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To Whom Do You Belong?
Wes Schaeffer
January 26, 2020
From today’s reading…
I mean that each of you is saying,
‘I belong to Paul,’ or ‘I belong to Apollos,’
or ‘I belong to Cephas,’ or ‘I belong to Christ.’
Is Christ divided?” 1 Cor 1:12-13
On many occasions, I’ve seen 150-lb Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu fighters beat 200-lb, 225-lb, even 250-lb opponents not by overpowering them, but through speed, agility, and exploiting a weakness in their larger opponent. (No matter how big and strong you are, your wrist, ankle, elbow, and knee can’t stand an attack by a 150-lb motivated opponent who focuses all of his weight and strength on that one joint!)
Finding and exploiting a weakness is how you win all games of strategy from chess to Monopoly to the Super Bowl…to your soul.
A brand new graduate from basic training knows the importance of splitting up an enemy to defeat them. Germany learned the hard way how difficult it is to win a war fought on two fronts.
Meanwhile, Christians have more denominations than you can count. A quick scan of Wikipedia lists:
American interchurch
Anabaptist and Friends
Anglican Baptist
Catholic
Eastern Christian
Holiness and Pietist
Lutheran
Methodist
Pentecostal
Presbyterian and Reformed
Stone-Campbell
Other
The Wikipedia article lists dozens more as subsets, and there are subsets to the subsets. Regardless if there are 12 or 36 or 41,000 divisions, the Hatfields and McCoys showed that just one division is brutal enough, and we clearly have more than one division in the Christian faith.
But Wes, who am I to heal all the divisions in Christianity? I’m just a (insert your self-assigned lowly title as your feeble excuse to absolve you of any responsibility.) What can I do?”
I’ll tell you what you can do.
Heal the divisions in your immediate family. (You know what they are and how to do it but you allow your pride and passive-aggressiveness to subdue your compassion and humility.)
Once that’s done, heal the divisions in your extended family. (See above.)
Then heal the divisions in the hospitality club at your church or the pool committee at your HOA or the snack bar committee at your kid’s Little League.
If one million people healed one million families, that’s four million healthy people.
If four million people healed four million extended families, that’s 40 million healthy people.
If 40 million people healed every hospitality, pool, and snack bar committee we’d have heaven on earth.
Heaven on earth starts with you focusing on how to…
Stay the course. Keep the faith. Endure.
Now go sell something.