On Fighting

I have really been enjoying the contributions on Duke Divinity’s faith and leadership blog. They always have thoughtful, current, and relevant topics for living in the world today, like “The Secular is not the Enemy”

Karl Barth once wrote, “We do not have the Word of God otherwise than in the mystery of its secularity.” Whenever we draw the line too sharply between God and secularity, between the church and the world, or between faith and public life, we inadvertently reinforce the ancient heresy of Gnosticism. That is, by morally and spiritually separating God, the eternal and immortal, from the world of substance and stuff.

C. S. Lewis, wrote: “People must believe what they can, and those who believe more must not be hard upon those who believe less.” When we write-off whole tracts of humanity as secular we may be missing the wisdom of the God who cannot be contained in any creed or ideology. It is fitting and prudent, humble and sane, to be ready to hear what God may wish to say to us from unexpected corners of the larger world.

For some strange reason we in the Church sometimes get the idea that everyone else is the problem, or should be avoided. I can’t put my finger on why, but I know that I have felt that way in the past. No where is this clearer than the contempt of friends in church when you start having a social life outside the church. This fight between the Church and the world is exactly what should not be happening. Of course there shouldn’t be fighting within the Church either – but we see that as well, we’re not perfect. At least we consider one another family, and fighting within the family precludes leaving the family (one would hope at least).

The world is not the enemy, Jesus plainly showed us that the accuser, the power behind the institutions and high places that de-humanizes is the enemy. He fought that enemy through his ministry and personally. The fighting that the world does with the Church is de-humanizing at times. The Church should be responding in kind. We need to treat the world humanly with love and compassion, showing them who they are and what they are doing. We are not to respond with in kind with fighting.

Both factionalism and schism seem to forget that, according to the gospels at least, we are not recognized as children of God (literally as children of our heavenly Father) by the correctness of our views, but by the quality of our mercy.