Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified. | 1 Corinthians 9:24–27
It has been an interesting year. Between impeachment, a pandemic, and protests against racism, the divide and animosity between people seems to be growing greater. Yet, if you step back from the noise, another image emerges, one where people are assuming a greater chasm than actually exists.
One of the major reasons for this is the presentation of all issues as right vs. left. When we view everything as a choice between two options, we end up not only choosing a side, but also forming an enemy. This causes us to not only believe certain things, but also to reject anything that could possibly be linked to the opposition. All middle ground is cut out as you distance yourself from your perceived ‘enemies.’
As the church, we must reject this way of categorization. The reason we should do this is because the Bible gives us better definitions and descriptions to work with. When the Bible describes sin, it is not as a learned behavior or a result of conditions, but a broken reality within all of us. James 4 says:
What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.
1–2a
This is not a reality that some struggle with, but all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3.23). The Apostle Paul describes this war of passions within every person in Romans 7:
So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.
21-23
What Paul is describing here is the wrestling match that every person has within them. Sin is not a problem over there that can be snuffed out or avoided, it is a constant battle that each of us must engage with. I have always loved how the Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put it in The Gulag Archipelago:
If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?
We must acknowledge that there is evil within every person, including ourselves. The other side of the coin is, that in order for this evil to be at war within us, there must also be good. This goodness is contributed to the Imago Dei, the image of God. Every person has been formed by and imprinted with a divine fingerprint. The author of Ecclesiastes describes it this way:
He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.
Ecclesiastes 3:11
Here is this whole mass of humanity, created good by God and twisted by sin, trying to figure out how to navigate this world, while also fighting a war within their own heart. If you view sin this way, it will greatly change how you interact with others. There is still a good/bad and a right/wrong, but you are no longer the sole possessor of all that is good, and you enemies are not the manifestation of bad. Instead, we are all part of this creation, trying to figure out how to express this beauty within us as we are continually plagued by sin.
One of the things that I do when I counsel couples is ask them to view the sin of the other person, not simply as a part of their character or a motivated action, but as an evil that is waging war against them. If that is what sin is, then we can come alongside one another to help each other fight against this great destroyer. We can unify around the act of bringing light into the dark spaces of our own lives.
This is delicate work, because no one wants to destroy a piece of his own heart. Which is why the Bible gives us the metaphor of training for a race (above). In order to properly discipline yourself to win, you have to work hard and sacrifice in order to build up your muscles. You also have to have a clear vision of what the race is.
As Christians, we have been given, not only a definition of what sin is and how we must discipline ourselves, but we have also been given clarity on why this world exists, where it is going, and how we fit into a creation that has a Creator and a Redeemer. I wrote a few weeks ago that we must know the story we are a part of if we are going to put our hope and energy in the right places.
This week, I am going to apply this story to the issue of race (here is how another pastor has described this). Since the killing of George Floyd and the protests that followed, the pastors of Communion Church have been asked to comment, accused of not doing enough, and categorized as either too far ‘right’ or ‘left’ on the issue. Rather than responding quickly, we decided to listen and study and to allow the noise to die down before we addressed this topic.
We want to give our church the tools to think critically and to be discerning so that we: do not run aimlessly; [or] box as one beating the air. As a church, we will not all land in the same place, and that is okay. What isn’t okay is when we allow things of this world to become more important than the blood of Jesus Christ which unifies us.