I don't suppose battles of us versus us should be all that surprising. If you look at our current political situation, or at the state of the church, the worst fights are often internal ones. Republicans may want to view Democrats as them and Democrats do the same to Republicans, but of course we are all Americans, all the same us. And we Christians can be our own worst enemies. We demonize those who disagree with us in theology or practice. We try to turn them into a them, but the fact is we are all imperfect, flawed followers of Jesus, all the same us.
We humans seem to need enemies. We need an us that we can be against. But Jesus comes breaking down all those us-them barriers. He is scary to the authorities precisely because he upsets this status quo of us and them. Worse, he calls his followers to mimic him, to reach out to them, to love them. Jesus tells us to love our enemies. Surely this is the ultimate undoing of us versus them.
Given this, it seems unimaginable that the Church would engage in hate, that we would want to label this group or that group a them. But of course we do. Sometimes it seems that we are so busy being the Church or being Christians that we forget to be followers of Jesus. We forget that "God so loved the world," which seems to draw a pretty big circle labeled "us."
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I've stumbled upon the CC blogs. This is great. I'm currently re-learning Christianity, and I also recently learned of the Jewishness of Jesus and the early believers (i.e. messianic Jews, not a new religion originally), and how the anti-Jewish invective in the NT was likely later additions. Unfortunatly there is a big industry in profiting from division, even within the church.
ReplyDeleteI'm new to CC blogs as well, and there is some great stuff there. Thanks for you comments. And there certainly are those who profit from division, profit not always being a money thing.
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