He who loves his brother abides in the light, and there is no cause for stumbling in him. I John 1:10

And They Will Know We are Christians by Our. . . ?

            Yesterday, while driving to town, my husband and I came up behind a flatbed semi that was loaded with huge pieces of heavy rusted steel in shapes we couldn't identify.  Trying to figure out what those shapes were held our attention for a few moments, but then I heard a ringing sound that could only be metal on pavement. "What is that noise?" I asked. "Does that truck have a chain dragging or something?"

            My husband, whose eyesight is good enough to spot a caterpillar crossing the road, looked and exclaimed, "His trailer brakes are coming apart! There goes a spring!"

            As the semi chugged to a slow stop at the light we pulled up beside it on the passenger side and my husband began honking the horn in an attempt to get his attention.  When he still didn't see us, I jumped out of the car, ran to the sidewalk and began shouting and waving my arms. The driver rolled down the window and my husband, who had put his four-way flashers on by that time, got out of the car and climbed up onto the truck's passenger side to tell the driver what he'd seen. Whew! A truck that size, loaded as heavily as it was, could have destroyed property or even killed someone if the problem wasn't known and addressed.

            The urgency we felt to warn that driver left my heart pounding for many minutes after. I feel the same sense of urgency about another kind of "falling apart" about which I've become intensely aware over the past few weeks; the runaway truck of rusted and disintegrating brotherly love I see careening through differing denominations.

            When I see on a social media website, and hear from the mouths of other Christians about a well-known speaker and author of one Christian denomination  bashing another author from another Christian denomination for his writing success, I am appalled!  Who in the world, and I do mean "in the world," would ever be attracted to such division, such dissension, such disintegration?  "Doctrine divides, and it should," I've heard it said, and while good doctrine is very important for dividing truth from untruth, I don't believe doctrine was meant to divide people.  What did Jesus say on the matter when the Apostle John told Him, "Teacher, we saw someone who does not follow us casting out demons in Your name and we forbade him because he does not follow us" (Mark 9:38)?

Do not forbid him, for no one who works a miracle in My name can soon afterward speak evil of Me. For he who is not against us is on our side. For whoever gives you a cup of water to drink in My name, because you belong to Christ, assuredly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward. (Mark 9:39-41)

            Was Jesus saying that doctrine isn't important?  Not at all. He was teaching the same principle that Paul taught in his letter to the Galatians when he gave this warning:

But if you bite and devour one another, beware lest you be consumed by one another! (Galatians 5:15).

So what should we do instead? Paul gave this advice:

For you, brethren, have been called to liberty; only do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." (Galatians 5:13-14)

In a simple keyword search of the KJV, the words "love", "lovingkindness", etc. appear 756 times while the word "doctrine" appears only 57 times, an approximate ratio of 13:1.  In the NKJV the counts are "love" 500 times, and "doctrine" 42 times.  In the NASB, "love" 484 times, and "doctrine" 14 times.  Keyword searches of other versions of the Bible yield similar results. Do you think perhaps God is trying to tell us something?  It's not that doctrine isn't important, but that the doctrine of love is the most important!  Jesus said:

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another." John 13:34-35

And Paul wrote to the Corinthians:     

And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love. (I Cor. 13:13)

            So here's the difficult question: How are we doing in the "loving one another" department? How are we doing at responding in love to those who don't speak to us in love, whether those people are "in the world" or in the Church?  I suggest that we could all improve in this vitally important area which Scripture identifies as being greater even than faith and hope. I challenge you to ask in prayer, How am I doing at loving like you do, Lord? How do you want me to change?  If we do this, and listen for His answer, it may not be easy or even pleasant to make the changes we must, but I believe it's the first step in repairing the current "runaway truck" of unloving disagreement within the Church that is so detrimental to the Kingdom. It's not that we'll never disagree, but if we can agree to disagree respectfully, Christ will be glorified.  Hopefully, we can all agree that that's a good thing.

Daye Phillippo

July, 2012