“I have a serious concern to bring up with you, my friends, using the authority of Jesus, our Master. I’ll put it as urgently as I can: You must get along with each other. You must learn to be considerate of one another, cultivating a life in common. I bring this up because some from Chloe’s family brought a most disturbing report to my attention—that you’re fighting among yourselves! I’ll tell you exactly what I was told: You’re all picking sides, going around saying, “I’m on Paul’s side,” or “I’m for Apollos,” or “Peter is my man,” or “I’m in the Messiah group.” – The Message –
History tells us division in the church is virtually always destructive…because it is nearly always man-made. It is destructive because it marginalizes our ability to convince a lost world it needs Jesus when we proclaim the lost world needs the Pope’s Jesus, or Luther’s Jesus, or Calvin’s Jesus, or Wesley’s Jesus, or Simpson’s Jesus, or…fill in the blank.
But…divided we are.
Of course, we can stand on our man-made plot of “holy
ground” or we can stand on the sure foundation which is Christ the Lord. One destroys
while one heals. Paul’s response
in this regard is for Christians to “cultivate a Common Life”. Failure to do so has dire consequences.
I recently watched the new documentary on Mitt Romney. I
finished watching with a deep sense of sadness that he is not our president.
His devotion to Godly values, his devotion to his family, his fervent prayer…all
convince me he is the man we should have elected.
An undivided church would have delivered that result. But we
aren’t…we didn’t.
This isn’t about candidates…only God can judge hearts. It
is about the road down which any candidate wishes to take our country, and whether
that road “cultivates a common life” with our most
fervent desires to follow God.
We evangelicals could have
concentrated on the things that we have in common with the candidate whose personal values most
closely reflective our own. After all, as voters we don’t elect “messiahs” we
elect presidents.
This is not indistinguishable from saying we are “in communion” with any candidate like
some believers claimed. Evangelicals are not “in communion” with Mormons any more than we are “in communion” with pro-abortionists.
Oops!
Joel Rosenberg (wordpress.com) says “It is stunning to think that more than 6 million self-described
evangelical Christians would vote for a President who supports abortion on demand; supported
the same-sex marriage ballot initiatives that succeeded
in Maryland, Maine and Washington; and was on the cover of Newsweek as America’s “first gay
president.” Did these self-professed believers
surrender their Biblical convictions in the voting booth, or did they never
really have deep Biblical convictions on the critical issues to begin with?”
It’s a fair question….
Erick
Erickson (Red State) characterized evangelical voters this way: The
thing to remember about religious voters is that unlike any other voting
segment, they believe that history has already been written and they understand
that even when someone terrible is elected, it is God’s will. This is a
mindset that allows many people to sit out an election in a way that a union
member or NRA supporter never could. They put their faith in God and that
relieves them of certain responsibilities that other voters feel.
Except…our failure to vote is, in itself, a vote for the opposition.
Those evangelicals who didn’t vote can glibly
say the election turned out as God willed. I prefer to say the election, and
all its moral consequences, turned out the way it did…with our implicit blessing.
Of course, none of this matters if you are satisfied with
the road our country is travelling. An evangelical who subscribes to this
notion proves Paul’s words true…we must “cultivate a common life”
We get lots of advice…from well-intentioned friends. Unfortunately,
the closeness of the friendship does not always correlate directly to the value
of the advice. Advice that does not “cultivate a common life”
with other believers is not to be heeded.
Live boldly out
there today…
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