“Polarized!”
One word in the Pastor’s “Letter of Resignation.” One word in a collection of words that took just over five minutes to read. One word that exploded on my consciousness like thunder!
“Polarized!”
Our Church; an exemplary Community; followers of Jesus of Nazareth; “polarized”? Our Church; the one I and my Family have been a part of for many years. The people who provided an environment that helped shape our adolescent Sons into servants of Christ; that gave them a place to “cut their teeth,” in the particular service to Jesus and his people they were gifted for. The faith Community that gave me a place to continue fulfilling my calling while adding to my formal training as a Pastor and Teacher. Our Church: “polarized”? The Leaders of our Church “polarized”? The Pastor said so, in his “letter of resignation.”
How could this be?
My troubled mind sorted through stacks of possible answers. I came across memories of an old short film. “Is it always right to be right?” We’d show it to the Kids in our Youth Group at least once every four years. We wanted every Class to get it. We hoped they would understand that, sometimes, people insist on their “rightness” mistakenly. In doing so they harm themselves. They harm others. Only because they have to be “right.” I remembered the closing lines of the film. As the picture faded, a chasm widening between the players, the narrator intoned, “… Each group stood in its solitary rightness. … No one traveled across the giant gap.” “Solitary,” rightness: alone, separated by their insistence that they were right; “polarized.”
At first such ideas seem vaguely similar to the dangerous notion that there really is no “right,” or “wrong;” that we can never know the truth. Objective reality, such reasoning suggests, is unattainable. But then there are those strong words Jesus spoke about “judging” others. “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” (See the biography of Jesus, in the New Testament of the Bible, called “Luke”. Specifically, chapter six verses 41 & 42.) This is hard to read; so “in your face!” Jesus is saying, when you make judgments about other people you will always grossly overestimate how wrong they are. You will always just as excessively overestimate how right you are. You have a “self-oriented,” and therefore, distorted vision of reality. The German Philosopher, Schopenhauer, wrote, “Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.” Brings back memories of Dr. Seuss’ “Yertle the Turtle.” Elevated on top of a stack of his fellow turtles, whom he has bullied into this uncomfortable position, he boasts “I am ruler of all that I see.” Then he sees the moon above him in the sky. To his own, and all turtles’ dismay, he decides he’ll “call some more turtles,” and “stack ‘em to heaven!” He’ll “not allow it!” that “thing that dares to be higher than Yertle the King.” But the plan fails when an ordinary turtle, at the bottom of the stack, burps. The “Turtle King’s” tower collapses and Yertle is catapulted into the pond. A distorted perspective is dramatically corrected. And, “today the great Yertle, that Marvelous he, is King of the Mud. That is all he can see.”
“Polarization” is the inevitable consequence of a belief that my point of view is the only accurate understanding of reality. When such a belief is shared by others – even large numbers of others – it still has the potential to polarize. There are lots of examples: the Montagues and the Capulets; the Hatfields and the McCoys. There’s the example of the love of a Mother that has grown out of proportion. Everyone knows that there is no love more pure and selfless than “Mother love.” Yet, painfully, most of us know of Mothers who’ve become so delusional about their importance to a child that they’ve alienated the child and often many others. No example, though, is more sobering than that of the early Christian apologist, and preacher, Saul of Tarsus. Saul was, in his own words, “legalistically faultless.” By the standards of his own religion, he was “faultless.” Few if any standards are higher than those he lived by. Regardless, he could, legitimately claim that, when measured against those standards, he was “blameless.” Despite such impeccable virtue he had to admit, again in his own words, “I used to believe that I ought to do everything I could to oppose the followers of Jesus of Nazareth. Authorized by the leading priests, I caused many of the believers in Jerusalem to be sent to prison. And I cast my vote against them when they were condemned to death. Many times I had them whipped in the synagogues to try to get them to curse Christ. I was so violently opposed to them that I even hounded them in distant cities of foreign lands.” Clearly others shared his belief that Jesus of Nazareth, and his followers, were the enemy . They became “obsessed.” This man Jesus, and his devotees, must be exterminated. In later years that obsession became the thing Saul – then renamed Paul – most regretted in his life and the basis for his claim that he was the worst of all sinners. He, a man devoted for his entire life to pleasing God, had been mistaken about what God was really like and did not recognize him when he came to live in his neighborhood. How could this be?
“Polarization,” by definition, involves breaking up things. It breaks up groups of people. It divides. And once it divides it makes it easier for people to see those of a different point of view as something less than human. When we’ve gone that far it is alarmingly simple to dismiss or even discard another person. C.S. Lewis describes this process and the only preventative for it in a short essay called, “The Trouble With ‘X’.” He begins with the assumption that most of us have someone in our lives, or know of someone in the life of another, who is difficult. Someone who has made us more than a little miserable. Someone we would be happier without. Then he turns the tables on us. Talking about how God sees our difficulties and the people we blame for them, he writes, “He (God) sees (like you) how all the people in your home or your job are in various degrees awkward or difficult; but when He looks into that home or factory or office He sees one more person of the same kind - the one you never do see. I mean, of course, yourself. That is the next great step in wisdom - to realize that you also are just that sort of person. You also have a fatal flaw in your character. All the hopes and plans of others have again and again shipwrecked on your character just as your hopes and plans have shipwrecked on theirs.
It is no good passing this over with some vague, general admission such as 'Of course, I know I have my faults.' It is important to realize that there is some really fatal flaw in you: something which gives the others just that same feeling of despair which their flaws give you. And it is almost certainly something you don't know about - like what the advertisements call 'halitosis', which everyone notices except the person who has it. But why, you ask, don't the others tell me? Believe me, they have tried to tell you over and over again, and you just couldn't 'take it'. Perhaps a good deal of what you call their 'nagging' or 'bad temper' or 'oddities' are just their attempts to make you see the truth. And even the faults you do know you don't know fully. You say, 'I admit I lost my temper last night'; but the others know that you're always doing it, that you are a bad-tempered person. You say, 'I admit I drank too much last Saturday'; but everyone else knows that you are a habitual drunkard. … we must learn to see ourselves as a person of exactly the same kind. Some people say it is morbid to be always thinking of one's own faults. That would be all very well if most of us could stop thinking of our own without soon beginning to think about those of other people. For unfortunately we enjoy thinking about other people's faults: and in the proper sense of the word 'morbid', that is the most morbid pleasure in the world.
We don't like rationing which is imposed upon us, but I suggest one form of rationing which we ought to impose on ourselves. Abstain from all thinking about other people's faults, unless your duties as a teacher or parent make it necessary to think about them. Whenever the thoughts come unnecessarily into one's mind, why not simply shove them away? And think of one's own faults instead? For there, with God's help, one can do something. Of all the awkward people in your house or job there is only one whom you can improve very much.”
If you’re tempted to dismiss this as just Lewis’ opinion remember Jesus “speck” and “plank.” Remember how distorted our view can be. Remember how wrong a very right man like Saul of Tarsus could be.
We, the Church, will never be able to put our propensity for divisiveness behind us until we accept the fact that we incorrigibly insist on playing down our faults and playing up those of our Brothers and Sisters; until we are prepared to “first take the plank out of our own eye … .” Undoubtedly the polarizing issues in our Church are serious matters. But, according to Jesus, nothing is more serious than admitting when we are wrong. Even if it means laying aside the tools of sacred ritual to “go be reconciled,” to a Brother who thinks we are wrong. (See the biography of Jesus in the New Testament of the Bible called “Matthew”, specifically chapter five verse 24.)
There is a powerful illustration, in the Bible, of how dramatically such reconciliation can be realized. It’s in the New Testament section called “The Acts of the Apostles,” specifically chapter 15.
The story centers around an intense controversy in the First Century Church over whether or not Christians should practice the sacred rituals Jews do. Christianity had Jewish roots. Furthermore the new movement grew as rapidly as it did because Judaism was already well established in the Mediterranean world. This gave its promoters a jumping off point in virtually every place their mission took them because they, usually Jewish themselves, could begin their efforts by arguing, in the local synagogue, that Jesus of Nazareth really is the Messiah, the hope of Israel, and the world. In many instances they were effective. People were persuaded. Whenever their plan to begin with the Jewish people in a community failed they turned to the Gentiles. Again they enjoyed some success. Over time the Church expanded into virtually ever region of the Mediterranean world convincing people from every segment of Greco Roman society that Jesus really is the hope of all humankind.
Out of this wonderfully cosmopolitan movement dissension grew. The Jewish Christians were adamant. The movement was the fulfillment of everything the people of Israel were called to, and had lived for. It was only logical that their rituals should carry over into Christian life. Things came to a head. A Conference was convened in Jerusalem. You can read about it in chapter 15 of “The Acts of the Apostles,” a selective history of the early Church.
To fully understand how significant this Conference is to our discussion it is important to remember who the players were. It was a men only meeting. These men were highly passionate men. The had grown up in a world where a group bludgeoning someone to death with stones because he disagreed with them was not unheard of. Some in the room were guilty of such barbaric behavior. Some bore the scars of such treatment. In classic Biblical understatement the writer says, of the meeting, there was “much debating.” We know from earlier statements that the matter had come to a head because of “sharp dispute and debate.” We can just imagine what this “much debating” looked and sounded like. Just try to join a conversation among friends from any modern Mediterranean culture. Talk on any subject is impassioned. The men debating in the room that day were from most of the ancient Mediterranean countries. This Conference was, frankly, barely controlled chaos. Yet, among its closing remarks was this simple preface to a very brief directive for the Churches, “it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us.. ..”
“IT SEEMED GOOD TO THE HOLY SPIRIT AND TO US …”
Without going into detail it is clear that what kept these men from stoning each other was a mutual intimacy with God the Holy Spirit and a common respect for the influence of that Spirit in the other. Passionate feelings? Oh yes! Impassioned defense of their positions? Most certainly! Polarization? At times! Reconciliation? Yes!
To leave the defense of our “solitary rightness,” and be reconciled with each other is God’s will. If we surrender to this aspect of his will by obeying the simple command of Jesus to “go,” to the very one who thinks we are wrong, then the events of Acts 15 will begin to be rewritten. Strong words may be spoken. Sharp feelings might follow. But respect for the voice of the Spirit in our own heart, as well as in the heart of the other, will lead to a mutual recognition of God’s view of the matter. Hearts wanting that view above all others will be reconciled.
“The job has to be tackled some day: and every day we put it off will make it harder to begin. … The matter is serious: let us put ourselves in His hands at once - this very day, this hour.”
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