My wife and I have several bird feeders in our backyard; two of them hold seeds and periodically serve as squirrel feeders besides. (I’m convinced if squirrels could organize en masse, they could take down NATO in about 30 minutes. But I digress.)
The other two are hummingbird feeders positioned just outside our kitchen window. I guess we live off the wing-beaten path because rarely are there more than two of those long snouted, nectar-drinking wonders at a time. One is a beautiful ruby-throated, covered with green shimmering feathers on its sides and back, with the eponymous neck, while the other hummingbird is gray.
My wife, being the far more attentive person in this team, ensures that both feeders are constantly replenished with sugar-water to keep our friends coming back. That’s two feeders, each with about a quart of sugar-water, each with four feeding stations, for a total of eight feeding opportunities for two birds.
And they spend at least as much time fighting as eating. When one comes down to eat and the other does a Top Gun-worthy fly-by. Then, exchange their places and it happens all over.
All that food and energy—enough for them to fly to Antarctica—prepared especially for them, and they burn up countless calories fighting.
Not unlike a lot of Christians.
Spiritual Infighting
Our backyard hummingbirds, sadly, resemble too many church members: with a buffet of God’s Word available, sufficient for every need, they fight over non-essential, preferential things as if Jesus suffered Calvary’s agonies for the Sunday morning order of worship or the brand of paper towel dispensed in the restrooms. Also, sadly, this not new to the body of Christ.
Whether fallouts between church members (Euodia and Syntyche), between church-planters (Paul and Barnabas), or between fellow-laborers (Philemon and Onesimus), we have a tendency to fight about God’s blessings rather than receiving them. Grace gives way to grasping, resting to wrestling, and self-sacrifice to self-aggrandizement. Casting off our crosses, we pick up our swords to fight not the enemy, but each other.
We are called to unity, which implies that most things—things outside the faith’s essentials—are not to be fought over, so let’s make unity a priority.
Who’s Servant?
Romans 14 is instructive here, in the context of those weaker in faith:
Accept anyone who is weak in faith, but don’t argue about disputed matters. One person believes he may eat anything, while one who is weak eats only vegetables. One who eats must not look own on one who does not eat, and one who does eat must not just one who does, because God has accepted him. (v. 1–3)
On what basis is such judgment forbidden? Paul answers:
Who are you to judge another’s household servant? Before his own Lord he stands or falls. And he will stand, because the Lord is able to make him stand. (v. 4)
Paul’s admonition to Euodia and Syntyche was that they should “agree in the Lord.” God’s temporary solution for Paul and Barnabas’s falling out was that the Kingdom would expand in two directions rather than one. (But, eventually, Paul relented or repented and came to see John Mark as a valued team-member.) The reality of the a new, Kingdom-oriented humanity that obliterated class-boundaries was the basis for reconciliation between Philemon and Onesimus.
In these cases and others, the involved parties had to submit their own wills and/or preferences to God’s headship over us all. If God is please, I should not be displeased.
Whatever Happened to Unity?
It makes one wonder, does it not? Especially given how unity is commended to us: “Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity!” (Psalm 133:1). Unity in the body is a goal usually admired but rarely attained. Why? Often, it is the result of judging (or misjudging) another person, that is, another of God’s servants. Other times, it is the result of one member’s sin against another member. Still other times it is the result of two or more people who have divergent priorities or goals that preclude them from supporting each other, caring about each other, or loving each other as they should.
The second part of an old triplet says, “In non-essentials, unity.” Implicit in the phrase is there are some things that are not essential. There are some things that do not rise to the level of heresy, false-gospel, and anathema. If Paul freed the conscience of some Christians to knowingly eat meat that had been offered to literal idols in Corinth, or the Romans to determine whether certain days should be observed, then surely today’s followers of Jesus can prioritize unity while disagreeing about playing cards, movies, music, clothing styles, voting preferences, etc. Indeed, before the Lord every servant stands or falls.
Because in the final evaluation, I won’t give an account for your preferences and you won’t give an account for mine, but we all will give an account for whether we sought unity that we may be one even as Jesus and the Father are one. That is his prayer, after all (John 17:21 ). There is a parable in the hummingbirds, but like many parables it shows us what we should not do to teach us what we should.. May the people of God submit to the truth of the Word and power of the Spirit of God in our lives so the Kingdom advances in unity, rather than tearing it down and ourselves apart.
