As religious people we are potentially dangerous, and I mean dangerous in a bad way. Because we believe in ultimate universal persons and things – eternity, heaven, hell, and an infinitely holy Triune God – we can easily turn small issues into huge issues. The stakes are high, eternity is on the line, and so our over-reaction is somehow justified. Jesus said, “If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight.” He was talking about something pretty important: whether an innocent man should be arrested, tortured, and killed – there’s no ethical grey area there. And yet Jesus was indicating that given the nature of His kingdom, His servants would not be fighting to prevent His crucifixion. It’s a good thing Jesus said all this to Governor Pilate, but in spite of such teaching we show a disturbingly high tendency to fight about things of much lesser significance. After all, didn’t Paul talk about fighting the good fight? How likely is it that whatever I’m upset about at the moment is the “good” fight?
Compromise is a real problem in the church. The Slippery Slope is not just a theory. Powerful non-Christian currents in our culture pressure us not merely to tolerate ungodliness but to celebrate it. In response, we understandably become people who are ready to fight on every hill and die on every hill. But on what biblical basis do we endow an issue with fellowship-breaking force? When as a newly ordained pastor I entered a contentious debate in our Presbytery, an older and wiser man took me aside and said, “Stephen, you claim that this debate is a gospel watershed issue. When I was new in the ministry, our Presbytery spent two or three years arguing over the definition of the word ‘word.’ We were convinced that the definition of ‘word’ was worthy of a knockdown fight. We forgot that 2 Timothy 2:14 charges us ‘before God not to quarrel about words.’” I didn’t like the older pastor’s counsel, but he was right.
Though religious people are thought to be especially divisive, the current cancel culture shows that anyone can be self-righteous, strident, and inflexible. The church might divide over speaking in tongues, but the unchurched are dividing over diet, fossil fuels, and the definition of “woman.” How many people embrace veganism as merely a personal preference, and how many embrace it religiously? Certain hard-core rationalists believe that there is only one right answer to any ethical question, that if two people consistently share the same presuppositions, their answer to an ethical question should be the same. Ethics becomes mathematics. No need for nuance. If someone agrees to disagree, they are categorized as a hypocrite.
We can distinguish between someone who has assurance of things revealed and someone who is over-confident. An assured Christian recognizes the clarity of God’s Word and applies it to life while being open to correction. An over-confident Christian applies the Bible with a sense that he and his group have successfully grasped the issue from all possible sides and arrived at a once for all time answer. He reads 1 Timothy 2:12 where Paul says that a woman “is to remain quiet,” and concludes that a woman may not walk up to the front during the worship service and give an announcement, read the Scripture, or say “By the grace of God with all my heart, I do” in answer to a question at her profession of faith. Silent means silent. A brother comes along and says, “My friend, have you considered the implications of 1 Corinthians 11:5 in which women in the church were praying and prophesying, that certain types of speaking were not inherently an exercise of authority, but needed to be done in the right way?” Perhaps both of these brothers still have an incomplete interpretation, but the beautiful thing is that they would be listening to each other and listening to more of the Word!
When we are engaged in a cause of ultimate significance, whether it be something questionable like saving the planet from omnipotent AI monster computers or something holy such as preaching the gospel to every creature, we will be tempted to cease loving God will all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to cease loving our neighbour as ourselves. To the fanatic, the cause is everything. No sacrifice is too great. Preaching the gospel becomes more important than the gospel. Saving the planet becomes more important than knowing Christ who has already saved the planet. If I cannot distinguish between big matters and small matters, and thus break fellowship with people over small matters, I will end up living alone, estranged from my family, estranged from the church, and estranged from God.
Ever since our first parents sinned in the Garden of Eden, fallen humanity has been marked by estrangement. Jesus, the new Adam, is shaping the church to be a refreshingly different community marked by unity in the gospel, by love, and by holy communion. As our world becomes increasingly intolerant of any difference in opinion, the church will be increasingly attractive as a place that values both truth and love, both debate and friendship. A healthy church can laugh out loud when something is funny. A healthy church puts up with a good amount of noise from small children. And a healthy church appreciates the category of debatable issues, where we seek to love each other even as we debate. Is eating meat that has been sacrificed to idols a sin? It depends. There’s nothing really wrong with the meat itself, so Paul says in Romans 14:20 – “everything is clean.” But because my motives and the consequences of my actions matter, Paul goes on to say, “but it is wrong for anyone to make another stumble by what he eats.” Paul believed in the freedom of the believer, and he believed in loving your brother. He believed in yielding to the other person on debatable issues.
Any issue can be debated and is therefore a debatable issue. That’s not what I’m talking about. The Scripture is sufficiently clear on many things that are specified in our creeds and confessions – things so clear that they need little debate. By debatable issues I’m talking about issues that involve several steps of moral reasoning that go beyond what the Scripture explicitly says, issues that try to systematize the whole counsel of God and apply it to a particular person’s situation. Should you buy a Tesla? Should he be dating that girl? We might need more information before answering.
Listen to how one theologian discusses the freedom a Christian has in applying God’s Word: “The moral law that confronts us in the Decalogue, in the Sermon on the Mount, and further throughout the Old and New Testaments comprises universal norms, great principles, that leave a lot of room for individual application and summon every believer to examine what in a given situation would for them be the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God (Rom. 12:2). Since the moral law is not a code of articles we merely have to look up in order, from moment to moment, to know exactly what we must do, there is in its domain a freedom that may not be curbed by human ordinances but must – precisely to safeguard the character of the moral life – be recognized and maintained.” These are the words of Herman Bavinck, arguably the leading Reformed thinker of the past 150 years. His point here is this: the moral law of God does not answer all our ethical questions but rather requires that we apply wisdom to situations so that we may live lives of holiness and freedom.
Our list of convictions for which we would fight – the authority of the Word of God, the creation of humanity in God’s image, the finished work of Christ, the resurrection of Jesus – should include the unity of the church. Church unity is one of the cherished things we fight to defend. In our relationships in the church, there is a time to fight. And there is a time to give the other person a hug and say, “You’ve given me a lot to think about. Thanks for challenging me.”