Combatting a Divided World

        Growing up, one of the things I made a promise to myself about is the fact, I would never let myself get worked up about sports. Do I love watching and playing sports? Yes. Do I have teams I would prefer to win when watching them play? Absolutely. However, as I have process through this promise I made to myself, I came to the realization that I don’t ever want to get angry at someone around me about something I can’t control. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but what I did not like is the divisiveness that I saw being a fan of sports teams has on people.

                  I think this same effect happens in politics, the variety of ways of parenting, and all the other thousands of topics we so badly think we have the ‘right’ mindset on. The problem isn’t necessarily the disagreement but the fact we take on the identity of the things we believe in. While doing this we forget the people we disagree are human. That they have a heartbeat, and that God wonderfully and masterfully created them. All we see them as, in those moments of conflict, is an enemy. Which ends up resulting in fractured relationships. However, disagreements aren’t bad. Wrestling with topics together aren’t bad. If that’s the case, God wouldn’t have built community for us to live in.

                  As believers in Jesus Christ, we are called to be in community. God loves diversity and differences. Think about the way the world we live in are made. Even the creation and difference of male and female. He made animals of all kinds to roam the Earth. He made different ecosystems. He even made us to think and look differently. In fact, scripture tells us that eternity, will have differences. Revelation 7:9 states,

“After this I saw a vast crowd, too great to count, from every nation and tribe and people and language, standing in front of the throne and before the Lamb. They were clothed in white robes and held palm branches in their hands” (NLT).

This is the way that God wants eternity to be. And if that is his vision and promise, then we as believers have to realize the role we play in this. We need to be able to bridge the gap and show that through differences, we can still get along and even do live with people who might think differently than us. And the only way for us to do this is to live in the image of Jesus and love people around us. One of Jesus’s original twelve disciples, name John was said to have written 1 John, along with the other 2 letters (2 John & 3 John). John was given and known as the disciple “whom Jesus loved”. He had proximity to Jesus himself and felt the love that Jesus gave to the people around him. He ends up writing this in the book of 1 John 4:7-8,

“Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love” (NLT)

So how do we combat divisiveness? We combat it will love. Loving our neighbors like Jesus did and commands us to do (Matthew 22). Loving unconditionally and seeing through the differences we have with one another. Our identity should be in Christ, not the things of this world. So, believer, fight hard and side with team love and let’s make a difference in the world by reflecting Christ.