In the darkest hour of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln quoted the words of Jesus of Nazareth: "A house divided against itself cannot stand..."
Certain scribes were trying to impugn Jesus' great acts of healing. They were disturbed at his escalating popularity. People were thronging to hear him and to see him everywhere he went. "It is said that he can cast out demons," they declared. Defensively the scribes replied, "No wonder. He is possessed by the Devil himself!" Jesus immediately exposed the flaw in their criticism. "How can Satan cast out Satan?" he asked. And if a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. "And if a house be divided against itself, it cannot stand. And if Satan rise up against himself, and be divided, he cannot stand...."
No wonder those words captured Lincoln's imagination. Their truth is selfevident. A house divided against itself cannot stand.
THAT DIVIDED HOUSE MAY BE A HOME IN WHICH PEOPLE LIVE AS A FAMILY. There came a time in the Old West when cattlemen began fencing off their ranches. Barbed wire was used to mark the boundaries. The wire let everyone know whose land was whose, and which cattle belonged to which ranch. The barbed wire kept cattle in, and it also kept the stranger and the rustler out. One author has suggested that every family goes through a process of "putting up barbed wire." We define our boundaries as a family unit. But what happens when the barbed wire is taken down and moved inside the house-restrung down the center of the living room? "A house divided...."
A sixth-grade teacher in an uppermiddle class California city asked her class of thirty to complete a creative writing assignment by finishing a sentence that began with the words, "I wish..." The teacher expected the children to respond with wishes for bicycles, dogs, television sets and trips to Hawaii. She couldn't have been more wrong. A full TWENTY of the thirty children made reference in their responses to their own disintegrating families. Here are a few samples:
"I wish my parents wouldn't fight and I wish my father would come back."
"I wish my mother didn't have a boyfriend."
"I wish I could get straight A's so my father would love me."
"I wish I had one mom and one dad so the kids wouldn't make fun of me. I have three moms and three dads and they botch up my life."
"I wish I had an M1 rifle so I could shoot those who make fun of me." (1)
"A house divided against itself...."
A nine-year-old girl once said, "I don't know exactly what a family is, but I do know one thing: Your friends can go off and say they don't want to be your friends anymore, but people can't just go off and say they don't want to be your family anymore." I wish that were true, don't you? Nothing on this earth is sadder than when a family is divided against itself.
This is not to say that any home can ever be free from conflict or controversy. Where authentic human beings live together there will be honest disagreement. This is natural and it is healthy.
As a French philosopher once said, "It is better to debate a question without settling it, than to settle it without debate."
David Augsburg in his helpful book CARING ENOUGH TO CONFRONT suggests there are five possible steps to solving disagreements: The first one is "I win, you lose." That game is played everywhere and, obviously, is destructive to a relationship. The second is "You win, I quit." Most of us have seen this game played too. The third one he calls "Doormat." One person decides, "Well, walk on me; step on me; I want peace at all costsI don't care about the substance of this issue, but at least we will have peace in our home." Do you recognize anyone at this point?
An obvious example of "Doormat" was Jean Stapleton's marvelously played Edith Bunker on "All in the Family." In one scene Edith is talking to her friend Amelia. The dialogue went something like this:
Amelia: "Of all the people I know, you're practically the only one who has a happy marriage."
Edith: "Really? Me and Archie ... Oh, thank you."
Amelia: "What is your secret, Edith?"
Edith: "Oh, I ain't got no secret. Archie and me still have our fights. Of course, we don't let them go on too long. Somebody always says "I'm sorry." And Archie always says, "It's okay, Edith." (2)
I don't care how much you love your family, God did not create you to be a doormat.
Augsburg suggests two other possible steps. One of these is, "I'll meet your halfway," which is fine if both really are in the wrong. The other he calls, "Caring enough to confront." Sometimes confrontation is necessary in any relationship. But we confront with the understanding that regardless of our differences, we will keep the barbed wire strung on the outside of our house and not down the center of the living room floor. "A house divided against itself cannot stand...."
THAT IS ALSO TRUE OF THE HOUSE OF GODTHE CHURCH.
The world laughs when we who sing "They will know we are Christians by our love" explode into controversy within our own ranks. For some reason, it always seems to make the front page. One spring morning the million plus subscribers to the LOS ANGELES TIMES got this headline blaring at them while they sipped their morning coffee: 300 MEMBERS SPLINTER FROM THE CHURCH. Underneath was a full three column story about a fight that had broken out in a prominent southern Californian ministry. In the same paper, on the SAME day, another lead article accompanied by a large picture told the story of another church doing battle with the state over its tax status.(3) A squabble in our church would probably not make headlines, but the cause of Christ is hurt when we cannot disagree in love.
Dr. Eugene Brice tells a delightful but disturbing story about a minister who returned to visit a church he had once served. He ran into Bill, who had been an elder and leader in the church, but who wasn't around anymore. The pastor asked, "Bill, what happened? You used to be there every time the doors opened."
"Well, Pastor," said Bill, "a difference of opinion arose in the church. Some of us couldn't accept the final decision and we established a church of our own."
"Is that where you worship now?" asked the pastor.
"No," answered Bill, "we found that there, too, the people were not faithful and a small group of us began meeting in a rented hall at night."
"Has that proven satisfactory?" asked the minister. "No, I can't say that it has," Bill responded. "Satan was active even in that fellowship, so my wife and I withdrew and began to worship on Sunday at home by ourselves."
"Then at last you have found inner peace?" asked the pastor.
"No, I'm afraid we haven't," said Bill. "Even my wife began to develop ideas I was not comfortable with, so now she worships in the northeast corner of the living room, and I am in the southwest." (4)
"A house divided against itself . . . ."
Somewhere I read a true story about a chairman of a certain church committee who stood one Sunday morning before the congregation to present a minor matter of church business for a vote. After the vote, his next agenda item was to lead the congregation in singing several hymns. He confidently presented his project for a vote, fully expecting routine acceptance by the congregation. But to his surprise, the matter failed to win congregational approval. He was so completely rattled by this surprising turn of events that in introducing the next hymn, instead of inviting the group to join him in singing "I Stand All Amazed," he introduced it as "I Stand All Opposed."
It was an honest slip of the tongue on his part but that was how he was feeling. He felt that everyone in the church was opposed to him personally. That happens in the church. We will disagree. But Heaven help the congregation that gets out the barbed wire and begins erecting it down the center aisle of the sanctuary. "A house divided against itself..."
OF COURSE THAT DIVIDED HOUSE CAN EVEN BE AN INDIVIDUAL. Carl B. Rife, a pastor in Baltimore, Maryland, had a common but vexing dilemma. He writes, "My wife and I were visiting our folks in our hometown. We ate supper at my parents' house and we came out to the car to go to her parents' home. I turned on the car lights and we discovered they were stuck on high beam. Nothing I did would correct the problem. It was too dark to ride without lights so I stopped at a gas station nearby and I said, ˜Would you please check my lights?' The attendant said, ˜Your lights are stuck on high beam.' I said, ˜I know; that's the problem; can you fix it?' He said, ˜No, you need a new switch; come back tomorrow and I'll take care of it for you.' Well, we decided to go to my wife's home a back way to avoid as much traffic as possible. However, everybody seemed also to be taking the back way that night. I believe that everyone who went by us blinked their lights or reached out of their cars and shook their fists and said words that I would not want to repeat to you as they passed. And, oh, what I felt like doing was to scream out, ˜My lights are stuck on high beam; I know it and I can't do anything about it right now. I intend to have it fixed.' And then I realized that in life people may treat us in an unkind way or act in a way that is strange to us because their ˜lights are stuck on high beam' and they know it and at that moment they can't do anything about it.'"
To say that a person is "stuck on high beam" is another way of saying that he or she is living in a divided house. Jesus dealt with such persons frequently, and here is the beautiful truth for this morning: IN HIM IS HEALING FOR DIVIDED FAMILIES, DIVIDED CHURCHES AND DIVIDED LIVES.
An interesting study has recently been done underscoring the necessity of a central unifying factor for our lives. A scientist at UCLA has studied several rare groups of people who have been cut off from society and left to isolation. He analyzed the groups that survived and the groups that didn't and found that the vital factor for survival was a central unifying principle. Without this rallying point, the groups perished.
Among the survivors was a group of Japanese soldiers who hid out in the jungles of Guam and other Pacific islands for nearly 30 years after World War II. For a third of a century they posted sentries, patiently mended their clothing, and lit bonfires for Japanese ships that never came. Thirty years! Their unifying purpose was winning the war, and rallying behind it they achieved unity.
Another less well-known group that survived was the Yahi Indians of California. Only 16 members of the tribe survived a massacre in 1870. They hid in a remote canyon for 41 years, motivated by a terrible fear of being lynched. That may not be the highest motivation in the world, but it kept them together.
The best known example of a group that did not achieve unity was the crew of the HMS Bounty who mutinied in 1789. After three peaceful months on idyllic Tahiti, the crew seized the ship and set the captain and officers afloat in a raft. The mutineers went back to Tahiti, grabbed a small group of Tahitian men and women and sailed off to live on a deserted island.
When an American whaling vessel found the crew and their "friends" 18 years later, only one of the original crew was left. Friction and fighting for the women had quickly led to murder and suicidethey had no purpose to rally around other than their selfserving lusts. (5)
So it is with our lives. Many of us live fragmented lives tossed and buffeted by conflicting desires. We need to unite our lives around one love, one Savior, one Lord. "A house divided against itself cannot stand...." That is true. No house is big enough for cohabitation by the spirit of Christ and by a spirit of malice, of envy, of hatred and of hostility.
How can Satan cast out Satan? He can't. But Christ can.
1. Dr. James Dobson, LOVE MUST BE TOUGH, (Waco: Word, 1983) p.13.
2. Spencer Marsh, EDITH THE GOOD, (New York: Harper & Row, 1977).
3. LOS ANGELES TIMES, May 9, 1983, Orange County Edition, Sec. CC/Part II, p.1.
4. BOOKS THAT BRING LIFE, (Lubbock, Texas: Net Press, 1984).