Shouldn’t we just get along?
The recent months of vaccine passes and traffic lights have highlighted the breadth of views that can exist in a church. We’ve realised that we don’t always see eye-to-eye and I wonder how many of us were unnerved by this. Maybe we’ve struggled to reconcile being in community with people with whom we strongly disagree. Shouldn’t we just get along?
I want to gently suggest that I’m not sure this is true.
The core tenets of the Christian faith - those things someone has to believe in order to be a Christian - can be boiled down to about seven statements. Seven! That’s it. It leaves us with a lot of things we can see differently.
Secondly, the church has always been diverse. The very first church was drawn from a long list of different countries requiring the gospel message to be spoken in different languages. We can’t even rely on ethnicity or nationality to find common ground.
But finally, and perhaps most significantly, the church is made up of real people. It’s the only gathering where the requirement to belong is an acknowledgement that you don’t deserve to. It means none of us are perfect. We won’t always react very well and at times we’ll say things we really shouldn’t.
But, shouldn’t the church be different to the wider culture? Shouldn’t we be able to show people a different way? Of course. But perhaps our point of difference is not in the way we avoid disagreement but in the way we seek to resolve it when it happens.
For a start, we’re committed to one another. Baptism is the entry point into the church and it demonstrates that we’re committed to the people of the church. It means we don’t just walk away when it gets too hard. We don’t exclude people from relationship just because we disagree.
But I also take comfort from the fact that Jesus saw this coming. He gave us a daily prayer that includes the phrase… “Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matt 6:12). Jesus knew that we would disagree at times. He knew we’d fall out as we smooth one another’s rough edges. But he invites us to take these issues daily to prayer and ask Him to help us forgive those who sin against us.
I have found it helpful in recent weeks to use the Lord’s Prayer as a framework to guide my own prayer. Can I invite us all into this rhythm of prayer and forgiveness as a gift to one another and a powerful testimony to the world.
Simon
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