How Do I Think I Think?

“Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, ‘This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.’” (Luke 15:1-2, NIV)

This brief encounter in Luke 15 serves as Jesus’ opening for teaching basic principles in the Lost Coin, the Lost Sheep and the Prodigal Son parables. Two observations on the Luke 15 narrative come to mind: 1) the Pharisees and the teachers of the law imagine the world as binary, with two distinct and separate circles and persons consigned for whatever reason to one or the other, while 2) Jesus is teaching a unitary world view where there’s but one circle and everyone in it. The Pharisees and teachers of the law, the tax collectors and the sinners are all “sheep” in the analogy; the difference among them being only that some are lost and others not.

Binary thinking has its place: a door is either locked or unlocked; the pot is either boiling or it’s not; you either kept an appointment or you didn’t; when tested, you either show presence of the COVID 19 virus or you don’t; you passed the test or you failed it. On the dark side, though, binary thinking breaks up families, communities, nations and grounds the biases and prejudices that are just now being revealed to be persistent and endemic in our populations. Binary thinking has a hard time with gender differences that are not clearly man or woman, has difficulty seeing itself as "fellow sheep" with people who look different. 

Unitary thinking would have us see ourselves and the Chinese, the Russians, the people of colour and the white people, men & women, as “sheep of the same flock,” some satisfied and some needy, even lost, with our shepherds guiding us in the search for finding and ending lostness wherever it arises in the flock.

There are, of course, other ways of seeing humanity at a more interpersonal level, one being the spectrum worldview. For argument’s sake, let’s suppose that there’s a spectrum with “Nearness to God” being one direction and “Distance from God” the other. This view, also, is non-binary.

 “To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation.” (II Corinthians 5:19, KJV) The spectrum worldview makes the role of the church and its people clear. Doing what we can to help humanity move rightward on the spectrum, generally, and helping individuals take steps in the direction of God’s nearness. This was Christ’s purpose, that purpose handed over to his followers. It’s called reconciliation. The goal in Luke 15 is that the Pharisees and teachers of the law, the tax collectors and sinners will come to share a common table in the cloud of God’s presence, the Shekinah.

Wherever racial, ethnic tensions exist today, Christians need to keep the teachings of Jesus (Luke 15) and those of Paul (II Corinthians 5) clearly before them and ensure that their words are not emanating from a binary need to “be the winner,” or "holier than thou," but from the reconciling impulse that sees us all together on our journey toward the Kingdom. This includes recognition of the tensions that exist among us, discarding the Catholic/Protestant binary sensibility, for instance, and working at two objectives: unity and the rightward moving on the spectrum, together toward God.

An illustration I’ve used on this topic before: the church is often pictured as a lifeboat. It strives to pick up drowning victims of Satan’s shipwreck and some are saved, others can’t be reached and still others reject the help for whatever reason. It’s a binary worldview. You’re in the boat, or you ain’t!

Now think of all humanity on the same, single ship. The church is the crew seeking to transport everyone on board safely to harbour. This is unitary sensibility; some of the passengers are troublesome of course, but the crew feels the full weight of their duty to the welfare of all, and finds that its reconciling role takes up as much time and effort as does navigating, cooking, cleaning, etc.

“Now there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28, NIV)

NEXT WEEK: Practical Reconciliation.