One of my favorite recordings includes these lyrics:
When will the world
See that we need Jesus?
When sister and brother
Love one another as one.
When will the world
See that we need Jesus?
Will we ever understand
Jesus is the Son of man?
We must live in the shadow of His love.
From “We Need Jesus”
John and Dino Elefante and Scott Springer
Petra Praise 2: We Need Jesus, Word, 1997
Good teaching. Over the decades of my Christian service, I’ve been haunted by the call to unity among Christians. Prior to discovering the Bible was inherently mystical, I struggled with the dire necessity of maintaining my theological identity against the call unity. Only in my earliest years did I suffer the truculence that “our way” was the only valid way. Eventually I outgrew that.
But for quite some time I was still pretty raspy to anyone who tried to say unity was a real possibility here on earth. I had no intention of giving up my position, and knew others wouldn’t give up theirs, either. All discussion of unity always seemed to start with a sweet song and dance, but ended up with one particular organization or tradition snuffing the rest. I got tired and cynical of such unity efforts. I was particularly wary, even defensive, when the efforts hinted at using any measures of force. As if humanity had not already seen enough of that.
Only in recent years did it finally dawn on me the whole problem was almost every call for unity presumes a human solution. It’s nice to hear pretty words about God’s solution, a spiritual solution, but those words always seemed to conceal the sword of human politics. The song noted above points out how it must be voluntary. They offer no particular vision of how to execute this unification, and no expectation of how it will turn out. Rather, it simply notes our message is hindered without a better unity than we now possess.
So here’s what the prophet says, one more time: When we can set aside our Western obsession with reason and human intellect, unity becomes possible. Yes, there are some things we have to share in terms of doctrine, but the Bible requires no analytical frame of reference to embrace and apply. The essentials are covered, and they don’t have to make any particular sense, they simply have to be. When we can all turn and embrace the Bible on its own terms, as an essentially Hebrew document requiring an ancient Hebrew frame of reference, the whole thing makes as much sense as needs be.
No organization or identifiable Christian tradition owns me. There is no expectation of subsuming all others under something I can claim as “mine.” I really don’t care what you believe, for the most part. When you walk in the Spirit of Christ, cooperation is unavoidable. Until we conquer our intellectual peculiarities, dismiss our Western obsession with rational and intellectual theology, and simply work together, there will be no unity. When you combine the teachings of the New Testament on the issue of Christ’s Return, there is one solemn warning: He expects to come back and find His Body unified. Not around doctrine, per se, but functionally unified, able to work together at random with just about any other follower of Christ.
Nobody says you have to surrender your personal experience with Christ. For example, I fully realize my favor for Calvinism is little more than a reflection of how I encountered Him. Your experience might well make you Arminian, or something else. I’m not worried about that. Show me your spiritual fruit; that’s all I have to see. That would include a sensitivity to Scriptural guidance and penitent heart. Everything else is negotiable. Most especially do I reject the necessity of any systematic theology; all of it is simply man-made ideas. All organizations are man-made, too.
Yes, I know this puts me out on the fringe of Christendom. I also believe it puts me in the center of His Kingdom. The boundaries of Christ’s Kingdom cannot be drawn by the hand of man.
