The great issue of this day and every day is whether God’s people will be holy and united, whether we will speak true with love and love according to truth. It is whether we will be led by the Spirit working through the Word or whether we will be led by people of poor character working through new media.

A journey into the Rocky Mountains of Western Canada brought me to Vermilion Pass, a single point that divides two national parks and two provinces. It also divides two watersheds, for it stands upon the continental divide. To one side of this spot all waters flow west and eventually find their way to the vast Pacific; to the other side, all waters flow east and eventually empty into the cold Atlantic. To both sides are countless springs, countless snowmelts, countless glaciers, each one the headwaters of a creek, stream, or river that eventually joins with others and makes its way steadily toward one of these two great oceans.

In the decades that I’ve been a Christian, I’ve been told of many doctrines, many convictions, and many movements that represent the theological equivalent of a continental divide. Flowing to the one side of this issue are the faithful and to the other side the unfaithful. To the one side is the standing church and to the other side the falling church. To the one side is the godly remnant holding firm and to the other the great host of compromisers who are crumbling away. The implication is that if we don’t get a certain issue exactly right, we have set ourselves on the side of evil and will eventually be swept into the ocean of iniquity. Not only that, but we need to quickly separate ourselves from those who are moving in the opposite direction.

I face such divides with an increasing sense of skepticism. Though many claim that this issue or that issue is so important that it must be the basis of division, that it marks the point of disfellowship, I have my doubts. That’s not to say that nothing is true and nothing is false. It’s not to say that we ought to live in a kind of theological relativism or be content with a mushy middle. But it is to say that many people have a vested interest in making such claims. It is the claimants as much as the claims that warrant skepticism.

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