How Divisions Occur

It's my way to be sarcastic, sneering and colourful about stuff that I think is stupid and bad.  This limits who is able to stomach what I write.  So I set myself the challenge today of writing the same thing about how divisions occur, but without any sneer or colour or humour.  Made it quite difficult to express myself, as my feelings are left out of it to a much larger degree:

In the Brethren movement, since 1848, divisions have been happening almost constantly.  At any given moment, there seems to be a division brewing in some Brethren group, somewhere.  What exactly happens?  Is there a pattern?  I don't know of any Brethren writings about why divisions happen, or how to prevent them. 

Step 1: The Cause/Person

When a division is going to happen, first there is inevitably going to need to be something or someone people are going to object to, or fight against.  Something or someone that people will fear.  Will see as a threat.  Any Brethren assembly can be seen as dividable, somehow, into two camps (old/young, modern/traditional, thoughts/feelings-based, this family/that family).   For a division to happen, a wedge is then driven into that barely-visible seam. It uses fear and judgment.  Not thinking the best of others, no genuine attempts to understand, no grace, love or forgiveness.  Those things are deemed vulnerable, and thrown out the minute any kind of emergency situation is declared. If they were maintained, they would save the day. In fact, they are the only things that will.  No amount of doctrine-parsing is going to do that job.

   Because normally this divisive wedge itself comes in the guise of some kind of "doctrinal" issue.  Pouring more doctrinal debate on top of doctrinal argument is like pouring gasoline on a fire, to put it out. The fact is, many things Christians hold dear and feel very strongly about are incredibly lofty and mysterious and beyond human comprehension.  Things like the precise nature of and relationship between the various persons of the Godhead, (or exactly what's going on with God allowing sin, then curing it somehow with death. By dying.  Himself.  Incarnated as Man.  But distinct from Himself. Yet one.)
  What tends to happen at the onset of division is a man will write or say something opinionated about one of these very mysterious doctrinal things we see through a glass darkly, but love to fight about.  This action of his will divide the room.  Many of the people taking sides will never really understand the matter, but will jump on in anyway, passionately.
  So if a man writes or says anything like that, someone who often really doesn't fully understand what the man was intending to say will frequently feel personally threatened and will therefore proclaim it A Threat. To God.  To His Name.  His People. His Table.  His Doctrine.  His Testimony.  Something that is His.  What seldom happens at this point is that anyone is willing to speak to the man himself very much at all about the matter.  And the man himself, and any who say they're on his side, are seen as a serious threat, and fear happens, once again, with outrage. Something needs to be done.  And what is always done is "silencing" and division. Not love.  Not understanding.  Not communication.

   These doctrinal things we argue so opinionatedly about, in endless disputations, are famously deep and far beyond full human comprehension, but people will say that it's all actually quite simple.  And then they will get ready to defend God from the "new" and "complicated" ideas.
  God does not require this.  God makes things clear.  And people have to fumble through in order to learn hard things.  They need to be given time to get things right.  They have to be allowed missteps along the way.  But that's not how things go when there's going to be a division.  It's going to be strictly "black or white"?  Yes or no? Eternal or everlasting? Total or partial?  Open or closed? One or two-part? Predestination or election?  Infant or Believer?
  No one will be allowed to opt out of taking a position.  Because there need to be two teams and an open field for there to be a division.

Step 2: Two Teams

At this point those two parties or teams are assembled.  It is decided who will follow which of the two "Captains."  People are vetted to see which team they will be on.  This is done by a number of quiet meetings in coffee shops, and by emails and phone calls.  Direct communication.  Eye contact.  Lowered voices.  Leaning in conspiratorially.  Smiling and shaking heads in shared disbelief over the folly of the other team.  Sad shaking of heads that anyone could be so easily led astray as the people on the other team clearly are.  Often, teams bond over suspicion, spite and past grievances. Usually over power struggles.  Once assembled, each team gets ready to defend the Lord and His people from men with "new ideas."  They will prove unable to defend the flock from being torn up, the weak culled, and the sheep scattered, the whole time nobody's getting fed.

Step 3: Token Gesture

Brethren people know right well that fighting and dividing are bad. They know scripture speaks very highly of keeping unity.  They know what the fruits of the Spirit are, and don't wish to be seen to lack these fruits.  So what they do, for conscience's sake, is extend some kind of olive branch.  This is not normally done by phone calls or face to face meetings.  It's normally done with a sanctimoniously worded, extremely formal, authoritative, unfriendly letter.  Indirect communication.    This letter will inevitably be rejected, and people are going to photocopy it a number of times and show it to everyone as evidence of sincere attempts being made at peace-making. 

  What makes these letters fail is that they usually are, sometimes between the lines, sometimes very overtly, actually quite judgmental, closed, passive-aggressive, insulting and assumption-filled.  They assume personal correctness and the guilt and rebellion against scripture of those addressed, and they claim to be humbly, faithfully, sadly doing good.  But they ring false to anyone looking on.  Normally they contain a number of insulting verses.  They tend to use the word "concern(s,ed,ing)" repeatedly. 

Step 4: Rallying the Troops Letter

Once both teams are clearly defined, are angry at each other, and very much done talking (not that very much healthy communication was achieved, nor was an arbiter called in to help make sure it happened) each side will then write a letter to the rest of the assemblies in the world.  Copies of the previous letters may be enclosed to help each side make a case.  Internet and phones are once again used at this point (direct communication again), as there is nothing token about the attempts being made to turn sympathetic people firmly against the other side and get the doctrinal/membership war going.  

   These letters need to be stirring.  They are a trumpet call, urging Christians to join together in battle to do the ecclesiastical equivalent of killing each other on the battlefield.  They are about power, and who has it.  Who wields the sceptre?  Who is in the right place (Judah) and who isn't (Israel)?  They talk about obedience and "bowing."  They tend to use the words "sad" and "forced" and "leaving us with no choice but to".  Also "precious" and "faithful."  They are all about "positions" taken.  They use military imagery, like "armour."  The assumption is clear: your brother is now The Enemy.   Support our troops.
   I've seen quite a few of these. Here is part of one (I don't have the rest, including the part which, having moved on from "taking stand" against a faction, would urge everyone else to divide/withdraw from them too, or be "off scriptural ground.")

Step 5: Declaration of War

And then it's all about fighting.  Fighting over who gets to keep the meeting hall.  Over who is put out by whom.  Over who said or wrote what.  Over what scriptures can be launched at whom.  Over getting good shots in. Over putdowns. More letters will fly.  Letters about how "sad" brethren are to have been "forced," to have been "left with no other choice" but to decimate their assemblies, firing photocopied, highlighted letter after scripture-decorated, carefully signed letter; like an endless barrage of missiles landing on people's doorstops, daring any and all not to read them.  And almost no one will be able to resist having a bit of a surreptitious peek, and then they'll be asked which side they support.  What position they "take."  Who they're "bowing" to.  The Lord, or that rabble-rousing man we used to call "Brother."

  Locally, these divisions happen about once every ten years. They are done in the name of obeying scripture and walking uprightly.  They are done in the name of maintaining Christian testimony.  They are done in the name of endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit. They are done in the name of protecting God and His Name and His Table from people everyone grew up with. They are done in the name of protecting the children who might otherwise be led astray or hurt by these people and their dangerous influence. (Of course divisions hurt children. The more sensitive, idealistic, aware and faithful, the more it will hurt them.)  This dividing is done in the name of faithfulness, obedience and love.  And the claim is always that the saints have been forced to divide, and have no other choice but to be faithful. To bow.  To submit.  To stand.

Step 6: Aftermath

Afterward, all too often, people from the various sides of divisions will not have any real dealings with one another ever again.  Reconcilliation seldom occurs.  Before the division, they'd always and only worked with these people, when it came to spiritual/Christian/religious stuff.  After the division, these would be the last people they would have any dealings with in this arena.
   When a division occurs, what usually happens is a quarter of the people leave for good, a quarter stay for good (or until the next division in about ten years time), and half are just "gone."  They often stop going to church entirely, or certainly do not stay with either of those two warring sides. It's how flocks are scattered.

   I have repeatedly heard Brethren stand up and thank God in prayer for "keeping them faithful."  For "being kept."  For "making the true path, the right way, clear."  For "allowing us to see Thy mind."  (All this is the opposite of being lost.  Of being faithless. Of not being able to find the true, right path and way. Of not being able to discern the mind of the Lord.)
   What I generally hear is that "it was all very simple." And I hear people (from the other side) being named as wholly to blame.  With "evil doctrine" given as the reason for the division. 

Divisions all seem to be pretty much the same, starting with the one in Bethesda, 1848.  I wish people would stop repeating the past with the same spiritual error.