I recently heard a person in my church family claim that it is wrong for the rainbow to be used by those who promote gay pride. I suggested to this person that the Scriptures do not delineate how the rainbow can be used as a symbol. They agreed, but still felt it was wrong. I disagree with their viewpoint.
Are there people in your church family who think differently from you? What do you do about that? Avoid them?
Read Philippians 2:1-11 again, and I want you to notice the selfless movement in the passage. I believe that selfless movement is precisely how we can achieve peace even when we strongly disagree with people. What direction is the movement? The movement flows two ways in this passage. In this post we look at the first direction, and in the next post, the second direction.
The first direction of movement is outward.
In verses 1 through 4 Paul is talking about relationships in the church. In verses 1 and 2, the theme is unity. In verses 3 and 4, the theme is humble otherness. I would argue that to achieve unity and humble otherness, two incredibly important qualities needed for peace, we must have a viewpoint that looks outward.
What I mean is that we cannot expect that others will look toward us. That’s when we expect others to support us, think like us, give to us, serve us. If we expect others to bend to us, then the focus is really on us. Worse, we are less likely to think that we need to serve them, support them, give to them.
Peace and unity point the individuals in a church family to have primarily an outward focused view. Peace and unity encourage us to ask “How can I help, serve, love, give to the others in the church family? Who is hurting? Who is marginalized? Who is oppressed? Who is difficult? Who is struggling? I give of myself to serve them.” We don’t wait for them to come to ask. We actively keep our eyes open, and we observe, we seek to put ourselves in their shoes, and try to understand their perspective, what they are going through, so that we are the ones who take the initiative and serve them.
Paul uses the word “like-minded”. The word Paul uses there is about attitude. He is not saying that we need to have all the same ideologies, but we do have the same attitude. Having the same attitude is especially important because there will be so many times when we have different ideologies. That same attitude is the foundation for unity. It a willingness to have a Christ-like attitude while living in close community with people you might differ with when it comes to ideology.
Photo by Chris Barbalis on Unsplash
Engaging Scripture 