Whose Side Are You On?
“If you are a real Christian, it’s impossible for you to be a Democrat,” one devout Christian woman said to me.
Many Republicans and Democrats see people in the other political party as closed-minded, dishonest, immoral, unintelligent and lazy. In 2022, 72% of Republicans said Democrats were more immoral, and 63% of Democrats said the same about Republicans.[1]
One day Jesus is sitting at a well and asks a Samaritan woman for a drink. The Samaritan woman said to Jesus, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” In Jesus’ time, Jews and Samaritans did not associate with each other. The Samaritan woman had a binary worldview: “Whose side are you on? Are you in or are you out?”
When Joshua was by Jericho, he lifted up his eyes and saw a man standing before him with his sword in his hand. Joshua asked, “Are you for us, or for our enemies?” And the man said, “Neither, I have come as commander of the Lord’s Army” (Joshua 5:14). The natural tendency of humanity is an “either/or.” But Jesus’s is a “both/and” and a “neither/nor.” Jesus is neither conservative nor liberal, but he is also both. Pastor Tim Keller once said to young pastors, “For us preachers, the longer it takes people to figure out where we stand on politics, in all likelihood the more faithfully we are preaching Jesus.”[2]
One New Humanity
Once we had no peace with God. We were separated from
God, we were hostile to God, we were out of it altogether. But Christ is our
peace. Through the cross, he broke down the dividing wall of hostility. He made
peace. And he made us one. He created one new humanity, new society, new community,
that is, the Church, for us to taste and see God’s new reality – unity and peace.
The Church Is a Family
By Christ’s suffering, death,
and resurrection, God gave birth to his church. Church is God’s idea. Church is God’s household. Church
is family. God is our Father, and Jesus is our Brother. And we are all brothers
and sisters. Let us think about the nature of family. We don’t get to choose our family. We don’t choose who will be our parents or siblings or uncles.
Our family is chosen for us by God.
In the same way, we don’t choose our church family. We don’t choose one another. Instead, we are given to one another by our heavenly Father. Justin McRoberts says, “Being a Christian can sometimes feel like being in a family with a thousand drunk uncles.”[3] But we need to remember this: Like it or not, uncles are still our family. We don’t throw in the towel on the family. As members of God’s family, we are called to stick together through thick and thin.
The Church Is Not a Club
There is a significant difference between the church and
a club. The club consists of “like-minded” people who have something in common – school, hometown, interest, age, politics, or jobs. The
club members are kind of “natural friends.” So those who have different perspectives, cultures, and
experiences find it difficult to be part of it. But the church is different. By
design, God created the church to be made up of “natural enemies” we don’t naturally enjoy. D.
A. Carson writes in his book, Love in Hard Places this way[4]:
[The
church] is made up of natural enemies. What binds us together is not
common education, common race, common income levels, common politics, common
nationality, common accents, common jobs, or anything else of that sort.
Christians come together, not because they form a natural collocation, but
because they have all been saved by Jesus Christ and owe him a common
allegiance… In this light,
they are a band of natural enemies who love one another for Jesus’ sake.
I think Martin Luther King Jr. and Billy Graham showed us a great example of loving natural enemies. They both came from very different backgrounds in terms of their theology, their culture, their experience. However, they saw amazingly positive things in each other’s ministry and expressed their appreciation to each other. This is back in the 50’s and 60’s when racial tensions ran high. Once Graham said to Martin Luther King, “I will stay in the stadium and make them integrated. And you go ahead on the street and do your thing.” Graham was well known for integrating his ministry and insisting on integrated crowds at many of his rallies. In his later years, but still Graham lamented, wishing he’d done more for the cause of racial equality. And he publicly repented and asked for forgiveness, even though he had done so much. While Graham and MLK were in Latin America together on a mission, Dr. King said, “Had it not been for the ministry of my good friend Dr. Billy Graham, my work in the civil rights movement would not have been as successful as it has been.”
If we are united because we are natural friends, we are not necessarily called “church.” But if we are united because we are family washed by the blood of Jesus Christ no matter what the differences, we are the church.
Prepare the Way
The local church is the classroom for learning how to get
along in God’s family. The local
church is the classroom where we can grow and become more like Christ.
A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain” (Isaiah 40:3-5). Here the Prophet Isaiah by the Spirit is describing the natural state of the human heart. It’s uneven, crooked, ups and downs, rocky, rough, closed. So the very first step to prepare the coming of Christ is to repent – to fill in the valleys, smooth out the ruts, clear out the rocks in our hearts.
Living a life together in the church community can help us to prepare the way and make the path of the heart straight and smooth, a highway for God. Especially, those who are different people, and difficult people are actually a gift from God. They are like a mirror, that shows our reality – how selfish, how loveless, how unforgiving we are. As we learn how to get along with them, practicing forgiveness and compassion, we become a person whose heart is filled with Christ’s love.
Our God Is Able
There is a gap between God’s reality and our reality. If we look around, it seems
impossible to have unity and peace even in the church. But our God is able.
When everything seems hopeless, John the Baptist proclaims, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I
am not worthy to stoop down and untie the strap of his sandals. I have baptized
you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit” (Mark 1:7-8).
Is anything too hard for God? With God nothing is impossible. The other day one of my mentors shared his faith journey with me. A few years ago, he went through life threatening crisis. He was very sick and on the verge of death. But miraculously he was recovered and given a second chance at life. He said, “Because of that experience, I changed from conservative to real Christian.”
If we focus on difficult people, difficult problems, difficult issues, debates will be endless, and the church will be divided. But if we focus on Jesus, exalting him, we will be united. From day one my prayer for our church is to be known as the “most loving place in town.” Being loving is more important than being right. Let us always ask ourselves, “What is the most loving thing I can do in this situation?” “How can I love my natural enemies?” Let us make every effort to keep the unity of the church by the power of the Spirit. The One who began a good work among us will continue to complete it until the day of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
[1] "As Partisan Hostility Grows, Signs of Frustration With the Two-Party System," Pew Research Center, August 9, 2022, https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/08/09/as-partisan-hostility-grows-signs-of-frustration-with-the-two-party-system/, quoted in “Transcending Toxic Polarization,” Mathew59.org.
[2]
Scott Sauls, Jesus Outside the Lines: A Way Forward for Those Who Are Tired
of Taking Sides (p. 4). Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.. Kindle Edition.
[3]
Ibid., 50.
[4]
Ibid., 54.
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