“I know I have to love him, but I don’t have to like him.” There’s something to this, well, rationalization. That is, it contains both truth and rationalization. Our call to love one another doesn’t mean we can’t have some friends closer than others. That we can’t choose to spend more time with our friends than others. It doesn’t mean we won’t find ourselves in Paul, Barnabas and John Mark situations.
That said, it’s quite easy to confuse a refusal to murder those we are commanded to love as acting in love. Love for the brethren may not flatten our affections out. It means, however, significantly more than merely steering clear and leaving them alone.
In the broader church we have our various and sundry tribes. Sometimes those tribes are marked by theological differences on secondary and tertiary matters. Sometimes they are marked by more subtle differences in subcultures. That ornithological creatures of similar plumage tend to congregate in close proximity isn’t anything to be ashamed of. But when we are honest we have to admit we take it too far. If there would be Reformation in our day, that needs to change.
Which is why the loss of privilege, the increasing cultural hostility toward the Christian faith may be a great blessing. I’ve served the church under deep persecution, in a nation under martial law, where Christians are a small and despised minority. I found that they were sustained by involved arguments over whether infralapsarianism or supralapsarianism represented a more biblical view. No, that wasn’t it. I found the heat of persecution softened them toward each other. Persecution fulfilled its good office of making the true church a melting pot. It burned off the dross of the divisive. Perhaps this is what God has in store for us in our day.
That means the church down the road, where they are stiff and have all sorts of cultural rules, and your church, are family. Your church, doctrinally imprecise, loose, embracing many of the culture’s mores, is family to the uptight church down the road. Charismatics and Presbyterians, Baptists and non-denoms, Lutherans and the Reformed, we’re all in this together. We’re all bought with a price. We all have the same elder brother, Jesus who died not just for our sins but for our quirks and foibles. Jesus, who died for our brothers just as much as He died for us, who loves “them” just as much as He loves “us.”
We must stop putting up with our brothers and start lifting them up, stop begrudgingly admitting we’re related, more eagerly embracing them as beloved kin. Reformation of the church happens as we are re-formed, not separated shocks of wheat out in the fields, but one loaf, the body of Christ.