Unity and Idolatry

I’ll never forget my first “church hurt.” I know that phrase is maybe a little overused at this point, but I just mean experiencing the conflict and pain that comes when sinners attempt to have relationships with one another, specifically in a church setting. 

I was 14, just finished eighth grade, and I was attending a “cool” youth group. There were lights and loud music, and we did sermon series like “At The Movies,” that was before every megachurch in America started doing an “At The Movies” series once a year. 

I absolutely adored my youth pastor. He was young and fun and, despite the group having 100 students a week, I felt like he really knew me and cared about me. Fourteen is not an age where that happens often. 

Anyway, our church had multiple campuses around the country, and they were always moving the staff around. One campus pastor would get transferred into an associate pastor role at a different campus, and that campus would get a different campus’s youth pastor for the next campus’s worship pastor. It was like a never-ending game of “Pastor Swap.” I know now that that should have been a sign of something really unhealthy going on beneath the surface, but I was fourteen. 

I’m sure you can guess how this story ends - after all, it’s the story of thousands of youth group students. My youth pastor left. He said he would never leave, and then he accepted a job at a different campus. He was gone just like that, and I’ve never seen him again. 

It took me a long time to get over that. It felt like such a deep betrayal that I struggled to connect with any of the stream of youth pastors who replaced him over the next few years (and there were a lot of them). But I learned something important through that experience: being in a church doesn’t make people perfect. No matter how gifted a preacher, how charming a person, how talented a musician, there is no reason to ever put another person up on a pedestal. 

Pedestals are destroyers of integrity. And they’re idolatry. 

I would experience more relational hurt in faith-based communities in the future, and each time they would lead me back here, to this root problem: I love making idols out of people. I love perching them high up in an untouchable ivory tower (“They’re so wise! So funny! So thoughtful! So talented! So knowledgeable!”) and then casting morally-superior judgment on them when they ultimately fail to live up to my expectation of perfection, as though their failure to be perfect is a direct betrayal of me. And I love to feel like the victim of their sin, pretending that their sin weighs astronomically more than my own, which I’m quick to provide every excuse in the book for, giving myself nothing but grace. 

The problem is that when you make people into idols, you cannot live in unity with them. They are always either too high up or on the list of those who have “disappointed” you. But when people are not idols, you see them for who they really are: complicated, broken, beautifully complex humans, designed and delighted in by their Creator. It’s easy to make idols out of others, but that’s not the work Jesus calls us to. His command to his Bride is unity, so that all may know of the power of the blood of Christ, to not only wash away every sin but to bring together the least likely of people. 

Sometimes, I think that surely unity must be harder now than it was in the first century when Paul was writing to the first Christians. I mean, look how divided we are! Politics and race and gender and sexuality - there’s no end to the things we disagree about. But I think that if unity had been easy for those early Christians, Paul probably wouldn’t have had to remind them about it so many times. 

“I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment.” 1 Corinthians 1:10

“Complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.” Philippians 2:2

“Finally, brothers, rejoice. Aim for restoration, comfort one another, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you.” 2 Corinthians 13:11

“May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus.” Romans 15:5

That’s just to name a few. 

I think that one of the reasons we struggle to live in unity is that it demands transparency. And when we’re transparent, our sins are in full view, and seeing the sins of others reminds me of my own sin, something I’m desperate to forget. We want to pretend to be perfect so that we can lord it over one another. 

But the gospel destroys all of that. When I try to hide my imperfection from my brothers and sisters, I am acting delusional. The cross has exposed me, you, all of us. We are guilty. There is no more Pharisaical obedience and piousness that can cover us. Jesus’s death has made it evident: there is none righteous - no, not one. 

It doesn’t end there, though. Yes, we’re guilty. Yes, we’ve been exposed for the broken, helpless, hostile sinners that we are. But the tomb is empty. Death has been demolished once and for all. Shame has no more power over us, for in Christ we have been transformed from sinners to saints, becoming partakers of the divine nature. 

I no longer have to put my hope in the perfection of others, no longer have to hide behind an air of moral superiority. I get to tell the truth about the state of my heart to my siblings in the Lord without fear, because no matter how they respond, I have been set free, made new, redeemed. 

If you are in Christ, that’s true for you, too. It’s true for all of us. Jesus has leveled the playing field so that we might live in unity with one another, and so testify to the world that there is no more powerful force in the universe than the love of our God for his people. He has shattered the pedestals and the idols we have constructed so that we may be fully known and fully loved, forevermore.