One of the suckiest part of life is how much of it is outside of our control. With the incredible discoveries of science, medicine, and technology, you’d think that’d be less true than in the past. While that’s partially true and while quality of life has drastically improved, we cede control everyday—often without knowing it.
A lot of our life is determined by algorithms. A series of ones and zeroes determines what we see online and thus our connection with friends, family, news, and culture at large. Algorithms control what advertising interrupts our life, what shows Netflix recommends, what results Google displays, what items squeeze onto our grocery store shelves, and what coupon spills out of the machine at Target. They also control who gets a green card, how many students are assigned to a classroom, and how long a prison sentence someone will serve.
An algorithm now even controls how to split the America church.
This bit of code sorts people and beliefs into binaries. Our heart has to break for refugees or foster kids—but not both. We must fund care for homeless veterans or immigrants. We must choose between Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter, between foreign missions and inner city ministries, between the Social Gospel and the Romans Road. Our local assembly must pursue either predictable liturgy or weekly creativity. Our services must include either loud praise or quiet introspection, high production value or authenticity. We must choose between denominational separatism or unfettered ecumenicalism. We can hold only one of either questions or faith.
Whoever programmed this sorting code created an insidious false dichotomy. While the rest of culture reflects this same algorithm, the church runs this code only with sad irony. We should be the bastion of mystery, the stronghold of diversity. Prophets and apostles wrote that God’s thoughts are higher than ours, that his full truth can only be known in part, that we see reality only through a dark glass. So, the church should be the most likely collection of people who regularly question our own presuppositions. While we should be absolutely sure that Jesus is who he said he is and did what witnesses recorded, there’s a lot that the Bible doesn’t directly address. While we must hold to his commands and cling to his promises, there’s a lot of life we must hold loosely.
For an entire segment of the population that believes we should be constantly growing, we have a hard time allowing others to not yet have learned what we now know. Few of us entertain the notion that maybe it’s us who haven’t learned the right way of thinking. For a religion that teaches that grace and mercy cover sin, we’ve yet to figure out that grace and mercy cover ignorance, too—including our own.
For people who follow a Savior who loves the whole world, it doesn’t make sense that we see that same world as a zero sum game. Since we can’t earn any more or any less of Jesus’ infinite love or attention, it’s wild that we try to feel better about our standing with him. Yet each of us create arbitrary ways for our sisters and brothers to appear less worthy of what we aren’t worthy of, either. We invite the algorithm to metastasize, to replicate itself like a virus with us as hosts.
Thankfully, all of us also hold enough of the antidote to heal both ourselves and the people in our lives. We can neuter the algorithm by not running it on our hard drives. We can ask questions instead of making assumptions. We can trade arrogance out for humility. We can make room for options like both and neither and somewhere-in-between. We can walk right up to nuance instead of staring at it through rifle scopes.
But that takes courage.
Maybe that’s part of why the Bible calls us both to fear not and to live in unity. Unity requires that we aren’t scared of what makes us different. Unity recognizes that diversity makes a bigger and better story. Unity knows we each express a unique part of God’s heart for a unique audience that needs that expression. Unity understands that people are wired or conditioned to care about some needs and ministries more than others. Unity acknowledges that there is no victim Olympics and that all souls hold the same value to their Creator. Unity doesn’t see borders; it has enough of a challenge fighting obstacles built by culture, perception, and systemic injustice. Unity allows for people with similar values but different tastes to explore worship and discipleship and charity in different ways. Wisdom and courage confront hypocrisy, duplicity, abuse, and heresy to ensure wolves can’t weaponize unity.
Unity draws attention because it’s countercultural. If we want to fulfill our collective destiny as a city on a hill, the first step will be putting our arms around the shoulders of the others up on that hill with us.
