But our community seems particularly stuck, paralyzed by our inability to be unified but not wanting to admit that we can’t figure it out. At this moment of awareness of our deep division and brokenness, Christians appear tempted to minimize them. In posts and articles and conversations, I hear us again and again wanting to (in the words of the prophet Jeremiah) “dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious” and pronounce, “’Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.” We seem drawn to move forward quickly, avoiding the actual pain of division and pronouncing some form of surface-level healing.

In response, I want to borrow a familiar framework from Dietrich Bonheoffer’s Cost of Discipleship, and to say that we are at this critical moment supremely tempted to opt for “cheap unity.” The urgent antidote, then, for this moment has to be “costly unity.” But what is costly unity over against cheap unity? Here are some characteristics of cheap unity that have come to my heart and mind:

• Cheap unity avoids conflict. It is uncomfortable with sharp disagreement, and seeks to diminish strong emotions and firm convictions. It elevates attempts to feel better over honest expressions of problems.
• Cheap unity finds a “least common denominator” and stops there. It looks for something innocuous we can all agree on, and declares “reconciliation” too soon
• Cheap unity draws the circle of community too tightly. One of the solutions it offers is to shrink the number of people who need to be reconciled. If there are fewer true brothers and sisters, then those folk furthest away from our perspective can be dismissed as heretics, non-believers, or apostates.
• Cheap unity also refuses to talk about holiness. In contrast to drawing the circle too tightly, this type of cheap unity wants to ignore decisions of conscience and exclude some from the conversation for being too inflexible or overly obsessed with keeping the rules.
• Cheap unity reduces conflict to concepts and ideas and avoids the messiness of the human heart and human relationships. It proposes that the problem of division lies primarily in a lack of intellectual or organizational rigor.
• Cheap unity diminishes power dynamics and minimizes the cost to some (usually the minority voices) of “staying at the table.” It presumes a level playing field in the conflict and that both sides must make the same amount and types of sacrifices in order to bring about healing and restoration.
• Cheap unity wants to move on too quickly, and ignore the painful history of the past. It insists that those who are wary or distrustful of reconciliation based on their past experiences need to “get over it.” It overemphasizes optimism for the future and detaches forgiveness from sorrow for sin.

There are probably more, but identifying aspects of cheap unity is only half the battle. Embracing and living out a more costly unity is the essential act of repentance from cheap unity. Costly unity moves away from what I just described above. It presses into conflict, it avoids declaring victory too soon, it accepts the tension between hospitality and holiness, it seeks the “messy middle”, it acknowledges injustice, it sits with pain. And then it begins to work slowly and honestly through what divides: listening, praying, learning, building trust, seeking the interests of those on the “other side”

I believe it is our real hope for moving toward the unity Jesus longs for us to experience. It is this kind of unity that will give the larger world hope and model the message of the gospel. Pursuit of costly unity will lead us more deeply into the discipleship Jesus has called us – “for whoever seeks to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for my sake and the sake of the gospel will find it.” (Mark 8). And it lives a life worthy of that gospel, “struggling together to remain faithful” to it (see Philippians 1:27 CEB). It embodies the self-emptying servant life of Christ that Paul goes on to describe in the next chapter of that epistle.

This is because ultimately costly unity forces me, forces all of us, out of ourselves. Costly unity presents a challenge to me to “count the cost” of pursuing my brothers and sisters and seeking their good. For one more time to borrow images from Scripture (this time from Luke’s gospel): Costly unity looks for the lost sheep without which the flock is not complete; it seeks the missing coin that is needed for the full value of the others; it pursues the separated siblings and invites them “in” – to life and celebration and relationship.

This commitment to costly unity is unilateral. It is a following in the way of Jesus to seek others in love. But this is the kind of unity I can be hopeful for. It won’t come easily and it will require discipline on the part of many of us. This is the kind of unity I am committed to spending the rest of my life working for. I invite you to join me.

Originally published here: https://recapitulareblog.wordpress.com/2016/12/12/cheap-unity-v-costly-unity/; re-posted with permission.