What Happens When the People of God Fight Each Other?

The 2016 presidential election highlighted the intense division that racks the United States of America. (Note united in our national name.) Two political parties with different worldviews vie for the majority of voters so that they can make their platform mainstream, while inside this struggle of worldviews resides two radically different viewpoints of Christianity, usually distinguished as either conservative or liberal. Both groups see themselves as the people of God, followers of Jesus Christ. Nonetheless they violently disagree about who should lead the government and what the governing philosophy should be.

Disagreement is not itself a problem. Everywhere there are groups of people there are disagreements about almost everything. As the most diverse nation on earth, the United States seems to have as much disagreement as alphabet soup has letters. This nation has survived and thrived because compromise and collaboration won out over conflict, but the question is will the citizens of this nation continue to coexist, and what will be the role of the Church?

One might think that when religious beliefs are similar or the same there would be little disagreement, but such is not nor ever has been the case. Some even insist that religion is a cause of conflict and cite the many historic examples in which religious differences have led to war. The Bible does not hide the faults and failures of the people of God. In the next Blog post, I will share a biblical story that involved conflict between two groups of the people of God, conflict that developed not only into violence and bloodshed but the near annihilation of one of the groups. Of course, none of this reflected God’s intentions.

Next: The War Between the People of God Recorded in the Bible