Sweet and Sour Church
When it comes to sweet and sour chicken, I am a fan, although I’ve never actually made it myself. As many of my friends and family know, my relationship with food is pretty straightforward: I am a consumer, not a producer. I demand. Others supply. All with an always-grateful smile!
Despite my complete lack of sweet and sour cooking expertise, I’m going to venture a guess that there might be something sweet and something sour somewhere in the mix. In my wife Gayline’s version, the sweet and sour includes a mix of brown sugar and vinegar, neither of which pleases much on its own. But when put together, something different from either is produced; and it’s delicious. Add in chicken, pineapple, onions, peppers, and assorted other ingredients, and a whole new and improved flavor is created. Here’s the point: without the different, the better would not exist.
Sweet and Sour Opinions
The same goes for relationships in the Body of Christ. “Different” is what the church is made of. Different people. Different generations. Different genders. Different spiritual journeys to Christ. Different cultures. Different colors. Different ideas. Different gifts. Different loyalties. Different passions. Different righteous causes. Different opinions. What God is doing in and through the church is a mix of sweet and savory that only he can concoct. But he is determined to make it work because, as with food, so with people: without the different, the better would not exist.
I would suggest that universal sameness in the church would stunt our growth. I suspect that God intends our diverse, strongly divergent opinions to sanctify us. Perhaps we were meant to be different—and sometimes radically so—to balance and enhance each other, to make us mutually beneficial streams of grace-enriched humanity flowing into each other’s life, transforming us into something more stunningly beautiful than we would otherwise be (Eph. 5:26–27).
I think this is more than a possibility. Given what our Lord promises in Romans 8:28, it is safe to stake our lives on it. Different is what we need. The sweet and the sour in our experiences, perspectives, and opinions are part of the all things that work together for our good. They are essential ingredients to produce a better us.
Welcome One Another
The apostle Paul talks about sweet and sour opinions in the church, that mix of opinions for which God has a sanctifying purpose. Read Romans 14:1–15:7, and you’ll see that his main point bookends the text—“As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions. . . . Therefore, welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God” (14:1; 15:7).
“We are to welcome the anothers in our lives who have opinions different from our own, even as God has welcomed us all in Christ.”
We are to welcome the anothers in our lives who have opinions different from our own, even as God has welcomed us all in Christ. Welcome is a hospitality word, encouraging us to receive others by inviting them into our hearts in order to embrace them in fellowship, communion, and unity.
We are not to keep differing people and opinions at a distance but welcome them in, with a commitment not to quarrel about the varying opinions each may hold. This is a tall order, given how tightly we hold and boldly we proclaim our opinions. But Paul’s point in Romans 14 is that united love, righteousness, peace, and joy in the indisputable and essential truth of God in Jesus Christ, are more important than all our opinions about anything else (Rom. 14:13–17; see also 2 Tim. 2:23–25).
We Aren’t the First to Face the Challenge
Clearly, we are not the first Christians to face the challenge of strong divergent opinions that we hold dear. While Romans 14:2–5 might sound like Christian controversies trivial by our standards, those first-century debates about holy days and diet were rooted in deep cultural traditions and convictional differences, not to mention long-standing ethnic privilege and prejudice.
These were not mere debates about whether there should be red meat on the menu or red-letter “holy” dates on the calendar. They were debates about which culture and traditions were superior. They were arguments between people who saw the world through very different eyes and thought their vision was best.
In the Roman Church—as in nearly all New Testament churches—there were privileged and powerful Romans (viewed by non-Romans as oppressors), Greek intellectuals who scorned uneducated and uncouth barbarians, privileged Jewish religious purists, current slaves along with their masters, ethnic outcasts, male and female sexists, immigrant dark-skinned Africans and the very much despised white-skinned Scythians (descendants of fearsome, hard-drinking, pot-smoking warrior tribes). You see this diversity in the early church when piecing together passages such as Romans 1:13–14, Galatians 3:28, and Colossians 3:11. Throw in the assorted former money-hoarders, gossips, alcoholics, fornicators, adulterers, homosexuals, thieves, swindlers, and molesters that, though saved, surely brought their own guilt and shame baggage into the early church, and it was a very interesting band of believers indeed (1 Cor. 6:9–11)!
This conglomeration of the different meant that New Testament churches included all the ingredients of stubborn ethnic prejudice, political oppression, educational disparity, class disadvantage, liturgical preferences, and cultural styles—all of which injected constant stress into their relationships. Sweet and sour were part of the mix. So if our churches have similar issues, we are at least in good company.
Experiencing Doubts and Wondering How
I guess that those reading this are already wondering how. And frankly I am too. As a veteran pastor of nearly forty years who has cared deeply about diversity in the church for decades and has now spent more than five years in a very diverse congregation, I must say that the challenge is hard. I believe it is worth it. But it is not, nor will it ever be, easy.
Current national and global conditions are shaping and hardening positions. COVID has produced strong dogmatic opposing opinions on the best way forward. Headlines about police shootings and trials scream at us daily. Racial and political tensions, together with very real injustice and wrongdoing, have drawn lines in the proverbial sand that are further devolving into dividing lines, deeply etched in stone. Who’s right and who’s wrong? Or is it ever quite so clear as that? And how can we possibly live and worship together?
“We will not be judged so much for the opinions we have held as for the love with which we have held our opinions. ”
Paul presents a way forward in Romans 14, where he commands us to know the difference between mere opinions and absolute truths (Rom. 14:8–9). He shows us that it is okay to have strong personal opinions that we live out in our own lives (Rom. 14:5) with which others may disagree, though he tells us not to argue about them (Rom. 14:1) or judge others over them (Rom. 14:10–13). But Paul also shows us that there is one supreme Agenda, overruling all others, that we need to add into the mix (Rom. 14:16–17), and that, as hard as it may seem, we really must welcome one another without quarreling so that the sweet and sour edifying effect of true diversity in unity may be experienced (Rom. 14:1; 15:2–7).
In short, Paul shows us that at the end of the day, we will not be judged so much for the opinions we have held as for the character (and love) with which we have held our opinions. What will matter most—and the standard by which we will be measured—will be whether we allowed the different in our lives to lead to the better.
Tim Shorey is lead pastor of Risen Hope Church, a multiethnic congregation in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. He is author of Respect the Image: Reflecting Human Worth in How We Listen and Talk (P&R Publishing) and is available to teach RTI seminars and provide other related services for churches and para-church ministries. Tim is married to Gayline, his wife of 43 years, and has six grown children and 13 grandchildren. For more information, visit www.timothyshorey.com.