The Dismembered Bride

The church is often called the bride and Christ the bridegroom. The role of the bride is to make herself ready for him (Revelation 19). She spends the day preparing, making herself beautiful, waiting in excitement and anticipation of the one who will come for her.

Forgive me if I over-extend the metaphor here, but I have a point. This is what I have seen recently from a great many people in the church. The bride wants to be pure and perfect, but then, this hair is out of place so she pulls it out. This fingernail is crooked so she trims it. One thing doesn’t seem quite right or doesn’t go with another part, and she cuts it off, bit by bit, until the bridegroom shows up and his beautiful bride has been pulled apart and limb from limb. In an attempt to perfect herself she has divided herself, leaving her groom with all of the pieces he loved, but none of them together.

I understand perfectly the desire for the truth and perfection of faith. My desire is to not be deceived and to understand as much as I can as clearly as I can, but I do not understand the relentless unsolvable debates and death matches Christians engage in among themselves. It’s not that I don’t think these topics have value in discussion, it’s how they are discussed that causes dismemberment.

In college, one of my favorite things about the first day of the semester was to observe the personalities I would be in class with. You see, even the most learned of professors, I had the honor to be taught by, would approach these difficult topics (such as predestination, works and faith or faith alone, denominational differences, women's roles in the church, old-earth new-earth, post-trib pre-trib, cessationism continualist) with an understanding that they couldn't say definitively that they were right, but would explain their own opinions. And even if I didn't agree entirely, I respected their humility and felt they were worth listening to. Then they would open it up to the class for discussion, and as soon as the freshman Biblical Studies majors would start having at it, I would tune out and start doodling. They were always absolutely convinced they got it right, and if they could shout loudly enough, they could win.

I know it doesn’t stop at the classroom. I know there are debates and arguments among large groups of believers that carry so much “zeal” that anyone from the outside would only see it as animosity.

I could stay out of the conversation in the classroom, but sometimes it hits when I’m not expecting it, from people I’m not expecting it from. And maybe this makes me a coward, but I duck out as soon as I can when I realize it’s no longer a discussion, but more like being yelled by a brick wall.

You see, I know what the Bible says. I know who said what in what context and who said whatever seemingly conflicts with the first guy. I see things that confuse me. I wrestle with them in coversations with people and on my own with God. I see a need to strive to understand. But I also see a need to let things lie when there isn’t a way to go.

My approach is to look at what God says like a geometry text book being presented to a first grader. Everything written is true. Some things are easy to understand, like circles, triangles and numbers, but the rest is too big and the details get kind of lost. The more we talk to the author, the more we understand, but we're still little and we can't fully get it. What we may see as discrepancies are just truths we can’t grasp yet, and maybe were never meant to.

Bottom line, I chalk it up to a really big God trying to explain the workings of his mind and the universe with itty-bitty people. We should never stop searching, but we need to stop fighting each other. We need to listen and we need to share the wisdom we have, but we can do that without lopping off body parts. 

I’m writing this while watching the Hunger Games and I am reminded of a line from Catching Fire. “Remember who the real enemy is.” If we don’t stop tearing our-self apart, we can’t be effective in the real war.

Jesus would often speak in parables and would say “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear,” (Mark 4:9). Sometimes the Bible works like that too. It's not always clear at first glance, but that means we have to seek God and wait to understand in our time. That often entails hearing another opinion, sharing our own, and, if your mind isn’t changed and you haven’t changed theirs, then letting it go for a while.

I think that, as a bride waiting for out groom, we have to start accepting that.

We have to remember we are all on the same team. Our goal is to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ. While we also need to keep each other accountable to the truth, we are called to do so in humility and love. If there is an impasse, we need to leave it up to God to defend his own truth, and walk away from the battle.

We don’t know the time when the Bridegroom will return, but we know he doesn’t want to return to a bloody mess in place of his beautiful bride.