Can We Sing With One Voice?

Ah, smart music. For everyone who likes their music to actually have something to say, I have found the band for you. Sure, the trumpet and trombone are a little hard to get used to, but the message in the O. C. Supertones’ music is just awesome! For me, Supertones music is an acquired taste. I had to listen to it for a while before I really began to appreciate it.

I have recently decided that I like the Supertones, and I came across their album Chase the Sun in our van. Since their music is so original, I have decided to go over some of their songs from Chase the Sun. First up is the first song on the cd, One Voice. The song is from 1999, so don’t worry about the reference to the year in the first line.

O. C. Supertones: One Voice
From the album Chase the Sun

1999 and the stakes is high.
Our options have come down
To either we do or we die.
We need You now more than ever.
Pull out all of the strife in the church,
Get us together.

Is time running out?
I can’t say. I do know
We have one day less
Than we did yesterday.So it’s up to us to unite;
You wanna fight the power?
You need the power to fight.

(chorus)
And can we sing with one voice,
If we all love the same God?
Can we agree to disagree?
And so we cry with one voice
To the only God in all the universe
Who holds us in His hands.

No more time
For us to bicker and complain.
If we’re called by the same name.
There’s nowhere for us to lay the blame
Except for ourselves,
And if we died of our old selves
To come alive as God’s flesh,
That makes us family.

Deeper than death,
But we don’t act so tight
When there’s a back to bite.
Are we less like a family, and
More like a fistfight?
Are we there, but not quite?
Are hypocrites children if light?

(repeat chorus)

Man, I even liked typing it. Of course, it helps to listen to the song, but the words alone can put forth the case for unity in the church quite well, and they do so in a short amount of time.
Seriously, we’ve got bigger things to worry about than whether or not those folks over there pray in tongues. We’ve got a unified enemy and we’re on his turf, and all we can think about is how we can’t stand those “flaky televangelists.” We’re too busy attacking other Christians over how they were baptized to even defend ourselves against attacks from the devil, much less mount a believable attack on the kingdom of darkness. “Are we less like a family and more like a fistfight?” Unfortunately (and irresponsibly), yes.

At what point did we stop thinking about winning souls? We are in a war with the kingdom of darkness, and the souls of billions of people are at stake. Instead of concentrating our collective efforts in a unified front against our common enemy, we waste our energy on petty, factious infighting. Imagine our enemy’s joy when he marches into battle only to find that those that he would strive against have turned on each other! Through our prideful negligence, we abandon our first priority in favor of pursuing a carnal, man-made goal (denominationalism), and in the process we end up slaughtering the cause we claim to champion (love).

With all the conflict in the body of Christ, it’s no wonder we are called hypocrites. We preach a message of love, but our message falls flat in the wake of our infighting. If we preach love, but we can’t even love each other, why should anyone listen to us? We, in all our pompous spirituality, say “love thy neighbor” while neglecting to love even our own brothers in Christ. We are supposed to have died of our old selves and come alive as God’s flesh, thus becoming family, but when it comes right down to it, we refuse to even love our brothers. As Christians, our relation is supposed go deeper than death, so surely it goes deeper than our carnal sectarianism.

We as Christians must realize that we are in a war, a struggle, between light and darkness. Because of that, we cannot live and function as though we have the luxury of being able to nit-pick and fight with other Christians like angry siblings. We cannot pretend that we have nothing better or more important to do than to bicker with Christians whose minor points of doctrine offend us. In WWII, many nations with disagreements came together to fight an impending evil, forgetting their differences and swallowing their arrogance and pride in order to defend the values that they all held dear.

That is how we must be. We are Christians, and as such, our first priority is to spreading the Gospel. Our call is not to get up in arms against our brothers because they like to swing a little incense; we should instead pick up our swords in defense of the fundamental parts of Christianity. We should stand up next to each other and fight for the basic tenets of our faith which we all hold dear, fighting against the enemy that threatens us all, rather than attacking our allies over small doctrinal disagreements.

We are the body of Christ, and as I have said before, all the parts of the Body should work together. If a house divided against itself cannot stand, then the church in danger of losing what influence it still has. Despite our disagreements, we are all in the same boat. It’s stupid to turn our cannons on each other when we are in a life and death struggle with the prince of the power of the air! Divided, we are a bickering bunch of impotent hypocrites, but united, we are unstoppable. If Christ is at our head, and we are all obedient to Him, there is nothing in this world that can stop us from winning the world to Christ.

Be blessed!
Neo