CHURCH UNITY
A visitor to a mental hospital was astonished to note that there were only three guards watching over a hundred dangerous inmates. He asked his guide, “Don’t you fear that these people will overpower the guards and escape?”
“No,” was the reply. “Lunatics never unite.”193
For safety reasons, mountain climbers rope themselves together when climbing a mountain. That way, if one climber should slip and fall, he would not fall to his death. He would be held by the others until he could regain his footing.
The church ought to be like that. When one member slips and falls, the others should hold him up until he regains his footing. We are all roped together by the Holy Spirit.194
A man asked his young son to break a bundle of sticks. He returned a little later to find the lad frustrated in the task. He had raised the bundle high and smashed it on his knee, but he only bruised his knee. He had set the bundle against a wall and stomped hard with his foot, but the bundle barely bent.
The father took the bundle from the child and untied it. Then he began to break the sticks easily—one at a time.
So it is with the church: united we are strong, divided we can fail or be broken.195
Many years ago, two students graduated from the Chicago-Kent College of Law. The highest ranking student in the class was a blind man named Overton, and when he received his honor, he insisted that half the credit should go to his friend, Kaspryzak. They had first met one another in school when the armless Kaspryzak had guided the blind Overton down a flight of stairs. This acquaintance ripened into friendship and a beautiful example of interdependence. The blind man carried the books that the armless man read aloud in their common study, and thus the deficiency of each individual was compensated for by the other’s ability.196
If you fell and severely injured your wrist, it would swell up and become very painful. The rest of your body might feel so bad about it that it would sit up all night to keep it company!
That is what the body of Christ should do when one member is hurt. When one hurts, all hurt—and all should respond.197
Two porcupines found themselves in a blizzard and tried to huddle together to keep warm. But because they were pricked by each other’s quills, they moved apart. Soon they were shivering again and had to lie side by side once more for their own survival. They needed each other, even though they needled each other!
There are many “porcupine” Christians running around. They have their good points, but you can’t get near them because the bad points prick too hard.198
Have you ever wondered what makes the difference between a spotlight and a laser beam? How can a medium-power laser burn through steel in a matter of seconds, while the most powerful spotlight can only make it warm? Both may have the same electrical power requirements. The difference is unity.
A laser can be simply described as a medium of excited molecules with mirrors at each end. Some of the excited molecules naturally decay into a less excited state. In the decay process they release a photon, a particle of light. It is here that the unique process of the laser begins. The photon moves along and “tickles” another molecule, inviting another photon to join him on his journey. Then these two photons “tickle” two more molecules and invite two more photons to join the parade. Soon there is a huge army of photons marching in step with each other. It is this unity that gives the laser its power. A spotlight may have just as many photons, but each is going its own independent way, occasionally interfering with other photons. As a result, much of its power is wasted and cannot be focused to do any useful work. However, the laser, because of its unity, is like an army marching in tight formation and is able to focus all its power on its objective.199
In any flesh-and-bones body, there are a variety of cells. There are nerve cells, blood cells, muscle cells, and many others, each having a distinct function. The body operates smoothly, not because the cells get together and vote on what to do, but because each one does what it was designed to do. It is the function of the head to bring all these different functions together, so that the body operates effectively as each cell gives itself to the task of functioning according to its design.
Certainly the body would not operate properly if its cells chose to go their own way. Do you know what we call a rebellion of the cells of your stomach? We call it indigestion! A revolt of your brain cells is called insanity. Any time the cells in our body don’t operate properly, it means that the body is sick, that something is wrong with it.
Many of the problems in the church today are a result of our forgetting that the church is a body with a head, Jesus Christ. Instead we sometimes try to operate the church as an organization. As a result, the church has no more power than any other human organization at work in the world.200
The story is told of a time when a little child in an African tribe wandered off into the tall jungle grass and could not be found, although the tribe searched all day. The next day the tribal members all held hands and walked through the grass together. This enabled them to find the child, but due to the cold night he had not survived. In her anguish and through tears, the mother cried, “If only we would have held hands sooner.”
It is not enough that we all share a common goal. We must all work together to accomplish it without hesitation.201
As members of the body of Christ, we can be compared to pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. Each piece has protrusions and indentations. The protrusions represent our strengths (gifts, talents, abilities), and the indentations represent our weaknesses (faults, limitations, shortcomings, undeveloped areas). The beautiful thing is that the pieces complement one another and produce a beautiful whole.
Just as each piece of a puzzle is important, so each member of the body of Christ is important and can minister to the other members of the body.
Just as, when one piece is missing from the puzzle, its absence is very obvious and damages the picture, so also is the whole weakened when we are absent from the body of Christ.
Just as, when each piece of a puzzle is in place, any one piece is not conspicuous but blends in to form the whole picture, so it should be in the body of Christ.202
The story is told that during the American Civil War, when the rival armies were encamped on the opposite banks of the Potomac River, the Union’s band played one of its patriotic tunes, and the Confederate musicians quickly struck up a melody dear to any Southerner’s heart. Then one of the bands started to play “Home, Sweet Home.” The musical competition ceased, and the musicians from the other army joined in. Soon voices from both sides of the river could be heard singing, “There is no place like home.”
In a similar way, the church, in spite of its many divisions, is bound together by that one strong link—we are all going home, and to the same home. We have a common destiny.203
Born in 1765 in France, James Smithson was the illegitimate son of a prominent English duke and a direct lineal descendant of King Henry VII through his mother. Branded as a bastard, James was refused British citizenship and denied a rich inheritance through his true father. Due to this rejection the young Smithson felt constrained to succeed at whatever he did, and he became one of England’s leading scientists and a member of the Royal Society (the chief association of leading scientists) at the age of twenty-two.
In 1829 Smithson, who never married, died and left his considerable fortune to a nephew. Rumor had it that the terms of Smithson’s will stipulated that his entire estate was to go to one recipient upon the nephew’s death. The English scientific community hoped that he had made sizable grants to their favorite institutions. But when the terms of the will were made public they were shocked!
Smithson had written: “Just as England has rejected me, so have I rejected England.” During Smithson’s lifetime, England had fought two bitter wars with her rebellious colonies in America. So, to show his utter contempt for those who had mistreated him, he gave everything to the United States Government for the establishment of a scientific institution in the young nation’s capital. To this day the Smithsonian Institution is recognized as one of the most prominent institutions of its kind in the world. England made the tremendous mistake of thinking that she had no need of this man, from whom she might have benefited greatly.
Let us be careful of saying to some member of the body of Christ, “I have no need of you,” only to find that the same member could have met some of our greatest spiritual needs.204