Trying to find the balance

One of the big issues surrounding Christian living is that of finding a place whereby balance is found and maintained. For instance, in the upper room, Jesus calls us to love one another:

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” John 13:35

Now a command given to us by the Boss is surely something we should do all we can to comply with! But of course love is not a pushover in that it begets responses that the focus of that love might not consider loving (I know this to be true from being a parent, for love is not permissive and accepting when they focus of it is doing something wrong).

Then we have the call to unity as found in John 17: 20-26. Here we find Jesus praying that all the believers might be one (just as He and the Father are one) and by this the world will believe (just as they did when they saw the unity in Acts 2 in the community and in Solomon's portico). The Act's reading (2:42) is the model for Church growth and Christian living:

"They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favour of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved."

What an idyll we find here - signs and wonders, unity in word and deed and people flocking to join. Something we lack these days as we scuttle into our small corners and bemoan modern society and its values and the decline in moral behaviour and thinking.

What do we have these days? People seeking to use elements of Church as weapons against others! People calling us to be united and expel the dinosaurs who oppose 'modern' (popularist, revisionist) thinking. People who choose to hear what they want to hear and disregard the rest (overactive 'Boxer' gene syndrome).

I hear people who call us to 'act against' those who seek to cause others to sin (perhaps the millstone and deep water of Matthew 18 might apply here) and other who call us to 'embrace today's society and rewrite the Bible accordingly (thus rejecting 2,000 years of received wisdom and orthodox thinking).

Seems to me that the popularist movements of their day have all resulted in less people coming to church and I have a sneaky suspicion that the same might be true of the next cause celebre! The Church is called to be counter-cultural and surely the more we look like society; the more we embrace society's standards and values the less reason there is to become part of it, because after all, there's no difference. After all if it's the same as the world, what's the point of coming in?

Now some will cry 'Jesus and God's love' but of course having thrown God (or at least diluted Him and the book about Him and humanity) out of the frame and diminishing Jesus into little more than a soppy, approving and impotent love and (with Oestreicher and Montifiasco combining to complete the 'Jesus, God made gay' image) a reinvented Christ.

Add to this the call to love the image of the invisible God made visible in the person before us (1 Jn 4) and the call upon us to 'restore gently those caught in sin' (which of course many will deny is sin these days, we're just doing what we are made to do and be) of Galatians 6 and it is obvious that the journey to balance, love and obedience is not the easiest we will ever take.

But take it we must.

Pax