Praying for oneness of the Church
I have heard that there is strife and division in the church and I am inclined to believe it. Apparently there are political wranglings between one party and another being played out in the congregation as well as strife and dispute being stirred up over many issues on social media. I am not on Facebook, so I miss everything that goes on there, but I am on this forum where they debate over whether or not Christians should be for Trump or not. I try to avoid these threads.
So then let's look at how the Bible says to make peace. It requires a peace offering which can be a bull, that is a very expensive offering.
So let's apply that to the church making peace and putting an end to all this bickering. In 2020 there were many people in this country who thought the election was stolen and wanted to do an audit of the process. Polls showed that as much as 30% of the country thought the election had been stolen by fraud. I felt that this greatly undermined the trust in our process and so I was for doing the audit. On the other hand there were some who felt it was not right to do an audit for just the states that had the closest votes for Biden. I agreed with them, I felt we could do audits on all 20 swing states or even do an audit of all 50 states. Many complained that to do an audit on all 50 states would cost $100 million. I felt this was a worthwhile expense to restore trust in the system. (If sending $160 billion to Ukraine didn't even require a debate it seems $100 million is really a small price to pay to bring peace to the US). But they never did the audits. Sometimes they did a "recount". This is like giving the people who were concerned the middle finger. An audit would verify that every name on the voter registration still lived in the state and was alive. It would verify that the addresses that mailed in ballots would confirm that they had indeed mailed in that many ballots and they had that many registered voters. Some addresses had 20 ballots that had come from them. But no one did an audit, the message to those who had an issue was "just shut up and do what you are told". That was not a message that led to peace. Today the most recent polls show that 50% of the country thinks the election was stolen and 70% thinks there was some fraud. The problem did not go away, it got worse. You can't claim to "love and care for someone" and then when they have an issue you just tell them to shut up and ignore them. The Christian churches represent 50% of the US population, they could have stood strong on this issue and some pastors did, but most kept silent.
You can argue that this was politics and the church and state are separate. OK, but then no doubt that is what you argued when they mandated the vaccine and shut down churches. You stood strong and said it is unconstitutional for the Federal government to shut down the churches. You can hold meetings online for any members afraid to go to the church, you can have hand sanitizer and take the temperature of people who come to the meeting, but if you are standing strong for separation of church and state why do you let the state lock your doors? They claimed it was a health crisis. I lived in NYC, about three miles from the church I met at was a casino, they never shut down the casino. They never shut down Costco or Walmart. Many people were forced to lose their jobs because they didn't take the vaccine. I am not anti science, I was a HS science teacher and I am not anti Vaxx I had all my shots that were required to teach in NYC. But I had legitimate questions about this vaccine, it was experimental and they violated the laws involving mandating experimental vaccines. They were behaving like criminals and liars, so it was reasonable to ask questions. But when anyone did they were insulted, mocked, and told to shut up and do what you are told. Where were the pastors, the shepherd of the sheep? If they had all stood up and stood strong there is no way this would have gone on, but instead many did nothing. They stood by while people were fired over this or forced against their will to get the vaccine. We now know that 17 million people died as a result of that vaccine and that is the most conservative number and does not include all the other health issues involved with the vaccine.
Yes, we should all be one in Christ. But in Acts when there were legitimate concerns about how the church was dealing with issues they didn't tell people to shut up and do what you are told. They appointed brothers like Stephen to deal with it, and this was not a hired hand that fled when he saw the wolves, he stood strong even if it cost him his life.
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