the battle

You may know Neil Allender. He is a friend of mine, a very smart guy, and a really cool dude. He wrote a blog about a year ago which I have never forgotten and re-read often. I hope he doesn't mind me reposting it, and you can find the original here. But it is a really interesting way of looking at Christianity and definitely worth a read.

Picture that scene at the end of the movie when the oppositely aligned twins finally face off. But this time they are triplets each named World. The only way to differentiate which is which is to know who their crew is, but we did not see the whole movie so we cannot be certain. One of the Worlds is hanging out with this guy Kingdom and they are getting along famously but the other World drags the other World into the mix because he's got beef with Kingdom and knows the best way to hurt him is to mess up his friendship with the first World guy.

So… we have a protagonist Kingdom who's friendship with World is threatened by the other bad guy World who has coerced the other World to foul things up.

The confusion is just beginning because Kingdom is mute. He smoke signals his posse Family of God and we finally find out that the Kingdom MUST be the guy we are rooting for because he has a family ;P Family communicates with Kingdom somehow, nods his head, and flees the scene.

The brewing triplet quarrel escalates until… in marches Family with 5 dudes wearing Church t-shirts. They have at the triplets on behalf of Kingdom but somehow they get confused about the World identities and start thrashing different World characters. Family starts freaking out and pulls out the Church, cells his friend Accountability, and now there are 10 Churches, 5 pairs of 2.

"Onward!" cries Family, and the church heads back in there all armored up. The World that got drug into this quagmire sees the approaching Churches and says, "Whoa! What are you marching over me for I'm just here man!"

But the Churchies don't believe him so they start trying to separate the triplets by force to find out which one is to blame.

The Bad World whispers in Neutral World's ear, "They got your number." Naturally, he defends himself and takes out an Accountability in one blow. Church 5 finds himself stranded alone and takes off running for the hills. Bad World laughs and Good World starts to cry.

Not done yet.

All this is happening on your front lawn. The Neighbors come out and wonder what the heck is going on while the quarrel escalates.

Now the Neighbors are joining in our commotion, "Wrong World you fuddy-duddies!"

Mute Kingdom goes and starts waving his arms near an Orphan Neighbor but two pairs of Church are pissed at Neutral World for taking out one of their crew.

Family is like, "Uhhhh???"

And now some Churches are playing Bad World's game – without knowing. Good World can't find Kingdom amidst the chaotic shouting and is so depressed by the situation he's looking for a tree to hang himself on. The other two pairs of Churches go over to help him but one gets distracted and 'THUNK!!!' takes an arrow from Bad World who launched it from over Neutral World's shoulder. Kingdom starts doing back flips like an Olympic Floor Routine to get some attention but the casualty gets all the attention from the Churches and we've got war!

If this wasn't bad enough, 21st Century Christian comes out of baptismal waters and sees with new eyes what she has never seen before. She surveys everything and tries to stay out of the mess; "Is that Kingdom???" she says to herself while spying someone who (for all she could possibly know) looks like what Kingdom ought to look like near the Orphan Neighbor.

But a Church cries, "Where's Accountability!!!" and she gets dragged in.

The "ugh, sorry…." gesture from her doesn't make Orphan feel much better and now he starts throwing rocks at the Churches. Kingdom starts pounding his fist painfully into the ground hoping Judge will show up and set things straight. Family thinks, "Yeah, Judge, OK" and oh… there he goes off again.

Now you go out to get the morning paper, warm up your car, or say hello to Your Neighbor. To your left, on a lawn chair, reclining in swim trunks, is Enemy asking Your Neighbor, "Mojito or Margarita?"

A Church comes out of the milieu and slaps the drink out of Enemies hand saying, "Why do think the world is in such a mess, huh?", pointing to the commotion.

Enemy drops the drink and says, "Oh, you are SO right, Alcohol IS the Enemy. Lets go tell everyone."

Your other Neighbor comes out and says, "Hey, you're Christian right? I'd like to hear about that sometime, maybe over a beer." What do you do?

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In our faith there are words and concepts they identify which are used in our everyday thoughts or conversations. You just read many of them; World, Enemy, Neighbor, etc…. These words are used to identify people, institutions, behaviors, concepts, attitudes, and outlooks as one thing or another: acceptable / unacceptable, appropriate / inappropriate, to be embraced / to be rejected. With them we determine how we are going to relate to people and institutions as well as how we will respond to behaviors, concepts, and motivations we encounter. These are distinctions.

Christian culture makes distinctions just like any other culture. Christian, are you sure you make distinctions in a manner consistent with how God has drawn His? You might be surprised; as the story just told illustrates. A story where some Churches cannot differentiate between battling the world and serving God's Kingdom, talking about the Enemy like it was a beverage and spending more time on each other than being concerned with those people whom God's Kingdom is concerned – like orphans – or neighbors. This story, unfortunately, is not far from real life.