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Do you smell glue?

by James Barringer  
1/14/2010 / Christian Living


A pastor I know, Bobby Pell, once told me the story of a church that split over the color of the new carpet in their sanctuary. One faction wanted orange, and the other wanted blue. Somehow this turned into a titanic argument, and before you know it, names were called, insults were thrown, and the whole church broke in half. Laugh if you want to, but I've heard of churches and marriages breaking up over similarly silly things. Most of the differences that people call "irreconcilable" are anything but.

I've often heard it said that your relationship with a person will only be as deep as the thing that you have in common. I would say that I'm friends with the guy I work with, but the only things we talk about are work and football. He's not exactly the kind of guy I would call at three in the morning if I needed a ride home, because our friendship isn't quite that deep. By contrast, the best friend I've had in life was a man with whom I had many things in common - we played music together, hiked and hunted and fished together, had bowel problems together (you'd be amazed how unifying something like this can be), praised God together, went through problems together, and even lived in adjacent rooms for a year. Even though I now live half a country away, nothing can pry that friendship apart, because the things that unify us are stronger even than distance.

Believe it or not, it's extremely easy to keep a marriage or a church together. I'll start with marriage, because it involves fewer people than a church. A marriage has three ingredients: two spouses, and something that holds them together. The strongest marriages are going to be the ones with the strongest glue. It seems pretty obvious, right? But if it's so obvious, why is it so rare? Why are half of all marriages in the United States held together by a glue too weak to prevent divorce?

A few months ago I was talking to a friend of mine who wasn't happy with her boyfriend. She was telling me how he was lazy and wouldn't look for a job, how her parents didn't like him, and how he was an arrogant jerk. I asked the obvious followup: "So why are you dating him? What's holding your relationship together?" She admitted, "I don't know," and earlier this week I got word that she had broken up with him. See, I think that if someone were to ask you, "Why are you with your boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse? What makes it worth it to you to be in that relationship?" you should have a definite, immediate answer. You should know exactly what it is that's holding you together.

Although I listed a bunch of things that bound me to my best friend, the strongest of all of them was a shared faith in God. But I don't mean simply that we both believed in the same God. We went to church together, prayed together, celebrated God together, grieved together, talked about God, asked tough questions about the Bible. Our faith was a major, shared part of our everyday life. I've seen Christian people dating, and even considering marriage, who shared an intellectual belief in God, but didn't share very much in the actual practice of that faith, outside of an hour a week on Sundays. I keep talking about the glue that holds people together, and if God is a glue that only holds people together one hour out of the 168 in a week, that's a pretty weak glue. He's only going to be strong if he permeates the other 167 hours, binding people together throughout the day every day. The practice of faith - shared time with each other and with God, living out the Christian life, taking the gospel to the people who need it - is the most powerful adhesive two people can have.

We could take that last sentence, completely intact, and apply it to church as well. I don't think a church will split, or even have significant conflict within it, if everyone understands that their purpose in life, their sole reason for being a church, is to practice faith together. There is a vertical component, of worship for God, and a horizontal component, of sharing our faith together in the context of friendships. A church that splits, especially over something as silly as carpet color, has completely lost sight of the reason that they're a church at all. Splits, whether in church or marriage, happen when someone forgets about the glue, or when the glue isn't as strong as everyone thought it was.

When we get right down to it, conflict in a church or marriage is essentially one person saying to another, "I value something else more than I value your friendship." It's saying, "I would rather have my way than have a good relationship with you." How many conflicts have you been in that, looking back on them, were silly and petty? How many of them were really worth having? I'm not even saying that a strong enough glue will ever keep people from having conflict. I wouldn't say it's a sin to prefer orange carpet over blue or vice versa; certainly no marriage is ever conflict-free. But the thing is, the glue is what's supposed to keep people tied to each other in spite of conflict. At the end of the day when tempers have gone down, it's the connection that brings a feuding church or a feuding couple back together.

Shared faith, the shared practice of faith on a regular basis, is what holds people together. It's why the early church sold everything they owned and lived together (Acts 2:45). It's why they met together every single day (2:46). They were a part of each other's lives. But when conflict did come up (see Acts 6), it was handled within the context of people who love each other. Splitting up or holding a permanent grudge was simply not an option. I've heard a lot of people today who wish that we could get back to what the early church had, and it's pretty obvious that spending time together, practicing faith together, letting God and other people be a part of my life on a regular basis, is the whole reason they had the community that they did. God is the glue.

It's true of every great friendship in the Bible. Elijah and Elisha. David and Jonathan. Jesus and his disciples (except one disciple, who was more interested in money than in community). If you share time and God with someone else, you will have something powerful. I have been intentionally vague about exactly what this looks like. It may be actual hands-on ministry, working in a soup kitchen or sharing the gospel in a park somewhere, or it may be Bible study and prayer. You and God can work out the details; I'm just giving you the basics.

Like many basic things, it's a very simple idea. Friendship, plus God, equals super-friendship. He's a very powerful glue. Colossians 1:17 says, "In him, all things hold together." All things - all friendships, all churches, all marriages, all of creation, as long as they are in him. That's the cornerstone to relationships that stand the test of time and weather any conflict. Let this be a reminder to all of us to build our lives on the cornerstone.

Jim Barringer is a 38-year-old writer, musician, and teacher. More of his work can be found at facebook.com/jmbarringer. This work may be reprinted for any purpose so long as this bio and statement of copyright is included.

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