Right Christian/Wrong Christian

In her beautifully clever and brutally transparent book, Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces That Keep Us Apart, Christena Cleveland writes[1]:

[For some] Wrong Christian is an irreverent little twerp who wears baseball caps during church. . . Wrong Christian is a charismatic guy who speaks in tongues and worships weirdly. . . Wrong Christian attends a church that allows female leadership. Or maybe Wrong Christian attends a church that doesn’t allow female leadership. Maybe Wrong Christian went to a Christian college. Maybe Wrong Christian doesn’t speak English. . . Maybe Wrong Christian drives a Hummer. Maybe Wrong Christian promotes Reformed theology. . . Maybe Wrong Christian is just annoying.[2]

Reflecting on her early life as a follower of Christ, Cleveland equated her spiritual “growth” with increasingly stronger opinions about the “right” way to follow Jesus. Her conclusion? Well, there were Right Christians (those who thought, felt, looked, voted, read, recreated and dressed like her) and Wrong Christians (everyone else). And what did she do with the Wrong Christians? “I managed to avoid them in my life by locating them, categorizing them and gracefully shunning them, all the while appearing to be both spiritual and community-oriented.”[3]

Later she would uncover the startling truth that our love for God is to be matched by our love for other Christians. Matter of fact, the single greatest missionary force in the world is not our love for Christ but our love for the Church.[4] Reformed biblical scholar Dale Bruner says it this way (referring to Jn 13:35):

Now Jesus does not say here that the world will know we are Christians by our love for God or for his Christ; rather, and a little surprisingly, they will know we are Christians by our loyal and affectionate churchmanship – by our heart for the Church.[5]

Now neither Cleveland nor Bruner are saying that the differences within the body of Christ – theological, historical, moral, philosophical, ideological – are trivial. They are substantive and important. But the centrality of Jesus’ command to love one another cannot and should not be overlooked[6]. Our mutually lived-out love for “the other,” even though we might believe them to be in error, is, according to Jesus, the centerpiece for world missions. My “right” and your “wrong” are leveled on the playing field of God’s love for us, stretched out on the Cross, inviting us into self-giving intimacy with the other.

I ask, Father, . . .

 that they [my disciples] may all be one . . .

that they may become completely one

so that the world may know that you have sent me

and know that you have loved them as much as you loved me.

John 17:20-21; 23

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[1] Christena Cleveland (PhD, University of California, Santa Barbara) is a social psychologist, researcher and professor at St. Catherine University.

[2] Christena Cleveland, Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces That Keep Us Apart (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2013), 14-15.

[3] Ibid, 12.

[4] Admittedly, our love for the Church and the world is properly derived from God’s love revealed perfectly in Jesus Christ.

[5] Frederick Dale Bruner, The Gospel of John: A Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012), 797.

[6] See the Greatest Commandment (Mt 22:35-40, Mk 12:28-34, Lk 10:25-28).