A New "Church?"

In the body of Christ, we recognize that we belong to Him.  Failure to do this can bring division and a lack of understanding and unity.  In 1st Corinthians 3, Paul addresses division that resulted from
people having their identity in the wrong place, he writes:
3 for you are still carnal. For where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal and behaving like mere men?
4 For when one says, "I am of Paul," and another, "I am of Apollos," are you not carnal?
5 Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers through whom you believed, as the Lord gave to each one?

There is one body and there is one enemy who seeks to divide us, so that the power of God cannot be seen through His Church.  Unfortunately, we get it wrong by seeing one another as enemies based on wrong perceptions and dangerous generalizations.  God calls us to know Him and then to seek to know one another through the lens of His love, so that we can be unified in purpose and bound together by Him.

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We can easily become divided based on what we look like on the outside, rather than who we are on
the inside and we can adjust this mindset by recognizing that our identity is in Christ. Galatians 3 states:
26 For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.
27 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
29 And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.

Almost two years ago, I shared a commentary on the inroads of cultural Marxism into the Church and how identity politics was a destructive, anti-Biblical force.  I quoted from Justin Steckbauer, who had written a piece at The Christian Post.  He wrote:

The new social justice warrior causes are not grounded in traditional Christian beliefs, but actually come out of the secular university system, and tend to be rooted in thinkers like Karl Marx, Herbert Marcuse, and Max Horkheimer. We should be very, very careful as a Christian movement when embracing so freely ideologies like critical theory, group identity, and identity politics.

Let's identify some terms. Critical theory is the idea that people are enslaved in various forms by society and that the chief end is to set people free from oppressive societal structures. Should we even accept such a premise about society overall? It's debatable I suppose, but I don't tend to believe society works that way. Our society for example is a democratic republic. I don't see it as an oppressive power structure of racism and bigotry. Neither should you, because it's not. The United States is a meritocracy, we rise and fall based on our merits and how hard we work, not based on oppressive structures.

In our culture today, we are continuing to see a devotion to dividing people according to their "identities," the primary ones being race and sexual orientation. I also shared:

Another term that he deals with is "identity politics," which he describes as "the process by which political movements attempt to gain power by pandering to victim groups. This usually means that anyone who disagrees with the politics of the movement in question is labeled and slandered as a racist, sexist, xenophobic, Islamophobic, homophobic, so and so. This also means that anyone who departs from the group think of a victim group...is slandered and ostracized."

Unfortunately, to integrate the current rage of identity politics that is fueling rage throughout society with the words of Jesus regarding His true Church - upon this rock, a new church is being built, and the foundation is certainly not the word of God.  Georgetown professor Joshua Mitchell, at the website, First Things, speaks of A Godless Great Awakening in a recent article.

Mitchell contends:

Identity politics is an American Awakening without God and without forgiveness. Like Christianity, it seeks to overcome the curse of death. Like Christianity, it seeks to overcome sin. Like Christianity, it recognizes that the problem of sin is deeper than the problem of death, and has precedence over it.

Identity politics does not overcome death, as Christianity does, through faith in Christ, so that man may again have eternal life as he did in the Garden of Eden. Identity politics overcomes death by attempting to build an Edenic world protected from death.

He goes on to say that, "Identity politics provides a cheap shortcut to redemption, a fig leaf that hides man from his own darkened heart. 'Say this and you will be counted among the cleansed.' Nothing could be further from the truth." He relates:

What identity politics cannot face, however, is that no amount of “innocence-signaling” undertaken by our educational, corporate, or political leaders will help us address America’s problems. For that, hard work and humility are needed. Identity politics has neither the stomach nor the patience for either; this deformed imitation of Christianity seeks redemption by group scapegoating instead.

Voddie Baucham, in a piece published on the Grace to You website, warns against the infiltration of critical theory and identity politics into the Church:

And if we’re not careful, what we do is we foster this group identity, us versus them thinking, and we say, “Yes, the cross is powerful and important. Go get ‘em, Jesus, because they need to be fixed.” And the Jew looks at the Gentile and says, “Yes, go get ‘em, Jesus. I’m glad that You died so that You can make them part of us.” And the Gentile says, “Yes, go get ‘em, Jesus, because they mistreated us. They thought they were superior to us.” And you got both of these groups saying, “Go get ‘em, Jesus.”

And Paul says here, “Stop both of you. I want you to understand: Christ did not come because He needed to die in order to reconcile this group or that group. It’s both/and. The ones who were close needed to be reconciled just like the ones who were far off needed to be reconciled, because the reconciliation was a reconciliation to God because of the sinfulness in your heart; and your ethnicity does not excuse you from that sinfulness in your heart.”

Baucham, along with John MacArthur and about a dozen others, provided leadership for The Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel, which is a Biblical blueprint for how we can relate to one another and confront the issues that have threatened to divide our culture and the Church.  It says, in the area of race and ethnicity:

WE DENY that Christians should segregate themselves into racial groups or regard racial identity above, or even equal to, their identity in Christ. We deny that any divisions between people groups (from an unstated attitude of superiority to an overt spirit of resentment) have any legitimate place in the fellowship of the redeemed. We reject any teaching that encourages racial groups to view themselves as privileged oppressors or entitled victims of oppression. While we are to weep with those who weep, we deny that a person’s feelings of offense or oppression necessarily prove that someone else is guilty of sinful behaviors, oppression, or prejudice.

We are all in need of God's grace, and ALL of us can be partakers of God's grace.  That's important to remember - Jesus died for all.  And, if we regard ourselves as one another as people made in the image of God for whom Jesus died, we can live out that attitude of not showing partiality or participating in divisiveness.  We can learn to love one another as we reflect on and practice the love He has for us.

But, Satan wants to keep us divided as a Church; so instead of leading the way and turning our energy on him and defeating his schemes, it is easy to get caught up in aiming our fire at one another.  We can make the decision to be at peace with everyone and to do what we can to bring unity.  The end of identity politics and critical theory is more division - the heart of God is reconciliation. We have to keep focused on being instruments of the love of Christ.