Tough love

The disagreement became so sharp that they parted company

The sun behind storm clouds outside our window, Romania

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Acts 15.36-40

Paul said to Barnabas, “Come, let us return and visit the believers in every city where we proclaimed the word of the Lord and see how they are doing.” Barnabas wanted to take with them John called Mark. But Paul decided not to take with them one who had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not accompanied them in the work. The disagreement became so sharp that they parted company; Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus. But Paul chose Silas.

The argument between Paul and Barnabas over Mark causes a bit of embarrassment. Two grown men, leaders, missionaries, arguing so strongly over something that they can’t work together any longer.

We salvage it by saying that it turned out for the best: Paul and Barnabas separately accomplished more than they would have by staying together. But sadly, we hear nothing of Barnabas after this. The only good news from his work is that later Mark becomes a help and a comfort to Paul, so our assumption is that this was because of Barnabas’ influence.

But that still leaves this embarrassing disagreement, the elephant in the room, and no one quite knows how to get around it.

There’s a reason for that. We’re children.

The sad thing about Sunday School is that most of us never leave. We want heroes. We want our religion to be clean, warm, sanitized. We want the people of Scripture to be saints, so we make sure they are. We want Moses to look like Charlton Heston: the wind whipping through his majestic gray hair as he looks out over the Red Sea, his staff raised, commanding the waters to stand aside so his people can cross over. We want Jesus to be Franco Zeffirelli’s tall, handsome, calm, unblinking, blue-eyed impossibly perfect man who glided over the countryside in ethereal otherness. We want Mary to be Olivia Hussey: the impossibly beautiful girl who ages by her hair taking on a wisp of gray.

What we don’t want is for Abraham and David to be adulterers. We don’t want the sons of Jacob to be heartless thugs who sold their brother into slavery and visited prostitutes. We don’t want the wise Solomon to be the foolish king who brought down the monarchy. We don’t want Esther to be what she really was. We don’t want the Twelve to be failures. We don’t want them to have body odor or bad breath. We want them to have no arguments, to never make a wrong decision, to never sin, to never be angry, to never make a mistake. We give them halos because our saints must be sanitized and idealized.

We’re children. We’re stuck in Sunday School.

When Paul has a disagreement with Barnabas we say, “Oh no, this isn’t good!” and find some reason that two otherwise honorable men would act like this. Barnabas means “son of encouragement” so clearly he is a man who is agreeable and polite, right? Paul told us to not let the sun go down on our anger, to live peaceably with everyone, and to do all things without murmuring. Surely he wouldn’t ever get angry, would he?

We’re children. In our childish world mommy and daddy never fight.

Marshall, for instance, says the disagreement was a matter of principle and was “so trivial” that there must have been some deeper cause. He surprisingly calls the separation “a happy solution”.

Stott takes the opposite tack and warns us that, although the split resulted in the work being doubled (really? did it?) this may not be used as an excuse for Christian quarreling. Stott apparently can't imagine a legitimate reason for Christians to quarrel so he warns us that we cannot use the advancement of the work in this case to justify similar behavior (anger, division) between believers now.

I like Stott. Stott, as usual, faces the text head on and tries to help us understand. Marshall retreats and wants no part of this embarrassing incident. Stott takes it on but comes up short because he trusts Paul but distrusts us. Paul, an apostle, and Jesus, the Son of God, and Abraham, the father of all who believe, can do things because of who they are, but we can't, because of who we are. In 99.99% of the cases we can agree with that, but we nevertheless stray into dangerous territory when we say that the highest examples in Scripture are too high for us, and they therefore are examples of what we cannot do. We cannot overturn tables or call religious leaders whitewashed tombs, we cannot take our son up the hillside and tie him to the altar, and we cannot have arguments with other believers. Yes, Jesus Christ and Abraham are special cases. You have to have the clear, unmistakable, unarguable, specific demand of God to do some things, but this disagreement between Paul and Barnabas is not that. Paul, in fact, had disagreements with just about everyone. Splitting with Barnabas was not such a big thing when we remember he also split with Peter, James, John, James' people, and almost every other Jew inside Israel and out. Paul split with all those because all those were doing something different and Paul was not going to change his direction or speed to accommodate what anyone else wanted. The lesson of Paul separating from Barnabas (and Peter and James and all the others) is a lesson that must be taught and understood and learned. It cannot be diminished. Even if every leader in your religion goes the other way and insists you follow along, you cannot do that. The plan of God can be stretched so thin that it runs through only one person, if necessary. That is the lesson of Paul (Rom 11.1), and Abraham and Elijah and John the Baptist, that must be preserved and respected. One person fulfills the promise. Even if everyone else goes the other way, one person standing against them all must continue to stand against them all.

Paul called it all garbage. Anything that hinders or distracts is garbage,

Back to the point: This is not two Christians upset over a confusion over has nursery duty this week. It is a splitting of the ways between a man who had given up everything and one who hadn’t. It wasn’t just John Mark: it was Barnabas as well. Paul’s view was that if Barnabas was going to cripple the work with crippled workers, then he could go his own way because Paul wasn’t going to slow down. Mark was suppose to be a worker but he had become work. Paul had enough to do. He needed helpers, not people who required help.

There’s a difference between a soldier who can’t go on and one who won’t. Yes, no one is left behind, but there are those who stay behind, and those you don’t waste your time on those.

Barnabas wanted to take along a soldier who wasn't. Paul said that would never happen. Barnabas wanted to save the soldier; Paul wanted to save the people. When Barnabas identified himself with that type of soldier, then he became that type of soldier, and so Paul left him behind as well.

Sometimes it's just easier to do it alone. Stott is wrong. This did not double the work. It freed one worker and hobbled the other.

The disagreement between Paul or Barnabas is understandable if you are doing something like that and not understandable if you're not. Sorry, I know I'm not supposed to use the word "you", but I don't know you, so it's okay.

We have a church where there are “the called” and everyone else. “The called” are different. We don't know why they're called, but we do know we're not, so we say it's okay to not understand because it is such a foreign thing. Literally.

If you want to understand, I will tell you. Yes, you.

It changes you to leave home. Almost everyone leaves home when they get married, and almost everyone takes a job that means they must move. This is not that. This is saying goodbye, just about forever. This is telling your family there will be no more Christmases, no more Thanksgivings, no barbecues. Babies will be born who don't know you and will squirm away when you want to hug them, three years too late. Your children will make their own lives, without you. Your friends will move closer to other friends. If you go back to your old job to say hi they won't even allow you in past reception.

It is a death.

Your impulse will be to fill in the gaps with new friends and holidays, but it will be a pathetic attempt. Then it will all come to a head when someone needs a father and chooses you. You don't want that. You can't do that. It's adultery. You can't leave your own children and then lessen the pain by taking on new ones. You hurt them and now you make yourself feel better? No. Never. But how do you tell this young man that you can't take his weight? How do you take care of this girl who has been abandoned by her family and needs protection, and has adopted you as her father? How do you say no?

You say no because you have already said no. Once you say no to your own children you can so no to these children too. Not because it is kind, but because it is necessary. You didn't leave home to make friends or solve people's problems. If your reason for leaving was that thin, then you had better go back because you won't make it.

After you have lightened the weight to do the work it is impossible to take on new weight that will stop the work. It is that simple.

It’s a weakness actually. You need to have things this way because you have nine toes over the edge and one more thing could tip you off. You can’t tolerate people who are too much different, not because you require people to do things your way, but because you don't have the strength to do it this way and their way too.

Everything you have left behind and everything you are struggling to do comes together to determine who you allow into the work. You can tolerate people who are “the work” but you cannot tolerate people who are “the workers” but don't. Lead, follow, or get out of the way. The bottom line is this: it is easier to work alone than to work with someone who weighs you down.

After you have left behind your son it is impossible to take on someone who wants you to be their father. After you have left behind your best friend it is impossible to take on someone who wants you to be their best friend. After you have left behind vacations and hobbies and distractions and weekends it is impossible to take on someone who insists on those things. You used to need things; Now you need to not have these things. People who still need things are needy: a weight.

To me it is perfectly understandable that Paul refused to take Mark along. He was too weak.

It is not that Barnabas saw something in Mark that Paul didn’t; it is that Paul had cut too deep to take on this weight. The disagreement exposed something they hadn’t see before: a weakness in Paul that Barnabas didn’t have.