Church Unity, Ur, and Babylon

Babylon and Ur

"Where would you go instead?" That is a question I am asked when I mention that I might leave my current church. It is worth noting that, while it is a valid question in healthy circumstances, it also bears disturbing resemblance to tactics of abuse. "No one else will love you." "Every workplace is at least as bad as us--but we're fine."

My answer has wound up like this:

If things are bad enough, if I fit in poorly enough, maybe it is with me as it was with Abram and the Lord is calling me out of the land of my forefather into a place he will show me. The question is: am I in Ur, being called to leave in faith, or am I in Babylon, being called to stay and seek the good of the land where God has placed me?

How do I tell the difference? Well, there is the conundrum, right? When you are inside, it feels like you should give Babylon a chance. Maybe they aren't so bad, maybe they will finally hear me, maybe I'm expecting too much... But that isn't, actually, how we relate to Babylon, either.

In a really good church, the question of whether I "fit in" has the opposite tenor. In our consumerist world, we look for what fits us. In the economy of salvation, we seek to welcome the stranger, the foreigner, the outsider. If I do not fit in at a church, and supposing that I am truly a part of the body of Christ, then the aspiration of Church Unity calls us as a body to see this not as reason for me to leave but as reason for the church to change. If the church says to me, "because you are a nose, you are not part of the body," then the church has failed at unity, not me. If I smell a rat, and the body says "you are too sensitive," then that is not the body being the body. The church might well say, "you smell wrongly, let us take you to a doctor," but this is very different. In the latter case the body listens to me, hears me out, and brings in the whole counsel of the body of Christ under the wisdom of our source of life and unity, that is, the Word.

So here is how the question seems to me: it is not about how well I fit in with the church, but about whether the church registers me as a part of the body. Does it feel my pain? Does it seek to heal, to nourish, to answer me? Does it receive what I offer as gifts from God? Or does it, instead, wish I would leave, regard me as a thorn in its side, hope that I will find somewhere I will fit in better. Does it receive my questions as opportunities to grow together into him who is the head and to seek to understand how great God's love is? Or does it, instead, feel threatened, exhausted, and divided by them? Does it incarnate me into Christ's body or discarnate me into the world?

So, then, with a Babylon of a church, one should be quiet and uncontentious, seeking its welfare, and generally live in it as one would live in the world. But then the obvious question arises: why not simply leave? There is enough world to live in without the confusion of a Babylon of a church. So, I conclude, there is no Babylon among churches, there is only Ur.

And Yet

And yet... this does not seem to answer the question, does it? It almost seems too easy, as if I were looking for a framing in which to excuse myself from the challenges of living in a church on this side of heaven's gates. That would surely be the charge against me from those who would have me stay, or at least to leave in a less condemnatory fashion. I am biased, certainly?

Well, I am biased, but that won't finally answer the question. Perhaps I am rightly biased. As Gadamer argues, we operate with biases because we couldn't get anywhere without some starting point, and a starting point inevitably biases us. We must, in his language, prejudge the situation in order to begin the task of interpretation.

Well, I am biased. I am biased because I am frustrated at not being heard, listened to, argued with. Fight me, I'm baptist! In the love of Christ, let us go face to face, head to head, hand to hand. Let us hash out our differences in the heat of emotions which are nevertheless tempered by an enormity of love for each other as brothers and sisters in the eternal family of God. Or perhaps don't fight me. But whatever you do, here I am, your brother in the Lord, asking questions you haven't answered. I am no threat to the body, but rather I am a part of the body.

As it stands, I feel as though, for the sake of a thin facade of "unity" I keep silent. And now... now my bones cry out. I cannot keep silent, but I do not seek division. I seek, rather, a more robust unity. A unity which does not rest on some paltry doctrine resting on a dozen verses, but one which rests on the historical life, death, and resurrection of the God-Man, Jesus of Nazareth, who I know loves me, and us, because he bled and died for us while we were yet sinners. He did not come to bring peace, but the sword--and yet in him we have peace and have it abundantly.

If the unity of your church does not welcome you into the fellowship of a God who knows you intimately, who made you, who loves you enough that he died for you while you were yet mired in sin, then it is not the Unity of the Church. Though the world and even your congregation may not hear, God hears, and knows, and cares. He died to make things right. He cares enough to bleed, even to die, not because he owes it to us, but because he loves us.

Imperfection: Already/Not Yet

Again, I hear the objection: "no church is perfect!" Indeed, and yet they are all called to pursue unity in Christ. I am not seeking a church which has perfectly attained it, but one which strives for unity in Christ. I seek a church which is evidently pursuing perfection. Be holy, O Church! Do not run from my pain, which I feel and which therefore you are called to feel. Answer my questions, for God cares for me in my afflicted questioning. Do not hide behind exhaustion or fear, for God himself will protect his church and provide for your every need. When I say to God "answer me when I call!" The answer comes--should come, usually comes--from the Church. We are one, you will live with me into eternity, so be preparing for that day.

On that day, when we are perfected, what will we say to each other? I am sure we will both ask for forgiveness. I will confess that I spoke out of anger, you will confess that you were afraid, we will rejoice together in the unity which God has provided. Perhaps you will admit that you were wrong... or perhaps I will. At any rate, we will look each other in the face, and we will weep over the division that has come between us, and we will rejoice that we have been reconciled again to each other.

And here is where I am now: I feel this division, and it hurts. It hurts more deeply than the betrayal of a pastor caught in adultery, it hurts more deeply than realizing my home church no longer exists, I have lost my tradition. My history must be rewritten. The very depths of my soul are in turmoil because I love you.

Looking Forward

So, then, with all this pain and anguish and frustration... where do I turn? With all the saints, I turn again to the Church's one foundation, her Lord, who will see his work through to completion, who will perfect her, who continues with a heavy heart to sanctify her by his blood. There will come a day when we are united, truly and fully, around the throne in worship. Jesus come quickly.