Love and Truth

Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart.
-1Peter 1:22

As our family looks for a new church, I have asked myself which is more important in a church, a commitment to demonstrating love or to upholding truth? Of course the answer is that both are important: love without truth is blind, sloppy and misdirected; truth without love is empty, barren even brutal. Even the most sincere love becomes perverted and destructive if not seeking truth. Even the most factual truth becomes distorted and deceptive if not guided by love. However, for some reason, we can have a hard time keeping them in balance when we gather together in a church.

I was raised in evangelical churches that upheld the importance of rightly studying Scripture to order our lives toward Christ. But after my my recent experience, I'm a bit wary of those who profess to only know and obey the truth in this way. I can respect their call to the truth and their desire to refine their words and actions to be pure. But they do risk putting their faith in details of the truth instead of the Spirit of God. When they start to work to maintain the power of their truth themselves, they fall away from love and end up judging others.

But I also cannot worship God in a church that is only about “goodwill and better friendships”. I have obtained strength meditating on the law of God. I ask many questions about where I am but Scripture is the basis I need to search for answers. I still need a church that is connected to God through Scripture and connected to the saints of the church through creeds. I need to keep this connection to the story of the Bible and the story of the Church myself.

I bumped into the Emerging Church movement on my way out of our last church. I found most evangelicals critical and dismissive of this movement. I still am not real sure what an emerging church is, maybe because it is … well, still emerging and figuring it out itself. The traits I observe are an avoidance of church hierarchy and an emphasis on accepting everything through the love of God. The purpose of the emerging church appears to be making room to listening to where we are as we read the Gospel. But whereas evangelicals judge this as watering down the Gospel, a more appropriate response is that the emerging church is offering real alternatives to the answers, judgment and control used by many evangelicals. It is an emphasis of truth before love that has brought about this reaction in the church to emphasize love.

But the pendulum shouldn’t just swing uncontrolled in the other direction. Rejection of all church hierarchy is not the best response to the misuse of authority in the church. We don’t find God’s love by simply ignoring evidence of his judgments. We don’t throw away 2000 years of church thought and creeds when we ask questions about what the Gospel means for us today. Any church movement that proceeds along these lines does risk missing the truth while trying to uphold love.

After leaving an evangelical Anglican church, we wandered to Journey Imperfect Faith Community (what a great name), mostly because it seemed interesting based on what a friend had said. We were still in shock from what had happened to us and weren't thinking so much about what to expect as about how to keep connected to God in some way. But on my first Sunday there, I was deeply moved by the message of love and acceptance standing in such stark contrast to the message of judgment I had heard previously. I kept coming back not just because they are accepting of me but they are still talking about how God wants us to live our lives in new ways. Marion also seems to feel this change and a desire to learn more about this manner of worship and service. We were worried about the kids (we left a very robust and organized children’s program) but they have embraced the love and acceptance as the place they really want to be as well. So maybe this is where God has called us. (I had wanted to visit a bunch of churches to find a "good match" but this is not so easy to do with three kids.)

But what about my concerns that love is emphasized at the expense of truth? Well, I don't think Journey is really an emerging church, at least not in the sense that they would question every truth in Scripture. But more importantly Journey is a community that is open to listening to each other. If they can extend grace to listen to some Bible-thumping, liturgy-loving evangelical as myself then I may could find a place there. I think that God does want us to listen to each other - show mercy to each other - as we ask how to live out the Gospel. In the end mercy does triumph over judgment.