A current Kingdom comment (estimated reading time: 6 minutes)
In 1858, at a different time of deep division in our country (United States), Abraham Lincoln echoed the words of Jesus (Mark 3:25), when he declared, “A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.” Not since the Civil War era has our country been as divided politically and ideologically as we are today.
I love the United States and the principles on which she is founded. Principles like the constitutional right to assemble and the right of free speech. In the US, the right to gather, demonstrate, and express our opinions are protected by law. Sadly, those rights are not promised in every country.
Followers of Jesus in the US have the right to different political opinions. And the right to talk about them. We have the right to make placards, to chant, and to march in the streets. We have the right and responsibility to vote according to the conviction of our conscience. We have the right to legal recourse.
As citizens of the United States, we even have the right to be divided ideologically and politically, though that can bring division.
As followers of Jesus who are US citizens, we have these rights. But we do not have the right to divisiveness. We do not have a right to promulgate hostility between others, within the Body or without.
Rather, we have a responsibility to express opinions and perspectives in love. We speak truth in love and listen in love, not to divide but to understand and “in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ” (Ephesians 4:15).
There are Jesus-followers who are Left and those who are Right. Both believe in justice. Both (should) promote lawfulness. Both want truth. Both want vote-counts to be accurate. Both are called to speak truth in love. Both seek to follow God’s Word. Both pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Both would say that their primary citizenship is in heaven. Both believe there is only one Lord, in whom lies all authority, and with whom lies their deepest loyalty. We could go on.
To seek to understand differences is acknowledging that, on some level, our Lord might lean both Left and Right in some areas. To try to listen to each can be an act of humility, and may be a way of seeing some things through our Lord’s eyes, things to which we may have been blind. To strive for spiritual unity while acknowledging different perspectives, may just possibly be the right and godly thing to do, may reveal some common ground, may uncover mutual values rooted in Jesus.
To be different from each other can be good. To be divisive, to intentionally, perhaps with animosity, allow the escalation of us-against-them within the Body of Christ, should be called anti-Christ. After all, to our Father, Jesus prayed, “My prayer is not for them (his followers at that time) alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message (that would be us, now), that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (John 17:20-21, italics and parentheses added).
Spiritual unity, yet ideological diversity. Is it possible? Yes. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28, italics added). Foundational differences, yet spiritually one. Jesus prayed for this unity in the Father (he must have known it would be hard for us to flesh out), “so that the world may believe . . .” (John 17:21).
They say we live in a post-Christian world. A post-Christian world does not have the lens of a Christian-worldview. A post-Christian world is a world that is “past-Christian.” It’s values and perspectives no longer default to Judeo-Christian culture. That worldview that is reflected in the Bible is a thing of the past.
On the other hand, a post-Christian worldview perhaps is described best in 2 Corinthians 4:4. “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” It is a matter of the “god of this age” who blinds, in contrast to Jesus, the “I am the light of the world.” Blindness versus “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God.”
This shattered, broken, and blinded world in which we live today needs to see Jesus-followers who love each other and are united in Christ whether they be Left or Right. In this divisive time, people need to see Jesus-followers who pursue God’s heart and not just only-partly-right political perspectives. In an environment where rightness and wrongness get confused, folk need to be influenced by grounded, godly folk who pursue justice who pursue freedom to love and heal, who pursue being salt and light in a flavorless and dark world, who love their neighbor as themselves, take up their cross and follow Jesus, who hold to the “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” rather than transitory political opinions, who are ambassadors of Christ, who are loyal to the King of the kingdom of God and who give no place to “the god of this age” (cf. James 4:7).
Our culture and country is divided. Will Jesus-followers on the Left and on the Right be God’s preserving salt and light “so that the world may believe . . .” (John 17:21)? Or will divisiveness hold us back from being who Jesus wants us to be and doing what Jesus wants us to do?
The Cross divides flesh and unifies the Spirit.
Flesh divides the Spirit ( no good thing) and unifies the Flesh.
Until the cross prevails and destroys all flesh (New Heaven and New Earth) there will always be division. Gods call and his work; He is the Boss!. No man working to be moral or self righteous apart from the Cross of Jesus Christ. can remedy this division. Only the Father knows when..Not even the Son who created all things….
Key verse: Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not to our own understanding (right, left, black, white, crips, bloods, men, women, choice,life..and on and on and on until?)
In all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall direct thy paths… Blessed is the man who puts his trust in God.. Cursed is the Man that puts his trust in man
The Father knows. Trust him!
This so commonly gets framed as a “both sides” issue. You quoted Lincoln to start, but the problem wasn’t that abolitionists and slave holders couldn’t get along and co-exist, it was that half the country wanted to continue owning human beings.
We currently have an issue where one of our political parties has completely abandoned the idea of ideology and has latched onto grasping for power by any means necessary and aligning itself behind the most hateful and divisive rhetoric that can be found among their voters. We have also reached a point where the religious right is almost indistinguishable from the political right, so as it pushes further and further into it’s worst instincts, it is dragging evangelical Christianity right along with it.
Is the other side blameless? No, but the right is so far outside of both religious and political bounds that we don’t need to be talking about coexisting, we need to be talking about what large scale repentance looks like.
Thank you, Tim. What would large scale repentance look like? How can we get there?