It was Christmas morning in Malaysia and I found myself waking up early to go have some coffee or tea with a chinese man I had met the day before in one of the Christmas gatherings we had. He told me he was very interested in our faith and worldviews and wanted to know more about them. Enough said. I was not going to turn down such opportunity, not even if it was Christmas morning.
I sat down, let the man invite me to a black coffee as it is customary in their culture (by the way, malaysian coffee is mixed with butter so you can imagine my surprise when I started drinking it) and started to chat. We talked about some surface level experiences and thoughts and exchanged a little bit of our lifes before all the questions started to pop up. Many of the details of the conversation I don’t precisely recall but there was one question that stroke me in the heart and has stayed with me since then. The man asked me “If I were to go to church, to what church should I go to? How can I know which one is right? It seems that for being a single religion, you sure have a lot of different denominations”. I answered the question the best I could, explaining a little bit of the background and history of the birth of denominations, trying to justify our current position by comparing ourselves with other divided religions and sharing a little bit of foundations that would help him identify a faithful church to the teachings of Christ.
Even though the conversation ended well and I believe that this man will find what he is looking for because I know the goodness and love of my Father, his question has been ever since a constant reminder of the importance of the unity of the Church. In this case to eliminate those obstacles and questions in people who have not yet come to faith but are seeking. Our disputes, differences and lack of willingness to work together or active pursuit to do so, act as witnesses against our faith and the message of the Gospel we were entrusted with. People seeking for hope and safety from all the hardship and difficult situations of life and of this world are looking for a united kingdom in which peace, unity and understanding reigns, and since we as the Church fail to provide this, they settle for less within our denominations in the best scenario. The worst scenario is them placing their safety in the hands of other believe systems that will prove themselves useless when the time is right.
That is just one perspective into the importance of us staying united in love. The second, and to me the most importante one, is mainly our own survival as followers of Christ. The best example of unity within the Church I find it in the pages of Scripture, specially the book of Acts and some of the letters of Paul. You see, the Church when it started right after Jesus died on the cross and later on ascended to heaven, immediately started facing intense opposition and persecution. On a very primal level they knew that the only way of surviving and keeping alive the message of Jesus was through their unity. Their only focus was to stay alive so that they could disperse the hope of the Gospel of Jesus to as many people as they could. It was this very focus and committment to one thing only (granted that it had many ways to be carried) that allowed them to stay united and in turn it was this extreme unity which attracted most people to faith.
Now, the Church is not the only character in the story. The enemy, the deceiver, also was, has been and still is very present seeking to steal, kill and destroy the Church and what we represent. It seems that he has very skillfully applied the technique of “divide and conquer”. Hence our present condition. He has deceitfully gotten us to loose focus of the main thing that united us and inflamed our ego against each other using the little things that separate us.
If I were to leave this post right here, it would be a very slumber one and a good friend has taught me that we should never complain nor criticize unless we are willing and able to provide a solution or alternative. Since I’m running out of words please bear with the simplicity of my proposal. We are to once more fall in love with our Lord, our Saviour, our God, Jesus Christ. We are to humbly resubmit ourselves to His ways of peace and love by repenting from our pride, judgement, and lack of understanding, by forgiving those who have fallen astray or have sinned against us, by pursuing reconciliation with those of whom we have allowed our anger and pride to separate us from them and by recommiting ourselves to the only purpose of knowing Him and making Him known. You can fill in the gaps at home.
To end the post I want to share with you the reality that my greatest challenges on this trip, and I believe that it has been the same for most of my squad as well, come from maintaining the unity within the group and fighting and working for our relationships to stay healthy and in love. A key piece of insight in overcoming these challenges for me has been in understanding who I am in Christ, who the people around me are in Christ and who we are as the Church. I constantly need to remind myself that they love me and that I love them and that God loves us both. I remind myself of the task that was handed to us and the power and authority that was given to us to carry it out as Christ’s body here on earth. I as well need to remind myself who they are not. They are not my enemies, nor my judges and we are not week nor divided. We are one body, united in Christ Jesus, in his death and resurrection, and that is who we are called to be.
