What power is sufficient to tackle humanity’s innate tendency to tribalism?
Tribalism is the ugly habit of drawing boundaries and making distinctions that enable you to define some people as ‘in’ and some people as ‘out’. It therefore matters a great deal, and for two reasons. On the one hand, the pattern of a person’s in-cluding and out-cluding is the expression of their deepest convictions about what is true and what matters – whether and how they behave at this point tells you a great deal about them; on the other hand, including or excluding people is a fundamental expression of love, or lack thereof, and since love is the basic Christian virtue – command # 2, or as John puts it, “whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 Jn 4.8) – failure to love is a serious failure.
Sometimes tribalism is as crude as racism – ‘our’ colour/race is in, and any other colour/race is out (for example, Jews and Gentiles in Ephesus). Sometimes tribalism is convictional, and takes the form of groups at ideological war with one another, as in party politics. And sometimes tribalism is as banal as me and my friends with whom I feel comfortable and trust, whereas ‘they’ are not from the same stable as me.
Paul is convinced that there is a power that can overcome the tendency to tribalism. It is the gospel of Christ, and in particular, the corporate reality that that gospel creates. Ephesians, where these issues are right on the surface, is clearest on this:
For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it. (Eph 2.14-16
Romans, which on my reading has equally significant ‘tribalism’ issues bubbling along just beneath the surface (in the form of Gentilizing – the opposite of Judaising), says much the same thing:
For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. (Rom 12.4-5)
Notice three things about this:
One effect of the achievement of God in Christ – the gospel – is to create a body, the body of Christ. In Christ, that is, in his body, is where salvation is to be found. That is why one author could write: “the nature of the new covenant drives us to the conclusion that there is a certain sense in which extra ecclesiam nulla salus” (translation: outside the church there is no salvation). Which New Perspective author wrote this? Again, Don Carson, in the same article ‘Reflections on Assurance’! Note very carefully, Paul is (of course) not saying that being a member of a group called the church is what saves a person, which would open the door to mere nominalism. However, he is saying that being in Christ by faith – united with him in his death and his resurrection (which is what saves a person) – necessarily includes membership of the body of Christ, because that is part of what it is to be in Christ. To be in Christ is to be made to be members one of another. To be a Christian is necessarily to be in the church, part of the one new humanity, a member of the body of Christ. I belong to them, and they belong to me – whether either of us likes it, or each other, or not – because we both belong to Christ.
A crucial thing follows from this.
Since it is the gospel that necessarily creates the church, it is also the gospel that determines the character of the life of the church. We must church by grace, precisely because we are saved by grace. And the flip side is true as well. When you don’t church by grace (ie when you act tribally), it is the reflection of the fact that you don’t really enact the truth (or perhaps even believe the truth) that we are saved by grace. What is it to church by grace? Many things, but it at least means that no one has any right to demand of someone else who confesses Christ, that they fulfil certain requirements before they stand fully justified before me as a Christian sister or brother (just like God didn’t do for us). It is Bonhoeffer who captures ‘church by grace’ best in the first chapter of his book Life Together – some selections:
Not what a man is in himself as a Christian, his spirituality and piety, constitutes the basis of our community. What determines our brotherhood is what that man is by reason of Christ. our community with one another consists solely in what Christ has done to both of us. This is true not merely at the beginning, as though in the course of time something else were to be added to our community; it remains so for all the future and to all eternity.
That dismisses once and for all every clamorous desire for something more. One who wants more than what Christ has established does not want Christian brotherhood. [. . .] Just at this point Christian brotherhood is threatened most often at the very start by the greatest danger of all, the danger of being poisoned at its root, the danger of confusing Christian brotherhood with some wishful idea of religious fellowship, of confounding the natural desire of the devout heart for community with the spiritual reality of Christian brotherhood.
Because God has already laid the only foundation of our fellowship, because God has bound us together in one body with other Christians in Jesus Christ, long before we entered into common life with them, we enter into that common life not as demanders but as thankful recipients. We thank God for giving us brethren who live by his call, by his forgiveness, and his promise. We do not complain of what God does not give us; we rather thank God for what he does give us daily. And is not what has been given us enough: brothers, who will go on living with us through sin and need under the blessing of his grace? Is the divine gift of Christian fellowship anything less than this, any day, even the most difficult and distressing day? Even when sin and misunderstanding burden the communal life, is not the sinning brother still a brother, with whom I, too, stand under the Word of Christ? Will not his sin be a constant occasion for me to give thanks that both of us may live in the forgiving love of God in Christ Jesus? Thus, the very hour of disillusionment with my brother becomes incomparably salutary, because it so thoroughly teaches me that neither of us can ever live by our own words and deeds, but only by the one Word and Deed which really binds us together–the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ. When the morning mists of dreams vanish, then dawns the bright day of Christian fellowship.
Because Christ stands between me and others, I dare not desire direct fellowship with them. As only Christ can speak to me in such a way that I may be saved, so others, too, can be saved only by Christ himself. This means that I must release the other person from every attempt of mine to regulate, coerce, and dominate him with my love. The other person needs to retain his independence of me; to be loved for what he is, as one for whom Christ became man died, and rose again, for whom Christ bought forgiveness of sins and eternal life.
Every principle of selection and every separation connected with it that is not necessitated quite objectively by common work, local conditions, or family connections is of the greatest danger to a Christian community.
Church by grace gloriously kills tribalism. It does so because tribalism is built precisely on what a person is in him/her-self. And tribalism in church culture is equally built on “what a man [sic] is in himself as a Christian, his spirituality and piety” – and we might add theology – as though those things constitute the basis of our community. This is why a church culture that operates tribally is a tragic denial of the gospel of grace that it seeks to proclaim, and that brought it into being in the first place.
By the way – this body also gathers.
I say that to highlight the fact that the gathering of the body is not the definition of the body, but one of its functions. In other words, an understanding of church built around the notion of ekklesia / gathering, will always be deficient. It will have failed to ask the prior crucial question (as Rob Doyle put it in his MTC lectures years ago) – what is it that gathers? And by placing gathering – which ends up being a decision I make on a Sunday morning / evening – the basis of a doctrine of church, we will tend towards a ‘resource’ view of church. The reason is that for busy people in a society hostile to the church, the question will always be close at hand, ‘why gather?’ And an answer which runs along the lines of ‘because it helps me to live my Christian life’ will not be sufficient, either theologically or practically. But without a better-grounded doctrine of the church, that kind of resource / functional answer is the only answer available.
Saved by grace, church by grace, bound together in Christ in grace. I love it!
PS. See here for a post by Andrew Errington (Moore college student) which critically examines the notion of assembly as the basic notion of church
I am beginning to wonder about that guy Carson….
Are you claiming that we are not bound to those with whom we agree theologically, but to those who are also bound to Christ? If so, then since Christ in his royal grace calls those who are his, does this mean we are not to judge prematurely whether one who claims to be a sister or brother is really so?
Wonderful post Andrew! Isn’t it interesting that we can always more easily spot group blindspots to ‘culturally sancitfied’ sins – whether that be in the area of thought, attitude or action – in stables other than our own?
I have found that it is only when I have been humbled by my own sin to the point that I know truly that Christ is my only plea for salvation – that any detection of blindspots in a fellow Christain loses its power. This humbling has brought a new perspective – a right lens with which to see the other. It is then that I have come to see my brothers and sisters primarily as Jesus lovers and cross lovers: and as a consequence, any sense of patterns of sin in the ‘other’ (individual or in a stable) has receded to the background. Prior to this, when I thought of ‘the other’, I thought first of their sins. The cultural sins of the other stable, seemed to define their identity, rather than Christ in them. The wound from others sin, particularly the repeated woundings from horses from another stable who share a cultural pattern of behaviour or Christian thought, and the pain from these wounds, sat heavily in my identity defining my whole relationship with these brothers and sisters. But in being humbled, the awareness of my hypocrisy in judging the other stable for sins, which are so often very similar to what I myself have done, has enabled me to forgive – even when no apology or acknowledgment has been made.
What a wonderful restoration! What has been so healing has been the restoration of my Christian identity. My Christian identity has been restored to be Christ centred, rather than stable centred. As a result, my sense of unity with the broader Christian church has also been restored – I now feel like I belong again. I no longer feel I am living under a cloud of judgement, ironically, because I have repented of judging. (Judgement so often begets judgement). Anyone who simply trusts Jesus to forgive him, and I am in!
(Oh, and by the way, I am of the opinion you can trust Jesus to forgive and save you and sometimes hold some thoughts or theological understandings which are inconsistent with this. It is common in human experience to hold two beliefs that contradict each other. Thus, a presenting thought may not always accurately reflect someone’s primary conviction about Christ, or more importantly thier RELATIONSHIP WITH HIM AS SAVIOR AND LORD, but may be inconsistent with it. In this case, any errors of thought, are covered in Jesus blood).
And please forgive me, my dear brothers, if you detect yourself in this, my personal story, for judging you.
Cath,
thanks so much for your comment – very powerful. That judgment often begets judgment is a terrible trick of the evil one.
(By the way, did you mean ‘retains’ rather than ‘loses’ in the 3rd line of the second para?)
Byron,
absolutely!
Theological tribalism is as much tribalism – and as much anti-grace – as any other kind.
One of the interesting things about theological tiribalism is that it is nearly infinitely divisible. What I mean by that is that the theological criteria by which you have to confirm to belong to the tribe can get finer and finer. Not just Christian but Protestant; not just Protestant, but evangelical; not just evangelical but Reformed; not just reformed but 5 point Calvinist, 6 day creation, plural eldership etc. as defining of my tribe. And underneath it all, is just boring sinful theological tribalism.
Of course, it also very difficult. There are real issues at stake here. Church by grace does not imply a kind of soft theological relativism.
But it does mean that when you deal with anyone who confesses Christ as Lord – no matter how inadequately in your view – unless you think we are justified by right theology and unless you think you can set yourself up as judge of someone else’s confession – you are theologically bound to treat that person as a sister or brother – to accept them, to not bad-mouth them, to love and serve and pray for them. Anything less than that is the practice of justification by merit.
Even then it’s still not easy – especially on the question of who to work with and how to work with them. That will necessarily involves selection and therefore selection criteria, which will be narrower than sibling-hood in Christ. Nonetheless, if you don’t find that process difficult, if you don’t grieve over it, if it doesn’t pain you, if it’s easy to decide who’s in and who’s out – then something’s wrong.
One final thought: I have often heard the judgment expressed of a person: ‘he’s a friend, but he’s not family’. It’s a way of saying I a person is not really trusted. The thing about this is its theological bankruptcy. The blessing of the gospel of grace is precisely that in Christ we receive the Spirit of adoption, and are children of God, heirs, joint heirs with Christ.
The theologically most true thing that you can say – you must say – about another Christian is that they are family. And the irony is that the people who say it are precisely those who see themselves, and are seen, as the theological guardians of the Diocese.
Very sad.
What I meant was that it ‘loses’ its power to tempt me to judge others! Sorry about that lack of clarity.
Oh Andrew – haven’t you just sounded a rather tribalistic note right there in talking about nameless/faceless ‘guardians’?
Mike,
I take your point, but it’s difficult, isn’t it. It’s almost impossible not to be heard as tribal when critiquing a tribal comment! The ‘friend not family’ comment is so theologically flawed and relationally destructive that it needs to called to account.
Isn’t the easiest way just to condemn the phrase (giving reason) but not point in anybody’s direction? That way when we hear it we will be on our guard, but we are not prejudiced meanwhile.
Michael, you have just picked up on something that I was not feeling at ease about in my former comment. In my comment, I talked about what I perceived to be the blindspots in other groups of Christians that worship and journey together and come to shared ways of applying thier faith. I am deliberately not using this phrase now than the other stable, becuase we are all in the same stable. There are a couple of errors I think I made here:
Firstly, I do hope, my dear brothers and sisters, that you heard me say that I also believe I have cultural blindspots which are sin. This was in my comment but not emphasised, because it was written in a way that still focused more on other’s sin rather than my own.
Secondly, I wanted to adjust my poetic wording about judgement begetting judgement a bit. Another’s sin of judging me may tempt me in my flesh to commit the same sin of judgement. It is the sin in me which is ultiimately responsible for this temptation. I cannot hold the other person responsible for tempting me in this way.
Thirdly, I think I was inappopriate in the way I attitributed any wounding fully to another’s sin. This is not necessarily so. To requote myself – ‘The wound from others sin, particularly the repeated woundings from horses from another stable who share a cultural pattern of behaviour or Christian thought, and the pain from these wounds, sat heavily in my identity defining my whole relationship with these brothers and sisters’. I am sorry about this. This is not necessarily the case. The impact of another’s behaviour, or the wounding that you experience in response, is sometimes contributed to or shaped by other factors, for example, prior experiences, or my own sin that it tangled up in the relational interaction that caused my so much pain. When I feel intense pain over a messy interaction, I often (but not always) find this is because I have some sense of guilt that I am not facing and dealing with. Once this is confessed to God, peace tends to reign, even if relational issues are not yet resolved.
Fourthly, point 3 raises a question about how you name another’s sin. In the advocacy literature and discourse, there is a phrase – ‘naming and shaming’ an injustice. Obviously, we are not into shaming, but as christians, what do we do about naming sin with each other? Both within personal relationships and in public forums where we do business with others. But I have a few thoughts/ questions:
a) We may need to get the log out of our own eye before we can see clearly to help get a speck in the other’s eye, including naming it accurately. Surely this includes doing this in dialogue AND HUMILITY, so that we are open to someone coming back at us and showing us our own blindspots influence a perception of another supposed ‘sin’. It is possible of course to do dialogue without humility.
b) Should we not be naming at all – but offering observations and tentative conclusions for a brother to examine their conscience before God? Is this different in the case of confronting a brother/ sister about a personal wound and the case of discussing issues in the Christain community. (which is different again from public dialogue about society’s sins)?
c) How do we take into account / acknowledge the fact that God is the judge who is the only one who sees things clearly and perfectly in the way we talk about these things?
d) Is calling to account a behaviour the same as naming a sin? How do we call into account a behaviour, when sin is ultimately a matter of the heart? Can we do the first without suggesting or accusing someone of sin in the heart? (noting that suggesting and accusing are two very different things)
e) How do we raise the idea that a pattern of behaviour thought or attitude within a christain community that is currently accepted or even celebated, is potentially a culturally sanctified sin, (or blindspot?) – appropriately? taking into account I may be wrong in this assessment? or that people in the group I hang out may have a form of this cultural sin, which looks only slightly different?
This is of course is all different from setting the truth/ public record straight about things that have been said about you.
Also several other questions?
i) Andrew could you shed some light or how covenant love in the family of God fits into Mathew 18:15-17?
ii) The theme of trust above is a very interesting one. The trust that was talked about above seemed to be attributed to group membership. Is it possible that trust and group membership has something to do with unfinished business and forgiveness between groups for the way they have hurt each other in the past? If someone sins against me, it breaches trust. A breakdown in trust is normally a sign of relationship injury over whcih there needs to be a reconciliation process at either an individual or a group level. I have been thinking about how trust can be restored in a grace like way and would like to discuss this further with you.
Oh and also do you think 1 corinthians 13: 7 “always trusts” fits into covenant love in some way and if so, what do we do with broken trust?
Thanks Andrew,
this post is really helpful (and challenging) for everybody. It seems as though tribalism often breeds tribalism in others, of which I certainly have been guilty.
Perhaps instead of the ‘friend not family’ we could pick up the mafia lingo
‘this is tony, he’s a friend of the family’
”meet Andrew, he’s in the business’
So we’ll undermine tribalism by imitating the Mafia… hmmm…
Great post, Andrew! Including my favourite quote from Bonhoeffer.
“The other person needs to retain his independence of me; to be loved for what he is, as one for whom Christ became man died, and rose again, for whom Christ bought forgiveness of sins and eternal life.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s support for the assassination of Hitler was apparently the result of painful and prayerful decision, at odds with the sometimes-fatal pacifism of some contemporaries. The assassination attempt had tragic results, but I still don’t feel qualified to claim that DB had fallen from grace.
So how do we relate to a group of Christian with repugnant views on moral or theological questions? Can you and I join different political parties?
Can any party truthfully claim to represent The View of Christians? Do you and I have to agree about that?
The essential area of agreement according to 1 Cor 1 is not a public policy agenda, but grace.
Can you and I join different political parties?
I hope I don’t have to share Andrew’s political views! 😉