broken relationships

Art of Our Discontent

/ Dennis Griffith / 1 Comment

Trevin Wax asks these questions:

How do unbelievers know we are Christians?

  • By the fish symbols on our car?
  • By our bumper stickers?
  • By our voting patterns?
  • By our church attendance?

No. Jesus tells us that the outside world will know we are Christians by the way we love one another.  (John 13.34-35; 1 John 4.12)  When we submit to one another in love, we bolster our evangelistic witness by showing the world that love and authority don’t have to be separated.  God’s rule is life-giving.  He rules us for our good and for his glory, and the church reflects that loving rule.

(From Counterfeit Gospels, page 157)

But what about when that love runs cold?  What are faithful followers of Christ to do when we grate on one another or disappoint one another?  I am not talking about when we are in conflict, necessarily. I have in mind when we just seem to grow apart?

This is a pertinent question to ponder, because inevitably most will experience this in at least some relationships with others in our churches.  So how are we to respond? How can we most glorify God in these situations?

First, let me offer an illustration of a way not to respond.

Once, in a previous church I served, I participated in a discussion with a church member who had seemingly disappeared.  As we inquired about him, how was doing, and what he was up to, he informed us that he had been disappointed by some of the Elders in the church.  None of us had been aware that this had been the case, so we were filled with a mixture of emotions: sadness, disappointment, frustration, etc.  One man asked him why he had not made this known, why he had not followed the pattern of Matthew 18 to seek reconciliation and restoration of relationships.  His response: “Matthew 18 does not apply. None of you sinned against me.”

Somewhat perplexed, I inquired: “Had someone offended you because of sin would you have then followed Matthew 18?”  He assured us all that he most certainly would have done that.  And I believe him. He was (and is) a faithful man, zealous to be obedient to God.

I felt I had no choice. I had to point out the absurdity of this logic.  He was missing the whole spirit of the instructions for the process of reconciliation. True, Matthew 18 is a process that must be undertaken and which could culminate in some form of church discipline. But it is not discipline the Lord delights in.  Our Lord delights in heartfelt relationship.  What this man expressed was essentially that he would have shown more love and concern for his fellow Christians had any of us been guilty of offensive sins.  Absent that, he felt he had no responsibility to seek to restore these relationships.  In other words, he would have loved us more had we sinned against him than he did because we had not.

I suspect his dilemma is not uncommon.  In our disposable culture it seems relationships are among the easiest things to discard.  But as I posed at the beginning of this post, this is not the way things ought to be among those in Christ’s Church.  As J.I. Packer observes, in his doctrinal handbook Concise Theology:

“The task of the church is to make the invisible Kingdom visible through faithful Christian living and witness-bearing.”

I think Packer sums it up beautifully.  Our task is to embody the values and principles before a watching world. By doing so we become a living demonstration of the way things ought to be – and one day will be.  As we live this out, perhaps especially in relationship, we are counter-cultural – i.e. we present an alternative to the culture in which we live.

So how should we respond when we feel we have drifted apart from others in our church? How, practically, do we honor God with our relationships?

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Blessed Are the Peacemakers

/ Dennis Griffith / 2 Comments

boxing-baby

Jeff Purswell writes:

Who dreamed that their church participation was so significant? Giving the world a glimpse of the consummated kingdom of God!

Does such a grand vision govern our attitude toward our local churches?  If it does, our participation will no doubt reflect it.  We will love, serve, sacrifice, forgive, forbear, employ our gifts, mortify our pride – all that we might together “display in this present evil age the life and fellowship of the Age to come.” 

Churches that display such a life, however imperfectly, are God’s most potent intstruments in his cosmic program to reclaim and restore his creation.

At first glance this may not seem to be all that interesting of a paragraph.  But it is far more than a poetic ode to the Church and what the Church ought to be.

I think it safe to say that most of us desire peace in our churches.  We want to get along with everyone. We want everyone to think well of us.  That is, afterall, what the church is supposed to be like.  Unfortunately, it is not the reality experienced all the time in any church.

When we find ourselves in the middle of tensions or conflict, or even if we are simply on the perifery observing it between friends and fellow church members, it can cause an agonizing feeling.  We know this is not the way things ought to be. We think, “God cannot be glorified in this.”

While God is not glorified by church conflict, notice two of the words in the above paragraph: forgive and forbear.  These are important words to think about.  While both are noble words, they would not exist apart from some sort of tension or conflict.

What Jeff seems to be suggesting is that while peace & unity are marks of Christ’s Church, the real life struggles of living, breathing, sin-infected people that make up the membership of the church almost guarantees that from time to time we will rub one another the wrong way.  Yet if we are a people, marked by the gospel, committed to reconciliation through the practices of forbearing and forgiving one another, even the presence of conflict within a congregation provides opportunity to glorify God.