Right from the start, I inserted into this discussion that God’s will is inherently tribal as well as feudal.
On the level of the flesh, God has divided us into tribal identities. The intellect rebels at the thought, but the Bible is quite clear on this. God insisted at the Tower of Babel that humanity will be tribal and nationalist. Attempts to pull humanity together into a generic frame of reference is a flat rejection of God Himself. Not only are we to cultivate ethnic differences, but we are to celebrate living in separation from other ethnic identities.
If you imagine the Cross changed that, then you aren’t paying attention to what the New Testament actually says. Don’t inject your preferred intellectual assumptions into the phrase “one in Christ”. We are one in the Spirit, not in the flesh. The task of organizing churches as human entities rests on first being tribal and feudal. The Cross did not dissolve the Father’s command at the Tower of Babel. Churches must be decentralized and tribal-feudal in order to implement Biblical Law.
The Lord Himself appoints the leadership of His Body. Without digging into the details at this point, the net result remains very shaky in human terms, but that’s how He gets things done. It’s all miracles, not human will. A fundamental question is, “Which human is in charge of this body?” It is a feudal family structure, and anyone who wants to join in must be able to play the role of family member.
This means that the new member will make themselves comfortable with whatever exists, and will seek to make the rest comfortable with whatever they bring to the table. Granted, this job is never complete, but it is a fundamental part of the living dynamic that we will all deal with a certain amount of human frustration. And the feudal head of the body is the primary deciding factor. What can he live with? He is appointed by God, not the members. The members join him.
If you cannot tolerate the choices of the leader, then maybe you have been called to lead a body yourself. Or maybe you haven’t found a leader you can tolerate. Or maybe you have some work to do learning how to get along. And it could be something else, but the point here is that conflict is inevitable; it is part of the whole package. The whole mission of the church is wrestling with the inevitable conflict, not pretending that the conflict can ever be vanquished.
No, you cannot make rules to prevent conflict. However, Biblical Law has pointed to some rules for doing conflict. Get this: Human conflict is a given. It is the setting in which human life if lived. It is not just typical; it is the norm. Conflict is essential to living.
Thus, a fundamental question is first deciding what is worthy of raising as essential conflict and what can be shelved for some other time and place. If the human head of the body doesn’t want to deal with something important to you, call on God for guidance first. Then decide if it justifies leaving his covering, because God did not appoint you to destroy any family household of faith. Rebellion is a sin.
By now it should be obvious that if you endeavor to join a covenant family household of faith, bringing with you a strong human ethnic identity could be a primary source of conflict. The basic principle is a two-edged sword: You can and should try to add something to the body. You should not try to change the ethnic climate of the body. If you cannot avoid the urge to redefine the ethnic climate of the body, then you don’t belong there.
And should you find yourself itching to compel some kind of change by leveraging power from outside the body, then you had better repent and stop listening to demons. There is nothing wrong with proliferating small bodies of faith; there is nothing wrong with dividing from each other to create a new witness to divine truth. There is a functional distinction between conflict and hostility. Conflict is inevitable; hostility is rejection of your brothers and sisters.
And the New Testament word “love” (agape) does not mean you must put up with behavior that hinders and disrupts, never mind the source. You can love your brothers and sisters just fine — you can hold them in high regard as a part of God’s treasury — without having to stand in their brand of worship. You shouldn’t condemn what works for someone else, but you can condemn something that departs from the recorded character of God.
And you need not rely on someone outside your covenant family to define the boundaries for what that means.
“If you imagine the Cross changed that, then you aren’t paying attention to what the New Testament actually says.”
There’s a big tendency in evie thought to use whatever power the cross is supposed to have as a universal talisman that can resolve any human behavioral issue that appears. I think that’s a huge misunderstanding of what God intentions were for the cross.