Food For Thought is a public theology & Bible advocacy blog for Eternity from Sophia Think Tank’s David Wilson, who gathers top Christian thinkers to take a closer look at how the Christian faith addresses matters in society at large every week.

In case you didn’t notice it there was an election last week. It was in the local papers but it may have slipped your attention. It was to elect the Captain of my friend’s cricket team and it was a close call.  There were two candidates and they both spoke well on the night, declaring their divergent vision for the season and even more divergent view of how the team would get there. It came to the vote: 33 to 32 with 1 counted as informal. The winner took all, but the team and everyone associated with it are a divided crew. They will need to learn how to overcome that if the team is going to move forward this year, get on with it even though so divided.

Sound familiar? The elections in the USA for President happened in the same week (just in case you missed it!). The result was just as close and the American nation is a divided nation, in some places passionately so. How will the people of the USA be able to get on with it in the midst of this division?

The USA is not alone in this. It seems there is a pattern throughout the Western world. We are deeply divided as to our future and how we’ll get there. In Australia, the Federal Government is hanging on with the slimmest of majorities, able to form Government because of deals sealed with others not of their Party. The same thing happened in the recent ACT elections and in Victoria the Coalition is in Government with only a 1-seat majority. The same division happened in the New Zealand elections of 2011, with less than 50 per cent of the population voting for the ‘winning’ party.

What does this level of division mean for a nation? This is an essential question when it comes to policy relating to asylum seekers, refugees, Indigenous matters, the environment, climate change, defence spending, and national budget priorities to name just a few. With this level of division we have half of the nation/state/territory believing we should go one way and the other half just as convinced we need to go the other way. Listening to talk back radio, reading the newspapers, talking with friends over a beer, tells this story: We are a deeply divided people. How do we get on with it?

Does the Bible have any light to shed on this question? Of course it does. For example, when Paul the Apostle was writing to the church in Rome he was writing to a potentially deeply divided group of people. Some of the divisions were coming from divergent beliefs about what was important in life and what rules and regulations had to be obeyed. There were very different opinions about such matters. Similar questions had been dealt with earlier in Jerusalem at a Council of the church in that region (Acts 15) and the issues were not going away. How does a group of people work with such potentially divisive opinions? This is what Paul addresses in the book of Romans, chapter 14.  In some ways it is the church’s anti-vilification policy of the 1^st century.

Here’s a sampling of what he says:

• Don’t criticise people or look down on them for having opinions that are different to yours.
• Each of you should make up your own mind as to what is important.
• Don’t judge other people for their opinions.
• Don’t flaunt your ideas just for the sake of it.
• Try to live at peace with one another.

Of course, there are limits to this sort of lifestyle. If some of the members of my friend’s cricket team had the opinion that they should play baseball from now on, they should be asked politely to leave.

But the principles given by Paul to a specific set of issues and a particular group of people have some generalities that would be good to apply to our division in this country. Such respect for one another in the midst of differing opinions would raise the level of debate, would mean that we are attacking issues rather than persons, and would lead us to discover common ground on which we all could move forward to get on with the job of creating a better world.

Food for thought…