Jesus often spoke in parables—stories like The Good Samaritan taught us to cross the road to help others. As everyone knows, this wasn't a story about a man walking across some asphalt, it is a story about stepping over differences, labels, and beliefs to fulfill the commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves.
But the body of Christ is made up of humans and religion itself is a human construct, full of fleshly pride and sometimes full blown hubris. We take this Word and focus on what we decide are the important parts and negate the areas we don't like. Then we take sides against other Christians who have different, deeply-held ideals. How loving of us!
My father used to say Christians are a poor advertisement for Christ. Our disagreements and backbiting are not mentioned in any list of the fruits of the Spirit. At UNITE INDY we have often found that the biggest challenge is to get churches to work together for the good of those in need. At a meeting of city transformational groups like ours in Portland, OR., we found that this is true across the country.
Yet in Christ's longest recorded prayer, found in John 17, Jesus asks His Father to "keep them in Your name...that they may be one even as We are one." One scholar says of this passage: "...the church's present divisions are the result of the failures of Christians." How can we not agree that this is a failure?
When I was a wide-eyed 19-year old at Butler University, I took a course in religion. I had grown up in the church, but after one semester of studying how the denominations fought and split and fought and split, it soured what had been a pure, if naive faith and I left the church for 20 years. So, while we may raise rich mega-churches by claiming that our view of God's plan is the correct one, we are poor followers of the God we claim as our own if we cannot love and support even fellow Christians.
The truth is, any reading of the Bible will expose competing views and verses that say one thing and are disputed in another. But—lucky for me—my Bibles make it so easy to find solid ground. As they are printed in so many Bibles, the words of Christ are printed in red. When the red and black disagree, I go with the red. And the red print says to love my neighbor as myself—Jewish, Gentile, Muslim, Catholic, Baptist, Evangelical, Methodist, Samaritan, Agnostic, what have you. I will cross the road to help and work beside anyone else who will join me.
Please join me. UNITE INDY has so much to do.
Peace,
Nancy
