Uniformity is to have an appearance of sameness. This can be achieved voluntarily or by means of manipulation or by that sinister mixture of the two which leaves one wondering. Etymologically, uniformity is to have the same form, like plastic parts stamped out by a machine in a factory.
Unity, by contrast, speaks of purposes and goals which unite people who are detectably different in any number of ways. Those differences can even lead to significant disagreement.
Any group of people who are united — not uniform — will be devoted to their common goals, and that devotion may lead them to conceptualize those purposes in different ways, even mutually exclusive ways, and to conceptualize the best means to those goals in likewise distinct and even conflicting ways. These frictions are not sinful. Rather they can be used by God to move His kingdom forward.
Note Paul’s words in his letter to the Romans:
I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them.
Paul is not instructing the Romans to “watch out for” and “avoid” divisions. Rather, he instructs them to watch out for, and avoid, “those who cause divisions.” It is not the divisions which are the problems, but rather those who foster division.
What’s the difference? What is Paul trying to communicate? What’s he getting at?
Differences can be sincere and honest attempts to seek God’s will, but those who “foster” divisions are doing so, not to serve God, but rather to aggrandize themselves. Paul continues:
People like these are not serving Christ our Lord. They are serving their own desires. By their smooth talk and flattering words they deceive unsuspecting people.
Those who amplify disagreements, or who plant disagreements where none need be, are sowing the seeds of chaos in the church. They do so because they hope for opportunities to elevate, not Jesus, but rather themselves.
Paul asks us, then, to avoid those who cause divisions. Paul simultaneously, however, affirms that there must be divisions among us, and that such divisions can be part of God’s plan to reveal His will.
In his letters to the Corinthians, Paul writes:
There must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized.
God’s method here may be vaguely similar to Hegelian dialectic. Finding textual evidence for or against the plausibility of such a comparison will be left as an exercise for the reader.
One can imagine a group of disciples — this could be a formalized organization like a congregation, or an informal gathering of believers in a home, or a large multinational network of churches — facing a decision. It could be a major interpretation of doctrine, or the setting of a goal for significant use of resources to minister to the larger world outside the church, or an insignificant choice about which color to paint the hallway.
Paul’s point is that there needs to be differing options, and argumentation in support of those various options. In this process, the views which are genuine “may be recognized.” The process of debate can be used by God to reveal His plan.
This is seen already in the book of Proverbs:
Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.
While Paul has stern words about those who “create divisions,” he does not direct similar judgment against those who take sides in those divisions. Unlike the ones who create needless divisions, and amplify divisions more than necessary, those who support one side or another in a division are operating out of a sincere desire to seek God’s will — may in fact be driven by the Holy Spirit to engage in a debate which will ultimately reveal the truth.
Without divisions, there could be no debate, and without debate, some elements of truth would remain undiscovered.
The mere mere presence of divisions does not signify a lack of unity. The military leadership of the UK and the US during WW2 were united in their goal to end National Socialist aggression. But there were certainly lively debates between Bernard Montgomery, Arthur Harris, Louis Mountbatten, and Eisenhower, MacArthur, Omar Bradley, Patton, Nimitz, Mark Clark, Halsey, and others. There were passionate disagreements, which were not always entirely resolved, and moments of chaos. But none of that indicates a lack of unity. In fact, the energy of those conflicts was driven by the strength of their unity.
On the other hand, mere uniformity can often be free of disagreement. But it is also often free of the power to move toward a goal.
Church history is full of disagreements and conflicts. It can look like 2,000 years of chaos. Sometimes, those disagreements were the needless type which Paul condemns. Other times, they were productive and were God’s way of showing the path forward.
Despite the church’s many failings and sins, the result has been 2,000 years of feeding the poor, educating children, rendering medical care, and infusing all of that with the spiritual peace which comes only from Jesus.
The workings of the church can seem messy, inefficient, and at times doomed to failure. Yet God has used precisely these workings to bestow both temporal and eternal blessings upon people.
