Praying During Senseless Tragedy

I’ve done a lot of praying recently, because every time a tragedy happens, I’m drawn to prayer, and since a lot of tragedies have been happening recently, I’ve been praying a lot.  Tragedy – and terrorist tragedy at that – typically is much more complex and confusing than what I know to do with it.  But one thing I do know is this: Jesus commanded that His people cry out to him day and night (Luke 18:6).  So the safest place I know to go when dealing with grief is the arms of Jesus – He in fact says to come, and His death for me proves that He isn’t lying in His invitation.  I'm not always quick there - and in fact am too often sluggish.  But He seems to draw me each time, for which I'm thankful.

But I’ve noticed recently that some well-meaning friends have taken offense that a person would respond, especially to a gun crime, by saying they’re rushing to prayer.   Based on my reading and hearing responses, it seems to me that critics think of a prayerful response as an escapist pie-in-the-sky excuse to not actually do anything, “because I’m too busy praying.”

But I think they respond this way because of a pervasive defective view of God and of tragedy.  God is sovereign –which means He’s in control – even when I don’t understand why.  Ask the sold-into-slavery-by-his-brothers Joseph on his way to Egypt, the betrayed-to-the-cross Jesus suffering Roman crucifixion, or any Christian undergoing intense painful trial, while God’s Word tells them that such trials are necessary (Matthew 18:7, 1 Peter 1:6).

When tragedy strikes, we typically rush to one of two extremes: Blame God who could have stopped it (which He could have), and so He must not be good because He didn’t; or treat God as though He’s powerless because it can’t be true that it’s His will for tragedy to happen, which did happen.  But what if there’s a third way, where God grieves with us in our suffering, and yet has a sovereign plan which He is working out behind the scenes, like there was when He Himself came to earth to get involved in the suffering at the cross?  That worked out pretty well, didn’t it? 

The real reason I think people respond with anger at “I’m praying” is that they really don’t think God is active and working today, and they hear in the prayer response a meeger well-wish from the pray-er, saying they hope God comforts the victim or their family.   And of course that is a well-wish.  But the critics of such a notion say that that doesn’t go far enough – so you should instead act.

But when I say I’m praying, what I mean is this: Our real problem is seen most keenly in senseless tragedy such as murder.   The disease of murder that is in the shooter is in me, and is in you.  Jesus equated resentment with murder (Matt. 5:21-22), as did his brother James (Jms. 4:2), and John the Apostle (1 Jn. 3:15).  Jesus went even further, to teach that that kind of capability doesn’t get sown into you from the outside – instead it comes from the inside, “out of the heart of man” (Mark 7:21).  If I’m capable of a resentment and a hatred that holds a person under a grudge (and I am capable of it), then what if that resentment is allowed to fully grow?  James gives the answer: it leads to death (James 1:15).  Therefore when a tragedy like this strikes, it doesn’t just reveal something about the killer.  It reveals something about me, you, and all of us.

So when I say I’m praying, what I’m saying is that only God can change the heart and uproot the bitterness, hatred, and delusional reality that leads a person to act this way, and that that is what I’m praying for.  Ask King Nebuchadnezzar about God’s ability to humble the proud and restore a person’s reason (or, since Nebuchadnezzar is dead, read Daniel 4).   If I’m praying, it is because I’m seeing the power of God over my life, in that He’s transformed me, given me new desires that accord with His Word, and is working repentance in me daily as I walk by faith, and I’m wanting that for others, and asking God to do it in them.  When a person responds, “Prayer is not enough,” I’m not surprised.  But I’m also not duped – it is enough, because we will never outrun tragedy or murder.  But God can outrun the tragedy or murder that is in a person’s heart (see the Apostle Paul).

Should we consider changing laws to prevent murder if we can? Absolutely.  But will we legislate tragedy, and even senseless tragedy, out of existence?  No we will not.  The Bible’s diagnosis for the world is this: Hatred from one to another (Titus 3:3), and swiftness to shed blood (Romans 3:15).  Each speaks peace to his neighbor but inwardly plans ambush (Jeremiah 9:8), and – get ready for this – all toil and work result from man wanting to outdo his neighbor (Ecclesiastes 4:4)  My point is this: we will never kill killing.

But this is the message of the Bible: God looked at the fallen world, came into it, took killing on himself, and rose again to begin defeating death at that time, until one day it’ll be put down completely (1 Corinthians 15:26).  If God can call creation into existence, uphold all things by His own Word, give to mankind life and breath and everything, and rise up from death at His own will, then the God whom I call upon can change the hearts of men.  That’s why I pray.

And I actually am hopeful that this is precisely how God will use all of these senseless tragedies: In our education-driven self-trust, where we assume that all that’s needed is to on one hand learn and on the other hand follow our hearts, we are appalled at tragedy because we just don’t understand how it’s even possible, with all of our advancements, expertise, and knowledge now.  My hope is this: That said false narrative of reality will be exposed for the fool’s gold which it is, and we’ll realize that we need life from the dead ourselves.  And that only comes through the death of One who was unjustly killed a long time ago, that He’d rise again and defeat death once for all.

So at death, I grieve, but not as one without hope.  I hope, because one died to defeat death.  And He lives now, that we’d call on Him in our grief. 

So I pray.

Past Posturing to Authenticity

I was struck this morning by Psalm 148:13 – “His name alone is exalted.”  As a Christian, I believe that the God revealed in Christian scripture is alone worthy of worship.  And I don’t think that “worship” (the act of ascribing ultimate worth or value) is unnatural to people.  All people worship, and the essence of Christian conversion is that a person comes to see that their whole life they’ve been worshiping things God made, and are now ready to worship God Himself.  “You turned to God from idols” (1 Thes. 1:10).  “You should turn from these vain things to the living God” (Ac. 14:17).  See also Psalms 115 and 135, and Isaiah 44.

But this leaves me with a dilemma when I read Psalm 148:13.  It says that God alone is exalted.  In other words, He’s the only one who’s truly worshiped.  Scripture is replete (as I just hinted at above) with the claim that all their lives, people worship, whether God or not.  So what is the Psalmist saying by saying that God alone is worshiped?

It seems the answer is found in Jesus’ famous words to the Samaritan woman, recorded in John 4:23-24: “The time is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.  God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth.”  Here Jesus defines true worship as that which is given to the true God by true worshipers.  This assumes that there is such a thing as false worshipers. 

And therein lies the answer.  According to the Bible, it’s true worship if it’s given to God in truth.  But it’s false worship if it’s given to any other idol in life, or even to God as a lie.

This begs two questions: 1. How is it that idolatry is false worship?  And 2. How can one worship God falsely?

1. Idolatry is false worship because a person is ascribing ultimate worth to something merely for what it gives them so that they can be happy on their own terms, and maintain self-sovereignty over their own lives.  In essence, they’re not worshiping the thing, but they’re worshiping themselves.  This was the fatal flaw of Cain: He withheld from God because he thought that he’d flourish if he defined and acted on what he thought he should let go of.  His parents were promised life and happiness if they’d fulfill God’s call on their lives, and the Ancient Serpent convinced them that a) he himself was more trustworthy, and b) their own sense perception was more trustworthy.  Paul says twice in his letters that covetousness is idolatry (Ephesians 5:5, Colossians 3:5).  How so?  It’s making an idol of something one doesn’t have because of what it will give to them so that they can stay happy in their self-sovereignty. 

And it’s no wonder this is so natural to us: Satan is the father of lies, and since all people outside of Christ are under his deception (2 Cor. 4:4, 1 Jn. 5:19), they think they’re authentic but they’re really not. 

2. Worshiping God falsely is what happens when one is worshiping God outwardly, but inwardly is merely using Him for what they really want.  I’m convinced that far more Christians (and religious people in general) are doing this than they realize – perhaps this is why authentic Christianity seems so foreign to us today: Many Christians, whether old-school or progressive, are using God for what really matters to them, whether, for example, using God for a "Christian" America where civil religion is the end, or a world where individuals define reality themselves, so that sexuality and gender is relative to a person's preferred definitions.  This is why God accused Israel of “drawing near with their lips,” while “their hearts were far from” him (Isaiah 29:13).   Simon the magician fell into this trap in Acts 8, when he was converted but then was dazzled by Peter and John’s miracle-working, and said to them, “I have to have this, for my following!”  Peter then rebuked him for his idolatry.

False worship is natural.  True worship is a miracle, because it’s ascribing ultimate worth to God, from seeing His ultimate worth with the eyes of faith, and desiring him to be praised regardless of what it does for you, because it’s just true.  This is why if one loses their faith in God because things get hard, their god wasn’t God, but whatever it is they’ve lost. 

But if one is worshiping God truly, they enjoy praising Him because they know He’s worthy, and they’re not doing it for their enjoyment.  And in not seeking their own joy but seeking His glory, they actually in the end find great joy (see Psalm 63:5).  And this is true worship, because one isn’t self-seeking, but God-seeking.  This is how His name is exalted alone – because only when people are coming to worship him for who He is, with a heart of thanksgiving for what He's done, and receiving with childlike faith what He's said, does true exaltation happen.  Everything else is posturing.

Infinite Grace For When You're Done Trying

“Jesus does not primarily come as an example; his job is not to model for us the answers to the big questions.  He’s not even primarily a teacher, telling us the answers to those questions.  No, he comes as a savior – to be the answer to the big questions.  To do for us what we could not hope to do on our own.”

                                                            Tim Keller, Encounters With Jesus, 103

Our God-given need to work, investing our time and energy working toward something is one proof that God exists.  The desire to work, the orderly nature of working toward something, the enjoyment of sitting back at the end of a job and saying, “It’s good,” all have their place in the opening pages of Genesis.  It is of God, the work itself and the enjoyment of the work (Ecclesiastes 3:13).

The problem comes in when we see the radical disparity between how the world is and how it is supposed to be, and assume that we can fix the disparity, too.  Our fallen hands might be made for working, but the fallen hands can’t fix the problem of the Fall, and the harder and harder we work on it, the worse and worse it gets.  Perhaps my point is helped on this 500-year anniversary of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses by a quote by him regarding his guilty conscience before he learned the doctrine of justification by faith:

“My conscience would not give me certainty, but I always doubted and said, ‘You didn’t do that right.  You weren’t contrite enough.  You left that out of your confession.’  The more I tried to remedy an uncertain, weak and troubled conscience with human traditions, the more daily I found it more uncertain, weaker and more troubled” (quoted in Alistair McGrath, Reformation Thought, 72).

Most of us have taken our (God-given) ingenuity into our Christianity, and have assumed that to be a Christian is to try and live a good life so that in the end we’ll receive a pat on the back from God and be welcomed in for a job well done.  But the truth is that the Fall goes deeper than we think, and it is in fact in our hearts and on our hands.  So what I’m describing is like trying to clean a dirty hand with another dirty hand.

To be a Christian isn’t only to have a listening ear to what Jesus said, although it is that (Matthew 11:15; John 8:51, 18:37).  But to be a Christian means to give proper respect to what Jesus accomplished with His hands; that is, His life, death, resurrection, and continual sovereign working as the High Priest who brings dirty and lost people into His Father’s presence by grace through faith.  One doesn’t become a Christian by saying, “I’m done trying to live for me, so now I’m going to try to live for Jesus.”  They become a Christina when they say, “I’m done trying at all, because now I believe and know that Jesus lived, died, and rose for me, and now I belong to Him.”  The emphasis is off what they can do for Him, and on what He did for them.

And boy, do your hands find work to do once that grace pin drops in place!  But it isn’t the labor that you thought it would be.  These are good works prepared for you beforehand by your Father (Ephesians 2:10), and the overflow of thanksgiving put together with the very presence of the Spirit of Jesus inside of you compels you to live for Him who lives for you.

It is too obvious to say that the reason we can’t fix our problems today is the failure of the modern mind (all generations included) to look in faith on Jesus.  Everyone knows that already.  What is less obvious is why we can’t even look to Jesus in the first place.  It is because of our proud perceived abilities blinding us to our great need for reform from the inside out, which only the Son of Man can give.  Because there is so much we’re capable of, as God’s image-bearers, surely we can fix our core problems as humans.  But we can’t.  Only Jesus can. 

And though we can’t see this reality without the Spirit of truth, the Jesus of the Bible can bring us all the way there.  As Keller said above, Jesus didn’t come to give us the answers, but to be the answer.  And if you have doubts, consider the cross:  How capable are our hands if the piercing of His hands is the only hope that God saw for redeeming the fallen creation?

Let the church believe that we have a risen Lord who rules today, and has the power to build His church and advance His Kingdom beyond the schemes of the devil and rebellious man.  And let the church say so.

Reflections on a Checkered Christian Past

“When churches lose their influence, when the Christian message ceases to arrest the indifferent and the unbelieving, when moral decline is obvious in places which once owned biblical standards – when such symptoms as these are evident, then the first need is not to regroup such professing Christianity as remains.  It is rather to ask whether the spiritual decline is not due to a fundamental failure to understand and practice what Christianity really is.”

                                   Iain Murray, Evangelicalism Divided, p. 151

Murray suggests above that if a culture once dominated by Christianity’s influence and morals ceases to adhere to those standards, perhaps Christianity never truly had the influence it thought it did, but was only being practiced in a lesser form.  Put another way, perhaps the Christianity once so influential was a lesser Christianity than the Biblical one. 

This of course begs the question, Is Christianity prone to misunderstanding?  The answer is yes, for a couple of basic reasons.  First, Jesus said Himself that many will think they understand what following Him means, only to find out in the end that they were utterly mistaken (Matt. 7:22-23, Luke 13:26-27).  Second, everyone knows what it’s like to not only be misunderstood but to in fact misunderstand another person, group, or whatever; we are prone to misunderstand and be misunderstood.  Finally, the very message of Christianity teaches that because man is fallen, his mind is now functioning at a lower grade than when it was originally created.  “Claiming to be wise, they became fools” (Rom. 1:21).  “The world did not know God through wisdom” (1 Cor. 1:23).  “Have those who work evil no knowledge?” (Ps. 53:4).  “They are darkened in their understanding” (Eph. 4:18).

So what is the real message of Christianity, and was it ever truly internalized in the American and Western consciousness?  To answer the second question, I believe there have been few times where true Christianity was widely embraced, and several shorter instances where, due to revivals, true Christianity was embraced.  And at all times, there is a remnant of people (the “little flock” of Luke 12:34) who are real Christians, including today.

To answer the first question – What is the real message of Christianity? – let me turn to Jesus’ summary of the Gospel message and call in Matthew 16: “The Son of man must suffer and be killed, and on the third day rise; and if anyone would come after me, let him take up his cross too” (16:21, 24, paraphrased).  It is tempting today - and indeed fashionable - to keep the last part while throwing out the first part; that is, to rightly emphasize our need to take up our own cross daily, and live the dying life, while wrongly neglecting to pay respect to Jesus’ taking up of His cross unto death, and what it means for us.  The responsibility of every professing Christian is to examine themselves to find if they are crucified with Christ, and alive to God in Him.

To follow Jesus is to live in light of His costly death in the our place that we may have an alien righteousness before a holy God, and to, in response, die daily and follow Him, entrusting our whole life and eternity into the risen Lord’s hands.  It is that you live in moment-by-moment obedience, pressing inward to Christ’s chest, and pressing forward to take hold of Him, Who has taken hold of you, counting all things as loss, for the sake of simply gaining Christ (Phil. 3:8).  Though the believer doesn’t see Christ, they love Him, and are full of praise, thanksgiving, and joy in Him (1 Pet. 1:7-8).  You see that this means that the risen Christ must be the proverbial light of one’s life which, like the sun, lights the way and, as Lewis famously said, is the light by which one sees all things.  Can you say that Jesus lights your life like this?  Do you have a sense of His immediate presence, and live by feasting on every word that comes from his mouth?  Is it your testimony that the only hope you have for this world and the next that a sinless Savior died to reverse the curse and make all things new?

While there have been small scale and larger scale revivals of this religion, the quest for Christianity throughout history sadly appears to have been one of power.  Instead of the power of the Holy Spirit through the gospel as given in the Bible, it has been about power for Christians, whether it was in ancient Rome, 17^th century Britain, or 20^th century America.  But don’t “amen” that statement too quickly, without some self-reflection.  Many millennial Christians today are making that same argument without realizing that they’re doing the exact same thing.  They say they’re tired of their whole generation being turned off to the church for the wrong reasons, and it’s Christians’ quest for power which is to blame, so Christians need to stop wanting power and start repenting (which is true).  But one needs to make sure their motivation in making this accusation isn’t so that their friends will more easily accept a compromised form of Christianity, so that we as Christians can then regain our footing in a society moving ahead “without us.”  I just think many making the accusation are actually guilty themselves, in accusing of doing the same thing.  And it is the opposite of cross-bearing.  If it was bearing the cross as Jesus says, there would be prayerful consideration that Christians are sinners too, and the reason the world rejects Jesus, before it’s because of anything a Christian does, is that the world is at enmity with God and can’t submit to his will because of man's enslavement to man's own independence.  Also remember that Jesus said it would be Christians’ love for one another – not love for the world – that would evangelize the world.  Why are so many Christians in my generation backwards on this?  I grieve it, and pray for a change of heart, which only God can bring. 

Jesus was very clear that following Him would not be popular in the world.  And it isn’t only because it threatens power structures in the world, but because it confronts the idols of society and individuals.  What I mean is this: whether one is in the 99% or the 1%, they all need Jesus, and the essence of the message of the Gospel will be immediately offensive to them if they hear it clearly.  The message that you’re highly valued by God, which is why it’s so tragic that you’re as fallen and enslaved to sin as you are, and Jesus came to save you, but you only get it if you come with your bloody hands, is utterly offensive to the multitudes because everyone feels like a victim but no one wants to hear they’re actually a rebel.  It's an offensive message.  But to those who are called, “Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:24).   May we have the real message, from a real fellowship with Christ, which will result in real change.  But we only get it if the living Christ is our treasure, and nothing else compares. 

In short, Christians living for something other than Christ as the treasure need to examine themselves to find if they are alive in Him, or are still merely alive in the world.  And those "leading the charge" today for revival need to make sure they're not guilty of the same things they're fighting against.  That's real Christianity, not because it makes a person perfect.  But because it takes their gaze off of their own and others infirmities, and fixes their gaze on the One who has none, and lives today to love His glory and rightness into a new creation.

“You can have all this world, but give me Jesus.”

It's exciting to be a Christian right now

I’ve been studying a lot recently on the radical cultural shift of the last hundred years or so in the West.  Most Gen-Xers would say it’s a cultural shift from only the last 50 years (as they’ve seen it in their lifetimes), and it is true that a lot has changed since the mid-60s (some good, some bad).  But the mechanics of the shift have been a long time coming in the West, and are, to borrow a phrase from the Bible, our culture “filling up the measure of our sins.”  In other words, things weren’t great before, because bad change doesn’t just happen without cause.  It happens because some blind spot isn’t being dealt with, so to deal with it, another one (or four) is created.

Post-modern thought – the dominant mindset of both millenials (and an increasing amount of the older generation) – is so radically different than modern thought that older people and younger people don’t know how to speak each others “language,” let alone think like one another.  Modern people believed (and practiced) that the individual’s rights and choice to pursue happiness on their own terms is an inalienable right.  Post-modern people have kept this conviction, and taken this to an extreme that modern people had no clue was even possible.  And the cultural rub is the post-modern person saying, “We’re just doing what you’ve told us to do,” while the modern person responds, “Well ... I didn’t think you’d go that far.”  And so today’s parents between the ages of 40 and 60 struggle to speak to or even understand their kids or grandkids.  The kids or grandkids don’t care – mom/grandma is the one who needs to change (as Bill Nye has recently said on his Netflix show).

And when Christian thought is annexed to politics and behaviorism in the minds of both modern people and post-modern people, both sides lose all connection with what God really is after.  The modern person is more interested in the world being simple like it used to be, while the post-modern person wants to make the world a new kind of simple.  All of this kicks against the reality of Christ’s coming into the world to save the world by ushering in a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17), establishing His kingdom of peace and righteousness (Mk. 1:15), and doing it all through the truth of His life, death, and resurrection, received with “repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus” (Ac. 20:21). 

These realities are only accessible to the one who is over the conversation about who is right and who is wrong and who will win the cultural battle.  The world is going somewhere – that is one of the pieces of the Christian message that has set it apart since the beginning of the New Testament church (see Charles Taylor's The Secular Age, the chapter "The Impersonal Order").  And where is it going?  A new creation where truth and rightness reign (2 Pet. 3:12), only possible through an honest reckoning of our own sin and injustice today.

This is why Jesus began his ministry with “repent,” as did the Apostles.  Repentance is turning from the world’s thought patterns, battles, and cultural arguments, and pursuing what God has for us.  Thus, true Christians are described as those who no longer walk after the pattern of the world (Rom. 12:2, Eph. 2:1-3), but are seeking a heavenly treasure in a place where the fleeting opinions of man can’t lower it’s value (cf. Matt. 6:19-21).  And while they wait here for the reception of the treasure, they live lives of repentance, with Christ alone as their treasure and source of joy (Psalm 73:25-26, Hebrews 11, and 1 Pet. 1:6-8).  And that makes the Christian message valuable and relevant to a world stuck in the whirlwind of emotions and arguments, because the message for all, regardless of what generation, is, “Repent!  Turn and believe, and God will give you life, which is what we were made for!”

Here is what’s encouraging: God is sifting out His Gospel message from a society that has been content to have Him only in the conversation insofar as He makes life here more convenient.  The Gospel message is about how all of our problems are rooted deeper than we can imagine, and so we are to repent of the pride of pursuing a self-sovereign convenience, and live under the risen Jesus’ true rule and reign.  And I believe God is working today in the midst of the chaos to get this message of reconciliation and redemption to every generation heard louder and clearer than it has been, perhaps in generations.  This explains the reports that churches with regular Biblepreaching are actually growing at the present time: Not because we are going “back” toward the fundamentalism of 50 years ago; but because people are genuinely interested in what God says, as they can no longer take the noise. 

It is an awesome time to be a Christian in America – we have truth that sets men free.  Let’s get busy with our prison keys.

Pursuing Unity and Purity

Unity and Purity

We had a discussion this past week in Sunday school about how to pursue both unity and purity in the church.  The context of the conversation was “Catholicity – what it means to strive for unity within the global church.”  We are in the middle of a membership class of sorts, and Independent Christian Churches like ours have always carried as a priority seeking unity with other Christians.

It is in fact the conversation among many believers today how to strive for and achieve unity within the church.  I’ve had the conversation with more liberal-minded Christians and conservative-minded ones alike.  The truth is that we all want unity, and we all believe that our unity as Christians is meant to provide a powerful witness to the nations.  That was indeed Jesus’ point when he told his disciples that the world would know that they are his disciples by their love for one another (John 13:35).  He was saying that the culture among His people would be a clear witness to the world that they belong to Jesus.  So we naturally long for this.

But are there boundaries to the unity?  I think we all know that there are, but few want to be “the bad guy” and go ahead defining what the boundaries are.  In class we discussed the boundaries as set forth by 1 John 5:2-3:

“By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments.  For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments.  And his commandments are not burdensome.”

It appears here that John defines “love” among Christians in terms of obedience to Christ’s Word.  “By this” – what? Loving God and keeping the commandments – “we know we love the children of God.”  John understood that Jesus is God in the flesh, which is why this statement appears similar to Jesus’ words which John had recorded elsewhere, “If you love me, you’ll keep my commands” (John 14:15).  What is John’s point?  Among God’s people, love is marked out and defined by the Word of Christ.  It is by their seeking, keeping, and abiding in Christ that they know they are in practicing love toward one another.  In other words, the road to unity (among believers) is actually the same road to purity (conformity to God’s will spelled out in His word).  Christians love one another only insofar as they love the Lord, in keeping His Word and obeying Him in joyful gratitude.  This is why Jesus elsewhere attached the disciples’ loving one another to His Word abiding in them and they in Him (see John 15:9-12).

Jesus did say He’d build His church on the apostolic profession of His Person and work as “the Christ, the Son of God” (Matt. 16:17-18).  I take this to mean that as Christ’s Spirit speaks through the Apostles’ witness, as it given us in the New Testament and is preached and taught regularly in the church by faithful pastors and leaders, Jesus sovereignly uses it as the foundation and He builds His church.

The upshot of all of this is that there is no unity among believers if there is no unity in our understanding of what it means to be a believer.  “Christian” has many definitions in the world (and in the church), but it has to be God’s truth as it is revealed in Christ and spelled out in the Scripture that gives us the final word of authority on what Christianity is.  Otherwise, we’ll be left up to our own preferences and opinions, all of us filed into different tribes, and unity remaining a far-off wish-dream.  But if we seek purity – each of us seeking a wholesale conformity to God’s will as we throw ourselves on Christ as the risen Lord who still is doing good and perfect work today – we’ll find ourselves on a different road than we originally thought, and alongside one another.