The Invisible Fault Lines

The Invisible Fault Lines--February 21, 2019

"Welcome those who are weak in faith, but not for the purpose of quarreling over opinions. Some believe in eating anything, while the weak eat only vegetables. Those who eat must not despise those who abstain, and those who abstain must not pass judgment on those who eat; for God has welcomed them. Who are you to pass judgment on servants of another? It is before their own lord that they stand or fall. And they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand. Some judge one day to be better than another, while others judge all days to be alike. Let all be fully convinced in their own minds. Those who observe the day, observe it in honor of the Lord. Also those who eat, eat in honor of the Lord, since they give thanks to God; while those who abstain, abstain in honor of the Lord and give thanks to God. We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s." [Romans 14:1-8]

It's often the invisible divisions between us that are the hardest to overcome.

Sometimes the "us" and "them" groupings we put ourselves into are obvious.  We divide ourselves up along lines of gender, or skin coloring, of language and dress, and the like. And almost instinctively, we make judgments and preferences based on who is more "like" us and who is "other." We tell ourselves in our wiser moments that it is wrong to do, of course, but we still struggle with those obvious, overt divisions.

But even more insidious, even more powerfully subtle, are the divisions we cling to that are invisible because they have to do with the thoughts in our heads and the convictions in our hearts.  We still fiercely clutch those hatreds, the lines between "those who think like us" and "those who disagree with us," sometimes even more tightly than the (seemingly) visible differences of gender and race and dress.  Perhaps enough after-school TV specials or sound-bytes from Dr. King's "I Have A Dream" speech have taught us that it is not publicly acceptable to scorn people for the way their physical appearances differ from our own (although, again, below the surface, we are still often still entangled in those sins, too).  But we have without a doubt given ourselves permission to hate people who disagree with us.

That kind of division is rampant.  Not that our day and age has a corner on that market--as these verses from Romans remind us, the first generation of Christians in Rome were already good at dividing themselves into categories of "us" and "them," "like me" and "other," based on convictions of their hearts and theological differences in their minds.  As much as the early church in Rome was still trying to heal the wounds that had set Jews and Gentiles against one another, they were also divided along invisible lines over things like who would or wouldn't eat meat (which may have had something to do with being sacrificed to pagan idols before it was sold in the marketplace), who did or didn't observe special holidays, and so on.  These weren't visible differences--they didn't wear buttons or badges, or have color-coded t-shirts so you could tell at a distance who was one of those no-good, backward-thinking meat-eaters, and who was one of those rotten, weak-faithed non-meat-eaters.  You couldn't tell by just looking at someone who was secretly calculating when to celebrate the next new moon festival, and who were the folks that couldn't tell you what day of the week it was.  And yet those divisions were just as fierce--maybe even more so--than the visible categories of gender, of ethnicity, or even of socioeconomic status.  They still are pretty powerfully divisive.

Paul the apostle wasn't blind to those differences.  Even though he had never been to Rome when he wrote this letter, he knew about the partisan divides in the Christian community at Rome, not only the visible ethnic ones but also the invisible fault lines below the surface.  And not only does Paul know about the different factions--those who would only eat vegetables, and those who would also eat meat; those who observed special days, and those who did not--he has opinions of his own.  He doesn't pretend to be neutral on these subjects, and he has a set of convictions that ground his position.  He knows why he believes it's ok to eat meat (if his writing to the Corinthians gives us a clue, it's because Paul knows that the pagan gods are all fictional anyway), and he is free to say so.  Paul doesn't think that being in his position of authority in the church as an apostle means he must be Switzerland, neutral and without any convictions of his own.  He has them, and he says them.

But here is the really radical thing that keeps coming back throughout the New Testament--the thing that we in twenty-first century America seem to have forgotten: Paul doesn't insist that everyone has to believe like he does, even within the Christian community.  Instead, Paul says that we are all called to make room and allowance for those who think and feel differently.  Granted, we may not be at each other's throats in the year 2019 over meat or calendars, but the strategy Paul uses here is just as radical and just as vital today.  Paul's response to the invisible divisions we partition ourselves into is to say, "Ok, fine, you over there think one way, and you over there think another way--so how about you each make special effort to accommodate each other, since we are all striving to be faithful to Jesus here?"  The different factions Paul was writing to weren't a danger to each other--nobody was leading armed vegetarian raids against the meat-eating Bible Study members.  So Paul says, "If this group over here is convinced in their conscience that their meat-eating and holiday-celebrating is glorifying God, and this group over there is convinced in their consciences as well that only eating vegetables and not celebrating holidays is where they are led to be, then let's allow God to deal with it in God's own time and God's way!"  

In other words, Paul is capable of seeing that sometimes it is better to be gracious than to be "right."  Paul understands that being "saved by grace through faith" does not mean that you earn your salvation by having more correct answers on your theology exam than your neighbor.  It's not the case that the theologically "correct" get into heaven and the theologically "incorrect" go to hell--it's always all been about grace, and it always will be.  If that's how God regards us, then it's the least we can do to regard one another with the same grace.

That doesn't mean we have permission to be sloppy in our theology or not to care about what we believe and practice--but it does mean that we will not put a higher value on being "right" than on being kind.  And it means that even when we are deeply convinced of our views, that we will not deliberately make it harder for others who see things differently to do as their conscience leads them to do.  If anything, Paul says--and this is probably the hardest, most counter-intuitive part--we are to give preference to those with whom we disagree: making sure that they have what they need to be able to live by their own consciences, going out of our way to accommodate their needs, and bending over backwards to protect their ability to act and speak as their conscience leads them to, precisely because we disagree with them and want to make sure they are not snuffed out or silenced.  And the beautiful catch here is that the folks on the "other side" of the argument will be listening to Paul, too, and they will be instructed to go out of their way to accommodate you as well.

See?  Instead of Paul just bringing down the hammer of "I'm right. You're wrong. Get on my side or get out," Paul says, "Here's what I believe and why.  But I'm not so insecure as to be threatened by your difference of conviction, because I'm convinced we are serving the same Lord and called by the same Spirit.  So I will make my case, and then go out of my way to help you live by your convictions as well."  

We have been fed so much self-interested "Don't tread on me" sloganeering that it might never occur to us to recognize that Paul has built a whole way of life around deliberately putting his own preferences second to making room for "the other."  Paul doesn't get riled up when there are different factions who believe and practice differently than he does, and he doesn't defensively react by saying, "You can't tell me what to do!  No one can make me do or not do something--I have to defend my RIGHTS after all!"  Instead, he says the opposite: "I will go out of my way to make room for you, and I will lay down my rights for the sake of making sure you are ok."  And if everybody does that on both "sides", we will end up with breathing space for all of us to seek, to listen, and to do what we are convinced God is calling us to do.

Paul seems to be ok with the possibility that he might pray for God's direction and come to one conclusion, and that someone else might be praying just as earnestly for God's direction and come to another, and even though Paul knows what he believes and why, he doesn't have to attack the people who feel genuinely led to a different conclusion than he does.  Living together that way--knowing that we will disagree with each other, but staying with one another in the midst of that disagreement--is always hard.  It is certainly harder than just walking away and taking your toys with you.  But Paul is convinced it is worth it, because Paul is convinced that Christ is there, with the "other" side while Christ is also here "with" me, too. 

Today, let's be as completely honest as we can be: not just about the visible divisions that we allow still to color our treatment of one another, but also about the invisible fault lines that we struggle with.  Let's be honest about where we stand and why, rather than sweeping our differences of conviction under the rug and pretending they are not there.  And then, let us also go out of our way--as Paul here teaches us--to help those with whom we disagree to be able to live and practice as they are convinced God is leading them to do, because we are more interested in being like Christ than in winning a fight.

Lord Jesus, help us to see your presence with those with whom we most disagree, and to learn to do good for those we have the hardest time talking with.