Naming the Lie

          As I write this I am perched in the gallery at the General Conference of the United Methodist Church, where I have come to serve as a Reserve Delegate.    It is the last day of the Conference.    The days have been etched with the acid of acrimony as delegates have fought over a host of concerns.   Human Sexuality,  Climate Change, Health Care,  all of them very real and of serious import, and almost all of them are argued from “Progressive”  or “Conservative” perspectives.     As the Church tries to express itself, every petition and argument, whether it is theological, social or financial, is sliced with the blade of ideology between left and right.   The tension is high.   So high, in fact, that schism is a very real possibility.

            In the midst of the power maneuvers and political manipulation – and there is plenty of it from all corners – there is a pervasive and defining lie that hangs in the air like smog.   It is a lie that is so prevalent and all encompassing that most people are not even aware of it.     It’s a lie too, that infects our secular culture as well.

            And the lie is this.

            The binary labels of left or right, liberal or conservative are in themselves a fundamental lie.    To draw a line through the Body of Christ, or through our secular culture and to force people into one column or the other is fundamentally an act of violence.    These are artificial designations, and I would submit that they are designed to separate and alienate.     Divide the people into two oppositional, adversarial groups and get them arguing and fighting and they will never unite to create real change.  Divide and conquer, right?   Moreover, if we train people to  adopt a narrow world-view and tell them they should only relate to people with whom they agree, we have then created an easily controlled population, haven’t we?    This brings to mind an experience I had as a Pastor when I brought a book for an adult study class.  The class rejected the book because they didn’t agree with public positions the author had taken.   Mind you, they had never read the book, but they refused to even expose themselves to an idea that might be different from their ideological perspective.

            Think about this in terms of real life experience.    No one is completely liberal or completely conservative.    We are all far more complex than that.   Indeed, it’s a bit insulting to think that we could be so narrowly labeled and filed away.   The truth is that each person is a marvelously complicated jumble of feelings, emotions and experiences.    Our very Createdness defies any attempt to dump us into one of two camps so we can curse, judge and throw stones at one another.    Indeed, we believe that God Created us each as unique individuals, knowing us even before we entered our Mother’s womb (Jeremiah 1:5).    More than that, our human nature is to be dynamic and changing.  No one stays the same.   The things we thought and believed when were twenty years old are rarely the things we think and believe at age sixty.  

            For those of us in Christian community, reality is based, not upon stands, positions, or artificial categories,  but on relationships.   We are called together not because of ideological agreement but because of our common commitment to God’s love in Christ Jesus.   For us, the relationships we build in faith are deeper than the wounds we cause one another.   They are broader than the disagreements that we will inevitably have, and they are stronger than the pull of secular culture which always tries to define us and pull us down to it’s level (Romans 12:2 “The Message,” Eugene Peterson).     In Christian community we belong to one another to such an extent that we are described in Romans 12 as all part of one body in Christ, and all unique, all with different functions and roles to play.    More than that, we follow a Savior who takes down the “dividing walls of hostility, (Ephesians 2:14)” creating a new community of peace and harmony.

            Yet here in Portland, the United Methodist Church is infected with the virus of secular culture, using the power of “this world (Ephesians 6:12)” and jamming people into categories rather than relationships.    Arguing, positioning and posturing, not according to the beautiful relational power of The Gospel, but along the lines of ideology and the lust for control.

            It’s my firm conviction that if our Church does not name and renounce this lie of ideological categorization, we are doomed to be completely swallowed up by the culture around us.    So the call comes for each of us to lay down our closely held ideological positions.    We are not liberal or conservative, left or right, we are One in Christ Jesus.    Do not be taken in by a pre-set list of positions and policies.  Instead, sit with people who have a different point of view.   Build relationships with people who see the world through a different lens.    Root your relationships, your life, your work with Christ at the Center, not your ideology.

            If we can actually do this, we might have a shot at being Church rather than an outpost of a secular political party.  If we can do this we might find a way of claiming God’s firey, Pentecostal love as a global people.   If we can do this, we might be able to heal the hurt we’ve caused and bring life where there is only strife.   If we can do this we might be able to begin the transformation of the world we yearn for so powerfully in our mission statement as a denomination.

            And in all of it let us remember that it is God, and not we who do the judging.  Our job in Jesus Christ, is to love extravagantly and leave the judging to God.

SR