Pilgrims – Separatists and Puritans
For example, when we were in Tulsa, the church Matthew and I attended kept getting more and more weird. And then the pastor started letting his wife preach every other week, which didn’t make sense – HE might have been gifted as a teacher, but she most certainly was not. It was a struggle for us to not be thoroughly disgusted with Christian oddities Every. Single. Sunday. But we are both anti-church-hopping, so we stuck it out, until one Sunday morning when we found ourselves sitting in our living room, dressed and ready to go, yet unable to force ourselves out the door for church. I tentatively broached the subject. “Uhhh…you know, we could maybe possibly perhaps consider going to another church. It’s not like we haven’t been going there for a long time – we’ve given them plenty of chances. We’ve both gotten involved in ministries there and yet no one has reached out to us in any sort of friendly overture. And it’s just getting weirder and weirder. What do you think?” Thereafter, we started going to another church, which we both ended up really liking. No weirdness, no bad speakers teaching, just Jesus, preached plainly every Sunday. In this case, separatism was the right choice.
Then take our move to Rhode Island. Matthew had decided long before we moved that, upon our relocating to New England, we would attend the church he had grown up in. From previous conversations, I knew that this church differed in a few areas of practice from Matthew’s and my beliefs, so I fought his decision fang and claw, good separatist that I am. His view was, if we’re really right in our interpretations, it will make a difference in the way we live, and people will see that and want to know more. Influencing and purifying, as it were. I finally sulkily decided that, fine, we could do it his way. (He ended up being right, by the way. Overall, it’s a great church, and although I do feel like the odd one out sometimes, people have been curious about some of our different practices and have given us opportunities to share about them.)
So. There is a time when separatism is absolutely necessary, and, as Matthew has been reminding me, there are other times when we need to suck it up and learn how to live in unity with our fellow believers. What would happen if we split every time we had a difference with someone? It would be like the Grey Town in the beginning of C.S. Lewis’s book “The Great Divorce.” Or like the state of denominations as they exist today. (Hmmm…)
The other night, Matthew and I had a great discussion on this issue of differing interpretations and practices. I really like black and white, right and wrong answers. (In school, I liked algebra because you simply memorized the rules and forumlas and applied them. I hated subjective “discussion questions” in history or literature where there could be more than one answer.) In Christianity, there are some absolutely clear items of belief, the chief of which is Christ and Him crucified. Beyond that, Matthew pointed out, no two Christians will ever absolutely agree on everything. That’s hard for me to accept, because I want to believe that I could be totally right about everything. Yet, essentially, not a one of us has it ALL right. That’s one reason we need each other, why we are not to forsake assembling together. As we sharpen each other, as we spur each other on to love and good deeds, we can balance each others’ tendencies to one extreme or another, hopefully arriving as close to the Truth as possible.
Along the way, God does give each of us particular passions, personal convictions, and areas of understanding, a “life message,” if you will. Each of us seems to have a special insight into one area of Christian living or another, and as we share those with each other, we edify the body.
Summary: All of us are fallible. None of us has this Christianity thing down perfectly. Let’s pursue Jesus in unified community with others, in all humility and grace, purifying when at all possible and separating only when entirely necessary.
