51 Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. (Luke 12:51 NIV)
When our younger daughter Christie was 10 she went to one of many sleepovers with her friends. (Perhaps one of the most fraudulently named events of childhood. The only sleep that occurs is the better part of the next day when they get home.) It is my understanding that these first forays into allnighters usually involved eight or ten 10-year-old girls, copious amounts of high-calorie snacks and highly-caffeinated beverages, plenty of makeup for makeovers, stacks of scratched and chipped CDs by the Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, the Spice Girls, and Hanson if any hipsters were invited. (Christie loved Hanson...the little hipster) All of these ingredients created a volatile environment for sure, but it was merely a precursor to the main event, the movies.
Every girl brought at least one of her favorite movies and delicate negotiations ensued to determine which movies made the cut and the order in which they would be watched. It was at this point that Christie was the catalyst for conflict. Generally speaking the unwritten rule in that era and in Christie's circle of friends was that movies would be G or PG. However, one girl had brought a particularly racy PG-13 title that the girls were going to watch "later." It happened to be a movie that Lynn and I and specifically said we didn't want her to see. So, as the night progressed and the time came to taste the forbidden fruit, Christie informed the girls that she was not allowed to watch hat movie. A couple of other girls agreed with Christie; others argued their point. To all the girls' credit they didn't gang up on Christie or kick her to the curb for throwing a wrench in the VCR. There was a risky appeal to the mom-in-residence--that's how we found out about it--but she supported Christie's protest and the movie went back in the girl's backpack. There was a little grumbling from the group and maybe a couple of eye rolls aimed at Christie, but they all survived the night.
Christie did not attend the sleepover for the purpose of causing a scene. Her plans did not include creating a division in the group. The division simply arose from Christie clinging to what she thought, in her precious heart-of-hearts, was the right thing.
Christie's opinion about the movie was based on her parent's opinion which was highly subjective. As we make the move from Christie and her pre-adolescent sleepover to to Jesus and his pre-second coming do-over we also make the move from subjective opinion to objective Truth. Jesus didn't come to the earth he created with another opinion about the right way to live to be tossed into the hopper for consideration. Jesus knew every nook and cranny of the planet and every crease and crevasse of the hearts of the people who inhabited it. Subjective opinions can be parsed and applied to a group like sharing M&Ms by colors. The objective Truth, however, will slice through a group of opinionated people like a warm knife slicing through an ice cream cake at a sleepover. But truth's intrinsic purpose is not to divide. Truth's purpose is to stand fast and let those who hear it and see it make a choice.
Luke refers to Jesus as God's peace seven times and yet, here, Jesus says he did not come to bring peace. While that seems patently contradictory, it really isn't. Jesus came to reveal the truth of God's love for all humankind. It was a love that would bring peace to human hearts that were waging a war against themselves from within. Unfortunately, the internal struggle often spills out into external relationships creating bitter dissension, harmful apathy, and cruel hate. The extent to which his peace would surface in the form of reconciliation among people would depend upon the choice people make about receiving his truth and letting it do its thing. Paradoxically, the division Jesus' truth creates internally can heal the divisions in our lives externally if we're willing to let his healing fire warm our hearts. Of course, it can also be a wedge to those who, thank you very much, prefer the fire down below. (For those who don't speak Classic Rock, that's a reference to a Bob Seger song, not hell, lest we get distracted and miss the point. We'll save hell for another day.)
Maybe this detour on our journey toward the cross should be a pause for a long look inside and an honest evaluation of our hearts. Is sin fanning the flames of war creating casualties among the people around us? Jesus wants to create a division between the dangerous subjective truths we learn from the world or create for ourselves and his redemptive objective Truth that has always been and will always be. When we lean toward the Truth of God's love in Jesus Christ it may create some division initially among those who prefer the old paradigm of calling our own shots--even when those shots hit people we love. But, eventually the division can bring wholeness that will draw people together, which was Jesus' purpose all along.
Blessings,
Larry
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