Christian Civil War

It's time to stop ignoring this issue. In a society that thrives off of judging, criticizing, comparing, and competing, it should come as no surprise that all of that seeps into our Christian communities. I was recently thinking of an old Relient K song called "Down in Flames". You can look up the rest of the lyrics for yourself or just listen to the song, but here are the verses that struck me...


"Christians-- we're all afraid of fire.
We prefer to suck on pacifiers.
Baby pacifists, we're throwing fits.
We don't shake hands, we shake our fists.


We're cannibals.
We watch our brothers fall.
We eat our own, the bones and all.


Christians-- we mourn, the thorn is stuck
in the side of the body watch it self-destruct.
The enemy is much ignored
when we fight this Christian civil war."

Basically this song reminds us that a lot of the time we're treating our very own brothers and sisters in Christ like enemies. The Christian community is not a place to be competitive about who is the holiest or who is closer to God. Sometimes we focus so much on finding what's wrong with our fellow Christians that we forget that we're all on the same team. Look at what Matthew says in 7:3 ""Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?" Christianity is not about lifting your hands higher in praise then the person next to you or using church to show off your newest clothes. We should be above that. We are not to be like the Pharisees who bragged about their holiness, or how much they were fasting, and how much they were giving. We are called to be like the old widow in the bible who quietly gave all she had to her Lord...

Not only does this judgment lead to destruction within our own communities but destruction within ourselves. We miss the "beam" that is in our own eye. Ignoring the beam in our eye leads to judgment of everyone around us, not just our fellow Christians, but those we are called to love by our words and deeds.

A Christian civil war is not the battle we need to be fighting. We live in a world where so many go to bed hungry, not all babies live to see the light of day, and children in third world countries will die of diseases simple vaccines could have prevented. What are we as Christians doing to fight the battles that plague our world? The Eucharist, source and summit of the Catholic faith, should fill us with the strength that we need to go out and act just as Christ acted. Community should lift us up and fill us with fervor to make a difference, not rip us apart...

One of the last few stanza's in that Relient K song is perhaps the most important. As I write this just know that these words are present in my mind.

"Let me pause to clarify
('cause I'm sure you're asking, "Why?").
I stand before you and proudly claim
to belong to what this song complains.


I'm part of the problem,
I confess,
But I gotta get this off my chest.


Let's extinguish the anguish
for which we're to blame,
and save the world 
from going down in flames."

Let's stop tearing each other down. Being holy is not a competition. It's time to put our energy to better use. Don't just speak the words. Live the words.