Unity Requires Ditching Our Religious Superiority Complexes
Too many Christians have religious superiority complexes that tend to block the unity we are called by God to manifest in God's church.
If we are to reach the unity we pray for, it will take some work on our part -- the Spirit will lead us, but we must be willing. We must begin to see others through the eyes of Christ. We must see each Christian for Whose they are (Christ's) and who they are in Christ.
That means looking beyond human imperfections to the union we have with Jesus Himself. Liberals must seek to no longer look upon Conservatives as their backwoods cousins, but rather as brothers and sisters in Christ. Conservatives must not see Liberals as aliens from another planer, but as fellow children of he Living God. We must seek to be the family that God desires us to be, glorifying the Lord as we partner in the Missio Dei.
Can we be tolerant of different points of view and different scriptural emphases? Conservatives see purity in line with the historic confessions. Liberals see purity as in line with newer theological points of view.
But is Christ calling us to a profound display of peace and unity despite those known differences? Might a greater witness to the world, at a higher level of reality, be our finding unity in our vast common ground, rather than labeling the other side wrong because of our different reading of certain Scriptures?
If both sides -- and there are definitely two sides in this thirty year fight -- keep playing the "I am better than you game" we are doomed to disunity and division. But if we can rise into the unity we have in Christ -- in all the glorious things that blessed phrase means -- then the world will know that we are Christians by our love, and by God's amazing grace. What a day of rejoicing that will be.
S. Glenn Wilson, November 4, 2011
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