unity?

there's a lot of talk floating around about "christian unity."  people point out that Jesus and Paul both pray for the church to be in unity.  and there are many prayers for unity in many denomenations out there.  there are also accusations of division thrown back and forth in the calvinism vs. non-calvinism argument.

the problem i see with most of these is that "unity" usually means "like me."  for the christian church to be "unified" in most of these conversations and prayers is to mean that everyone believes the same thing, which is usually the set or sysem of beliefs of the person asking for unity.

two things bug me about this.  the first is a simple lack of "i might be wrong" humility.  very rarely is the person crying for "unity" willing to back down on some doctrinal disagreement, some secondary matter of the faith, whether it be women in leadership, a theory of atonement, transubstantiation, or a theory of authority.

the second thing is a little more nuanced.  i don't believe that Jesus or Paul were asking for a uniform, monoculture church.  Paul was the apostle to the gentiles and he recognizes Peter as the apostle to the Jews.  he insists that they do preach the same gospel, but it may look a little different.  contrary to popular belief, there is no record of Paul ever claiming that jews shouldn't continue to follow Torah.  it is only gentiles who do not have to.*

even in our new testament, we have various writers taking different views on things.  the author of the letter to the hebrews sounds very different than much of the rest of the new testament.  the differences between James and Paul and John and Paul have been commented on at length.  Paul leaves room for disagreement over non-primary matters of the gospel.

in the beginning, God created a hugely diverse creation, with all kinds of plants and shrubs and trees, and fish of the sea and birds of the air and beasts and creeping things on the ground.  and when God created humanity, he created a diverse humanity of male and female.  and it was very good.

uniformity isn't in God's plan.  part of the beauty of creation even before the fall is the beauty of diversity.

i can't see anywhere where denominations might be bad things in and of themselves.**  people are diverse, and it makes sense that we would create different traditions and have different patterns of worship and emphasize different nuances or angles of christian belief.  the roman catholic church, the eastern churches, the anglican churches, the presbyterians, the mennonites, the baptists, the pentacostals, the megachurches... as long as Christ crucified is being preached, we are in unity.   it is fair to call out a brother or sister when Jesus' life, death, and resurrection is not being preached.  that is when we must call for unity.  but there's no place for attacking fellow members of Jesus' body about secondary matters.

*it is clear that some of the food purity laws have to go out the window in favour of the unity of table fellowship.  however, even some of that is upheld in acts 15 when gentiles are counselled not to eat "meat with blood in it" or "meat of strangled animals."  i guess we should all be eating kosher meat! ;)

**i don't think the oft-cited passage from 1 corinthians 1:10-17 is a valid comparison when talking about denominations.  Paul is criticizing the corinthians for claiming to follow other people (including himself) instead of Christ.  even the roman catholic church, for all it reveres the pope, would not claim to be "of the pope" but "of Christ" as Paul demands.