, then those borders and barriers will fall and so will the divisions between us if, and only if we place our care, tolerance, and compassion for one another as more important than whether or not we are “right” about things we can neither see nor touch nor hear. And this was exactly what St. Paul himself taught when he wrote to the Corinthians about the schisms which had grown up among them.

The divisions within the Church of Jesus Christ exist only so long as we want them to. When we no longer want them to, then, and only then will the Church be unified.