Division and Reconciliation

Recently we had a two and half weeklong government shutdown. Simply put, too many people on either side of the aisle simply could not come to consensus. It is easy to blame either side for having been too headstrong and so much mud slinging occurred that hardly anyone involved is above reproach. As the Senate chaplain Barry Black said most poignantly in one of his morning invocations during the first week, “Deliver us from the hypocrisy of attempting to sound reasonable, while being unreasonable.” Clearly when such a stalemate had been reached and so much polarization had happened, neither side could really be considered reasonable.

            A government shutdown is perhaps low hanging fruit for a reflection on division and reconciliation, but it has me thinking about the ways that the church has done this very same thing but with the power, at least in Protestantism, to “secede” readily available to any who find that their way is being rejected. Our Senate cannot simply split the nation in two and allow each to have their own way, yet the Protestant church is known for this kind of activity to the point where the number of denominations world-wide has broken 35,000. By comparison, (to my knowledge) the Roman Catholic church has only split three times in its nearly 2,000 year existence; once with Eastern Orthodoxy, with Protestantism, and with Anglicanism, though my understanding is that the latter maintains some significant catholic identity. How, then, have Protestants become so entitled to the point that their perspectives not being made doctrine is cause for a schism? Perhaps this is a “grass is always greener” mentality, but on some level I find that Catholics, who frequently and vocally disagree with their pope or priest, have a better way of doing things; they seem to be a united church with a diversity of opinions constantly discussing the right way of doing things while the cause of unity nearly always overrules the cause of being right.

            And yet as I reflect on all of this and point fingers at Protestantism, I know I have wanted to leave my own church over conceivably petty matters as well. I do not like that my church vocally designates homosexuality as a sin (though I am not yet sure where I land)***, I do not like that our worship music is cliché, homogenous, and stereotypically “Christian,” and I do not like that we use the ESV translation on the overhead on Sundays. Yet after two years, I still attend and have just recently become a member. I have prayerfully asked God for permission to leave, and he has said no. At which point I have been forced to ask myself, why I am still at Mosaic Community Church. The answer is the same as the answer to the question of why I started attending; Mosaic values community and has excellent attitudes about worship. I am proud to be a part of an expression of the church that genuinely cares for others and that appreciates seeing God glorified in myriad forms of worship. The community aspect I have never doubted. The worship aspect I have doubted frequently, but I also have to concede that since joining the worship team new instruments have appeared on stage for the first time (trumpet, saxophone, xylophone, accordion, mandolin and more) and new forms of worship have been engaged in (ballet, art and spoken word), so progress is happening.

In another morning invocation this week, Barry Black also said, “Unless [God] empower[s] our lawmakers, they can see the ideal but not reach it, they can know the right but not do it, they can comprehend their duty but not perform it.” The church, just as much as our congress, needs to be empowered by God to perform their duty to maintain our unity, and I do mean duty. One cannot simply say that compromise is the solution, but somehow the differences of the congress and of the church must be acknowledged and respected and prayer must be integral to our decisions. From there we might begin to see what direction God points us and, with his empowerment, might press towards the goal that he has set for us.

***I want to note that this last Sunday (about a week after I posted this blog) my pastor gave a sermon in response to the question "Don't Most Christians Hate Gay People?" On the whole I thought he knocked it out of the park and responded to this question very well. The only critique I had was on one comment he made suggesting that those who are not opposed to homosexuality in the church are "changing the word of God." I don't want to make to much of that comment as it may not have been meant how it sounds. Simply put, I think it's dangerous to say that their reading "changes the word of God," but the more important point is that he has not capitulated on his perspective, which I respect, and his sermon was really intended to be a welcome to all.