“If being hurt by church causes you to lose faith in God, then your faith was in people not in God.”
A few weeks ago this quote was making the rounds on social media. At first, I gave it a hearty ‘Amen’ but then I had a check in my spirit. “Something is missing here,” I thought.
I understand much of the sentiment behind this quote. It’s saying some helpful things. Though everyone abandons the faith it doesn’t make the truth less true. The hypocrisy of Christians doesn’t negate the reality of Christ. We want our faith (and all the other graces of the Spirit) to be grounded in the objective reality of Christ. We must be ultimately tethered to Christ and not to others. So, I give all those points a thumbs up but I still think this statement is missing something about the reality of New Testament Christianity.
This pithy quote, I believe, is missing the fact that our greatest apologetic is other Christians. Or as Francis Schaeffer said,
…after we have done our best to communicate to a lost world, still we must never forget that the final apologetic which Jesus gave is the observable love of true Christians for true Christians. (The Mark of the True Christian, 29)
Schaeffer makes his point by showing the difference between Jesus’ points in John 13 and John 17. In John 13 Jesus tells his disciples that they’ll give evidence that they truly are followers of Jesus by loving one another. But in John 17 Jesus is tying the veracity of His own claims to our ability to actually love one another.
So when church folk do hurt you and it rocks your faith—it doesn’t de facto mean that your faith was in people instead of God. John 17 helps us to see that a rattled faith in God is an expected byproduct of Christians not modeling Christ.
Yes, there are people who are needlessly offended. Yes, sometimes “Christians are hypocrites” is just a smokescreen to keep from having to actually wrestle with the claims of Christ. But on occasion the disunity among professing followers of Jesus actually will rattle the faith of others. And that’s not because they are weak—it’s because our love for others was weak and we weren’t accurately imaging Christ. And such a thing ought to give us pause to consider how our interaction might actually harm the faith of others.
That’s why that statement didn’t sit well with me. It minimizes the interconnectedness of believers and it mutes our final apologetic. I get it that God is sovereign and He cares for His sheep and He ultimately keeps us. But John 17 has to weigh something. Does my love for other believers and the way I interact with them proclaim that Jesus Christ is the crucified and risen Son of God who actively transforms hearts? Or does my interaction give lip service to those claims whilst clearly evidencing a heart still grabbing for another kingdom?
Think of it this way. Your unity with other believers is a means that God uses to keep me in the faith. The way you interact with others is something that God uses to strengthen and enliven my belief that the Spirit of God really does change hearts. Or your interactions and your disunity calls into question whether or not God is powerful enough to bring the unity he said that he would. And your disunity leaves a little pebble in my shoe forcing me to wonder whether or not this whole thing is just a sham.
Don’t read me wrong. My faith is grounded in the objective reality of a resurrected Christ. You can’t ultimately cause me or anyone else to lose my faith. In fact, I’m firmly convinced of the living Christ. Because I know Him. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have a few pebbles in my shoe that I wish weren’t there. And in John 17 Jesus calls us to care about the pebbles we are putting in the shoe of others. As well as the active way our unity can shine a massive spotlight on Jesus.
Our unity matters this much.
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