Urgency of the present day


Christianity is rapidly losing the favored status in Western culture that it enjoyed for centuries. Looking forward, we can hope for God's grace as we find ourselves in situations comparable to what is experienced by Christians living elsewhere, under regimes hostile to the faith.

We can no longer afford the luxury of bickering with one another over religious disputes now centuries old. We must join forces across denominational boundary lines. The simplest way to do that is to serve each other mutually and with mutual love, in practical ways that silence theological objections. Every faction will have to set aside some cherished prejudice or other: That is called humility.

Christ's call to us is to love one another as he loves us. Let us all give thanks that he loves the imperfect follower and the flawed theologian. Who among us is perfect? If you refuse your aid to fellow Christians because they do not agree with everything in the Westminster Confession, or they do not understand everything the Council of Trent was driving at, you are not meeting the challenge our times have put before us.

When the world sees us loving one another, acting across boundaries of denomination and historical schism,  they will know we are Christ's followers. At the least, they will know they are seeing something they do not understand. In their world, there is no precedent for selfless actions across factional boundaries.

It will also do us a world of good. I do not mean only the aid we will receive from others, but the glory that rests on those who forgive seventy-seven times, who keep no count of wrongs, who suppose Lamech had the wrong idea and Jesus had it right. There are bitter wrongs in the Christian past, wrongs to one another not the least of them. Spite, pride and the will to power have been all too evident in our history. But the aberrations of Christian history were not committed for the love of Christ or by his commandment. We know no murderer has eternal life abiding in him, yet interchurch relations have at times involved murder--and torture, and warfare, and unfair accusation.

Perhaps it will be all the more remarkable to the people of this world when they see the churches serving one another despite everything they have against one another, a stronger witness than a unified single church would be if seen cooperating within itself. The mistake we have made up to now is to try to explain past offenses by arguing each for our own faction's justification, rather than forgiving others for their trespasses and acknowledging our own. I think forgiveness, love and service form our way forward from here.



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