There's Only All of Us--September 12, 2022

There's Only All of Us--September 12, 2022

"For if others see you, who possess knowledge, eating in the temple of an idol, might they not, since their conscience is weak, be encouraged to the point of eating food sacrificed to idols? So by your knowledge these weak believers for whom Christ died are destroyed. But when you thus sin against members of your family, and wound their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ." [1 Corinthians 8:10-12]

Let's cut right to the chase: there is no "us" and "them" in the end. There are only "all of us, people for whom Christ died."

And when you put it that way, it really does give a stark clarity to how we see one another, and how we deal with differences between us.  As much as we may divide ourselves up into groups who believe X but not Y, or who do A but cannot accept doing B, none of our divisions create a category of "people for who Jesus did not give his life."  Or, to put it in the positive framing, there is no one you will ever meet--like them or not, agree with them or not--whom Jesus did not think worthy of him laying down his life.  There is no face you will ever look into, including the one in the mirror, which is not beloved of God and made in God's own image. And that means, at the very least, that all of our disagreements, as heated as they can get sometimes, need to happen with a certain base level of decency, respect, consideration, empathy, and honor of someone Jesus has loved enough to go to a cross on their behalf.  

We are so conditioned in this cultural moment to demonize the ones we disagree with.  They aren't just "wrong"--they're evil, so we are told.  They don't merely see things from a different vantage point--they are a threat to our very way of life.  They are not simply "mistaken" or "misinformed," but are deliberately trying to destroy "us."  You know how easy it is to get swept up into that kind of thinking, how easy it is to see "my" side as always in the right, impervious to any questioning, and "the other side" as morally corrupt.  We so easily accept that division of the world into "people who think like me and thus are good and righteous" versus "people who think differently from me and therefore are suspicious and shady."  We do it along the fault lines of our political parties, our church denominations, our splintering sub-groups that fragment things further within in our denominations, and the supposed "sides" we are told to take in various culture wars.  And we just accept those divisions as if they were self-evident truths like the law of gravity.

But Paul challenges us here to reframe things.  Without denying that he has a particular side he lands on in the great Meat-Sacrificed-To-Idols Debate of AD 55, Paul refuses to see those he disagrees with here as in league with the devil, or morally wicked, or deliberately plotting to destroy the church.  Paul can acknowledge the differences of belief and differences of opinion, and yet he still insists on seeing the people he disagrees with as "those for whom Christ died."  And that rules out a winner-take-all, total-war kind of approach to dealing with conflict.  Paul refuses scorched-earth tactics, but sees the ones he disagrees with still, and always, as people worthy of grace because Jesus has deemed them worthy of his laying down his life for them.

I wonder what would happen if we held that reminder in front of our minds before we used social media... or bad-mouthed someone we disagree with to a third person... or further fractured the church with greater schism and division.  I wonder how it would change things if, before we launched into a tirade against "those people who all think that way," we rather saw those we disagree with first and foremost as people for whom Christ died, and people with whom Christ is in connection, however much or little that may be.  I wonder how we would be changed if we remembered in every action that we will never meet someone who God does not love... someone for whom God's love was willing to bear a cross.

Let's do an experiment, you and I--let's commit to seeing the people we really struggle to get along with as people for whom Christ died, and see how that affects the ways we talk with them.  You don't even have to tell anybody else you are doing it--just wee what happens when we reframe every disagreement in the terms, "This is a disagreement between two people who are both loved by God."  It might just make the difference we need right now.

Lord God, give us the grace to see all people with your eyes of love, and only then, to be able to navigate through difficult questions and disagreements.