Limited Objectives


No church unity movement will be able to unify the true body of believers with the heretical sect, the petty doctrinaire know-it-all church or the church existing as a cultural artifact not a spiritual body. The problem is that the wheat and chaff are different, in important ways that make them impossible to reunite once you have separated them.

In the so-called Christian West, some churches are going to be left behind on the road to unity. But is unity really unity if some are left out of it? I am going out on a limb and saying that it is indeed valid unity if some do not participate. Things alike cannot be made one with unlike things. Jesus' prayer "that they all may be one" requires some limitation on who and what "they" are and close attention to what "one" means.  If we make the mandate endlessly expansive we find ourselves embarked on a journey through the land of paradox. Faithful and faithless are two things, and two things cannot be made one thing.

The Lord's express interest is in what the world sees when it looks at the church, John 13:34-35, 17:20-23, and we may take that into account in our plans. We will have to rely on the world to exercise a little bit of discernment on its own. We cannot wish all heretics transported to the moon, and so we must be the true church so clearly and shiningly that the world will see a difference between them and us. The world may not understand the nature of the difference, and some in the world may even prefer the heretics to the genuine article, but that is not our concern. All we need to do is be clearly different. If we are all one, it scarcely matters what they are.

The desire to be altogether rid of dissidents is evil. The world still remembers the inquisitions and crusades against heretical sects, and against some that were not so very heretical, and uses those episodes to accuse and reject Christianity to this day. Our only defense is to say that those deeds were aberrant and un-Christian, done according to no teaching of Christ and violating several of them.  In a sense, Christianity did not do them, just bad people in religious garb. It is not a resounding defense but it is the only one the facts leave us.

So, no, what we will need to do is leave the tares alone to grow as they will. Does that sound at all familiar? It has been too little discussed. It should be foremost in our minds as we work toward solving questions of unity, our Lord's own teaching on how to deal with the fraudulently religious.

How, then, shall the true believers deal with the churches bent on folly, distortions and self-worship?

Simple. We must outclass them. The light of the gospel will cast the rest into shadow.

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