I can't come to a conclusion about unity.

This past year in BSF, we studied the Acts of the Apostles, reading Acts and several NT letters. The one theme that kept jumping out at me was the idea of unity. The apostles continually reminded believers to be unified, to not become distracted by ideas that could cause divisions between them. Paul told the Ephesians, "Be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other's faults because of your love. Always keep yourselves united in the Holy Spirit, and bind yourselves together with peace" (4.2-3 NLT).

I like that phrase, make allowance for each other's faults. Why do we get so bent out of shape over people's human tendancies? We all have faults, but I guess in order to make ourselves feel better, we like to think that our faults aren't as bad as someone else's faults. I've been plenty guilty of this, and that's a fault in itself; it's just a part of being human, I suppose.

What's interesting is that what I might consider a fault in a person, someone else might consider a good quality in that person. So if I go badmouthing that person for his or her "fault," I am offending the people who like that person, and I am guilty of not controlling my tongue, making my religion worthless and creating the risk of starting a virtual forest fire, as James would say.

Just because we are all human with our own selfish tendencies, one little remark can cause severe disunity in a body of believers. How sad. But what's even sadder to me is that we don't really seem to want to overcome this tendency. We want our way, and we want everyone else to do it our way too. Examples: Churches split up all the time over issues that shouldn't even be important--like what style of worship to have; Christian friends get mad at each other over politics--church politics and government politics; we hold to certain doctrines that may or may not be perfectly correct scripturally and ostracize those who don't agree. The list goes on. We create and perpetuate divisions because we'd rather be right than unified. In reality, the spiritual lives of Christians sometimes aren't that much better than the spiritual lives of those outside the church because we go on creating chaos for ourselves. No wonder so many unbelievers remain unbelievers.

OK, the English teacher in me says that now I'm supposed to write a conclusion paragraph, but right now I can't come to a conclusion, so I think I'll get up and get some more coffee.