Loving the Church While Hating the Christians

The Challenge of Closeness

In Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, there is a brilliant back-and-forth between a respected elder at a monastery named Zosima and a woman who came to him for advice.

In addressing her situation, Zosima tells her of a doctor he knew who would visualize himself sacrificing greatly for people yet said, "In actual fact, however, I cannot bear to spend two days in the same room with another person... I become a man's enemy as soon as he touches me. But to make up for it, the more I hate individual people, the more ardent is my general love for mankind."

The man was so proud of himself for his love of hypothetical "mankind," he was perfectly content to live with his disdain for the actual, real-life people around him.

You see this frequently in today's political and social climate. Many who believe their political activism is about love for others can't even stand their own parents. Some want to take money from people they don't know and give it to people they don't know and consider themselves great philanthropists for it. Yet, some of the same people do little to actually help anybody from their own means.

It's the same thinking behind virtue signaling, where people are more worried about letting everyone know they're a good person without actually having to do any good.

How does this thinking come into the church?

In like manner, we can fall into the trap of idealizing the Christians we meet online or around the country at major conferences or camps. "If we could just all live closer together, it would be like heaven," you'll hear someone say from time to time.

And there's no doubt modern interconnectivity has made it easier to find like-minded people. That's a blessing, to be sure.

But the reality is, the closer we get to people, the more friction there will be. If those like-minded people all came to live near me and went to church with me, we'd almost certainly have to work through some kind of conflict eventually.

And while the people we do live around might be more difficult to connect with, Christian maturity would have us work through it and "bear with" and "tolerate" them, just as they'll have to do the same for us. Again, the imaginary, far-off people occupying the remarkably green grass on the other side of the fence are easy to love. The people sharing our grass will always be more difficult to love.

But that's what God has called us to. It's not unlike what John wrote in 1 John 4:20 - "If someone says, 'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?"

How can we say we love the church if we don't love the people who make up our actual church? 

The online church is great, and like-minded friends around the country are a blessing. But the truth is, they cost us very little. Like Dostoevsky's doctor, our true test comes in how we love the people around us. 

This article originally appeared on Focus+.