The true bride and the bimbos

In previous posts, here and here, I put forth the problem of unrequited love between man and woman as analogous to people's rejection of God's love, and their condemnation to an eternity without God's favor as the result. It is not a perfect analogy but I think it is a sensible one. If the church is the bride of Christ, it is safe to say that those who reject him hold no such status--they could if they would, but they won't. This is rather like the situation of my unhappy young friend Jack. Anna could be the bride of Jack, if she would have it so, but she simply won't.

Who in this world is (are) the bride of Christ? I would say, in a genial and ecumenical spirit, that it is all who love the Lord in sincerity. (Eph. 6:24) No narrower definition, such as just Catholics or just Protestants or only left handed evangelical Baptists, really does justice to what scripture is trying to tell us. Christ loves you. Love him back--the real Christ and not some false image of him--and you are in.

Doubtless there are better and worse understandings of what Christ is really like, thus truer and clearer love for him in some people than in others. But does that clarity follow denominational boundary lines? I do not think it does. I have seen people ablaze with Christ's love who are in denominations that hold theological views that are sketchy by the standards I was told are the right ones.

Christendom contains hundreds of divisive opinions and distinctive church doctrines, but the place where we have common ground is love. Love God. Love your neighbors. And (incredibly challenging), seek to love one another as Christ loves us.  (John 13:34-35)

So the glue that holds us all together in one Kingdom of God is emotion not intellect. Intellect is the solvent that makes us fall apart from each other--reasoned doctrine on issues like whether clergymen should marry, or whether they need even be men. We can work up enormous resentments for each other on the basis of such questions, and when resentment comes in the door, love flies out the window.

I have mentioned before that I am not an indifferentist. I think that each Christian question, large or small, has just one right answer, so long as paradox is avoided. But it is the plain truth that we are terrible at agreeing with one another on what that one right answer is. Sometimes we do not have enough information for a definitive statement. Sometimes we think we do when we don't. And sometimes, the question is simply too big and tangled for humans reliably to arrive at the same conclusions.

So then, I think that 1) each question has just one right answer and 2) sometimes we cannot gain enough clarity to reach agreement on what the answer is. It seems silly of us to go to war against each other when the real problem is that neither side of a debate is making a clear enough case.

Back to the bride of Christ analogy. The church loves her husband, and accepts his claims upon her obedience. Unfortunately we are like many brides squabbling (think of the problems Solomon likely had with that) when it comes to secondary doctrinal matters, but let's look beyond those matters for a moment.

Christian service is unifying. The people of all the Christian churches look much alike when we do the works of the gospel. There is just one way to help someone whose problem is that he lacks food. Likewise for someone who lacks clothes. Where the question is a practical one, not an abstract one, we arrive at the same answers.

Christian faith ought to be unifying. There is only one Christ to whom we are to point people. Although the churches say and do different things in the course of worshiping and proclaiming him, the Jesus we are talking about is plainly the same Jesus--else we are no Christians at all, but some sort of heretical offshoot of the true faith.

Christian love is unifying. We can look beyond our awkward doctrinal divergences if we really do see ourselves as each other's brothers and sisters, intent on doing the work of the gospel and pointing people to faith in Christ. We can pull off awesome feats of collaboration in social service and in evangelism, even if our ancestors burned each other at the stake over church politics and points of doctrine.

Where this line of reasoning seems to lead is that we need to reevaluate the divisive intellectual parts of being Christian. Why are these matters so very deadly to our unity? Can we relegate the divisive questions to a role of secondary importance? Can we place in the primary role love for each other? Thus, for example, Baptists and Catholics would first of all relate on the basis of honoring Christ in one another, loving each other as Christ does. On a secondary level of importance, they would admit to each other that some questions of Christian doctrine do not look at all the same to them and neither do the answers. But in the practical outworkings of their beliefs there is a strange similarity. Hungry people get food. Brokenhearted people are pointed to the God who can make them whole.

Of course there are those people for whom theology and church-specific points of doctrine are so consuming and essential that they can see no hope for unity without lockstep agreement on the answer to every question. Indeed, they cannot see the church world apart from its doctrinal distinctives: The doctrines are the important things and the defining things. Church organization and proper service to God and the proper opinions for Christians to hold must be defined rigidly, excluding different answers, as a lawyer would argue a case. But is that really the way a bride looks at her husband?