The Beauty of Unity
Wednesday, October 4th, 2006
can’t pass up the chance to point this out. This brought tears to my eyes. Literally! A tip of the hat goes to Internet Monk for directing me to this, as I might otherwise not have seen it.
Recently, the Desiring God conference was held, and although I am not involved in Reformed circles to know much about this, I was aware for months that there was some controversy over the fact that John Piper had invited Mark Driscoll to speak at the conference. If you aren’t familiar with these two men, you need to understand that Dr. Piper is highly respected as a pastor and an author by many, many Christians. Mark Driscoll, on the other hand, is controversial.
Piper is a polished speaker. Driscoll speaks off the cuff. Piper writes with finesse. Driscoll uses crude language sometimes. Piper is considered a pastor of pastors. Driscoll is a role model for lots of young guys who want to have hip, cool churches. (By the way, I’m not stating all of these as my own opinion. I’m just summarizing the tone of things I read about these two men in the blogosphere.)
So, it wasn’t surprising to find out that Driscoll said something at the conference that got people all upset. But then, after Driscoll had left the conference, Dr. Piper apparently spoke some words publicly as a sort of “correction” to Mark Driscoll, and again, people jumped all over this.
Now comes the very beautiful part that I want to point out. Mark Driscoll and John Piper exchanged some emails. And Dr. Piper gave Mark Driscoll permission to post them in their entirety on Driscoll’s blog.
I want you all to go read this post on Driscoll’s blog to see what I’m talking about. This is the kind of unity with diversity that is absolutely essential in the Kingdom of God and the Body of Christ. It is beautiful. And like I said, it literally brought tears to my eyes. May it be a model for all of us.
With that in mind, I have debated long and hard about writing something publicly on this matter, and following the example of Piper and Driscoll, I feel the time is right to do this. This is not intended to be sappy or cheesy, but a very sincere open letter to someone. That someone is the same person I just tipped my hat to at the top of this post: Michael Spencer, aka Internet Monk. So here is my public letter to Michael:
Michael,
This letter is way overdue. I don’t know if it matters at all to you, but I feel like I need to say some words of apology to you.
In the past, I have (in your own words) annoyed you. Maybe, although I’m not even sure, I may have even hurt you. I hope not, but I think it is entirely possible. Although I have from time to time linked to articles of yours with favorable comments, I also have spoken to you rather condescendingly at times.
It wasn’t intentional. Sometimes I just wanted to have a good dialogue, but I handled it wrong. And for about four or five months, it has been floating around in my mind as something I needed to get right.
Michael, you and I differ on some things. But I have come to realize that even with those differences, we are on the same team. From my perspective, we both care about the truth, even though we emphasize things that the other feels are out of balance. I have accused you of communicating an absence of hope, and I should not have done that. It was wrong, and I want to publicly ask your forgiveness for that.
There are actually a lot of things that you and I do agree on, Michael, and I think that those are the things that are more unifying than anything. I don’t want to speak for you or put words in your mouth, but I think that you and I agree on some really essential things about the Gospel.
In recent posts on my blog here, I and some of my readers have been having conversations about “short lists” and I have presented myself as one who does not break fellowship over differences on anything other than the basic Gospel message — that being that Jesus Christ was crucified for our sins according to the Scripture, was buried, and was raised again on the third day according to the Scriptures. And I fully believe, Michael, that you and I agree on that.
With all of that in mind, I want to publicly say that I’m sorry for things that I have said about your writing that may have hurt you. Again, maybe it wasn’t anything to you at all, but I can’t sit here and assume that and brush away my own wrongs based on that assumption.
As Piper said to Driscoll, I’m glad that you and I are on the same team, Michael. I’m glad that we both love Jesus and seek to serve Him in our writing. I’m glad that we both have been blessed to become a part of the Body of Christ through the salvation that can only come through faith in Jesus. And in that respect, I am glad that you are my brother.
May God bless you as you write, podcast, preach, and teach for His glory. May He speak through you to others as you seek to communicate His truth. And may He bless you and your family as you serve Him.
In Christ,
steve
y wife showed me this rather humorous site with a serious message, and I wanted to pass it on. I cannot fully endorse everything on this site because it crosses a line in its humor that I’m not completely comfortable with.
