Why Do Christians Fight?

Hi friends, welcome back to the pastor talk podcast.
Thanks for being with us as we kick off a new series today a
little bit tongue-in-cheek,
but I think some
Interesting material that we’ll be covering over the next several weeks and as Michael and I thought about this
Podcast and where we would go next we came upon this idea to maybe think about the ways that Christians have
Disagreed with one another,
you know we live in a time where I think there’s a pretty steady stream of disagreement and that’s not new and that’s been a part of
our church experience and our Christian pathway for
really since the beginning of the faith and some of those arguments Michael have been historical and deeply important others have been
Probably petty and a little flippant and we want to spend most of our time on the important ones
But we may mention some of the others as well.
Yes, we sort of set the stage for this
I think it’s important to recognize that if you’re joining us for the conversation and you’ve been a part of a church for any
really period of time,
it’s likely you’ve experienced in the church some form of
conflict a fight of some kind and
That’s par for the course when you’re dealing with people people who come in with different life experiences with different
expectations with different
preferences all of our human nature is going to tend to push us to the edge of ourselves where we find
Conflict with other people that certainly happens in churches and of course it wouldn’t you wouldn’t even need to go to Google to search to
Find stories about churches that have split over things that we would
From an outside vantage called petty things like the color of the carpet or the color of the paint on the walls or the kind
of coffee that got served or whether you do potlucks or
There’s things that we would probably say are not important that have been the source of
Significant division and fighting within churches not just in the modern era
But all throughout history and we have to just sort of name from the start
That flows from the basic
fundamental principle of human sinfulness when we in the Reformed tradition talk about original sin we talk about that that state of being
That we have really inherited from birth just a natural component of being human
That leads us to being self-obsessed to being
Clouded to our own interests and in that we sometimes find ourselves
Engaging in conflict with other people just because of this natural tendency within ourselves
In this conversation though is I think you already said well Clint our intention
Is to not focus on the petty the truth is if you want to find petty arguments
I’ve just load up Facebook or Twitter and you’ll find that within the first three posts it what we want to talk about is
What happens when you give a sustained look at?
The significant conflicts when there have been times
especially looking back hindsight’s 2020 when we look back on the history of
Christians trying to live out the faith.
What do we learn from some of those substantive?
Conflicts, what was at stake and what what is the implication of how those conflicts were resolved and what we’re gonna start teasing out
What you’ll see is sort of this division between what we’ve called sort of the the pursuit of truth or higher
ideals and the separation of those things that fall away the conditional things the petty things you might say and
I think as we work our way into it
We’re gonna find that there’s some substantial differences even if they’re maybe sometimes difficult to tell apart
Yeah, I think another way to get there Michael is that we of course have all experienced
disagreements and in any disagreement the part of us that is
Selfish and stubborn wants to win wants to get our way and we have experienced no shortage of disagreements in church
We disagree over favorite music.
We disagree over the way the church does something
We disagree over whether this program should be funded instead of that program
we we have those kind of things all the time and to be honest, we have
Very little interest in making those a focus of our conversation.
This is really about what are those
moments in the church where we have had significant conversation and sometimes conflict over
What is true about the Christian faith in other words when we’ve come to moments of impasse where?
Two different or multiple different ideas have have
Intersected about what is the nature of our faith?
What is fundamentally true about being people who follow Christ or about God and Christ themselves
What have we done and how have those moments of disagreement?
shaped the pathway of
particularly our tradition our Presbyterian heritage and I think it is important because
We all know that Christians are are not different than other people.
We can fight about anything
But we have at times thought about things that were very
Significant and important and we want to survey some of those in the coming weeks
And so Michael today,
I think in some ways we have the most
Vague
Conversation the one that’s maybe the hardest to really sink our teeth into why do
Christians fight why have these things happen and there are some different explanations.
There are certainly the personal explanation
There is of course sinfulness at work,
but there’s also some historical
Some historical considerations that have set Christians up really even from the beginning
To have a diversity of ideas.
Yeah, very much Clint and I just want to note one thing here before we
Push in too far and that is I think that it’s important to start this conversation with this
affirmation that Christians have
Historically believed that there is a thing that is true that God has revealed God’s self in Jesus Christ in a way
that shows us something that is
Universally right it is it is the way that it is it is true
I think we live in a moment in which people are comfortable talking about false narratives
they’re they’re talking they’re comfortable talking about bias and spin and
things that appear true that are actually fake and when we look at the Christian understanding of who Jesus Christ is
Christians have always started from this initial
Pre-supposition that who Jesus is is a true and accurate
Representation of not only who God is but what God intends and this is significant and I want to sort of illustrate it for just
a moment One of the interesting things that you’ll find if you
Go to visit with a family after they’ve lost a loved one that every family when a loved one dies
Begins to tell stories about that loved one about the good and there’s often laughter about the funny things that they did and they’re
They’re mannerisms and their habits and most of the time those stories especially in healthy family situations
Those stories are pretty accurate depiction.
There’s some embarrassing stories
There’s some really inspiring stories and sometimes even families that are able to say yeah
you know, they struggled with this addiction or this was a major point of contention for them in their life and and
What you will find though is that there are some instances
Where the family will begin to tell a story about their loved one that if you knew anything about them
Just doesn’t ring true.
It may be there’s some truth in it,
but largely it’s hollow
Sometimes they’ll talk about how this person, you know was
Completely devoted to this but there’s so many parts of their life that wasn’t devoted to that and you get this sense very early on
In those relational encounters that what is being described isn’t fully accurate
It’s not a complete reflection of who that person was there’s not enough nuance for it to be completely true
And what I mean to say in this is Christians have always hung our hats
We believe there’s a lot at stake in
How we describe Jesus Christ who he was as a person is the barometer of truth
It is the a bedrock and foundation of everything else that gets built on top of it
Theologically because we believe that Jesus is the revelation of God and God’s intention for the world
And so that’s significant because a lot of the diversities that we’re gonna find in the early church leading all the way to now
Have especially in the in the substantial conflicts
They have a lot to do with who was this person and what does that revelation teach us about who God is and who what?
God’s intention for the world is and if we miss it if we’re not
Describing Jesus as he actually was then we find ourselves ringing hollow.
We find ourselves
inserting ourselves and our own interest into the person of Christ instead of letting Christ be that
core barometer so that backing to what truth actually is and and this is a maybe it sounds
Abstract but I think that it will become very concrete in our future conversations
If you miss on who Christ is by a little bit it has significant ramifications
Not just for what you believe but how you behave in the world
And and so it is from that place that the church has continually returned in our substantial conflicts
To this idea of who is Christ and what does that teach us about who God is?
the word that we use in the church for this and in these moments of
seeking truth is
Revelation and revelation means that truth comes for us.
It doesn’t come from us
It is something that we we do not decide what is true
We discover what is true through the leading and the help of God’s Spirit
and so as Christians have drawn upsides through the years and battled over significant issues
what we believe has happened is that we
undertook those moments with a
genuine sense of Seeking what was true and that of course means that as we are led in the direction
We believe to be the truth
There are other things there are other ideas and opinions that weren’t the truth
And so in those moments of conflict there were also
Separation and some of our great doctrine.
In fact, I can’t think Michael of a
Significant doctrine in the church that came to the church without opposition and without some sorting that happened there There was no
This may be a surprise to people who haven’t maybe had a lot of experience with church history
But if you’ve been around people,
it’s probably not a surprise that there’s no doctrine of the faith that wasn’t fought over
There’s no significant tenet of what it means to be Christian that just arrived and everybody agreed on on the spot
Including some of what I would say are the fundamental beliefs that we hold to now
Centuries down the road.
And so as we look at that
We see that this has always been a part of how we discover truth
And as we seek to do that it almost inevitably means that we are going to have some disagreements and some
Conflicts along the way and it may surprise you to know
I think many people idealize the the concept of the quote-unquote early church as if there was just one group and
They agreed on everything and then it got more complicated from there.
And and the truth is just exactly
the opposite because The early church developed largely in secret because of the oppression and the threat of the Roman government
There were pockets of Christians and they had a hard time
communicating to one another fact what we have in our New Testament or the remnants of letters that were sent back and forth as
That got more difficult those churches largely went more and more underground and what that means is that they developed their system of beliefs
independently from one another and things that were held to be true in this community may not match
Exactly the things that were held to be true in this community
and so we have at the very outset this situation where there is an
incredible diversity and an incredible freedom to kind of
Form your own core beliefs and when the situation changes that sets the stage for a lot of disagreement
Yeah, I think it may be hard for us to put ourselves in those shoes Clint
But let’s pause here for a moment and just sort of name the struggle for the early church
We have all of the world’s information at our fingertips when we pull out our phones when we go on the computer
These churches many of them only had fragments of maybe one gospel
So when they came to worship lots of these small church communities
We’re dealing with just a tiny amount of information of who Jesus was passed on orally from one person to the next and so
While maybe in Rome they had some of Mark’s gospel over in Corinth
They may only had a little bit of Luke Luke’s gospel and in Ephesus
They maybe only had a little bit of Matthew’s gospel and then you’ve got letters from Paul and other
Apostles are being sent around and passed around some churches have them other churches don’t there’s not the freedom of movement
So therefore church leaders which are by the way contested you see that in Paul’s letters
There’s actual fighting over who is the leaders not as if they installed one pastor and and everybody agreed on that
Right, and one thing that should be added
Perhaps Michael is that what we have are the letters that ultimately stuck
There’s an entire collection of other letters that say different things that were also out there
circulating in some communities and
They contain things that the church later said
Those aren’t helpful to us.
But at the time there was nobody to say that right and that’s the exact point clay
I think that’s the best example of this movement that you were describing is the scriptures themselves
I think that people especially
When we grow up we give Bibles as gifts when we think of the Bible we think of a thing
That’s not what the early church thought of that in the early days of the church
There was not the New Testament that did not exist.
There were collections of writings and things which by the way historically
the amount of
Unanimity in the church’s acceptance of those letters is actually astounding once the the Bible is what we called canonized or
Officially collected there was an extreme amount of sort of universal acceptance of what books were there
But in the very beginning these things are circulating and they’re doing so in these individual pockets and this is relevant
Because what you see in the scriptures is you see these things being sorted
The things that become helpful rise to the top and churches give them more a time
They read them more often
They give them more credence and the stuff that’s less
Helpful begins to sort of fade away and go down the list and what’s interesting is Paul talks about like Apollos who?
He seems to be in direct conflict with in church leadership
It’s interesting that Apollos’s letters don’t make it into the New Testament the Apostle Paul’s letters and that’s not on accident
It’s not by sort of historical accident that these letters got lost in transit or something.
It’s that the churches
as time went on
Believe that the revelation of Christ was most clearly communicated in the letters that we now have in our Bible
so to us when we open the scriptures it is
it’s both common and
Accepted that this is what the Bible is
But only is that possible because of the conflict and maybe conflict is too strong of a word because of the sifting Sorting dropping
Emphasizing that the early church did sometimes with with opposition
So that we might have the thing that we now call the Bible
So I think just think clean that’s a great example of how from these individual sort of siloed pockets
The church slowly began to sift through organically what things should be given credence
What revelation was most clear and then as the church began to talk in a more sustained way the the threat of the Roman?
Empire went from direct threat to actual sort of cultural preservation of Christianity a
Governmental protection of the religion when that happened suddenly these conversations quickly rose up from their local
Places and they became national and in many cases international conversations and and then we begin to see the source sort itself out
Yeah, so you can read any letter really in the New Testament written by Paul and you’ll see that there was conflict at the outset
there were people teaching various things and and when you
Envision that there are all of these places that there are groups of people calling themselves Christian
But each has a little different
set of Information each has a little different spin on some part of what it means to be Christian
Then you see the stage that is set for the late 200s early
300s now, we’re almost two centuries.
We in fact we are well very close to two full centuries
Later, I’m sorry three full centuries later
From the death of Jesus the resurrection and in the late
200s Christianity is becoming tolerable to the Roman Empire
The Emperor Constantine in the early 300s is pretty favorable to Christianity and in
313 there is an edict sign that says Christianity is no longer illegal
Christianity now has the right to exist as a religion without Roman
Opposition and when that happens you have this moment and and it’s not really a moment because it kind of
Slides into it.
It had been happening Christians had been more and more accepted
But now it’s legal and so now all of these groups
Can freely and openly begin having conversations with one another and when they do
They find out very quickly that they don’t agree on everything
There are people saying well,
this is the way it is and other people saying no that that’s not right.
We do it this way
Well, we think this well,
we don’t think that at all
And what we will be looking at in the coming weeks or some of those fights from the very early part of Christianity
They’re not the only time that we’ve had fights
But there’s a lot of them because of the nature of this
Situation that’s been created.
In fact, one of the first things that Constantine does so in 313
Christianity is legalized by
325 or just 12 years later,
which historically is nothing
12 years later Constantine is so frustrated with the church that he demands they have a council called the Council of Nicaea
and he says don’t come back until you can bring me a
Summary of what Christianity looks like.
In fact, he goes there and even takes a role in the conference
But if you’ve ever noticed or seen the Nicene Creed
It’s the document produced by that meeting and that meeting is is held by Christians
But it’s instituted by the Emperor.
The Emperor is so frustrated within a decade
That that Christianity is deadlocked and has these these competing ideas that he says go get it figured out
because he understands that’s going to matter and
Michael so not surprisingly a great many of our early
Arguments in the historic church are theological in nature, you know
We would get to the point where they’ll fight over how they worship and all those but but that initial wave of
Disagreement is almost exclusively on
doctrines major doctrines of the faith
Absolutely.
You have to recognize within the diversities of these local communities
There’s also the reality that the earliest Christians thought of themselves as being Jews
There was this idea that they were participating in synagogue worship that they believed that they were part of this community
in fact if you remember Paul’s letters the idea that the Gentiles could be included was a very sort of
Challenging idea to the earliest church.
So once the Roman Empire turns once this
Proclamation is made and this council meets that the change there made to us seem
so sort of Accidental or it may seem unimportant.
But the truth is it changes absolutely everything because
for all of these reasons the diversities of the early church made a
consistent unified sort of religion very difficult to sort out it made it very hard to
Reconcile.
Okay. So was Jesus this did he teach this or did Jesus teach this and what’s the implication of what Jesus taught?
And what’s with this whole Trinity thing this church emphasizes that this church doesn’t talk about at all
We need to sort this out and what I think you discover if you do some reading in early church history
Clint is that not only is there conflict,
but it is in some cases literally
Violent conflict.
I mean we’re physical violence.
There is a sense that what is happening in those earliest conversations is
Incredibly important that it is substantial that what you need to figure out
Needs to be true and I think that what one of the things I’ve always appreciated
Looking back on human history is that God through God’s providence has worked through all of these
Human conflicts.
I mean as humans have gotten
sideways politically as even the emperor of a
Secular empire with a very nasty track record is calling some of these meetings
God is still able to bend these things to good at in the history of God’s work in the world as the church begins to
Understand who the church is and what the church is called to be
God is using these what we might say looking back some really strange sort of
Circumstances to help the church along that journey
Yeah, and
You know again most of those initial moments we had disagreements
that the church unfortunately as
It finds itself
Increasingly empowered by Roman authority to be honest
We would have to confess that in many ways the church doesn’t handle the acquisition of power very well and
the church adopts some of the secular practices of
punishing enemies of purging the wrong quote idea and
Some of the some of the fights of the faith have
been examples really of
the exact opposite of grace and of
graciousness of mercy and
There develops this idea that the church from a position of power has to protect the truth by
Exiling or or punishing or overthrowing those who represent a challenge to it
And and that that direction continues for for many many years
We’ll see it again in a couple weeks.
We talk about some Reformation
ideas, but that
pattern is Unfortunately established fairly early once the Christians have some power to wield
They don’t always wield it.
Well, and that’s kind of the nature of power
Having said that Michael
Let’s cover let’s pivot here and and talk about the sort of range of things as we move through this series
I think there are probably a range of things that we can see that have
Occupied a lot of the conflicts again
But we both confess that we know the church can fight about anything
But if we look at this from a historical perspective,
there are some mountaintops.
I think where Many of the disagreements have landed and we’ve mentioned
Theology we’ve mentioned doctrine and and we’ll start there pretty heavy next week looking at some of those original
Kind of things that have to be sorted out about the very nature of the faith some things that may surprise you because we’ve taken
Them for granted so long,
but they were on the table and they were up for grabs
But as the church then moves historically,
there are some other things that become a flashpoint as well
Yeah, so as the church begins to become recognized safe,
I would even use the word
institutionalized of both as a
Self-governing body with connections and with leadership structures
but also you have to remember it became institutionalized within government because of
Constant teens work.
So that became a very interesting
Challenging sort of nuanced relationship that you know a historian would have to tease out for us
But this has significant ramifications.
Let me give you an example
So what do you do when a person professes faith in Jesus Christ?
But then when persecution comes that person
Passes off on their faith.
They go before the authorities and they say I’m not a believer
I don’t believe in that Jesus Christ and because of that their family’s not persecuted.
They don’t lose any goods
But then when Christianity becomes safe again when it when it becomes
Institutionalized those same people say I never abdicated the faith.
I was just doing so in time of duress
One of the things that the church had to deal with in fact,
we have letters of some of the early church leaders
Trying to tease out and process.
What do you do with people who seem to have disavowed the faith?
Can they come back in?
What what would be the process of expectation for people to come back in?
There’s these kind of sea change things that need decided if you’ve got a church in Spirit Lake
And you’ve got another church over in Spencer.
What do you do when a person moves from one town to another?
well before the church was
institutionalized that was an organic process a person say I’m a person of the way I’m a person trying to follow Jesus and
They would relationally make that happen.
But as the church becomes in institutionalized be as it becomes
organizationally structured You have to process well,
what kind of policy should we have for people moving?
Is there a faith requirement that you must pass that person on and so?
These are just very micro cosmic sort of examples of the huge task that was put upon the early church
Almost a burden in some cases to figure out.
What should the practices of a Christian?
Organization look like if it’s going to be faithful and I just want to sort of quick throw in we’re gonna have a full
Conversation about what we call the Reformation capital R
This is actually made even more difficult and nuanced by the fact that the church has been having
Reformation’s plural small R throughout its history that the church has had moments where its policies and
practices were radically changed
because of a particular religious sort of leader like a Christian or a
Deacon someone maybe some time at some points in history.
They were Desert fathers mothers prophets,
but individuals who sort of
Emphasized a particular aspect of the faith and the larger church sort of looked at it and said oh,
yeah We’ve we’ve missed that or we’ve not emphasized that enough and then the church has changed
policies and practices and I think that there’s been this sort of
Continuing sort of turn and movement both as the church
institutionalizes but also as it comes into new cultures and new moments in in history it has had to
reevaluate some of those core operating principles and
Redefine what it means to be Christian in that time and place.
Yeah, and I think another place
We see that is the idea of leadership,
you know in in those self-contained
churches of the first century
We see that Paul might recommend someone or that there may be someone who grows to a leadership position in that
community and then Paul
Interacts with them that that changes very much when we get to a structured organized
institutional type church now leadership becomes a
More significant question because if you now represent a whole
Church you have to ensure that those people who are doing leadership
Know the right things that they teach the right things that they enforce the right policies that they have the right ideas that they have
The right doctrine so who can serve as leader?
How are they trained?
How are they supervised who to whom are they accountable?
These are all questions and and a significant number of conflicts.
I would say
After that early Roman period but before the Reformation our
Leadership conflicts there’s a leader as as Michael has pointed out that begins to teach something that is slightly out of step with
the rest of the bunch and
It in some cases that person’s idea
Proves true in the long run and it moves the church with it in other places
That person is judged to have the wrong idea and they are either
corrected or
in some cases
Excommunicated let go because they they don’t
Ultimately show that their idea is
The direction the church should now move with them and so leadership becomes a major source of conflicts
To some extent probably to a lesser extent I
Ironically other than the Reformation Michael ironically probably in our lifetime
Maybe as much as any other time in the life of the church worship
Worship is for the first
Well, not the first two centuries,
but after three from 300 on for quite a while worship is pretty standard
There there’s going to be a pretty consistent way that it’s applied
But in the late 20th century
There are hundreds literally hundreds of ways to worship in the Reformation
There are changes to worship though again
Relatively
Consistent within each tradition
But in our lifetime, we’ve seen
just a myriad of ways that people have said this is how we can worship and that has spawned a
Lot of conflict been a lot of what has sometimes been called worship wars
Yeah, you know, I think what’s interesting as we’ll turn to that in a later conversation
What we find in the historic church is that most of these conflicts have existed the entire time?
But we see them come up in different ages with different emphasis and oftentimes I would say with sort of different
fundamental presuppositions that lie underneath them
I won’t tease that out in this conversation,
but I think the thing that worship really helps us see is that
within that one topic we have both the idea of
Worshiping is supposed to be giving glory to one beyond ourselves
And yet worship for humans can never be completely separated from what we prefer
What we grew up with what we think helps us worship and so different times different ages are going to tackle these questions in different ways ironically
Some of the conflicts we saw in Reformation over what is worship properly observed
We had different versions of those conversations when we brought in drum sets and other kinds of things in churches
We’ll talk about that when we get to it
But these conversations the point for today is these conversations are not somehow disconnected that they share these themes
they share these sort of occasional
Revisiting of the thing that we thought about before and so it’s good to understand that that prior
Argument because I think it helps illuminate the argument we may be having now
I think another place for that Clint lives in our own culture and political moment
This is a time
Where I think many of us struggle to sort of separate fact from fiction in our own experience of the world
There’s just so much opposition.
There’s so much fighting both
between parties and within parties whether that be political or whether that be different sort of
Persuasions and I think as we sort of walk into this from a faith perspective
That too is not new the church has had very interesting tenuous relationship with both culture and political institutional
Governmental leadership throughout our entire history.
And if you look at that,
there’s always been conflict within the church
How close should we be to government?
Should we as the church sort of be a prophetic voice against a government overreach into people’s lives when the government hurts?
The poorest should the church be the voice for that or should the church try to be close to leadership?
So it can help sort of pull the reins as as that leadership leads
I mean that is seen immediately in the church’s conversations with Constantine
They were trying to strike that balance all the way
From the beginning of the church immediately after their experience of persecution and those themes continue on through the history of the church
today much like these other themes and I think that
That in some of these areas Michael people may find this conversation more accessible
I mean it it may be if you’ve been a Christian
For a long period of time and if you’ve been involved in churches
it’s probably very very difficult to imagine a church having a vote on whether
Jesus is divine right whether Jesus is the Savior whether there’s a Trinity whether Jesus is born of the Virgin Mary
that probably seems unimaginable that a church would have a moment where they’re going to cast ballots for
Fundamental truths that we all have accepted for many many many years.
However
In you meet you may not care how leaders
Get trained if they lead well if you’re happy with them
You you may not give much thought to the arguments over who can lead how do they lead?
How are they educated?
What do they need to know?
How are they certified and supervised that that may not be an issue to you at all?
But when we get to places like worship
When we get to things like culture
Which is just the way we talk about the world around the church the sort of water
We all swim in at the moment when we get to things like politics that then I think this conversation over
Disagreement becomes more accessible more personal,
you know, it’s fascinating Michael I’ve literally had people say both of these things to me
I do not think a person can be a Christian and be Republican
I do not think a person can be Christian and be Democrat,
right?
The the idea that all of us are in touch with the issues that exist during our lifetime
though, those are the things that are happening all around us and so as people of faith,
we are always putting our faith in
conversation with those things and
I have sometimes thought it would be fascinating to trace
The libraries of pastors and look at the books they had,
you know, but books on slavery books on war books on
Homosexuality books on divorce books on gender studies
you you could tell something about the era that pastor ministered in by what
They read in regard to making sense of the issues that were present in their life and times and I
think in some ways
maybe those are the most
Interesting kind of arguments for us because we do resonate with them on the other hand
They’re the most sensitive that they’re the most loaded right?
I mean very few people are going to be hot and bothered by
What the church decided about?
When to close the canon of Scripture, right, right
papal authority
That’s likely not going to ruffle feathers.
You start talking about current issues and
We can all get our blood raised kind of quickly.
Yeah, and that’s a point
I think I’d like to speak to in this initial conversation is if you’re tired of the
Challenges and the conflict and the fighting of this present moment rest assured we’re not trying to dig that up in these conversations
We’re not going to make light of all of the divisions and all of the struggles of this present moment in the culture around us
I think what we’re doing is substantially different than that.
I had a high school teacher
Who once well her her shtick the thing that she returned to over and over again
Was that if we don’t learn our history we’re doomed to repeat it and as a high school student
I thought to myself.
Oh, that’s a nice saying and then as a college student
I begin to think yeah
There are some patterns here be nice to sort of know those patterns and then you know
Maybe it’ll help you sort of predict what’s coming sort of a utilitarian
understanding of history as I’ve
Hopefully matured a little bit beyond that point.
I think I’ve begun to see
That the thing that makes understanding history
So significant is it gives us a lens to understand the world that we live in right now
And as Christians that lens will help us to behave more Christianly
In fact, it’ll help us to become better disciples of Christ CS Lewis a Christian writer
Once said that every Christian should read a new book followed by an old book in that order that that we should never
become so obsessed with our present moment and whatever the new thing is that we fail to recognize the truth that we find in the
Old and I suspect if you continue with us in these conversations
What you’re going to find is when we turn to these old conversations that don’t get our blood pressure up Clint
That what you’re going to find in them is not only
significant substantial truth But when you bring that
Awareness back to our present moment.
You’re going to find that it is going to become a kind of touchstone a
Rosetta stone for our own experience of our present moment because these substantive truths
Still exist today Most of if not all of our present conflicts have historical precedent and yes
Even within the church and what you discover as we will go through these conversations
Is that yes indeed even in some of these literally world changing conflicts?
The church has worked through by God’s grace and providence
Resolutions things that today we teach our confirmation students as simple facts
Which when they were a first debated they were not simple facts
They weren’t just a statement of faith the the Nicene Creed that we now take to be self-evident
Most of the things in those documents were substantially disagreed upon and so what we can discover in our own moment of
substantial disagreements Is that there are ways that the church has faithfully lived out its call to work through these conflicts?
And I think if you are weary of conflict if you’re weary of fighting
Then you’re going to find some balm in the truth that as the church has navigated these other fights
There is substantial reason to have hope that the same will happen in our present moment
Yeah, and I think that has worked in two ways Michael there have been moments where
the church facing those issues has looked back upon its heritage and said
We stand on the truth that has been revealed to us
we we look back to our forefathers and foremothers in the faith and we see
that this thing they’ve handed us is is is beautiful and trustworthy and we stand upon it and
upon their witness and
We then use that to interpret the conversations and questions of our day on the other hand
There have been moments where we look back and we see the humanness of those who have gone before us
in questions like slavery and the inclusion of women and the way that
Ethnic groups are treated or or the way that the poor haven’t been marginalized and we say that those people while
Trying their their very best to follow Christ.
We’re not immune from the blindness of sin and and sometimes we look back and say they didn’t get it right and
And it is this
constant
correction this this course correction that happens through the faith that
Ultimately points us back to our belief that it’s not in our ability that the church navigates its way
It’s not our wisdom.
It’s not our strength.
It’s not our Our processes and our structures.
It is the Spirit of God
moving us sometimes
incrementally
slowly
Towards truth and and sometimes that’s a truth to be preserved from the past
sometimes that’s a truth to be celebrated in the present and change the falsehoods of the the past and
It is a it is a dynamic and at times messy
progress and in that sense
these moments of conflict
Are a driving force now how we argue matters how we disagree matters
but it is largely the history of those moments those
shaping forces of of
Conflict even that have propelled the church forward and open our eyes to new things at times
And so a church that would have no arguments Michael
May struggle to move past the status quo and I and I think that matters it
it is important that we continue to be open to the challenges of the word and the world and
ourselves in order to
Seek to be the most faithful to Christ that we are able.
Yeah Clint.
That’s really well said
I think the word that I would use to describe that is we must bring humility to the conversation next week
We’re gonna talk about Jesus.
We’re gonna look at some of the early church and there’s no way that we can have conversations
About the truth of who God is and who God revealed himself to be in Jesus Christ without a significant
dose of Humility and the human temptation in fighting is to beat your opponent and then to gloat about it,
right?
It’s to bring this triumphal sort of attitude to life and say I’m the biggest strongest I won
I won the fight.
That’s all that matters.
I’m in control and when we look at Christian history
For the many times that the church has got it, right?
There is a equal and opposite if not more number of times when the church has got it wrong
So when we believe that we have some grasp of truth when we have some grasp of the fight having one out
Real revelation of who God is the only proper?
Christian response in my view is one of humility and gratitude gratitude for those who?
Were willing to engage in?
Christian conflict over a thing that was substantial and mattered but humility to say
We should never rest on the idea that we have it all because the moment we do that we have inserted ourselves back into the
Conversation as the sole arbiter of truth and the only one who gives us truth is the revelation of Jesus Christ
So we must be humble.
We must be humble as we approach the conflicts in our own time
But there’s also a wisdom of bringing ourselves in a posture of humility to those who fought in these previous
Times because clean it was not clear to them.
It may seem to us in this moment like it was obvious but
Conflict in many cases though.
There’s pettiness and though there’s selfishness and arrogance all throughout it
Oftentimes these things Seemed prescient they seemed necessary in the time that they happened because it was not clear and we should come to these
conflicts with the same kind of humility that we would hope that those who live beyond us who will stand on our own shoulders in
The faith that they will bring as they survey the conflicts that we are having in our own time and place
Yeah, and so it if we were going to try to summarize this first session,
you know Why do christians fight you see it behind us?
at our best
we fight because
We believe that we have been revealed a truth and that that truth
Matters that truth guides us in the midst of falsehood
and we argue
over
that truth in order to preserve and
to discover and to
Promote it and and so if this
Conversation seems dry.
Give us a week.
I I think there’ll be some
I think there’ll be some opportunity very quickly in next week’s conversation to to put some skin on this to
Show you the ways in which christians have really from the outset had to
Um be in conversation with one another,
you know, that that’s uh an interesting thing
We’ll talk about it perhaps next week
but we we never
Have really believed as christians that truth comes from a single source
In other words the the person doesn’t show up with the golden tablet and say here’s what we should do
It is a communal process to find truth.
It involves a people
most often not simply a person and
That that is a strength of our system historically and I think it makes for some very entertaining conversation
next week, we’ll take a look at
The dominant fights of the early church the church of the 300s that being who jesus is
And jesus relation to god and that that’s where we started.
That’s where you have to start and
some of that initial
conversation
Really becomes foundational for where the church goes from there
You know by way of conclusion,
uh and administratively really,
uh, this is the 57th episode of the pastor talk podcast
And it’s just a word of gratitude for all of you who continue to join us for these conversations
It’s been really kind of remarkable to see the number of people in that circle
Grow and so just thank you for taking the time to spend to to join us for a conversation like this one
And I think it’s worth saying as we begin this conversation
This is a great point for someone else to join in so if there’s someone who you think might be interested in this
Feel free to forward the email
Feel free to share it on facebook,
whatever get people access to it
If you think that they would enjoy it because I think there will be some fun
If you can have fun in the midst of talking about some of the historic church fights
I do think it will be illuminating and if there’s someone who you think that that might be encouraging to
Be sure that they are aware of it.
But that said thank you for taking the time today to join us
We look forward to seeing you again next week in the next episode of the pastor talk podcast.