Every Effort

There’s this devastating WWII movie from a long time ago.

I won’t tell you the name of the movie, in case you have a very, very old “to watch” list, and you haven’t quite gotten around to it yet. I’d hate to spoil it so soon (it was released in 1992) without having given you a chance to hop in the car and rent the VHS tape.

Cold, gritty and grey… this movie was about war.

But it was less about the physical violence that we tend to unleash on one another, and more about the violence that war wages against hope. Sometimes the most devastating consequences of our fights are not contained in the conflicts themselves, but in what unfolds along the quiet margins.

In the movie, a group of tired German Army soldiers run into a young American Intelligence Squad. Both sides know the other side is hidden nearby, and tensions run high.

But at some point, you begin to see that the Germans are more bent on peace than fighting, and decide that rather than die in a war they fear is turning, they will surrender to the Americans, who have begun to seem more human than the war has ever allowed them to seem.

On the night of Christmas Eve, there is this moment when all of the cold, darkness and separation of war give way to a beautiful cry for peace as the opposing squads hear one another singing Christmas melodies from their own trenches and join the singing, in their own languages, with each other.

But the next day, in the closing moments of the Germans’ approach to surrender, there is a tragic misunderstanding, and both sides pick their guns back up and unload on each other at close range. It’s not just violent; it’s utterly heartbreaking.

When I have made you my enemy, the very last thing I’m willing to lay down isn’t my weapon; it’s my firm belief that you would never be willing to lay down yours.

I was recently in conflict with someone via the ‘miracle’ of social networking. It started out simply enough, with one person making a comment on a wall.

Well, then the second person made a comment about the comment on the first person’s wall. Then the first person made a comment about the comment that the second person made about the first person’s original comment. Subsequently, (stay with me here) the second person reciprocated that comment about the comment they had made by making another comment of their own.

So on, and so on. There was a lot of commenting.

Eventually, along the margins, there were these battle lines drawn, insinuations made, tensions got very high, and moreover, some very strong opinions were developed on both “sides” about the other “side” and their positions.

We made enemies out of one another.

Obviously it wasn’t even close to the movie, A Midnight Clear. (Oops, did I just write that out loud?) However, we were not going to put down our weapons anytime soon. It had to end. So I employed economic sanctions and sent a delegation in with Hillary. (Totally kidding.)

But Ironically enough, our fight started over the love and saving work of Jesus.

It’s sad, really. In the quiet margins of this discussion over Jesus’ love, a few weapons designed for nothing but battle were wielded. It went from a discussion about redemption to something quite near the opposite.

Here is what I believe.

I think that we in the Christian church can have a tendency to stop listening early in any conversation that challenges either the content of our belief or the way we live out those beliefs. I think we immediately draw battle lines and we make it about “us” vs. “them”. It’s simply safe.

If I make you my enemy, I don’t have to listen to you anymore.

If I make you one of “them” when it comes to spirituality, I now have God on my side, not yours.

Let this hit a little closer to home. If you and I are in a conflict, it’s easier if I can sort of make you the “enemy” in my mind… or at the very least, one of “them”… And when this is the case,

I no longer have to listen to what you’re saying.

I only have to think about what I am going to say next.

And I’m no longer responsible to put pride, arrogance and judgment to death in the way I treat you. It’s safe.

Hope is one of the biggest casualties when followers of Jesus engage disagreement in the same way the world does. Of all the moments that people need to see the difference that it makes to follow Jesus… you would think this would be a biggie.

It may not be the hope that you or I sense that is the casualty, but perhaps the hope that could have been taking root in the heart of someone on the “outside” watching how we carry ourselves as followers of God.

Especially when our conflict is with people who are supposedly on our own team.

Hebrews 12:14 says, “Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.”

A good friend recently reminded me of this verse and the challenge to “make every effort” at peace. Make no mistake… this is not a command to agree.

Thank Heaven.

This is a command to be set apart in the way we disagree. I think we have a lot to learn here.

I admit, it certainly is harder to see and sense the evidence of what God is doing when I’m fully rooted in reacting in my own way, and not being set apart.

I wonder what it would change for you, for me… for the church, or for my social networking buddy… if this idea hit squarely on our hearts and minds.

Or maybe most importantly, our trigger fingers.
So here’s the deal.

May you pray.

May you pray, like I am learning to, that God would sit down and set up shop in the center of our hearts when we deal with conflict.

When we’re called on the carpet, or when we are doing the calling.
When we’re debating Scripture, or seeing someone take it for granted.
When we’re addressing suffering, and someone doesn’t like the way we’re doing it.
Or maybe when we’re suffering, and someone is rolling over us with commandments.

May you pray to see and know that you are called to something larger.

Something that is so large that it can only be contained and wielded within you by the power of God’s Holy Spirit…who will help you (and me) to not be so arrogant, to not be so rooted in what we know that we forget how much we don’t, and to remember that when even the greatest thing that we can come up with is something thought up by us, that that isn’t so much… and that God is so very gracious to listen, approach and love.

And oh yes… and also to make every effort.