Unity

     How important is unity?  Biblically, it is very important.  But not all calls for unity are biblical unity.  It's important to know the difference.

      "Satan is using you to attack me!" the woman accused, looking scared, refusing to make eye contact.  This woman and I were supposed to be teamed up for a ministry, but we really didn't gel well,  That happens.  But I had just caught her in a lie, and I confronted this.  I wasn't able to let it go.  Rather than admit it, or deny it and try to explain that I perceived it differently than she had intended, she flew into attack mode.  Satan was using me to attack her, supposedly.  "You're destroying the unity!"  She continued.  I saw that I was getting nowhere with her, and I let it go for the time being, which turned out to be a big mistake, because the problem only got worse. 

     I have found that nine times out of ten, when someone shows concern about unity, it is really a misdirection to avoid being held accountable.  So many times, I have seen wrongdoers immediately go into the unity speech.  But before they did their wrong deed, they weren't interested in unity.  They were interested in their agenda.  

     When someone calls for unity, more often than not, they are asking you to compromise your heartfelt beliefs and convictions, ignore problematic behavior that will only get worse, refuse to hold others accountable, and pretend things are acceptable when they are not.  I have seen this in families, churches, ministries, communities, and political arenas.  

     Unity is only as good as what you're unified around.  In Christianity, we are unified around the truth of the Bible, and the Gospel message that Christ died for our sins and rose again.  These things are central in our focus.  There are times when people let issues in the background become too important, and lose that unity with fellow believers.  Paul addressed two women in Philippians 4:2-3, I beseech Euodias, and beseech Syntyche, that they be of the same mind in the Lord.  And I intreat thee also, true yokefellow, help those women which laboured with me in the gospel, with Clement also, and with other my fellowlabourers, whose names are in the book of life.  There are times when we are called to put differences aside and focus on the fundamentals.  Psalm 133:1 gives this sentiment when it says, Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!  But these and other passages about unity do not mean that we have to call a truce with evil.  

     We are called to fight!  In Jude verse 3 (Jude only has one chapter) we are told to contend for the faith.  The next verse tells us For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.  So we know here we are to fight when it comes to evil creeping into Christianity, especially wrong teaching about Jesus.  We are to fight that!  

     In First Kings, we see Elijah making a stand against Ahab and Jezebel.  He didn't try to have unity with them.  In fact, all the prophets ran into these situations, where they had to speak out and, on the surface, seem to cause disunity.  What they were really doing was fighting against evil for what was right.  We are never to make a peace treaty with evil.  We are not to be unified with what isn't of God.  Second Corinthians 6:14 says, Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?  This verse is often used to teach against Christians dating and marrying unbelievers, and that is one way it can rightfully apply.  But it is really an even broader application.  Light and darkness don't mix.  Truth and error don't mix.  Good and evil don't mix.  This means we don't unify with evil ideas.  

     We are also called to wisdom, and told that God will give us wisdom if we ask (James 1:4-5).  Wisdom doesn't ignore problems for surface peace.  Wisdom is knowing how to address problems so that they don't affect the real unity.  In the scenario I stared with, this woman and I never had unity.  When I confronted her lie, and she accused me to destroying unity, she was really saying that I was shattering any illusions of peace we had on the surface.  But if we had real peace, she wouldn't have lied.  She wouldn't have had to accuse me to cover for her own sin.  I've seen other situations where someone did something very wrong, then told the wronged party they needed to move on and forgive and get over it.  They didn't want to be held accountable.  Don't let them distract you from doing right by their cries for unity.  Real unity matters, but sometimes, we have to go through unpleasant situations to get to it.  This means disturbing surface unity, because it isn't real.  What is real matters.  Don't sacrifice it for what isn't!  

Life's not fair...or is it?

      Life isn't fair, but I have found it isn't as unfair as we sometimes think.  Everyone has hurts and disappointments.  There was a time I'd look at people who didn't have the same difficulties I was facing and wondered if God loved them more (I theologically knew that wasn't true, but I wondered how they had somehow gotten His favor).  I wondered if certain people knew a secret I did not.  But the longer I live and see things play out, and hold all of it up to God's word, I see how life is hurtful, but God is our comforter.  

     Second Corinthians 1:4 says that God comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.  What a beautiful picture of being used by God to bring His healing to broken hearts.  

     A friend of mine really struggled with direction, finding a job, knowing where to live, etc.  I have never struggled with that.  I've always really fallen into the right things I'm supposed to be doing.  She could look at me and think about how unfair life is, and how I must know something she doesn't.  On the flip side, she didn't have the struggles in the dating world that I had before I was married. She married younger than I did, and after marriage she had no trouble conceiving.  I could look at her and compare my own journey in these areas and think how unfair it is.  You can apply this in so many ways.  Someone who has been severely abused, or someone who has lost a child or a spouse, can look at those who haven't yet faced these things, and think how unfair it is.  Our own experiences can really taint how we see others.  But everyone has gone through something.  We are broken, hurting people, and we need each other.  

     Sometimes, when we see the truth about other people's pain, it clarifies our own, and helps us not only be more compassionate, but feel a sense of validation that we are not alone.  

     I struggled with a series of events that occurred from early adolescence until my mid 20's.  These events, I see now, were a refiner's fire.  They purified me for God's service and really taught me a lot.  But it was hard, and it left me watching others and wondering what secret they knew that I didn't.  In order (and simplified for time's sake), here is a basic synopsis:

     1) Right as I was hitting adolescence, all of my closest friends left our church and small school within a few months, and I was left with a few very mean girls my age who continually left me out, and had the teacher (who didn't like my mother and took it out on me) around their finger so I was always the one who got in trouble for not playing their games.

     2) We finally joined a new church community, but the youth leader (it was a husband and wife couple, and I refer to the wife here) made a humiliating joke about my body publicly, and also made many other harsh and judgmental barbs against me.  There was a mean girl problem there too.  Eventually, as I got older and stepped up to serve the Lord, there was opposition in the church against a teenager sharing the gospel, and I was in trouble with church leadership.  I was so confused, because I was sharing Jesus, and leading others to salvation.  Why was I in trouble from people who should have been proud of me?  My family was kicked out of this church.  Again, I was humiliated.  By this time, I felt like a reject to other Christians, and I had panic attacks almost daily, where I couldn't breathe.  I wondered what secret all these other people knew that made them acceptable to the church but not me.  

     3) I went on a mission trip as a college student, and a young man pursued me, but inappropriately, and awakened desires in me that shouldn't have been aroused until my wedding night.  I both wanted him and was repulsed by him in that moment, and I rejected his advance.  The fallout from that was enormous.  As was my lot in life, I was in trouble for hurting him--he wasn't in trouble for his clumsy advance.  I was the bad one.  He was the sweet guy and I had a dirty mind.  This made me question my sanity.  Because I had liked him (just wanted him to pursue me less intensely), I tried again with him, but this gave him more opportunity to hurt me.  He talked about us getting married in several conversations, but then denied it when it suited him, and I was the one left with the hurt, loss and burning passion he had aroused.  He got off Scot-free, and went on his merry way without me.  I felt emotionally and even sexually gutted from the experience.  The few people I tried to confide in told me I was in the wrong and that he was godly and good.  I was given books such as Boy Meets Girl (now retracted by author Joshua Harris, whose own faith and marriage have ended), and Passion and Purity, by Elisabeth Elliot.  Both of these books (and others like them) were all about how men could do what they wanted and women had to just put up with it, and if they put down boundaries or questioned it, they were sinning.  I felt deep shame.  At the same time, I wondered, What magic or secret did all these people have that I didn't that made them acceptable but not me?  Was I genetically inferior?  Was I sub-human?  I felt like I was a peon in life, and all these other people who hurt me (like the mean girls, the hurtful church, the missionary guy, or the authors of the books I read) were at the top.  They were above question.  They got what they wanted.  They sat on their throne of popularity that I could never hope to have.  I was broken, and didn't realize that brokenness is a universally human condition.  

     All of these hurts combined inside of me, not dealt with, and colored how I saw and experienced everything.  I would look at others and think, as I had gotten in the habit of doing, "What do they know that I'm not privy to?"  What I didn't see was that they had hurts and problems too.  Just not the same ones as me.  

     I would go to women's Bible studies, and struggle with several panic attacks before and after (and force myself to act normal during the study) because being around so many women reminded me of the mean girls and female teachers in my past.  Being around married women who had never been dumped made me feel like I wasn't as good as they were, and wonder if they had followed all of Joshua Harris' and Elisabeth Elliot's rules.  Sometimes, even to this day, when I talk to people my age who nostalgically reminisce about going to youth group back in the 90's, and how fun and wonderful it was for them, I feel really jealous.  I didn't get to be a fun teenager.  I was too busy getting kicked out of church and rejected by people who were supposed to love me.  And I'm tempted, even now, to ask, "What secret were they following that I wasn't, for them to be accepted when I was rejected?"  The thing is, that's not a realistic way to think about it.  

     I got some healing, and in my walk with the Lord, I came to know some truths.  First, everyone has a cross to bear. If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.  (Matthew 16:24).  I came to know God's comfort experientially.  Sometimes, He was the only one I could turn to.  I went through a time in my early 20's, as I was dealing with all of this, that I took a pocket testament everywhere I sent, even into the bathroom, because I couldn't bear to be parted from it.  It was my only lifeline to sanity.  Those were precious days with God, and He gave me treasures from His heart to mine.  In the midst of those worst days, I discipled a young women about four years younger than me, and she is a missionary today.  God was using me, even when I felt I had nothing to give.  Even when I felt rejected by other Christians, and the man who had said he wanted me.  There were so many victories back then, some I wasn't aware of at the time.  

     Everyone has their own set of struggles and insecurities.  If given enough time, we start to see that they aren't all at the top of the totem pole.  So many of my friends have experienced different hurts than me, and I've realized that it is just as heartrending as my own pain, sometimes even more.  Some of them have had hurts later in life than I did, but are now at a similar place to where I have been.  As I said, Joshua Harris, the poster child for purity culture, ended up divorced, as did several other purity culture icon couples that seemed on top of the world when I felt I was at the bottom.  I take no joy in that.  It grieves me.  I am so happily married, and I don't want to see anyone's family fall apart.  But it does show that all wasn't as perfect as it seemed.  They weren't better than me.  They didn't know a secret I didn't.  As for Elisabeth Elliot, I read the newest biography about her this past week, and I was grieved to learn some things about her third marriage (her first two husbands died, and she had wonderful marriages with both of them).  Her third husband was abusive to her, and very difficult to live with.  It turns out he wasn't even a born again Christian until four years after Elisabeth died (she had thought he was saved, but he wasn't).  She was in that abusive marriage during the time she wrote Passion and Purity, the legalistic book that broke my heart more than it already was.  She was writing from a place of brokenness, just as I was reading from a place of brokenness.  None of these people had it all together.  They had a platform to share, but that didn't mean they were right, or were in on some big secret I was missing.  

     When the truth comes out, it should make us grieve for the pain of others, and for ourselves.  Humanity is in pain, and Jesus is the only solution.  As Christians, we can deliver the Good News to people who need Him, and give grace to the hurting fellow-believers among us.  I never want my life to make a struggling believer feel incompetent or want to give up.  I want to show as much compassion as the Lord gives me for everyone I meet.  I never let anyone in on how worthless I felt back then,  No one at Bible study knew about the panic attacks, or what I was carrying, and I wonder, what if I had found a compassionate Christian to share with?  Someone who would have exemplefied Second Corinthians 1:4?  I want to be that to someone.  

     As I said, life isn't fair, but it isn't as unfair as we sometimes think.  Everyone is broken.  Let the compassion of Jesus extend from you to someone in your life today!  Be an example of Second Corinthians 1:4.