By Norman Jameson
Between April and June 1994 an estimated 800,000 Rwandans were killed in the space of 100 days in a tribal, ethnic genocide that people outside of Rwanda still do not understand. Most of the dead were Tutsis and most of the killers were Hutus.
The two groups speak the same language, are the same color, inhabit the same areas and follow the same traditions. Yet, among themselves they perceived a difference so significant that it enabled them to kill each other with impunity on a scale that still takes our breath away.
Today you likely associate the words “Hutu” or “Tutsi” or even “Rwanda” with nothing other than the horrible, barbaric bloodlust of those 100 days.
Trying hard not to be overly dramatic, the analogy fits Baptists without the blood. To outsiders we all look alike. We speak the common language of Zion and look similar as we gather in our segregated village temples.
Only tribal insiders can discern among those who look like them, talk like them, believe like them — but just do not fit.
And to those on the outside, our internecine battles make us just as irrelevant as the hatred between Tutsis and Hutus makes them to the civilized world.
It was only in the midst of my brief tenure as Biblical Recorder editor that I came to fully understand the depth and significance of Jesus’ words to his disciples at the Last Supper.
There he gave them a “new command,” as recorded in John 13:34-35. “Love one another,” he said. “As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
Wouldn’t you think that would be the easiest task that could be asked of a Christian? Instead, Jesus knew that 20 centuries later those who claim his name would spend more time and energy discerning differences so they can exclude brothers and sisters than embracing similarities so they can include them in common mission.
Those who live inside the Baptist bubble for any length of time begin to believe that ours is a big, important world; that our meetings matter and the fate of the universe hinges on our ability to align our views perfectly.
But step outside that bubble and you will see that outsiders perceive only our inability to love one another. So what do we have to offer them?
I came to the Recorder with no agenda, other than to serve North Carolina Baptists. I’ve learned a lot. One thing I noticed was that Baptists don’t fuss much over the hard sayings of Jesus — we just ignore them.
We consign to a drawer his admonitions about loving enemies, harboring strangers, respecting laws and authority and holding very loosely to our money. Jesus tells us how to be church.
Our conflicts come over how to do church — women in ministry, alcohol, ordination, deacons or elders, music and worship style, private prayer language, qualifications to hold certain offices and who pronounces “Shibboleth” correctly (see Judges 12:4-6). Because it is easier and we convince ourselves we’re actually being productive, we immerse ourselves in “church work” and call it the “work of the church.”
One high-profile pastor called me after an editorial ran with which he disagreed. He suggested a majority of North Carolina Baptists also disagreed with my position and said, “Don’t you think you ought to write things that reflect the majority viewpoint?”
The shallowness of that position is both breathtaking and frightening. I’m reminded of a comment by “conservative resurgence” guru Adrian Rogers in the early 1980s when seminary professors were under fire.
As an example of how Rogers thought seminary professors ought to bow to the current theological wind, he said they ought to teach “whatever they are told to teach. And if we tell them to teach that pickles have souls, then they must teach that pickles have souls!”
My sadness going forward is realizing that no number of task forces, church starts, evangelism contacts, or proclamations that we “love the sinner, but hate the sin,” will ever avail when we demonstrate so regularly that we do not love each other.
Can you absorb an insult? Swallow a retort? Read a contrary opinion without assigning ill motive to the writer? Rejoice when God’s blessings fall on another? Refuse the shackles of legalism?
“As I have loved you, so you must love one another,” Jesus said. “By this, everyone will know….”