Divisiveness--The New Unforgiveable Sin

Last night I flicked on one of those news/talk shows that appear on News Television in the evening. Forgive me, I cannot remember which one. Nor does it matter. The subject matter was interesting only after the fact when I stopped to think about it.
Two talking heads were being interviewed. One represented the Gay community; the other was a cleric who purported to represent the views of conservative Christians. Their topic of disagreement was the selection of Rick Warren to give the invocation at next January’s inauguration.
Mr. Warren is the pastor of a mega church in California; he wrote one of the best selling non-fiction books of all time—The Purpose Driven Life. Thousands of churches have used it as a roadmap to a more effective church life and more committed congregants. He was also the first person to get Obama and McCain on TV, face to face, as opposing candidates.
There was a certain logic to Obama picking him for the invocation—it was a gesture of conciliation toward the evangelical community which had largely voted against him. The controversy came with Mr. Warren’s backing of California’s Proposition Eight (which would ban same-sex marriages).
The talking head that represented the Gay community last night made it clear that this was a well-nigh unforgiveable act on Mr. Warren’s part. It was the word he used, over and over again, that caught my attention in the hours after the television was turned off: DIVISIVE—DIVISIVENESS.
This, he indicated, was the unforgiveable sin that Mr. Warren had committed in the eyes of the gay community. “Rick Warren was divisive,” he said over and over. “He was guilty of divisiveness.” He was dividing people, one against the other. What more horrible sin could there be?
The worthy cleric seemed to duck his head and basically agree that “divisiveness” was by itself an undesirable thing. Somehow, he seemed to feel, Mr. Warren should have made his point on Gay Marriage, homosexuality and lesbianism without being divisive. He almost seemed frightened of the divisive label—the way people were scared of the “communist” label during the 1950s.
At the time they spoke, I was doing something else and paying very little attention. Later on, it came to me that neither man seemed to understand the fundamental nature of Christianity.
It isn’t a nice religion. There isn’t an ounce of niceness in the entire canon of its doctrines. Not in real, historic Christianity. Christ did not call us to be nice and conciliatory—certainly not in matters that we consider to be foundational to morality and faith.
Unfortunately for most Biblically oriented Christians, their faith makes homosexuality just such an issue. From Genesis through the letters of Paul. Rick Warren reflects that. (Yes, I read the cover piece in Newsweek a couple of issues ago. It was drivel, which is why I haven’t bothered to comment on it.)
Christianity was never intended to be home to a forum on moral or spiritual diversity. Its fundamental intent was to be a DIVISIVE FORCE in this world. (To call Mr. Warren “divisive” is to affirm the validity of his Christianity.) I would be flattered to be publicly seen as divisive in a similar sense.
Christ (the progenitor of Christianity) makes the point clearly. He asks (Luke 12:51-53) “Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but DIVISION. From now on there will be five in one family DIVIDED against each other, three against two and two against three. The will be DIVIDED, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother … .”
So strongly does Christ make the case for the divisiveness (and exclusivity) of Christianity that he insists, (Luke 14:26) “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple.”
There is some hyperbole there; Christ used it on more than one occasion. But no one can argue the urgency with which he was making his point: Christians are to stand firmly and be as divisive as necessary on questions of principle.
They are indeed commanded to love the sinner, but there is equal emphasis on their need to hate the sin. If that hatred makes the sinner angry, be it a mother or son or the rest of the family, then so be it—the Christian is commanded to stand firm in his divisiveness.
Christ says very bluntly that you, simply by being Christian, are going to annoy the living daylights out of other people. Christians are not permitted to cross their legs and chant mantras while smiling benignly at whatever else is going on around them. Tolerance, love of diversity in the moral arena, are not Christian virtues.
In John 15 (the Gospel of Love, incidentally) Christ warns, “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. … I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.” (All passages from NIV)
That’s pure, unalloyed divisiveness.