Replay: Christians and the sword

I thought it was about time to post this series again, especially since someone yesterday posted something on Facebook  about why non-resistance was naive and invited conversation about his post only to get mad when I very gently suggested some alternatives to his theories, unfriended and blocked me. I am afraid I don't understand why someone would post something, invite comment and then get mad when comments come in but I have seen this before on the topic of the sword and followers of Christ.

Why the anger at the suggestion, from Scripture, that Christians should not take up the sword and commit violence toward others? Do we love bloodshed so much? It is not a difficult case to make from the Bible, a case made from the teachings of Christ, the manner of His life and His death, the testimony of His apostles and the witness of His people throughout the ages who have gladly laid down their life for the sake of the Kingdom. Nevertheless I get more backlash from this topic than almost any other.

I would hope that I would not be misinterpreted as saying that those who take up the sword are not Christians, I simply ask if we should not seek the way of the towel and basin rather than the way of the sword and not just when it is safe and convenient but especially when it is not safe or convenient. It is easy to talk about loving our enemies in theory but many of the teachings of Christ are easy in the abstract. It is when we are faced with a situation where following Christ means great cost to us that we find out where our allegiance lies and who our trust is in.

The sword is the tool of the world, a tool that wields the power of finality by taking the life of another. That is what it is made for and that is what the powers of the world have always used it for. It is what the Jews expected from their Messiah, that He would lead them in overthrowing their oppressors. Jesus showed them a different way, a way that makes no sense to the world. He showed them and the Romans and His sheep throughout the ages that love of enemy can overcome the sin of the world.

Anyway, here is the series presented for your enjoyment and consideration.....

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The state, the sword and Christians


Can Christians take up the sword? - Intro


Can Christians take up the sword? - The pro-sword view


Can Christians take up the sword? - The anti-sword view


Can Christians take up the sword? - Conclusion

What Does Success Look Like?

How do we know if "church" was a success on Monday morning? We often ask questions like: Was the sermon good? Did people pay attention? How was the music, uplifting and tailored to the sermon? How many people showed up? What was the offering?

Dave Black offered some pertinent thoughts last Sunday on the critical importance of what happens after Sunday:

If, then, the ministry of the laos is God's means of fulfilling His mission in the world, it is necessary that we view what we do on Sunday mornings as merely the beginning, not the climax, of our work. In other words, we need to change the basis for evaluating the effectiveness of the ministry of our churches. The question is not "How many attended on Sunday?" but "What did those who attended on Sunday do during the week to advance God's mission?" This is what it means to be the People of God. It is a people who understand that the mission of the church is to fulfill God's redemptive mission. Our calling is to join God's army and become aggressively involved in His mission in the world.

My point was that God's call to salvation and His call to mission/ministry are one and the same. To follow Christ in this way is not optional for the one who is truly born again. It is to this life of mission/ministry that we must respond. Not only is this possible and practical in this day of over-professionalization; an emphasis on anything else is, I think, a perversion of the Gospel.

That is a powerful but accurate statement. God does not call us to salvation and then expects us to run out the clock sitting in pews until we die or Christ returns. As Dave says the call to salvation and the call to mission are one and the same. No one who is called to saving faith in Christ is not likewise called to ministry. To truly know if the gathering of the church accomplished what it should have on Sunday we should look to how the church lives Monday through Saturday. A major reason we are exhorted to gather together in the first place is not to "worship" but to "stir up one another to love and good works" (Hebrews 10:24). if people are not encouraged, equipped and exhorted to mission work when the church gathers, you might as well stay home.

There has been some backlash recently against the calls for a more "radical" Christianity. In the response to the Platt/Chan radicalism, which isn't really terribly radical, I fear that many Christians are having the "show up, pay up and shut up" model of "church" reinforced. For example a recent article in World magazine, The 'new legalism', seems mostly designed to comfort people who are content with "going to church" as the sum total of their Christian life. The problem with the "new radicalism" is not that it makes people who live comfy middle-class suburban lives interspersed with a couple of hours of "worship" feel bad about themselves, it is that the definition of radical doesn't go nearly far enough! What passes for the life of disciples of Christ in the west is so radically (pun intended) different from what being a disciple meant to the 1st century church, to the Reformers and later the Anabaptists and for all of those who live in places of the world where being a disciple often means laying down your life, that those saints who went before wouldn't even recognize it. Can you imagine an Anabaptist who watched friends tortured, drowned and burden at the stake for their faith being told that a suggestion that Christians don't need multiple iPhones was excessively radical and "legalistic"? I don't think they would be very sympathetic.

Calls for radical discipleship, every member ministry must be coupled with a proper theology of justification so that we don't confuse exhortations to ministry and good works as somehow aiding our justification but that is no excuse to not call every Christian to engage in the privilege and solemn and sacred duty of being on mission for Christ. The church exists for mission and the mission is too big for any by-standers, too all encompassing to be subcontracted to a select group of professionals, too critical to be left to chance. Our faithfulness in this generation of the church will not be judged based on political victories or bank accounts or membership statistics. It will be judged on how faithfully we carried our the Great Commission and lived out the Great Commandment. If the Lord was passing out mid-term grades to this generation I am afraid we would all be looking at summer school.

Who Doesn't Love A Baby Horse?!

We have a couple of visitors to the farm, an Amish friend's Halflinger mare who is going to be bred to our Percerhon stallion and also her week old baby that is also from our stud horse! He is awfully cute and you can tell that his daddy is jet black from his coloration. Dad is not very interested in the baby but he is quite happy to see momma horse!

The One Place We Should (But Still Don't) Find Unity In The Church

Over at Eric Carpenter's blog he raises a very good point, namely that if there is one place the church should be unified it is in missions. He says in his post,Church Unity and World Missions, that our agreement in the Gospel should lead invariably to unity in the field of world missions and he is planning on series on that topic. I am looking forward to his series but I also am reminded that even though we ought to be unified when it comes to reaching the lost around the globe, this is an area where factions and denominations still are largely disunified. Would the Southern Baptist Convention support and send a Presbyterian missionary to Belize? Would a Reformed group send and support a charismatic missionary? Or do we only send out missionaries that meet our standards for doctrinal purity?

Maybe I am being overly cynical or perhaps my inexperience in world missions is showing. I know that there are groups, especially aid and mercy groups, that cross denominational lines but I have to wonder if we are as concerend with reaching the lost with the Gospel as we are with spreading our own theological positions to the ends of the earth? Check out Eric's post and subsequent series, maybe we can find out together...

The Ethics of Fertility

Apparently some people think you can, as if we can tell God that we know better than He. Enter Sarah Richards in an essay in the weekend Wall Street Journal, Why I Froze My Eggs (And You Should Too). She has a new book coming out titled Motherhood Rescheduled: The New Frontier of Egg Freezing and the Women Who Tried It  and it promises to raise a whole host of questions that should be troubling. Her essay comes out swinging:

Between the ages of 36 and 38, I spent nearly $50,000 to freeze 70 eggs in the hope that they would help me have a family in my mid-40s, when my natural fertility is gone. For this baby insurance, I obliterated my savings and used up the money my parents had set aside for a wedding. It was the best investment I ever made.

Egg freezing stopped the sadness that I was feeling at losing my chance to have the child I had dreamed about my entire life. It soothed my pangs of regret for frittering away my 20s with a man I didn't want to have children with, and for wasting more years in my 30s with a man who wasn't sure he even wanted children. It took away the punishing pressure to seek a new mate and helped me find love again at age 42.

I decided to freeze on the afternoon of my 36th birthday, when I did a fresh round of baby math on the back of a business card at Starbucks. Even if the man I was dating at the time agreed to start a family in the near future, I was cutting it close to have one baby, let alone a second. Several months later, after injecting myself for nearly two weeks with hormone shots, I was in surgery at a Manhattan fertility clinic as my doctor pierced my ovaries, suctioned out nine eggs and handed them to the embryologist to freeze until I was ready to use them. As soon as I woke up in the recovery room, I no longer felt as though I were watching my window to have a baby close by the month. My future seemed full of possibility again.

The ethics around issues of infertility and intentional delaying of childbearing are perilous ground indeed. Enter into this debate the practice of intentionally pre-planning to have children after a woman's normal window of fertility and you take the debate to a completely new level. I am not talking here about a woman facing cancer treatments or women who are naturally infertile. We are talking about yet another step to commoditizing children, making them into something that can be quantified on a financial ledger and manipulated into being as convenient as possible for busy parents.

Let me make sure I am getting what Ms. Richards is proposing because it doesn't seem to add up based on what real life tells us. Women should put off marriage and child

bearing until they are established in their careers and presumably financially secure (without having to rely on a man) which means that they can then spend tens of thousands of dollars in a desperate attempt to thwart nature and have children on their time frames rather than the time frames God has ordained. Freezing eggs, fertility treatments, etc. are hugely expensive as well as unnatural but they are becoming the norm for many women who have been convinced that they need to chase a vague notion of financial security and relational stability before starting a family. This strikes me as a symptom if a deeper problem in our culture.

It is not just a matter of a "biological clock". There are very real consequences to delaying child bearing that go beyond merely not being able to get pregnant.

Delayed childbearing is rarely coupled with delayed sexual activity, leading to a perfect situation for perpetual male adolescence (a very lengthy post on that topic has been in the works for some time). Women have bought into the theory of delaying marriage and child bearing, two events that have historically aided the maturation process of young men but are largely unable/unwilling to avoid companionship which invariably leads to sexual activity. So young men get the sex they want without the need to “settle down” by getting married and grow up to care for a family. In fact with such a huge number of women in the work force the numbers of men who not only don’t bother to get married also don’t bother to get a job, leaching off their girlfriends or parents indefinitely enjoying a life of perpetual casual sex and X-Box. Viva la feminism!

It is also simply a fact of nature that raising a family is best suited for the young. Not to suggest that older parents are not great parents, in some ways I am a better parent as I get older thanks to a modicum of maturity and experience gained by making mistakes as a young parent. When it comes to the daily routine of parenting children though, from sleepless nights as the parents of a newborn to the endless energy of toddlers and preschoolers, younger parents have decided biological advantages. When I was in college and my wife and I had our first two children those sleepless nights weren't a big deal. After all that is part of the college experience! When we had our last child in the latter part of my 30's? That was a different situation for my wife and I. Everything in how God designed men and women points to a very specific time when getting pregnant is easier and raising children less exhausting and no amount of biological tinkering can change that.

Missing from this conversation is a deeper discussion of how our views of family and specifically children has changed. In a world where more and more we view children as a hassle and burden to be managed, controlled and avoided for as long as possible it is no wonder that we see conversations about egg freezing given serious consideration. What I find especially of concern is what seems to me to be a delayed but very real acceptance of these same norms and attitudes in the church. Sure we might talk a big show about family in the high level conversations but when you look at the way church going parents raise their children it often seems like the expectations are very similar. Career and financial stability take priority over family, children need to be kept to a "reasonable" number, both parents working, etc. The result in the church are families, like mine in many ways, that look almost exactly like the world. Before we publish yet another book/blog/article on why "kids leave the church", we need to examine why they would want to stay.

You can save money in a 529 plan, have just the perfect nursery and thought out birth plan, pre-registered your as yet unconceived child in the best preschool in town but you cannot turn back the clock or change the fundamentals of human biology. I understand that some women just don't want kids. That is their choice just as some people choose celibacy. What I find troubling is that so many women, and especially so many of my sisters in the church, have been deceived into denying what is a deep seated longing that God has placed in their hearts for the sake of capitulating to a sub-culture that hates children, delaying parenthood until it is too late and hugely expensive and ethically sketchy steps need to be taken to fulfill a yearning for children that was suppressed for most of a woman's natural child bearing age.

The fruits of radical feminism include empty wombs and empty hearts. No amount of financial security can offset that. The same movement that promotes artificial birth control as a great advancement now finds itself scrambling to find a way to undo the results of generations of women who bought into the lie that they can "have it all" and now are facing a childless future. In this quest to change the rules is anyone asking the question posed in Jurassic Park, in our quest to find out if we can has anyone stopped to ask if we should? I am sure there are plenty of women who are quite content to be childless and others who struggle with infertility who cannot have children naturally but there are also countless other women who waste their twenties and early thirties in cubicles and relationships that are going nowhere because they have been fed these lies for generations. The church has a responsibility to provide a counter-culture, a culture that cherishes children and gladly, even joyfully, accepts and embraces the glory of bearing each others burdens, including caring for children when they are young and in turn caring for our parents as they grow old.

I’m not committing treason, you are!

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, and of course he also gave the church Fox News to keep Christians informed of how they are being persecuted in a land where the church gets all sorts of tax breaks and preferential treatment from Caesar. (Ephesians 4:11, American Judeo-Christian Traditional Values Version)

I confess. I tend to read Fox News when I am checking on the events of the day. I find CNN to be entirely too busy and clearly slanted (of course so if Fox but everyone knows it unlike CNN which pretends to be unbiased). MSNBC? Please. So along with the Wall Street Journal and our local paper, Fox is a frequently viewed page for me. But I find it troubling that many Christians seem to think that Fox is somehow more friendly to Christianity than other news outlets.

Maybe it is just me but when your news site that posts articles all the time about "attacks" on Christianity also posts smutty articles about which star had a wardrobe malfunction or published a sex tape or photos of stars in various states of undress (see a screen shot from today, about noon)....

....it is hard to take it seriously as the media defender of the faith.

In the screen shot above we see an article right above the links about a Kardashian and Amy Bynes "racy tweet from self-appointed cultural warrior and selective religious freedom crusader Todd Starnes, Pentagon: Religious Proselytizing is Not Permitted with the obligatory flag waving picture:

So yeah. I am not sure when religious freedom in the ranks became a top priority but whatever. The question I am asking is this: what exactly is being threatened? Are soldiers being muzzled and prevented under threat of firing squad from sharing their faith with fellow soliders and sailors? Not really, at least not based on the article.
Here is the portion of the article, way down the page, that addresses the source of the complaint by Mikey Weinstein of The Military Religious Freedom Foundation :

Pentagon officials met with Weinstein and his group were to discuss a policy called “Air Force Culture, Air Force Standards,” published on Aug. 7, 2012.

Section 2.11 requires “government neutrality regarding religion.”

“Leaders at all levels must balance constitutional protections for an individual’s free exercise of religion or other personal beliefs and the constitutional prohibition against governmental establishment of religion,” the regulation states.

Military leaders were admonished not to use their position to “promote their personal religious beliefs to their subordinates or to extend preferential treatment for any religion.”

So as I read that the regulations discourage superiors from using their position to promote a particular religious outlook to those that report to them. I fail to see how this is a violation of religious freedom. I would certainly wonder how Mr. Starnes would respond to a Muslim major that was aggressively proselytizing enlisted members that reported up to them to try to get them to convert to Islam? I think the real underlying issue here is the notion that Christianity is the proper or preferred religious expression for the U.S. military. After all, the military recruits and compensates clergy as an integral part of the military structure.

It isn't like this is an unknown policy. The military has a policy in place that prevents proselytizing:

The Pentagon confirmed to Fox News that Christian evangelism is against regulations.

“Religious proselytization is not permitted within the Department of Defense, LCDR Nate Christensen said in a written statement. He declined to say if any chaplains or service members had been prosecuted for such an offense.

“Court martials and non-judicial punishments are decided on a case-by-case basis and it would be inappropriate to speculate on the outcome in specific cases,” he said.

So in a rigid, hierarchical military there are rules against religious proselytizing. Again this makes sense given the diversity of the military and the inherent coercive nature of superior-subordinate relationships in the military. I would think it only sensible to keep political/religious coercion out of the ranks for the sake of cohesion in the ranks.
But what really takes the cake is this exchange between Mr. Weinstein and Family Research Council president Tony Perkins:

In an interview with the Washington Post, Weinstein called proselytizing a “national security threat.”

“And what the Pentagon needs to understand is that it is sedition and treason,” he told the newspaper. “It should be punished.”

Perkins said it was troubling the Obama Administration would place so much trust in someone like Weinstein.

“Unfortunately, it appears our military is on a forced march away from the very freedoms they are sworn to protect,” he said. “This language from Weinstein that Christians who share their faith or offer comfort to others from their faith in Jesus Christ is “sedition and treason” is a treasonous statement in and of itself.”

I am not sure which charge of treason is more silly. You're a traitor! No, you're a traitor. I know you are but what am I?!

Bottom line, the church really needs to find better spokespeople than Todd Starnes and Glenn Beck. When the world looks at us and these sorts of silly squabbles when people are homeless and orphans are languishing in orphanages, why would we expect them to be interested in hearing about Jesus?

What Exactly Is An Anabaptist In 21st Century America?

That is a tough question. When you look at Anabaptism in America what you see is a pretty diverse group split into two main streams, one very liberal and one very conservative. Trying to say "this is an Anabaptist" when the two groups look, think and live nothing alike is pretty difficult. That doesn't stop us from trying!  Scot McKnight attempts to answer this question today in hos post, So What's An Anabaptist and does so by looking back to Harold Bender's The Anabaptist Vision as the best summary that transcends the liberal-conservative divide. Mcknight summarizes Bender in this paragraph:

For Bender, the Anabaptists are the full implementation of the Reformation. Neither Luther nor Calvin went far enough. Bender’s focus is Luther, not Calvin, and he cites evidence that Luther late in his life realized his “mass church,” which was basically everyone born into the community/State would be baptized and be Lutheran, was ineffective in transforming the life of the person. The early Anabaptists, like Conrad Grebel, observed the lack of discipleship among the Lutherans of the Reformation. So the Anabaptists carried through the Lutheran reforms and broke with 1500 years of the church.


That is a pretty good summary. More and more I see the Anabaptists, for all of their faults ancient and modern, as the most faithful followers of what the Magisterial Reformers started but were unable or unwilling to finish. I left this comment on Scot's post:

Very good summary and I applaud the reference to Bender. There are two pretty distinct lines of modern Anabaptism. For many people Anabaptism is a term that primarily references “progressive” Christianity, not merely non-resistance but other more leftward causes that have been folded into the umbrella of “Anabaptism”. Where I live the Anabaptist line is far more conservative with a sizeable population of Amish and very conservative Mennonites, Beachy Amish, zealous former Amish and others marked by conservative dress, headcoverings, conservative theology and simplicity in the distinctive way they live. The Mennonite gathering we attend is considered fairly liberal by local Anabpatist standards even though virtually every woman in attendance has a headcovering and wear dresses or long skirts.

In many ways the two different lines of Anabaptism are about as far apart as you can imagine making it very difficult to define modern Anabaptist thought. The things that marked the early Anabaptists have been somewhat lost in the mists of time and the centuries of persecution but those very lessons are going to be critical to the church in the days to come as we emerge from the suffocating cocoon of Christendom and into a world that is gradually more hostile to Christianity.

As something of a Johnny-come-lately to Anabaptism I often see a jarring disconnect between what I read of the early Anabaptists and what I see today. In some ways I see the term Anabaptism being hijacked by "progressive" theologians who want to take the radical discipleship of Anabaptists and turn it into a license for "anything goes" theology, which is kind of the opposite of the original Anabaptist who simply read and believed what the Bible, esp. the New Testament, had to teach us. On the other hand I see some of that as an understandable backlash against the conservative Anabaptist model that is more and more entrenched with each passing year, terrified of not being "conservative" enough and letting the proverbial liberal camel nose under the tent.

So who were and who are the Anabaptists? My study of them reveals a people who were committed, radically so, to the teachings of Scripture especially when it comes to the teachings of Jesus. They were hardly liberal. The use of the Ban, known more commonly as shunning, as a tool of church discipline in response to sin and wayward behavior seems jarring to some on the leftward leaning spectrum. They had little interest in trying to use the machinery of the state to make unregenerate people behave. The saw the church as primarily a fellowship, a brotherhood. They expected and received persecution from the world. All of the rest of this stuff that has come to be associated with "Anabaptism" is often just fluff and frequently harmful. If you want to know who the Anabaptist are, read what they wrote, study how they lived and learn how their example can benefit the church today.

Oh The Delicious Irony

We were driving through northern Indiana this weekend and saw this scene in LaGrange. We had to stop, turn around and take a picture.

I have to wonder if anyone else saw the irony in a giant, dare I say idol, of a cow (perhaps a calf?) being parked behind the Ten Commandments? Not to mention the fact that a) this is the parking lot of a U.S. post office, where are the lawyers?! andf b) why would you have a giant cow on wheels in the first place and furthermore why is it parked here?

Just felt compelled to share that.

Lamb Update

Our remaining ewe lambs are doing well, unfortunately the ram lamb didn't make it after his mom rejected him and in spite of living in our living room for a week. Still waiting on the last ewe to have her lambs, this is her first year so we are only expecting one. Kind of disappointed that the second ewe only had a single but at least it was a ewe.

The Limits On Unity

Alan Knox has a new chain blog, this time on the topic of relational unity. The word "relational" is critical here. A lot of Christians will acknowledge the concept of unity while by their actions practically deny that very same unity. Saying "we are one in Christ but I don't associate with you Sunday morning or cooperate with you in any meaningful sense" is a farce and sinful.

I talk a lot about unity and there are some great posts already in the chain blog. I want to add a different viewpoint having to do with the limits of unity. Can we have unity without exception? Does unity trump everything else? If not, what are the limits?

When we look to Scripture we see clearly that unity is very important, not just in theory but in reality. We see the church around the ancient world collecting funds for famine relief for churches in other regions, we see the church freely sharing with one another materially, we see Jesus praying for unity in His high priestly prayer. However we also see that from the very earliest days there were people who for a variety of reason that we are warned about and often those warnings required us to separate from people, to be dis-unified for the sake of the church. Where we run into trouble is the "when" of this issue. The sad truth is that most of what we divide over in word or deed has essentially no Scriptural basis and sometimes it seems we fail to divide when Scripture says we ought to.

I want to start by looking at some places where separation is required and the first place in Scripture that springs to mind is the opening of Paul's letter to the church of Galatia.

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. (Gal 1:6-9)

That is some pretty strong language. Not "we should form an ecumenical council to discuss common ground". If someone, an individual or group of individuals, denies central tenets of the Gospel, replacing them with teachings that subvert the very essence of that Gospel, we cannot have unity with them. We can love them, and must. We can pray for them and ought to. Be visibly unified in the faith with them? No. This warning and the next are especially pertinent in our world today. No as far as what those central tenets are, that is a conversation for another day. Mormonism and the Jehovah's Witnesses obviously fall outside of Gospel orthodoxy. Historically that has been true to a lesser extent with Roman Catholicism. What about Seventh-day Adventism? Again, important topics for a different day.

Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, "I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty." (2 Cor 6:14-18)

This might as well have been written to the political activists on both sides of the church. I see this mostly applied in the church to marriage as a warning against "inter-faith marriage" but it clearly is a much broader command. I understand the impulse to make public signs of unity with like minded unbelievers to achieve common goals but there is a real danger of unity with those whom we are nto united in the faith with. So there ought to be clear distinguishing lines between the church and the world.

I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. "Purge the evil person from among you."  (1 Cor 5:9-13)

Sexuality immorality and other gross sins that fester unrepentant in the church are destructive. Paul is not saying here that they have "lost their salvation" or that people who are sinning are not believers but that they should be treated as unbelievers, denying them the fellowship of the saints and "purging" them from the church. It damages the witness of the church and causes confusion when we look past these sins. So when people are refusing to repent of their sins we must of necessity separate from them.

So obviously the Bible places limits on unity. Here is another one, a tricky one to ponder....

But avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless. As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned.  (Titus 3:9-11)

That is a hard one. The response to someone who is divisive is to...divide from them? In this case yes, being divisive is harmful to the church and for the sake of unity we must stay clear of people like that. Now they are plenty of people who are excessively quarrelsome in the church, not the same thing as people asking legitimate if difficult questions, and the church has an obligation to discipline and potentially eventually, to borrow an Anabaptist term, shun those who refuse to repent.

We face a major stumbling block in this whole issue of unity and limits in that we have an awful lot of trouble identifying and agreeing on what those limits mean. Most of what divides the church does not have much, or any, Scriptural support. Divisions over eschatology, music style or church governance, specifics of soteriology, traditions, denominations, etc. are common in the church but are completely absent from Scripture. I guess when you are being persecuted for the faith you don't have time to worry about secondary issues. Because we divide over secondary issues and other issues that are so silly they don't qualify as secondary we fail to clearly define what issues we should see as legitimate limits to unity.
We ought to seek unity, real and relational unity, as a top priority for the church. We should find barriers to unity and tear them down. Yet we must not mistake prioritizing relational unity with false unity, unity at all costs. Unity that compromises the Gospel is not unity we should pursue. Unity that overlooks what Scripture declares to be inviolable principles is false unity and worse than disunity. What is truly ironic is that because of our disunity we have utterly failed to have the conversations in the church that would clarify what rises to the level of an issue to divide over. Our disunity makes unity nearly impossible.

So what do you think? What are the reasonable limits of unity in the church? Where do we draw the line?

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Chain blog rules:



1) If you would like to write the next blog post (link) in this chain, leave a comment stating that you would like to do so. If someone else has already requested to write the next link, then please wait for that blog post and leave a comment there requesting to write the following link.

2) Feel free to leave comments here and discuss items in this blog post without taking part in the actual “chain.” Your comments and discussion are very important in this chain blog (both on this post and the other link posts in the chain).

3) When you write a link in this chain, please reply in the comments of the previous post to let everyone know that your link is ready. Also, please try to keep an updated list of links in the chain at the bottom of your post, and please include these rules at the bottom of your post.



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“Links” in the “Real Relational Unity” chain blog:

1. “Chain Blog: Real Relational Unity” by Alan

2. “The Treasure of Unity ‘in’ our Relationships” by Jim

3. “So The World May Know – Observations on the Road to Unity” by Christopher

4. “Christian Unity – What it is and What it’s not” by Nathan

5. “Steps to Relational Unity” by Randi

6. “Learn to Live or Live to Learn” by Greg

7. “The Limits on Unity” by Arthur

8. Who will write the 8th link post in the chain?

New baby!

Another of our ewes had a baby this afternoon, so far just one but we are expecting another twin. We just have to wait at this point.

The worlds fattest sheep?

Quite possible. This is not our ewe, one of our Amish friends bought her and brought her to our place to become...acquainted with our ram but she used to be a pet and clearly had more than enough hay to eat. Our friend and I together had a tough time picking up the crate she was in.