We live in a time where there is quite a bit of division. There’s a lot of division even within the church. It’s not an easy time to build bridges. There’s some factors that work against that. We can bemoan that. And we can also say, wow, what an incredible time for the Christian testimony of the unity of the church. Our opinions are not our testimony. Our unity is.
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Pastor Ben Willey
Excerpt from “Walls of Hostility vs Unity in the Rubble”
Video Transcript:
I do want to say that when we’re talking about the church throughout our history, We’ve had to take stands to define what is orthodox and what is not.
We have a doctrinal statement for our church to say, hey, if you want to be a part of our church, this is what we believe. In constructing that doctrinal statement, we’re, we’re saying there are load bearing walls. There are walls that help define what is true, what is orthodox. This has happened throughout the history of the church.
This is why the creeds and the councils has happened. There are, there are edges to what we believe and that are taught in this church. There are times in history, there’ll be times for this church, when those walls have been threatened and they need to be upheld. But after being in church leadership for 23 years, I can tell you that the vast amount of hostility that Christians have with other Christians are not about load bearing walls.
The problem is that we erect walls between ourselves and the house of God that are about smaller things. Convenient things. Cosmetic things. Partition walls. But why? I think first is it’s help us. It helps us to be less messy. When we are similar and agree with everybody in the room. I think the early church would have been less messy too.
If it’s like, okay, wow, Jewish Gentiles, your whole framework, your whole habits, your whole, like, viewpoints on a million things are different. Let’s create a Jewish church. Christian Church and a Gentile Christian Church. That’s not what happened. Or, you know what? There are some people who are higher on the socioeconomic, some people are on the lower socioeconomic, some people are a lot more intelligent, a lot of people can’t read.
Let’s just divide them up to like, have this group here and that group there, so that there’s not that messy. See, when Jesus breaks down walls, there’s rubble. It’s tough. All of a sudden, we’re seeing people who are different than us, or representing Jesus in a way that’s like, Oh, I don’t know. And it’s uncomfortable.
I remember when I moved back from, um, Chicago, and I was there for ten years, and I told my wife, Babe, I’m gonna take you to Wawa. And you know what she said? What is Wawa? And I’m like, It’s not Wawa. I’m gonna take you to Wawa. It’s my people, right? And I take her in, and don’t judge her too much, judge her a little.
She went in and said, Oh, it’s like a 7 Eleven. A 7 Eleven? That’s beef jerky to filet mignon, like you don’t say 7 Eleven, it’s like wah wah. It’s my people. It’s easier when people have similar backgrounds to you. People different than us. The first thing is they feel like threat. They scare us. And I think this is something true for me.
I really wanna seem smart. It’s important to me, and it feels good when I can really figure out in my mind that other people are wrong.
It feels good to be able to take maybe their worst argument and poke holes in it.
And then lastly, I think we react stronger to what we disagree with than what we agree with. Um, I didn’t experiment this. Last week, where I wrote, like, 20 incendiary extreme statements. And I had different staff members walk in and read the statements. I, I mean, I was talking about guns, social media, child raising, 2020 election, racism, COVID, vaccine, social media, like, anything that people fight over, I was, like, just putting it, it, lots of statements.
And I had people read it. Jared literally just like laughed through the list, like, Oh, ho, ho, ho, are you gonna read these? Ryan, like, had a little breakdown, like, Oh, why? No, no fighting. But different people, different reactions. But I asked the question to the staff, Do you react more to the statements you more agree with?
Or to the statements you more disagree with? Whatever side of whatever issue that I could think of that you were on. Not one person said, why I reacted more than what I agreed with. We react more strongly to what we disagree with, and that’s definitely true for me. Things that I disagree with bother me more than the things I agree with make me happy.
There’s just something in us, and some of that, right, is our natural wiring to look for safety. And that’s natural, and that’s what, I don’t think, I think that’s just part of being a human. But, but see, part of being a Christian is to say the threat of hostility was taken out on that body, leading to our last question of why should we leave these walls that are torn down.
Ephesians 4 that we just read, make every effort, make every effort.
You know what, look at the group on your phone or your page, over that I read, make every effort to keep the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace. Why should we leave the walls torn down? Because broken walls demonstrate the power of a Savior who can break them. Broken walls keep us needing the Savior to stay around because He Himself remains our peace and the only way we can do community well.
And lastly, broken walls testify to a unity, not a uniformity that we agree on everything, but that unity is possible. Because his love is greater than our fear and tribalism. We live in a pretty divided time and, and that’s historically in our country we’re pretty divided. And we’ve been divided through many, many points of history throughout the world.
But I wrote this statement and I want one to read it specifically. Our testimony to the world is not bringing them, the world, into narrow closets of theology. explaining why our particular version of Christianity is better than the other versions. It’s bringing them into seeing a Savior who loves and helps us live out unity in the rubble of broken down walls.
This world does not need more arguments and othering. This world needs to see people who are different from each other, disagree on some things, and still live together in love. Our unity, dear church. Is our testimony living in unity will always take Tremendous courage peacemaking is always bloody. You know, why because it’s walking into conflict all the time
Last question for you on your notes this morning. What is my plan for dismantling? This wall of hostility with jesus’s help again. We can’t just leave it in theory We’re about to go through an election season. Man, was that rough last time. Boy, does it look just as rough this time. No matter where you line up.
What is your plan for dismantling the walls of hostility that you will face? And I just, one thing as you think of a plan, I would like you to write it if you would. It should include relationship. Get to know someone who can give the best arguments for why they think the other thing is right. Put a face on it and things change.
The Amazon River has no bridges. It’s over 4, 000 miles long. They just recently built a bridge over one of the tributaries as it comes into the Amazon River. But in the Amazon River, um, which produces more water than any river in the world, there are zero bridges. The factors of the Amazon River make bridge building really hard.
During dry seasons, it’s just, there’s very narrow waterways comparatively. And during rain, rainy seasons, there can be miles and miles wide. Also, there’s something about the sediment that flows in the Amazon river that moves the ground around quite a bit. The ground is always shifting. So it’s difficult, um, environment to build bridges on.
Whoever builds the first bridge over a significant portion of the Amazon, it will be a remarkable testament to their engineering.
We live in a time where there is quite a bit of division. There’s a lot of division even within the church. It’s not an easy time to build bridges. There’s some factors that work against that. We can bemoan that. And we can also say, wow, what an incredible time for the Christian testimony of the unity of the church.
Our opinions are not our testimony. Our unity is.