REVISITING THE BASIS OF UNITY

REVISITING THE BASIS OF UNITY

Is homosexuality bad? Of course it is bad Is gender dysphoria bad? Of course it is bad. Is the need to cross dress bad? Of course it is bad. If by bad we mean less than optimal behavior, then these things are bad. The people beset by these malfunctioning behaviors are glorious beings of God’s self expression, even with whatever dysfunctions are active in them. They are filled with the goodness that God Himself is, so they should be treated with respect and even loved deeply.

When we consider just how massively dysfunctional every member of our species is, allowing ourselves to treat some members of our species as being of less value than others because of some malfunction or other is insanity. And if you are truly treating a person as having the same level of value as everything and everyone else God has made how would you then handle their place in your communities? This becomes the issue of importance, not whether what they are doing is optimal human behavior or not. 

And let’s say a person comes to your community who cannot see that their dysfunction is actually a dysfunction. Does this render them any less containers of God’s glorious value than you? In answering this question you should recall those times when others knew you were making a mistake and you thought they were wrong, and you then found out they were right. 

Now, what do you want to do about a person with a same-gender sexual orientation, or gender dysphoria, or a person with a compulsion to cross dress who cannot yet see that their behavior is in any way a malfunction? Would you not like to extend grace to them and focus not on whether you can agree with their understanding of good and bad, but on whether they truly want harmony with God or not.

If a person does not actually want harmony with God, even if they agree with you on concepts regarding morality, they cannot be a genuine member of your community of people who want such harmony with God. And conversely, if a person disagrees with you on even profoundly important concepts, but truly wants a harmonious relationship with God, will not God be able to help them sort out their confused concepts?

And if you can trust God to do that for every member of your community then you can extend to the members of your community the grace that God extends to you, and unity will prevail where division over an endless stream of conceptual disagreement exists.

Hundreds of years ago followers of Jesus decided to make agreement on concepts the basis for unity. They thought they were being wise by selecting what they considered the most fundamental concepts. They made this list of fundamental concepts into what we call creeds. And to this day there are many Church organizations that revere those creeds. 

Yet the creation of those creeds did not root out or even protect those churches who revere the creeds from eventually adopting some pretty bad concepts. And what the dependence upon agreement over concepts being a basis for unity did do is generate a never ending fountain of division in us, in that community that Jesus told us would only be known by our love.

So, whether you lean toward what people call progressive theology or to conservative orthodoxy, if you want to be free to effectively love people and still remain true to the concepts you hold dear, you will need to make the basis of your unity be the simple factor of whether a person wants harmony with God or not. 

You cannot, you will not be free to love others with differing ideas about love and morality effectively if you don’t set aside the agreement over concepts as your basis of fellowship with others. It can’t and it will never happen that way.

Some of you reading this are virulently disagreeing with my concepts about the badness of homosexual and cross-dressing behavior. You feel my ideas will cause people unnecessary and immense harm. And your love for people in those categories makes you passionate about those issues.

Some of you reading this are just as passionately disagreeing with my disparaging of creeds and the agreement over concepts as a basis for unity. You visualize all manor of heresy creeping in to Christian communities by virtue of my position on the best basis of unity and taking away peoples relationship with God.

Here’s the thing; even if either of you are right, you will never, NEVER, experience the freedom to love and be one with other believers unless you do as I have advised you to do. And that disunity cannot possibly be God. Our immense propensity for disunity is not something God is doing in us. The vast divisions existing between people who love God is a very great evil.  

Perhaps it is time to change things up. Perhaps this is God’ Spirit in me asking this of you. You decide. 

I will love you and fellowship with you regardless of your choice. Can you fellowship with me?

© John Brusseau, 7/9/2025