No 44: To Destroy the Hostility between Races

Maybe it’s a sign of my age (59 later this year), but I have become much less caught up with the theory and theology of my Christian faith, and far more interested in how to get it to work out in me in practice.  This is probably why Piper’s book has not really been the book for me: it has been 100% theology, all rather abstract.  Such a book could only have been written by a man! 

Take this chapter as an example.  Looking through it, I have found just one indication of a slightly more practical nature, of what we might do about what he says: ‘Ritual and race are not the ground of joyful togetherness.’  Presumably, by race he means here that we should never value our neighbour more or less on grounds of his race.  That’s unquestionably good.  I would hope also that Piper means by ritual that we should never value our neighbour’s spiritual walk more or less on grounds of his rituals.  But I know from his chapter 13 that he really thinks that all rituals must be got rid of. 

In my reflections on that chapter, my main point was that none of us can live without ‘a certain way of doing things’; shared habits and practices and points of view in our particular church – in other words, traditions and rituals.  So abolition is clearly not the answer; and in fact churches which think they have, are the most self-deceived and unable to critique what they do.

In that chapter and this one, St Paul’s letter to the Galatians is most quoted.  What interests me this morning is how much St Paul changed and matured over his lifetime, on this issue.  Galatians is believed to be his earliest letter.  From its polemical tone, the bruising encounter in Jerusalem seems very fresh in his memory, and what is more, he writes unapologetically about the way he handled it.  He is clearly still in the thick of a battle, and we have to forgive him some very unholy words – look at Galatians 5:12.

By the time we get to Romans, which is maybe his last letter, his teaching in chapter 14 is compassionate and inclusive.  He now accepts how precious some traditions and rituals are to their practitioners, and urges Christians not to look down on each other on such grounds.  His decades as a father to many new churches have deepened his understanding of people, and deepened his trust in God’s hand on all of them, in all their diversity.  It’s a wonderful, wise chapter.

“Who are you to judge someone else’s servant?  To his own master he stands or falls.  And he will stand for the Lord is able to make him stand” (Romans 14:4).

“Why do you judge your brother?  Why do you look down on your brother?  For we all stand before God’s judgment seat” (Romans 14:10).

“Whatever you believe about these things keep between yourself and God.  Blessed is the man who does not condemn himself by what he approves” (Romans 14:22).