“Pride goeth before the fall” is tragically true for all of us, whatever our sentiments and whatever our hermeneutic.
We will never successfully build our tower to heaven, because God, with mercy and wisdom, confuses our language, to spread us abroad. Into every system of thought God builds the Babel principle to foster diversity and to create mutual need.
The diversity is a fact, but the mutual need is a choice we have to make, a choice driven by humility because we see through a glass darkly.
God restricts our take on things, so that love becomes the only glue that holds the Body together rather than agreement of thought and practice.
It’s love that requires us to say of one another: “It’s not my cup of tea, but your cup is just as good as mine.” Though I cannot abide with your take on things, I’ll not separate myself from you or try to cast you out. We will talk with one another until we’re blue in the face, and then talk some more. We will make room for one another, and we’ll find a way to yet live together. We will not go the way of the world by claiming “irreconcilable differences” – such a thought is nothing less than stubborn pride rearing its ugly visage in our souls and a denigration of “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
Sin tempts us to claim the better cup of tea. Exclusivity feels very good on the surface of things, and it’s on the surface of things that we have to live in order to sustain our prideful judgment of others. Whether we love the Westminster and our detailed treatises on grace or whether we love the barricades and the struggles for social justice, superficial thought is the only way we can preserve our pride of place.
But probe beneath the surface of our claims, and we find a seething uncertainty and a vast discomfort. Manifesting itself defensively in ceaseless judgment of the other, or a humble embrace of the other in spite of profound differences.
