Our Witness of Undividedness

by Craig Wong - GUM Newsletter, Summer 2009

 

 

“Be ye undivided, therefore, as your Heavenly Father is undivided”

- Paraphrase of Matthew 5:48, Jack Bernard, How to Become a Saint, 2007

   A fellow congregant and I recently found ourselves in the midst of a furor at our children’s middle school where, as parents, we serve on the “site council,” the committee ostensibly responsible for overseeing the school’s academic priorities and budget. Without warning or solicitation of community input, the district announced that a charter high school was going to be co-located at our facility, wresting away the entire third floor. “This is an outrage!” cried the school community, my friend and I among the throng.

   We soon learned that this closed-door decision stemmed from California’s Prop 39, a statewide ballot initiative that was promoted and bankrolled by Netflix founder, Reed Hastings, an ardent evangelist of the then-fledgling charter school movement. Not only did Prop 39 pass in 2000, but Hastings was also appointed to head the State Board of Education that same year. This confluence resulted in an educational reform policy that gave charter schools a huge legal boost: the power to demand and procure available building space within public school districts. In predictable fashion, this flawed policy pits charter schools against traditional schools in divisive fights for space.

   Like all forms of sin and violence, dividedness leads to dividedness and a spirit of “us” versus “them” manifested in a variety of directions at our school. For many, it was easy to vilify the district administrators as cowards for kowtowing to demands of Prop 39, written or not, for fear of lawsuit. For others, disdain arose for a principal who could have done more to defend his school. Between the two schools, reticence fostered an air of mutual suspicion. Kids viewed the high-schoolers as invaders. And district officials dismissed the parents as fearful, territorial or small-minded. This last judgment, of course, was particularly offensive to those of us who, in the name of social justice, brought the fight directly to the local board of education.

   In all our pushing and striving, even when well intended, we become aware of the dividedness within ourselves, that is, our duplicitous faith. As Christians, when in the middle of such “battles” as the one at my child’s school, examining our motives serves to reveal the source of our hope. Once, in moment of advocacy fatigue, I remember asking my late pastor Bob Appleby, “How do I know if I’m investing more time and energy than is fruitful?” He very pastorally responded, “Well, are you hoping to bear witness…or to win?” This humbling question, which I remember finding difficult to answer at the time, required that I come to grips with the fact that I could be worshipping Christ with my lips while taking matters into my own hands. Lord have mercy upon this divided heart!

   Receiving God’s mercy, in fact, sat at the heart of my church’s recent “season of Jubilee,” a significant moment in our history that provided an important alternative picture to the one that had played out at the school. Our pastors recognized that while, after 25 years of life together, there was much to celebrate, there were also debts to be forgiven, liens to be cancelled, accounts to be wiped clean. There were patterns of relating that had become lifeless or indeed destructive, whether between leaders and the general congregation, members with one another, pastors among themselves. There was a subtle yet real divide exposed, during a time of corporate confession, between those in the congregation who largely stood in judgment of others…and those who had long went into hiding for fear of judgment. There were also ways that we had come to pigeon-hole each other, or indeed our selves, in a way that squelched the wealth of gifts and testimonies we could offer to one another. Perhaps most
importantly, we recognized ways we had become too certain about ourselves, the gospel, or what it means to be the Church, which not only foster division within our ranks, but with those who sit outside as well. We had to re-kindle our first love, say yes to Jesus once again, and re-learn what it means to be children in his presence…and in the world.

Such seasons of renewal remind us that a hopelessly divided world will remain without hope if we, the Church, remain divided as well. Indeed, engagement in the world, as it is in the Church, is more often than not, messy and unpredictable. Nonetheless, despite our sin and flaws, we are called by Christ to be in these places. Set apart for His purposes, trusting only in Him, we are given grace to live miraculously undivided for a world yearning for sanity.

This article first appears in PRISM Magazine, the publication of Philadelphia-based Evangelicals for Social Action (ESA), for whom Craig Wong writes a regular column called On Being the Church. ESA’s archive of this column can be accessed at www.gum.org/onbeingthechurch