FRIENDLY FIRE
The helicopter had made a normal approach to the landing pad, following all of the standard procedures, including a slow descent, followed by the tail landing gear lightly touching down first, but then, with an uncharacteristic jolt, we slammed down onto the tarmac violently. Something had gone wrong, the whole crew knew it immediately, and as the Crew Chief of this venerable Seaking helicopter, I jumped out to investigate, knowing that we had broken something for certain. Approaching the tail wheel of the aircraft, and seeing hydraulic fluid sprayed everywhere, it was obvious to me that the shock-absorbing strut had failed. Not a big deal, when you are landing on an airfield down the road a few miles from the naval air station, but had this happened while landing on a small ship at sea, in adverse conditions, it would have been far more serious, and we as a crew noted this good fortune, and flew back home for repairs.
Upon returning to the squadron’s hangar, however, we were greeted with some resentment from the maintenance department, who, without even investigating the incident had already placed the blame on my pilot for a performing a hard-landing and breaking a perfectly good aircraft. Not knowing this yet, I had gone down to the Airframes shop, (the shop that I personally worked in when I wasn’t flying or working for the Operations Dept.); in order to give my shipmates a “heads-up” about what had happened. One of the mechanics responded by saying, “Yeah, I knew that was going to happen if they kept, ‘gun-decking’ the servicing on that strut!” Gun-decking, is of course a slang term for not doing something by the book, and signing it off as being completed.
Knowing this information, I started walking down to maintenance control to speak with the maintenance chief about it, but I was stopped short from doing so by a very upset Lieutenant, who had just been worked over by a few maintenance chiefs who didn’t appreciate him busting up their helicopter by smacking it into the runway. He was a good man and a good pilot, and I didn’t appreciate the way that he was being treated, knowing how unfair and downright untrue the accusations against him were. So at this point, I committed the cardinal sin of sharing privileged maintenance department information with him, something that should never be trusted in the hands of operations department personnel, obviously; and he ran with it. Man, did he ever run with it! Within minutes of this revelation of maintenance malpractice being shared with my pilot, the hanger bay was exploding with angry accusations, cover-ups, and finger-pointing, and I was at the epicenter of this storm. I barely had time to hang up my flight gear before the Maintenance Master Chief grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and took me out to the woodshed for some good ol’ fashioned naval discipline.
I’m sharing this story to illustrate that fact that there have always been divisions which arise within organizations. Even though the individual members are completely loyal to each other, they respect each other, are fighting for the same causes, and are in every sense on the same team with each other; chaos ensues due to intense pressures, arduous circumstances, and the human inability to respond to such situations objectively, and without selfish motivations. As a result, the cohesiveness of the unit is shattered and if they are unable to resolve their differences, sometimes the organization is disbanded or permanently ruptured into separate factions. Considering the illustration above gives us a small insight into one of many reasons that the following question is often posed concerning Christianity; Why are there so many denominations, sects, and schisms within the Christian Church?
It is true, within the church, there are literally thousands of denominations, divisions, and individual churches that make up the entire Body of Christ worldwide. These groups range from a massive majority population that essentially all believe the same tenants of the faith, to a vast array of minority groups, who in some cases, don’t resemble the traditional Christianity at all. However, this wide divergence of faith and practice does claim a common religious heritage known as Christianity, and this tends to raise valid concerns and condemnation from the unbelieving world, and from those within the church alike. They ask, “Why are there so many divisions if there is only one God and one Bible? Why can’t they all just get along, if they are supposed to be known by their love for each other?” Often, the response to these questions is very shallow and simplistic, but this is a complex issue that cannot be addressed by one straightforward answer. Therefore, this blog entry will attempt to establish the five main causes for the diverse make-up of the Christian Church, and provide an explanation for why the Lord has allowed it to continue to expand in the way that it has for the last two thousand years.
It would be too simplistic to just make a statement to the effect that, “Denominations don’t divide the church, they just allow for people with diverse walks of life to find something that accommodates their needs.” While this indeed may be a contributing factor as to why God allows division within His church, it cannot be held up as the only reason for divisions in the church. Similarly, saying merely that, doctrinal conflicts and theological disagreements have splintered the church, is not a sufficient answer either; although it has been a contributing factor of divisions throughout the church age. Thus we can begin to see the complexity of this issue and the need for a multi-faceted response that considers the historical, sociological, emotional, spiritual, as well as the theological elements that are involved.
Historically, the church has been morphing, renaming, and transforming itself over the entire course of its existence, in response to a wide variety of external pressures, such as: wars, persecutions, cultural changes, transitions in language, social-economic upheavals, population migrations, and a host of other factors that had nothing at all to do with doctrine, church splits, or personal preferences. As the world changed, people within the church changed with it, but they didn’t lose their faith, they just renamed and repackaged their churches to meet the needs of cultures that they were now ministering to and representing. As a result, the Body of Christ has left in its wake, over the millennia, thousands of large and small denominational churches and movements, which were once isolated and segregated into the communities, cultures, and nations from which they sprang, which endowed them with very distinctive customs, traditions, rituals, and philosophies of doing ministry, that stand in stark contrast to other churches which sprang from cultures in other parts of the world. Some of these rituals and traditions may conflict with each other, and even scriptural definitions on a small scale, but for the most part, they all believe the same things about Jesus and our common faith.
Another perspective that must be considered is the sociological reason for the diversity that exists in the church. On a macro level, people groups within society just tend to gravitate toward being independent, demanding change, and looking for something new and exciting to be a part of. People leave churches all of the time for these unbiblical reasons, which are the same things that cause other non-religious organizations and groups to splinter and dissolve as well. So in one sense you could say that the amount of church denominations is more reflective of the human condition in society, than something being wrong with the church organization itself. The term, “Human condition” is not a biblical term, obviously; we should rather say that, the sinful heart of man is the root cause of church splits. This definition is more suitable for the “theological” category, but as mentioned in the introduction, all groups and organizations tend to morph and change in the same manner that the church has done, as a result of the influence of man in society, so it is appropriate to label this a sociological phenomenon rather than a doctrinal one (we’ll get to that eventually).
Closely related to this, is the emotional or personal reasons that affect the state of the church today. Returning to more of a simplistic or even shallow assumption regarding denominational preferences, it must be acknowledged that people do seek out churches that appeal to them on an emotional and personal level. Often, it’s not that the word is being taught accurately, or that praise and worship is being offered to God, but how is it being done? With how much or how little humor, intelligence, personality, excitement, or fervor is the word of God being taught or preached? How fast, how slow, how passionate, how new, how old, is the music used in the worship service? All of these things point to emotion and personal preference, based on the type of person you are, and what you like and don’t like; again, this has nothing at all to do with doctrine or church administration. People are different! As a result, there are many types of churches out there, to meet the needs of the many types of people that exist in the world. This is not a negative aspect of the church, but rather a positive one. The Apostle Paul said, “…to the weak I became as weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some” (NKJV 1 Cor 9:22), and this is a manifestation of that ministry dynamic begun by Paul so long ago.
Not all aspects are positive, however, and the spiritual causes of church divisions illustrate that point all too well. Recognizing that we in the church, are not just members of the Elks Lodge, the Greenpeace Society, or H & R Block; we are soldiers in an epic war that has engulfed the entire universe since the beginning of time, and the battles we fight are brutally intense, producing casualties and fatalities at every turn. Just when a local church body begins to believe that they are experiencing spiritual growth, unity among its members, and victory in the fight; they can be virtually wiped out in a matter of months, weeks, or even days, without even realizing why it happened. Often, this comes as a result of what is known in combat as, "Friendly Fire". Mistakenly, Christians lost in the fog of spiritual warfare, turn their guns on each other, rather than turning them, "...against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Eph 6:12). Unfortunately, many churches do not even understand or acknowledge that this battle is even taking place, and the carnage continues, making them prime candidates for destruction.
Destruction can come in many forms, however, and churches may continue to operate with the appearance of being a church, even though the Holy Spirit has removed the power of His presence from them, and they were destroyed years, and even decades earlier, and sadly, they don’t even know it to this day. There are far too many of these "churches" that remain standing as mere monuments of what the Lord once did in and through them, but has since moved on to newer vessels of service. Each time this happens, a new division or movement of the Holy Spirit is born, while the old monument still stands. That is why Jesus said, "Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place—unless you repent.” (Rev 2:5), and, “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil” (Eph 6:11). Spiritual warfare can be very ugly, causing churches to shy away from it and go with a, “hope for the best” attitude, but it is not nearly as ugly as if we stand idly by and do nothing, watching destroyed churches and their members slide over the brink into the abyss.
Lastly, we come to the most well-known aspect; the theological or doctrinal causes for church division. Similar to the spiritual aspect, doctrine often divides because the members of a church body are not walking in the Spirit, but in the flesh. For example: the church has been debating and arguing over the doctrinal and theological implications of church government since its inception. The reason for this is because God seems to have deliberately allowed the matter to remain somewhat undefined within Scripture. As a result, some feel that an elder run church is more effective and endorsed by Scripture, while others believe that a pastor run church is called for. Still others believe that the congregation should be the administrators of the church. All of these systems have seen their fair amount of successes and failures throughout the years, and the debate rages on (along denominational lines of course). Why is this? The reason is that all of these systems have some biblical merit and can be used by the church successfully, but only if the members of the church are humbly being led by the Holy Spirit, and are yielded to His word and His will. Otherwise, all of these systems have the potential to suffer catastrophic failure, and become another statistic that makes us wonder why people in churches can’t just get along with each other. Doctrine can and will divide churches, and sometimes this is necessary in order to preserve truth and purity within the Body of Christ. Some-times it is only a pretense to engage in carnality and divisiveness, however.
So in the final analysis, church divisions can be a needed and even welcome aspect of Christianity, which has been growing and changing through these divisions to produce fruitfulness in every age and culture that it has encountered along the way. At other times, division can be a sign of a lack of spiritual maturity and willingness to stand up and fight for the truth of God’s word and His kingdom. We must be diligent to discern which is the case, while considering this exhortation from the annals of church history: “In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity” (Meldenius 1627).
NKJV New King James Version. Holy Bible. Thomas Nelson. Nashville, TN: 2000. Print.
Meldenius, Rupertus. Tract on Christian unity. Publisher Unknown. 1627. Print.
