On my post below on the PC(USA)’s recent church-court rulings, my wife’s Uncle Ben left a comment in which he noted, among other things, that “we all have varying lists of issues A-Z that we consider essential that don’t quite match what other people think are non-essential. Of course, one gets tangled up in that nasty charity stuff, too, even if we can codify essentials. Darn that I Cor 13.” True statement, that, one which was echoed today by the Rev. Paul Detterman, executive director of Presbyterians for Renewal, in a powerful sermon to our presbytery assembly on 1 John 2:1-11. (Unfortunately, no one taped his message, but when I asked him for a copy, he said it would be posted on the website; when it is, I expect I’ll have more to say on it.)
As the Rev. Detterman noted, sin is sin, and it’s “not love but cultural capitulation” to tell people otherwise—and yet, when we let those who disagree with us become enemies and treat them as such, that’s sin too. “By this we may know that we are in [Jesus]: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked. . . . Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness . . . and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.” We may disagree—in fact, we will disagree, there’s nothing more certain than that; but how did Jesus treat those with whom he disagreed? He spoke to them quite sharply, to be sure, but he never stopped loving them; though their hard, cold hearts drove him to his death, that death was for them, too, just as surely as for any of the rest of us. May we also learn to love those who oppose us, even to the point of being willing to lay down our own good for theirs.
Amen, brother.