Jesus
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not "perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.” (John 3:16-17)
Martin Buber
“In the relation to God, unconditional exclusiveness and unconditional inclusiveness are one. For those who enter into the absolute relationship, nothing particular retains any importance—neither things nor beings, neither earth nor heaven—but everything is included in the relationship. For entering into the pure relationship does not involve ignoring everything but seeing everything in the You, not renouncing the world but placing it upon its proper ground. Looking away from the world is no help toward God; staring at the world is no help either; but whoever beholds the world in him stands in his presences…” (from
I and Thou)
C.S. Lewis
“When I attempted a few minutes ago, to describe our spiritual longings, I was omitting one of their most curious characteristics. We usually notice it just as the moment of vision dies away, as the music ends, or as the landscape loses the celestial light… For a few minutes we have had the illusion of belonging to that world. Now we wake to find that it is no such thing. We have been mere spectators. Beauty has smiled, but not to welcome us; her face turned in our direction, but not to see us. We have not been accepted, welcomed, or taken into the dance. We may go when we please, we may stay if we can, no one cares. Now, a scientist may reply that since most of the things we call beautiful are inanimate it is not very surprising that they take no notice of us. That, of course, is true. It is not the physical objects that I am speaking of, but that indescribable Something of which they become for a moment the messengers. And part of the bitterness which mixes with the sweetness of that message is due to the fact that it so seldom seems to be a message intended for us, but rather something we have overheard. By bitterness I mean pain, not resentment. We should hardly dare to ask that any notice be taken of ourselves. But we pine. The sense that in the universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, the bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret.” (from
The Weight of Glory)
Terrence Malick
Badlands (1972)
Days of Heaven (1978)
The Thin Red Line (1998)
The New World (2005)
Martin Heidegger
“Truth is the truth of Being. Beauty does not occur alongside and apart from this truth. When truth sets itself into the work, it appears. Appearance—as this being of truth in the work and as work—is beauty. Thus the beautiful belongs to the advent of truth, truth’s taking of its place. It does not exist merely relative to pleasure and purely as its object.” (from “The Origin of the Work of Art.”)
Saint Paul
“Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” (I Corinthians 13:12)
Marshall McLuhan
“All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered.” (from
The Medium is the Massage)
Sufjan Stevens
And in my best behavior
I am really just like him
Look beneath the floorboards
For the secrets I have hid
(from “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.”)
F. Scott Fitzgerald
“And as I sat there brooding on the old unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s long dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it, He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.” (from
The Great Gatsby)
Yasujiro Ozu
Tokyo Story (1953)
George Steiner
“All representations, even the most abstract, infer a rendezvous with intelligibility or, at the least, with a strangeness attenuated, qualified by observance and willed form. Apprehension (the meeting with the other) signifies both fear and perception. The continuum between both, the modulation from one to the other, lie at the source of poetry and the arts.” (from
Real Presences)
Paul Tillich
“What is the nature of a being that is able to produce art? Man is finite. He is, as one could say, mixed of being and nonbeing. Once he was not. Now he is and some time he will not be. He is not by himself, but thrown into existence and he will be thrown out of existence and cease to be for himself. He is delivered to the flux of time which runs from the past to the future through the ever-moving point which is called the present. He is aware of the infinite. He is aware that he belongs to it. But he is also aware that he is excluded from it… Out of the anxiety, and the double awareness that we are finite and that we belong to infinity from which we are excluded, the urge arises to express the essential unity of that which we are in symbols which are religious and artistic.” (from
On Art and Architecture)
Dorothy Sayers
“Poets have, indeed, often communicated in their own mode of expression truths identical with the theologians’ truths; but just because of the difference in the modes of expression, we often fail to see the identity of the statements.” (from
The Mind of the Maker)
Over the Rhine
What a beautiful piece of heartache this has all turned out to be.
Lord knows we've learned the hard way all about healthy apathy.
And I use these words pretty loosely.
There's so much more to life than words.
(from “Latter Days”)
Soren Kierkegaard
“He will grant thee a hiding place within Him, and once hidden in Him he will hide thy sins. For He is the friend of sinners... He does not merely stand still, open His arms and say, 'Come hither'; no, he stands there and waits, as the father of the lost son waited, rather He does not stand and wait, he goes forth to seek, as the shepherd sought the lost sheep, as the woman sought the lost coin. He goes--yet no, he has gone, but infinitely farther than any shepherd or any woman, He went, in sooth, the infinitely long way from being God to becoming man, and that way He went in search of sinners.” (from
Training in Christianity)
Richard Linklater
Before Sunrise (1995)
Waking Life (2001)
Before Sunset (2004)
George MacDonald
“In what belongs to the deeper meanings of nature and her mediation between us and God, the appearances of nature are the truths of nature, far deeper than any scientific discoveries in and concerning them. The show of things is that for which God cares most, for their show is the face of far deeper things than they; we see in them, in a distant way, as in a glass darkly, the face of the unseen. It is through their show, not through their analysis, that we enter into their deepest truths. What they say to the childlike soul is the truest thing to be gathered of them.” (from
The Voice of Job)
Emily Dickinson
The Bustle in a House
The Morning after Death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted opon Earth –
The Sweeping up the Heart
And putting Love away
We shall not want to use again
Until Eternity
John Steinbeck
“In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror.” (from
East of Eden)
Bob Dylan
He woke up, the room was bare
He didn't see her anywhere.
He told himself he didn't care,
pushed the window open wide,
Felt an emptiness inside
to which he just could not relate
Brought on by a simple twist of fate.
(from “Simple Twist of Fate”)
Walker Percy
“What is the malaise? You ask. The malaise is the pain of loss. The world is lost to you, the world and the people in it, and there remains only you and the world and you no more able to be in the world than Banquo’s ghost.” (from
The Moviegoer)
Sofia Coppola
Virgin Suicides (2000)
Lost in Translation (2003)
Marie Antoinette (2006)
Kathleen Norris
“Church is to be participated in and not consumed. The point is not what one gets out of it, but the worship of God; the service takes place both because of and despite the needs, strengths, and frailties of the people present. How else could it be?” (from
Dakota)
Marilynne Robinson
“Whenever I think of Edward, I think of playing catch in a hot street and that wonderful weariness of the arms. I think of leaping after a high throw and that wonderful collaboration of the whole body with itself and that wonderful certainty and amazement when you know the glove is just where it should be. Oh, I will miss the world!” (from
Gilead)
N.T. Wright
“Preaching the gospel means announcing Jesus as Lord of the world; and, unless we are prepared to contradict ourselves with every breath we take, we cannot make that announcement without seeking to bring that lordship to bear over every aspect of the world.” (from
What Saint Paul Really Said).
David Bazan
It's weird to think of all the things
That have not been keeping up with the times
It's ten o' clock the sun is down
Just begun to set the western hills on fire
I hear that you don't change
How do you expect to keep up with the trends
You won't survive the information age
Unless you plan to change the truth to accommodate the brilliance of man
The brilliance of man
(from “Letter From a Concerned Follower”)
G.K. Chesterton
“Gazing at some detail like a bird or a cloud, we can all ignore its awful blue background; we can neglect the sky; and precisely because it bears down upon us with an annihilating force it is felt as nothing. A thing of this kind can only be an impression and a rather subtle impression; but to me it is a very strong impression made by pagan literature and religion. I repeat that in our special sacramental sense there is, of course, the absence of the presence of God. But there is in a very real sense the presence of the absence of God. We feel it in the unfathomable sadness of pagan poetry; for I doubt if there was ever in all the marvelous manhood of antiquity a man who was happy as St. Francis was happy.” (from
The Everlasting Man)
Gus Van Sant
Elephant (2003)
Paranoid Park (2008)
Solomon
"I have seen the task which God has given the sons of men with which to occupy themselves. He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end. I know that there is nothing better for them than to rejoice and to do good in one's lifetime; moreover, that every man who eats and drinks sees good in all his labor--it is the gift of God. I know that everything God does will remain forever; there is nothing to add to it and there is nothing to take from it, for God has so worked that men should fear Him. That which is has been already and that which will be has already been, for God seeks what has passed by." (Ecclesiastes 3:10-15).
Jack Kerouac
“What is that feeling when you’re driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing?—it’s the too-huge world vaulting us, and it’s good bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.” (from
On the Road)
St. Augustine
"Thou hast made us for Thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee..."
Martin Luther
“Unless I am convinced by proofs from Scriptures or by plain and clear reasons and arguments, I can and will not retract, for it is neither safe nor wise to do anything against conscience. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen."
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
The Son (2002)
The Child (2005)
;
The Search 
Spots and wrinkles indeed. I think you nailed it. The adversary is using these highly charged issues to weaken the unity of the Body of Christ. Theses issues are ministry opportunities that should inspire discussion, not hate. We ought to go back to what the word of God says about these issues and be the church that God birthed by His Spirit. Agree to disagree on the debateables and move on.
I always appreciate how you lay out these types of issues. The most intriguing point is the internet. The neo-Calivinism movement was barely a peep when I became a Christian ten years ago and now it is like the thing and if you aren’t apart of it, i.e. Charismatic, Arminianistic, etc. you are in the wrong. Before you could simply disagree and worship Jesus, now it feels like the war between England and Rome.
Back in the day, young adults gathered at events like The Call, One Day and other things to seek Christ and now everyone is segmented. I am really down about that I guess. Good post.
Brett-
You nailed it as denominations, blogs, pastors are drawing lines in the sand over these six issues. What I wonder is how are christian evangelical colleges (wheaton in particular) leading or tackling these issues….or should they be. I would be curious to know what your impression is of the roll christian colleges should play in this arena.
Malin Friess
Why is it that no one understands figurative language any more? #4 shouldn’t even be an issue; there’s no need to force some kind of literal truth onto parabolic language. I don’t believe that the creation stories of the Bible are literally true – and given their inconsistency, I don’t know how anyone else could, either – but they do hold a lot of truth about how the ancients saw the world. I’d argue that the real challenge for us as contemporary Christians is in finding the truth that speaks to us from those words in our current context.
While these may very well be the “national” issues that continue to divide Christians, each context has its own set of issues. For instance, here in Boston, numbers 3-5 aren’t things that divide orthodox Christians. I really only come up against those when I go back to my denomination conferences in the South. Boston has also had legalized gay marriage since 2004. While that doesn’t make it a non-issues, it makes it a different issue for individuals on both sides.
I think the biggest divisions will be traced back to the urban/suburban/rural differences. If you ask urban Christians on the coasts what the issues are, you are going to get different answers than what’s happening in the South or midwest.
Agreed. When we lived in San Francisco, Christians hardly even discussed #3-5. They had opinions about them, but they weren’t hot topics. We now live in Alabama, and holy crap–just say the word “Gay” and Christians reach for the boxing gloves.
I think Ben Rey would agree with this. If you want to really see American Christian’s get divided, ask them about service to the poor and marginalized. Should we invite homeless people over for dinner? Should your church have a ministry for sex addicts? Is it ok for Christians to buy luxury cars?
Agree with all of these. Another one to add I think would be the role of the Holy Spirit in the church. Things seen pretty divided between charismatics and mainstream evangelicals on this one issue. I think it will get more pronounced with the increasing popularity of IHOP and others.
Wow, somebody besides me sees this, I feel like I found another brother in Christ. =P Good observation.
Great observations. I might be able to think of a couple others but none bigger than these 6.
Whoops, I’m Mr. Anonymous who replied to Ben Rey.
Though this may fall under politics, I believe that immigration is a huge divisive issue in the U.S. church.
I would also point out that the divisive issues you listed are largely descriptive of the church within the United States, but in my opinion, not the global church. I’m not sure that many of our brothers and sisters around the world have had the “luxury” of dealing with issues like the internet when they are facing persecution and poverty.
I think you might very well find that alot of your brothers and sisters “around the world” have more luxury than you imagine and are perfectly fit to deal with issues like the internet. I know as I am one of those “brothers and sisters around the world”. I don’t think you are entirely wrong, the global church does have more pressing societal issues to deal with but at the same time Americans must stop seeing the rest of the world as the wretched of the earth. I live and am from one of the poorest countries on this earth. This doesn’t mean that I am poor myself or that I am not aware of and struggling with the issues mentioned in this post. After all I am here on this blog aren’t I?
I would say the debate on the Holy Spirit is fairly recent when looking from a historical perspective; only in the last 100 years has it become an issue. All of these things are definitely divisive and will only get worse. I would also submit music and worship styles. While this falls in the “open hand issue” category, try telling that to some people. The enemy has definitely used this to divide churches and generations.
Calvinism vs. Arminianism is a huge divisive theological stance for ages. And multi-site campus churches vs. autonomous churches is another huge issue in our time.
Anchor MAN!!!!! Not Anchor WOMAN!
Holy Spirit. The “charismatic” label is about as bad in some churches as being called an atheist. Huge need for reconciliation, cool-headed reading of the Scriptures and letting go of some control.
These issues differ not only between denominations, but regionally, like a few other commenters suggested. Place has a lot of influence in this discussion, because urban, rural, and suburban communities all have different demographics of people to serve. You talked about it being amplified with politics, and I’ve experienced that deeply. Living in the city, “pro-life” has come to mean “all life” to me, as I see people suffering from poverty and disease daily. My parents and other folks I know who live in suburban areas don’t come into contact with this as often, and this affects their political alliances for sure.
The rural/urban disconnect, as you put it, spurs and perpetuates division more than we give it blame for.
These issues differ not only between denominations, but regionally, like a few other commenters suggested. Place has a lot of influence in this discussion, because urban, rural, and suburban communities all have different demographics of people to serve. You talked about it being amplified with politics, and I’ve experienced that deeply. Living in the city, “pro-life” has come to mean “all life” to me, as I see people suffering from poverty and disease daily. My parents and other folks I know who live in suburban areas don’t come into contact with this as often, and this affects their political alliances for sure.
The rural/urban disconnect, as you put it, spurs and perpetuates division more than we give it blame for.
Brett ––
Well done. Your list of things that divide and unite Christians seems perceptive and accurate. However, I would make this one caveat: most of what you listed (2-5) tends to divide Evangelicals more than Roman Catholics or the Eastern Orthodox.
If I were to add one more divisive issue for Evangelicals, it would be biblicism as described by sociologist Christian Smith in his new book, “The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture” (Brazos). Professor Scot McKnight says, “I believe this book is the biggest challenge evangelicalism has to face, and I mean honestly face. In essence, he argues that what we believe about the Bible (biblicism) is undermined by how we actually read the Bible and how we practice the Bible.”
Although I am reluctant to lay blame, I do think many neo-Calvinists are responsible for turning non-essential issues (egalitarianism vs. complementarianism, evolution vs. creation) into essential issues over which Christian fellowship should unite or divide. We should remember these wise words from British theologian Oliver O’Donovan whenever we are tempted to call it quits:
“The problem with the notion of separation is its expressive, self-purifying character. It will not wait for God to purify his own church in his own time. Schisms may come, but woe to that church through whom they come! There is no right, or duty, of schism. As unity is given to the church as a gift, so it is taken away as a judgment. But on no account can disunity be a course of action that the church may embrace in pursuit of its mission or identity. The only justified breach is the one we have taken every possible step to avert.”
Christopher
I don’t know if I’d add anything. I might enlarge the categories (which would render them less meaningful, I suppose). I think sexuality divides evangelicals in general- not just homosexuality. I think pornography is eating the church alive, and it divides us insidiously. It’s not an issue, prima facie, that divides us. But, it divides our community by being the sin behind many other things relationally. Porn is killing the church more than many of those other issues. I meet and counsel with several men as a pastor, and invariably, nearly all of them struggle with porn. Some habitually, others occasionally.
What I’m saying is that this isn’t a public issue that evangelicals are divided on, where they could take a stance on one side of it or another. I think evangelicals are against porn, but if we’re discussing real reasons for division, porn is why so many marriages split, why so many friendships are shallow, and why small groups in our churches never disclose real issues. I think it’s THE division in the church.
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Brett,
Thanks for this. I would say that these are issues in the American Church. As far as issues among American evangelicals, you nail it.
An issue that you do touch on, and that is related to all six, is who’s in and who’s out in the Church. Ecumenism is not a concern for some because the only people who are “in” are people in their circle, while for others, it is a pressing issue.
Also, it’s spelled “complementarian”.
Thanks again Brett.
You’re Wrong!
No! You’re Wrong!
In Christian Love,
Bob
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Why can’t Christians debate these issues without being accused of being divisive? Answer: Biblical Illiteracy. Too much focus on subjects and not enough on what the Bible says or how to study and interpret it. Most of the debates/discussions I have with other Christians is sadly lacking of Biblical references to back one’s position. (This is true of both sides.) We need to stop using “This is what I think or feel” as the standard Christian default.
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War: i.e. Just War theorists vs. pacifists. Ironically, the divide over war is a relatively quiet one in that those standing on either side tend to leave the other be with both sides deeming the other hopelessly convinced of idiocy. Now more than ever Christians need to address this issue and work out what the Bible says if we are ever going to be able to speak against the new “Holy Wars” that are being waged against present day “evil-doers.”
All good points thus far… to zoom out a bit, I think ecclesiology is an up and coming issue for the American Church. I see an increasingly visible, though perhaps not as emotionally charged, divide between what one could call the sacramental/liturgical/ecclesial Christians vs. the more individualistic/non-sacramental Christians. Big questions at stake in this discussion: does Christ manifest Himself through an historic institutional medium with established rituals, sacraments, and liturgies? Or does He manifest Himself directly and immediately to each believer on an individual basis apart from form, matter, and institution?
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