When Division is the Right Thing

Threading a needle

Let’s say you go to a football game with a few friends. Let’s say the friend who drove everyone isn’t a Christian and likes to have more than a few drinks. As the game ends, he’s ready to drive home. Thankfully, you ended up with the keys somehow. But he really wants them, and he’s going to be furious if you don’t hand them over. Your options are:

Hand him the keys and get in the car
Hand him the keys and tell him you’ll find your own way home
Insist on driving, even if it means he’s going to hit you, spit on you, call you names, and stop being your friend before he gets in the car

Obviously, it’s not a hard choice. 1990s school D.A.R.E. program scenarios like this were easy enough we could solve them in elementary school. Getting in the car might be a life-threatening mistake. Personally abstaining while putting everyone else in the car and everyone else on the highway at risk would be morally inexcusable. The only option is to hold the line, even if it means you lose a friend.

As clear as that may be, it does help illustrate an important point:

Everybody agrees it’s necessary to cause division sometimes

And in instances like this, you aren’t guilty of the kind of divisiveness the Bible speaks against. What we are forbidden from doing is doing the dividing ourselves (Romans 12:18) by our selfishness (James 4:1-3) and lack of love (1 Corinthians 13:1-3).

But if the truth itself causes the division, then we are outside of the realm of “as far as it depends on you.” Naturally, the truth causes plenty of division. Jesus Himself said He wasn’t bringing peace but a sword—division, in other words (Matthew 10:34).

And despite the false choice many create between choosing truth or love, there is no either/or. It is not loving to avoid the truth in hopes it will win them over. The only loving thing to do is to compassionately tell them what they need to hear.

This is a key principle of leadership. We think “servant leadership” is taking the pulse of everyone involved and trying to keep everyone happy, but making sure no one ever gets mad isn’t servant leadership—it’s self-serving leadership. Truly serving people means knowing what is best for them and choosing it, even if it makes them furious. To do otherwise would be to try to shepherd without a rod or a fence.

Someone might read this and think I’m advocating we go out looking for ways to divide. Of course not. There should be no more division than the truth itself would create.

But neither should we hide from division if we are speaking the truth in love. C.S. Lewis’ fire department (explained here) has been running rampant again, making us far more wary of division and confrontation than we are of compromise and appeasement when the latter is the easier, more common path.

It’s easy to see the truth of these principles when it comes to something so obvious as drunk driving, though. It’s more complicated when it comes to the more common dividing points in the home, the church, and the political realm.

Parents telling their daughter she’s not leaving the house in a certain piece of immodest clothing or telling their son his phone is being taken away or restricted with parental controls might make them really mad. But it’s the right thing to do.

Even more difficult, a man telling his wife that he expects her to quit watching that smutty reality show because it’s not pleasing to God might draw serious ire and require some tough follow-up conversations. Hopefully she is righteous enough to not pursue actual division when the husband tries to do his job of spiritually leading. But a lot of bad things happen to a home when a husband and father avoids these kinds of conversations because it’s the path of least resistance.

Church leaders constantly have to keep a finger on the pulse of the congregation, knowing that it’s not uncommon for some Christians to threaten to leave over a ministerial hire, a budgetary spending decision, or even a controversial but true teaching. Some elders will go so far as to put a Godly man out of work just to keep the peace. The right thing to do is to make the best decision they know how and stand by it, no matter how many fits somebody throws or even how many people leave.

And, of course, there is the political realm. Literally dozens of books have been written in recent years about how Christians cannot join in the political division. But, once again, if the division is caused by truth spoken in love, then it needs to happen. The church does not need to divide over quibbles of small percentages on tax rates, or discretionary spending, or other everyday governmental procedures. But there are absolutely some things worth dividing over. Jesus is Lord over our politics, too, and if we tip-toe around them to keep the peace, we’re telling people His Lordship doesn’t matter.

For example, if I say that abortion is a sin, being pro-abortion is a sin, and voting for the party that defines themselves by their support of abortion is a sin, it will probably cause some division. That doesn’t make it wrong to say it.

We can certainly debate whether a Christian can vote for a “lesser of two evils” option, but what is not debatable is that it is always wrong to support the greater of two evils. This is taking the car keys away from a drunk driver who is going to get people killed.

But once again, this is serving people for their own good, even if they don’t like it. It is neither good for the individual nor the nation for women to be allowed to murder their own children. Nor is it good for the nation to light up its centers of power in rainbow colors in defiance of God and in provocation of His judgment. We should be able to unapologetically say these things.

With each of these examples, it is the willingness to be hated for saying what’s right that is needed. This is the prophetic voice men of God have always had to have in order to guard good people from evil, to stop evil people from advancing, and to give neutral people a chance. Sometimes it has ended in people being won over. Sometimes it has ended in such a backlash that the prophets were killed for telling the truth.

But the results are not up to us. All we are asked to do is be faithful enough to speak the truth, even if nobody wants to hear it (2 Timothy 4:1-4). It is wrong to look for reasons to divide, but it is just as wrong to avoid necessary truths that will cause division. We need to pray for the meekness to know when to stand down, and the spine to know when to stand up.

---

Notes

I wanted to give a plug for this week’s Think Deeper Podcast episode. I believe it’s one of the most useful ones we’ve done yet. Available at this link or on your podcast app.