Love leaves no room for ‘us and them,’ Dallas pastor says

Posted: 2/15/08

Love leaves no room for
‘us and them,’ Dallas pastor says

By Ken Camp

Managing Editor

ATLANTA—Peace and reconciliation require people to move beyond categories of “us and them” that always become “us versus them,” said George Mason, pastor of Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas.

Mason spoke at a prophetic preaching conference held as a part of the New Baptist Covenant celebration in Atlanta.

“There are two kinds of people in the world—those who view the glass as half-full and those who see it as half-empty. There are two kinds of people—those who suck the life out of every day and the ones who let the day suck the life out of them. …There are two kinds of people in your church—those who agree with you and the bigots,” Mason began.

“OK, we could go on and on with this. But that’s also the problem. Any time you go down that trail of dividing up the world into two kinds of people, it goes on and on.”

Danger of Categorizing

Lumping people into categories of “us and them” leads not only to division, but also to arrogance and antagonism, he said.

“We somehow need to believe that we are the good, and yet doing so requires we believe that others are the bad. But it’s hard to love your neighbor—let alone your enemy—if you spend all your time trying to figure out who’s who or which is which,” Mason said.

Baptists have plenty of practice dividing people into categories, he acknowledged, whether splitting internally over theological and political issues or separating all humanity into easy-to-grasp categories of “lost and saved, counting ourselves among the saved and looking upon the majority of the world as damned to hell.”

Missions and evangelism rightly call people to faith, Mason stressed, but God’s work of salvation does not depend upon human efforts.

“It’s not up to us to account for the standing of others before God,” he said. “It is up to us to stand before God and give account of our witness of good news to the poor, the captive, the blind and the oppressed. They, too, are included.”

The division of people into clear-cut categories leads far too easily to armed conflict, as in the United States’ occupation of Iraq, Mason asserted.

“We are told over and over that we are the good; they, the bad. We are the righteous; they, the unrighteous. We are the do-gooders; they, the evildoers. We are told that nations are either with us or with our enemies—us against them,” he said. “But isn’t this just a mirror image of the very thinking of those who flew planes into the World Trade Center buildings?

Religions of peace

“Christians question whether Islam is a religion of peace. We ought to be asking whether others can believe by our witness that Christianity is a religion of peace.”

Evil must be acknowledged and confronted, Mason said. The challenge Christians face is to oppose evil without playing by evil’s rules.

“For example, employing the tortured logic of the greater good in order to justify torture only damages us all,” he said. “Never mind the Geneva Conventions. The Golden Rule on which they are based is broken in every torture chamber.”

Mason termed it “presumptuous” for any preacher to label any sermon in advance as prophetic. The prophetic nature and “gospel truth” of any message is determined in the lives of God’s people over time, he insisted.

But, he stressed, the world needs more prophetic preaching if Christians are serious about wanting all people to recognize the gospel’s power.

“But that will not happen by our climbing up on public perches of privileged piety and scolding people for their bad behavior,” he said.

“It will happen by climbing down to join them at the foot of the cross and loving our neighbors—and even our enemies—as Jesus did.”