For those of you unfamiliar to Star Wars lore, Anikan Skywalker was discovered by two jedi as a young man full of potential in the force. In fact, he was so full of potential that the jedi council believed that he would bring balance to the force... he was the chosen one to bring everything to the light. However, over time, he got a big head, over-confident in himself, thought he could do more than he could and when he was threatened with the possibility of losing his wife he turned to the dark side for the power to control his fate. He ended up losing his wife and became a terrible tyrant otherwise known as Darth Vader. Most of you know how this ends: Darth Vader finds his son Luke and trys to convert him to the dark side which fails. When the Evil emperor is fed up trying to change Luke he decides to kill him and as Vader watches something happens... he shows compassion. He saves is son by throwing the Emperor down a random large hole in the middle of the room. Luke all through the movie insisted that there was still good within his father and Vader's dying words are "You were right." What looked like a broken promise and a hopeless darkness ended up bringing immense light.
The Church of Christ began committed to unity. The idea was that if we could all just get back to scripture we could all agree and be one big happy family. 100 years later there are dozens of identifiable sects within the Church of Christ itself. It seems like the story is finished. There is not much talk about unity anymore within our churches, we failed, end of story. We have seen so much positive change over the last couple of decades in the Church of Christ though. We have largely become a more loving, graceful, thankful group of Christ followers and with these changes maybe the group that began with such promise and grand hope for unification can someday fulfill that potential. Maybe, after journeying through the darkness, we can point to the light.
Here's some things I think we have learned, some things we still have to offer to the Unity conversation because of our unique journey:
1) Unity is a gift of grace from God
2) Unity emerges from a relationship with God
3) Some things are more important than others
4) Outward expressions of unity (worship preferences, aesthetic choices, how we name our churches) are no substitutes for deep expressions of unity (confession of the holy trinity)
5) Sometimes we are wrong
6) the Truth changes us into different kind of people, it does not give us authority to condemn
Can you think of other things we've learned along the way?
1 comment:
Good post. Hope to keep up with your blog this summer.
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