However, some things never change. When I told a friend the title of tonight's talk she laughed and said 'That's what all the epistles are about'.
Let me start with a medical analogy. When you are faced with an emergency in Casualty, say a major road crash, you do not stop to look up the books, you get on with the resuscitation, splintage, X-rays and all the things you have to do because you have learnt enough to know the drill; because you have been grounded in the anatomy, physiology and pathology of what happens when a car hits the human body how it breaks bones and crushes organs.
Like a car crash disagreements between Christians can also take us unawares. 'Whilst I was speaking my heart burned.' There you are in the middle of anger and disagreement before you realized it.
In any situation we need to know what the resources available to us are and what the forces against us are. So we start by looking at ourselves.
In times past missionaries had a tool called the wordless book which they could use as a very basic communication of the gospel. It had four pages; the first white, the second black, the third red and the last gold. They correspond to the four-fold state of man. That simple concept has been the basis of much longer books. The colours act as a visual aid. Man in innocence, man in sin, man redeemed and man eventually transformed and glorified. Let us look at ourselves under the heading of the four-fold state.
First of all we are human. Romans 6:17 (NIV) says 'But thanks be to God that though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted'.
If we pick out the words, wholeheartedly, obeyed, and teaching, I suggest that there we see the three components of the human character. We have minds to respond to the teaching, emotions to move and a will to obey. Every human person is composed of mind, emotions and will. But each of us will have these in different proportions. Do you know your own balance? Over the years I have learnt what sort of temper I have. A long fuse, but really nasty when eventually it blows. Do you know the boiling point of your own blood? Do you rush into things? Or is your mind well in control? Are you a cold fish? Do you need to go away and think about it?
It is as well to learn your own temperament so that you may guard against your personal weaknesses.
Secondly, we are not only human but we are fallen. Mind as well as heart and will are touched by the fall. We are attracted to the evil. It is interesting that in art the baddies tend to have the good parts. The dark tragedies tend to be in the greater plays. In Paradise Lost Satan always tends to get the good lines. If you have seen Carmen you may agree that Michaela, the good girl, tends to come out as boring compared to Carmen herself.
Medics have their own version of this. A Dean told me long ago that medical students have minds like sieves. They only retain the coarser material. I can certainly remember the stinging, albeit funny remarks made by my teachers forty years ago.
Of all the parts of the body that are affected by the fall the tongue is pre-eminent. 'Out of the heart the mouth speaks.' Proverbs is full of warnings and good advice about the use of the tongue which we do well to ponder. Reckless words pierce like a sword (Pr 12:18). The words of a gossip are like choice morsels; they go down to a man's inmost parts (Pr 18:8). The tongue that brings healing is a tree of life, but a deceitful tongue crushes the spirit (Pr 15:4). Some words are arguments in themselves. Think of 'Dour Calvinists', 'Woolly Charismatics', 'Fenians' if you're Irish.
Thirdly we are redeemed. We are talking about when Christians disagree. God in his mercy has called us out to be his children. Yet in a strange and sad way this makes the situation worse when it comes to disagreements.
We are here in St Thomas's where William Battle invented his incision for taking out the appendix. It is an argument of long ago but I have heard surgeons waxing quite fierce as they argue the merits and demerits of the case. I once was an RSO to a man who hated the McBurney incision but at the end of the argument people could still be friends. However, when it comes to the Gospel, more is at stake. How could Toplady who wrote the hymn 'Rock of Ages' call John Wesley a 'puny tadpole'? It was because he thought that John Wesley was not taking Scripture seriously on certain points. There is nothing worse than a religious controversy for stirring the passions. History is full of examples.
Fourthly, may God be thanked that we are not only redeemed but regenerate. We have not yet attained to the glory but God is working through his Spirit to make us fit for glory. It is not achieved passively or in a moment. We have to say 'No' to sin and actively do the right, but by God's grace, whatever our temperament or our genes, we can be moulded into a better pattern.
Now we have laid a basic framework of how we need to be aware of our own strengths and weaknesses, we come on to the practicalities of how we actually cope.
The fathers of old taught us that controversy should be conducted, not without knowledge, not without necessity and not without love. Let us look at these things.
Not without knowledge. It is amazing how we all rush into things without knowing the facts. You read it in the press; 'I understand that X said at a meeting that, etc. etc. If this is so then he is completely unchristian in his attitude...' Find out first just what people did say. It can be difficult to do but it is not impossible before you start shouting. I once had a patient who suddenly became very tense in his attitude. Eventually I got down to the problem and he said, 'You think I am a neurotic'. When I got to the bottom of it he had read the word hypochondrium on an X-ray form. To me this was the site of his pain. He had interpreted it as hypochondriacal. Once we got the facts right the controversy between us disappeared.
Not without necessity. This can be the most difficult of all to handle because what is one man's necessity is indifferent to another. So over the same problem one man may think 'a curse on him who is lax in doing the Lord's work!' (Je 48:10) and regard his brother as a weak-kneed Laodicean while the other thinks the whole thing a mere peccadillo which is easily forgiven and forgotten. Temperament is obviously important here. Even location may make a difference. An Englishman at the Cardiff Arms Park is ill-advised to trail leeks after the match.
Finally, not without love. Our Lord laid down clear rules about going and telling your brother what you have against him (Mt 5:21-26 and Mt 18:15-18). One of our practical problems is that we do not have very good mechanisms for doing this. In the East African revival one of the great strengths was their openness to one another. To walk in the light and have fellowship. Even this has its problems. It is fine to confess your own fault to your brother, but it leads to trouble when you confess other people's faults.
As I speak I am near where the septic block of St Thomas's was situated. It is there no more. Antibiotics have removed the need for a ward given over to dreadful carbuncles and other sepsis. But the basic rule remains that where you have pus you let it out. Otherwise it festers and spreads. It is a hard thing to do and I confess to having failed in this. Or I have thought that I had adequately stated a thing to find that it was completely unclear to the other person, who was therefore still sore. Manners can get in the way of clarity. In the end the wound between you and your friend will heal better and more quickly if it is out in the open.
I speak in all this as someone who has failed in these matters. We can thank God that we have a loving Heavenly Father who knows what we are like and forgives us.
Queen Elizabeth the First said to her servants over a certain matter, 'God may forgive you but I never will'. Let us follow the heavenly rather than the regal example in the whole matter of disagreement between Christians.
