P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

June 3 , 2005

THE HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR

Isn’t it an amazing thing how the Christian faith just bites at you sometimes? Have you ever gone to church, and your heart’s rumbling with anger over something going on IN that church? And of course, the hymn that day is “Amazing Grace.” Or “I Surrender All.” The text the preacher uses in his sermon is Matthew 6:14, 15, where God won’t forgive us if we don’t forgive others. And you almost expect to look up on the big screen and see the pastor using a digital picture of you in his PowerPoint slides to illustrate his point. That’s got to be the Murphy’s Law of God’s kingdom.

The delightful compilation, Holy Humor, has a cartoon by an Ed Koehler, where the praise leader is saying to the congregation: “Now, on verse 3, only those sing who haven’t been speaking to each other for the past two weeks.” And that might be the most substantial singing the church has had in a month or two.

Like I say, friend, I know we’ve all experienced the little nips of conscience when we know the tenets of our faith are being contradicted by the feuds of our daily living. The preacher gives us a good word from the Lord, and we go out to the parking lot and say a bad word to our neighbor. We’ve all been there. But let me escalate — as most battles do anyway — and talk with you about just flat-out combat here in our Friday visit. What if it’s not a misunderstanding but a war? What if it’s an anger that dates back to May of 1995? And the hymn of the day in church is #466, which in my Adventist denomination is entitled Wonderful Peace?
“Coming down from the Father above. Sweep over my spirit forever, I pray, In fathomless billows of love.”

Can we live with the inherent contradiction here? “Peace, peace, when there is no peace”? We were studying through a great Internet essay by Ken Trivette, which went through the infamous verse in James chapter 4:
“From whence come WARS and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that WAR in your members?”

And Pastor Trivette has this spiritual definition about that word “war”:
“To carry on a campaign. It indicates chronic, long-lasting hostilities. It speaks of a prolonged problem of division and dissension. This is more than a business meeting getting out of hand. This is a church fight that stretches into weeks, months, and even years.”

Trivette continues on in his five-page article to suggest that this kind of simmering, extended battle will “cost the church certain blessings.” Obviously, the prayer life of that congregation will be compromised. Its witness to the watching community will suffer. As we’ve used as a series title, WHO BLEEDS WHEN CHRISTIANS FIGHT? And the answer is: everyone . . . including the non-believers and atheists who just drive past the parking lot on Sabbath or Sunday morning and see the smoke coming out the windows.

Have you ever felt that a war like that was going on, and that there was simply no solution? That this was a locked, fixed, buttoned-down reality? There’s a colorful book out entitled All’s Fair . . . and of course, you know that the word “war” is in the rest of that slogan. But political animals (and husband and wife) James Carville and Mary Matalin co-wrote, or co-battled their way through, this tell-all account of the 1992 presidential election. So there was plenty of war just between these two embattled and embittered lovers. But Mary Matalin confesses that one particular issue — one non-fixable, unsolvable, won’t-go-away hot button — was a constant source of war just on her Republican side of the great divide. And the issue, of course, is abortion. The internecine warfare just within the GOP was almost enough to sink Bush’s ship by itself.
“The acrimony between pro-choice and pro-life Republicans is palpable,” Mary writes. “It’s a ferociously personal issue” — and now, listen to this — “AND I’VE NEVER SEEN ANYONE ON EITHER SIDE PERSUADE SOMEONE ON THE OTHER.” Then she adds, tongue in cheek: “We let the word go out [during the Republican convention] that if people were pro-choice and could not bring themselves to vote for the pro-life plank, we wouldn’t notice if they simply went to the bathroom during that particular vote.”

Are there any solutions here for God’s people? No, if an issue is festering in your church, you can’t spend the next five years in the ladies’ room. But is it possible that there are some wars where, from a human point of view, people simply are not going to switch sides? I have seen long, extended debates “eat up the clock” at the highest-level, most expensive meeting in my denomination, the quinquennial “General Conference” session. The straw vote on a difficult issue would be 64% against, 36% for. And after three days of heated discussion, the final vote tally was . . . 64% against, 36% for. With the meter of hotels and per diems running for those three days of precious “GC agenda time.”

Well, friend, some of these high-ranking summit meetings do need to happen. But in my own life, and in your life, at my church and yours, what happens to us and to the Body when a war goes on and on? Once it’s clear to everyone on the battlefield that no one is planning to change uniforms or defect to the opposition, what can believers do?

There’s a Bible passage that may or may not be helpful here, depending on the severity of the combat. Here’s II Timothy 2:23:
“Don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels. And the Lord’s servant must NOT quarrel; instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful.”

Now the question is this. If the war at your church has taken things up to Level Orange, or if your denomination is in severe turmoil over a major doctrinal problem, then that isn’t a “foolish and stupid argument,” is it? If crucial, necessary truth is actually being compromised away, then sometimes devout believers do need to “walk the plank,” as a recent headline in Christianity Today suggested. But in all cases, friend, we are not to quarrel. And we are to be kind to everyone; we are to be teachable, and not resentful. Those guidelines apply at all time.

Here are two more things to think about. Over a few pages to First John 3, we find this advice:
“We ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.”

Which applies to both our friends and our foes, doesn’t it? In fact, John takes it a bit further in the next chapter:
“Anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.”

So if there is conflict in the camp, we can ask one pre-qualifying question immediately. Are we trying to love the people on the other side? If the answer is no, then there’s no point even discussing the pros and cons of the debate, the fine nuances of our doctrinal perspective. We’re not even qualified to be combatants, the Bible says. IF we don’t love the other people in the discussion.

And then there’s this to think about. Whose church is it? Well, yes, it’s our church; we are the Body of Christ. If you join, you share ownership. But in a much larger sense, the church belongs to Jesus. The church is His bride. The book of Ephesians is marvelous on this point. And we ask here: is He capable of defending it? Will it survive to the end of time, because He is its chief protector? Is He or is He not the mighty horseman warrior of Revelation 19? So sometimes we have to simply pull back and say, “I’m going to let God be God. I’m going to let Jesus be the head of this Church.” That doesn’t mean you’re caving in, or that you don’t still hold an opinion. But especially when the Church is in a no-win situation, there are times for army privates to be that, and to let Jesus be the General of His own armies.

And when we get right to the edge of the battlefield, let’s remember that unity itself IS a Church doctrine! Do you believe that? That’s how people know we’re disciples, Jesus says – if we love each other. If you are heatedly defending your view of the secret rapture, and the nature of Christ, and the timing and definition of perfection, are you equally eloquent in defending the oneness of the Church? Which split hurts the church more — the ongoing discussions about the physical nature of hell, or the fact that there IS a split? A Paul Gear, writing also on the Internet, makes this concluding observation:
“In a world full of division and strife, if God’s people are truly unified, He cannot help but get the glory. God’s desire is for us to stick out like a sore thumb in a sinful world. When unbelievers see us living out the gospel as one body, when so many others are fighting to be independent and separate from each other, a clear statement of the power of the gospel is made.” Then he adds: “God’s model of unity for His body . . . consists of people who are other-centered and outward-focused and committed to putting the needs of others before their own. I’ll call them ‘unity-minded believers.’”

Wouldn’t it be something to sit across from your adversary and say, “I care about this. This is a big one to me. But more than anything, I’m a unity-minded believer”? That really would be . . . Amazing Grace.