How can we confront disagreements when we are so adept at taking sides?

There is a culture of intolerance in the church — intolerance for disagreement. Disagreement is scary. People are afraid of where it might lead, and they want to eliminate the disagreement so they can return to the comfort of uniformity as quickly as possible. They see the elders as having the responsibility to purge the disagreements, by all means necessary.

Those are real emotions and are not motivated by evil intentions. Elders and ministers should teach the congregation a better way to deal with disagreements. But often they don't know a better way either.

Knowing this, one has to carefully choose when and where (and how, and whether) to voice a disagreement. That's not a great situation to be in, but it's often a fact. Sometimes it really is better to keep what you think about a matter between yourself and God, because you consider the likely outcome of not doing so. Sometimes it is better to hold your thoughts and to speak to an elder or minister in private about it.

Most of us probably need to grow in our discernment about what is best in situations like that. I know I do.

I, unfortunately, grew up in one of those congregations you spoke of with the politically adept minister. And when he died things went downhill fast. They have split and then those that split then split the congregation they left us to go to and then wanted to come back to our congregation.

There truly is no room for open disagreement in traditional Churches of Christ. The saddest part is that we don't even realize there is another option. We don't even see that we could accept one another in love and stop being suspicious.

How can a fellowship of churches continue much longer with this as their central, foundational belief?

My Elders spoke to me alone Wednesday night asking for my side. I told them I have no side but that I would tell them what I experienced and saw in the class. It went down hill from there. Both Elders brought up an incident from many weeks ago where I had disagreed with the Preacher in a class. I went to the preacher that same night and apologized, that I disagreed with the idea and not him personally.

I had been scheduled to teach a class Sunday nights but declined at this point because I felt that there were too many people talking about this event and that I did not feel comfortable being in front of the class. One of the Elders stated that this action proved that I was in fact angry. I made no defense except to say that I was hurt by their not coming directly to me before gathering all of the testimony against me. We parted with no sense of encouragement.

How can we confront disagreements when we are so adept at taking sides? How can we learn to discern and handle the Word when we are not allowed to disagree openly? There are only three uses of Greek that are on par with Lust in connection to our desire for God every other use is of a carnal and sinful nature. It just did not make sense. But don't disagree.

Amen