A House Divided
John MacArthur should be thrown in jail. John MacArthur should run for president. Masks should be required. Masks should be burned. Don’t touch me. I need a hug. I’m not staying home anymore. I’m never going to church again.
What can be agreed upon, above all else, is that disagreement abounds. The poles are moving further apart. Peter Turchin, Keith Mines, and others have warned that America meets all the qualifying marks of a nation careening toward civil war. Mines has suggested that the US has a 60% chance of entering into a second civil war in the next 10-15 years. For many people, this is unthinkable. For another large demographic slice, it’s simply uninteresting.
While another American civil war would be an atrocity, there is still a greater threat which we face in our own day: a furthering of disunity amongst true Christians. We know that God’s pattern of creation includes tearing apart . . . but He has expressly stated His desire that, since Christ’s personal body was torn apart on our behalf, His ecclesiastical body ought not be. True Christians need to be working toward true catholicity. In this time of rapidly increasing polarity, unity will require significant striving and generosity.
Shrinking numbers won’t be a sign of losing the battle. Gideon’s army had to shrink before they could be used by God in victory. A tearing apart between believers and make-believers is a welcome rend. Richard Wurmbrand tells the story of masked men entering a house-church meeting with guns and demanding that everyone deny Christ or die. One by one, those who denied the Lord were told to run for their lives and when only those willing to die were left, the men took off their masks and said, ‘Ok. Now, let’s have church.’ While this story has the potential to dangerously resurrect a kind of Donatism if not handled carefully, the main point should be clear: some division bad; some division good.
The greatest crisis presently upon us is disunity in the Church. It ought not be so. God has said that discord amongst His people is to be guarded against and shunned (Proverbs 6:19, Titus 3:10, Romans 16:17). With political pressure, social pressure, angst, and disorientation all plying their wares on us, we have to be more guarded than ever . . . not to “keep the peace” but be “peacemakers.” Division is often a pre-requisite for true peace. Discord amongst brothers in another thing entirely. Neither mask-wearing nor mask-burning or appropriate grounds for erecting walls of hostility.
As churches begin to navigate how to reopen, if to reopen, whether they are “with” MacArthur or “against” him, compliance, or noncompliance, there is a single target that needs to be aimed at: maintaining unity in the Body of Christ. We have all heard countless stories about a Christian Union soldier encountering a Christian Confederate soldier alone on a country road during the Civil War. Even if all of these stories are apocryphal, the inevitable direction the anecdote takes toward their common faith being a meta-narrative more powerful in its binding than the micro-narratives were in their power to divide, should be a poetic lesson for us.
There are issues of great import on the line in our day. We are being faced with questions regarding racism, public health, the proper role of magistrates, and governmental overreach. Capitalism v Marxism. The Church v the world. These are important issues. The fact that they are lesser narratives than the Gospel does not mean that the Gospel does not speak to them nor that they are unimportant. As with any text, the Church should be able to read the times and say something about them in unison. This will require a rejection of the universal impulse to demonize those who are not with us on every point. In the wake of present polarization, people are being burned as witches not only for not believing in the right gods, but for not chanting their praises with the right inflection. These are all worship wars. Critical theory in its popular iteration is like the regulative principle on meth. With this in mind, the Church has to recognize that the Gospel is the only meta-narrative with power to save. She alone has the power to bind and to cast asunder. If America or any other nation wants to have a future, they must, by necessity, submit to the Gospel as the only hermeneutic capable of interpreting the trends and proclaiming a way forward.
The Church alone is the medium the Lord has appointed by which He will save nations (Matthew 28:19). If the nations of the earth join the kingdom, they will be allowed to keep their language, their national identity, and even their cultural artifacts (Revelation 7:9, Revelation 21:24). But make no mistake, these are not invitations to a party across town. The invitations are announcements that the earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof. Everyone is welcome to settle in and stick around, but only in service of the King. All squatters will be removed.
