Being Welded Together

Every now and then, my background in science informs my understanding of religion. I think this happened the other day.

I was having a conversation with a friend, and the topic turned to how we build the Kingdom, and we discovered that we’re coming from different perspectives on the best approach. For the last few years, I’ve been unimpressed with the institutional church, feeling like it’s been so co-opted by colonialism and a focus on quantity over quality that it’s basically working against the Kingdom despite its supposed Kingdom focus. My friend, on the other hand, is still in the institutional church world, and was describing to me on how important he feels that it is to be in community. And it felt like we were pulling in two different directions, even though we want the same end goal – the growth of the Kingdom.

At some level I fully understand his concerns about community, and there’s something valid going on there. After all, the Bible is actually a deeply communal book, written by and to a deeply communal people. In the Gospel of John, Jesus is very focused on the Kingdom, and in particular the unity of believers. In John 17, Jesus’ so-called “High Priestly Prayer,” focuses on the idea of becoming one with the Father, even as He was one with the Father – and in so doing, that we his followers would also become one.

That concept of oneness is pretty important. As a matter of fact, I think it’s probably the overriding principle in Scripture’s concept of the Kingdom, that eternal entity that supersedes all human endeavors and politics. As I’ve stepped back from evangelicalism’s focus on individual salvation, it’s easy to see in Scripture how the coming together of humanity is a central focus. All of the Bible seems to show a trajectory from a one-on-one relationship with God – Adam at first, then Abram, then Moses, but trending towards the Gospels describing all the new believers having all in common, to eventually Revelation describing a crowd made of “every tribe, tongue, and nation” gathered around the throne.

So while it’s early in the New Testament, I think Jesus’ comments about oneness in John 17 are in some sense the high point of Scripture’s call towards Kingdom. And I love the fact that we begin reading about becoming one, only after hearing all of Jesus’ comments about the Kingdom in the first three gospels.

What about the word “unity?” That word gets used a lot today in church circles. Well, I think there’s a difference, actually, between unity and oneness. Two different people may walk in unity, but they’re still two different people despite their common goal and path and actions. But being ONE is much, much deeper. People cannot be one while being fundamentally different. I suppose the case could be made that Scripture speaks of one body, coming together from different parts. But one body is composed of different parts that are still fundamentally identical at the deepest DNA level. If you’re familiar with transplant medicine, you know that the body will reject the transplant of parts from a different body, and extremely strong anti-rejection drugs must be taken for life to prevent the body from killing the new part.

So in oneness, unlike unity, there’s just a difference in expression between the different parts – they’re not different at a genetic level, because oneness requires complete commonality. Okay, some might argue that a trust in Jesus as savior is that oneness that underlies all the expression. But you don’t have to look too closely at today’s “church” and its tens of thousands of different denominations that vehemently and often violently disagree with one another, to realize that this is not a very real argument.

So where could things really be any different, if this underlying faith isn’t enough?

Well, I think a straightforward analysis will point to the failure to each actually become like Jesus. Instead, within any given congregation of believers, we tend to try to become like EACH OTHER, often in the image of the top leader of that organization, or its statement of faith, or some Christian creed. And as a result, we often end up with yet another denominational offshoot, believing that it alone has the actual unimpeachable Truth, and everyone else is wrong in subtle or even damning ways.

So when these different groups are around each other, they never quite stick together. They might have a great “church unity” picnic, but then they go their separate ways, convinced that they are worshiping in superior ways to all those other participating churches. There’s always something between them. Their differences are always too much to overcome, and ultimately, despite saying “yes, we’re all Christians here,” they don’t actually become One. They’re quite happy to end the meeting and go back to their preferred ways and doctrines, not having been substantially changed – or bonded together as one with a group with whom they disagree.

And in this construct, the Kingdom doesn’t seem possible to ever achieve: groups of rather diverse believers, being one with God, one with Jesus, one with each other.

And I think the idea that many churches have – that all the OTHER churches would change to become like whatever they believe is better about their doctrine – is not only wrong, it’s harmful to the Kingdom.

Again, I think the issue is in our differences from one another – not our expression, but our most deep identity. And it’s because we’re each looking at different patterns of becoming. Our standard, our ruler, the thing against which we measure ourselves, is different. And so we can never become one, because we’re intentionally pursuing a different goal from our fellow believers.

At the core, I think it’s because we have fundamentally varying ideas about what we’re actually modeling. We’re pursuing a set of beliefs, based on our particular and unique reading of the Bible. And after you’ve been around Christians long enough, it’s easy to see that two different human beings can read the exact same Bible – even the same translation – and arrive at starkly differing conclusions about those beliefs. Subtleties like which particular atonement theology or baptism method to which we subscribe are just one level – it goes all the way up to core issues like whether the races are actually identical, or whether men and women are both equally capable of and authorized for leadership, or whether marriage is strictly limited to lifelong monogamous heterosexual relationships. Beyond that, it even goes to questions of the nature and divinity of Jesus, the very nature of God, of the existence of heaven and hell and the Devil. These questions divide sincere believers who are fully convinced of the rightness of their beliefs, can back up their beliefs with thousands of scripture verses, and who are unwilling to countenance any differences.

And this problem is ultimately going to be completely insurmountable.

So what do we do? Can we ever become one with someone with such different ideas about scripture? Can there ever be “one holy catholic church?”

As long as our goal is to reproduce BELIEVERS, the answer is going to remain “no.”

But if our goal was to reproduce JESUS, I think the answer would be “yes.”

And I don’t think you can reproduce what Jesus BELIEVED. It’s too dependent on our interpretation of a fairly small set of verses recalling Jesus’ words – only about four percent of the entire Bible. In my younger years, as an evangelical, the leaders in my religious context spent an inordinate amount of time talking about those specific words and trying to parse out what Jesus was thinking. But we didn’t spend a lot of time talking about what Jesus DID, and how that revealed the nature of Jesus. We focused a ton on a mental model of the Kingdom and how to think the right things, instead of how to DO the right things.

This might sound like a works-based salvation. And I know the typical evangelical response to that: “we’re saved by faith, not by works.” But I’m not talking about salvation at all. (As an aside, that’s mainly because salvation is irrelevant to me: I firmly believe in universal reconciliation: we’ll all eventually end up in the Kingdom because God is infinitely patient and loving. I’d love to see everyone come to know God and be like Jesus in this lifetime, but I’m not particularly worried about the eternal destiny of those who don’t make that goal, because I think God is more patient than just caring about our lifetime on earth.)

At any rate, instead of talking about salvation, I’m talking about the Kingdom. And that’s something that Jesus seems to have been constantly talking about, at least in the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke). And to Jesus, it seems like the focus was on bringing about the Kingdom “on earth as it is in heaven.” He wasn’t talking about going to heaven; He was talking about bringing heaven to earth.

So rather than focusing on a set of beliefs about eternity, Jesus was focused on a very practical gospel: relief and deliverance to the sick and poor and oppressed.

And I’m personally convinced that, if we individually really become like Jesus, this whole issue of “oneness” will resolve itself naturally – the differing beliefs really won’t matter.

So what about that science I mentioned earlier? So far, I’ve just been talking about religion.

I studied the aerospace discipline in college, and there is this scientific principle you learn about while considering spacecraft, called “vacuum welding” or “vacuum cementing”. It’s not something you’d encounter other than in that field, so if you’ve never heard of it, that’s not surprising. So in a vacuum, when you bring together two objects made of the same metal, after they’ve been in physical contact for a while, they’ll permanently stick to one another. In some sense, the surface layers become intermingled – or welded. The idea of welding with which most people are familiar, after all, is making two metal objects into one, by making the surface molecules intermingled. Usually it’s done with a lot of heat, melting the metal until the two parts literally fuse together. But in space, it doesn’t require high temperatures, so sometimes this is called “cold welding.”

One of the keys of vacuum welding is that most of the time, metal surfaces are covered by layers of oxide – effectively a contamination layer. In a vacuum, the oxides break down, and so only truly pure metal is left on the surface. And then when these two separate objects touch, the surfaces have no contamination left, and they naturally fuse or weld together into one piece. Nothing more is required than close contact of two similar metal parts in a purifying vacuum.

Now, imagine this as a metaphor in a religious context. When we’re surrounded by the world, there’s always a surface layer of contamination wrapped around each of us, preventing intimate contact of our deepest purest beings. And we’re also each different from one another. Even without that contamination, two dissimilar objects won’t cold weld together. But if they’re each of identical substance, and uncontaminated, then when you bring them together, they stick and actually become one.

“Become one” – that’s the oneness Jesus was talking about in John 17.

But preventing it, there are two typical problems: contamination, and differences.

Let’s address the differences first.

As I noted already, if we’re pursuing commonality with our “tribe” or our human leader, we’re going to each be pursuing something different, and we’ll become that thing we’re trying to model. So within any one small local organization, a whole group of people CAN actually become one with each other. But they’ll be different than other groups, and can never really become one with those others.

But if, instead, we really try to become like Jesus, shunning any attempt to become like a tribe or a person, we’re going to ALL become like each other. I really do believe that the Holy Spirit will guide that process if we’re genuine about that pursuit. I do NOT think the Holy Spirit is so deeply interested in our beliefs, and I do NOT think that the Spirit will ensure that we believe the right things, despite our monomaniacal focus on having the Right Doctrine.

And so with that, addressing contamination becomes much easier: becoming like Jesus will naturally shed those things that produce that surface contamination that keeps each of us from intimate contact of our essence with the others around us. We don’t need to focus on sin management, trying to eliminate that contamination by external pressure. Instead, simply focusing on truly becoming like Jesus will take care of that.

This shouldn’t surprise any evangelical. I’ve heard evangelical preachers and teachers say for years that we need to stop focusing on systemic change – like the things that cause inequitable treatment of minorities at a structural level in our society – and instead focus on changing people’s hearts. But I’ve never heard that logic applied to this discussion of becoming one. It’s only used as a way to deflect the conversation away from solving systemic problems.

And there’s actually a really good word for this process of becoming like Jesus: discipleship. Unfortunately, we’ve misused that term for decades, if not millennia: we apply it to Bible studies and appropriate belief structures and recreating others in our image, instead of recreating them in the image of Jesus.

In New Testament times, a rabbi was followed by a set of disciples, and the rabbi’s job was to raise up those disciples in his own image. They might well have a different set of beliefs from their rabbi – in fact that was pretty common, and even welcomed in Jewish communities – but the nature and character of the rabbi were being reproduced. Jesus did this process with His disciples. Presumably they did it with their own disciples, once Jesus left. And I think that accounts for the shockingly fast growth of the early church: for a few generations of believers, it was truly reproducing Jesus, not a set of beliefs ABOUT Jesus.

But you can’t reproduce Jesus in a lot of people all at once. This kind of process, like for Jesus and the disciples, requires some years of truly living together, and it’s with a few people at a time. You can’t do that with thousands of congregants at a megachurch. There is no Henry Ford mass production line for disciples.

But if the slow and deeply-invested process is done well, in the end you have a handful of people who each faithfully reproduce a single common standard, and are free of external contaminants.

And what happens when you bring them together?

Just like cold welding: they stick. They weld. They become one, at a molecular level.

Now, if the models that these groups individually represent are different, then when you bring these already-joined people together with another group following a different leader, they won’t stick to them. They’ll remain two different groups. They’ll each be a group, but those groups won’t become joined together. No matter how hard you try, they’ll remain distinct groups.

But if they’re each reproducing the exact same thing, they’re going to have the same composition, and so they’ll stick together just as effectively as those subgroups welded together internally.

Now, I do believe that the Kingdom could eventually result from dissimilar groups being welded together, using all that heat and fire of the traditional welding process. In fact, I think that’s the best understanding of what we traditionally call “hell” – when Jesus was talking about the fires of Gehenna, I suspect He was referring to the purifying fire that will eliminate all those differences, and all the surface contamination of living in the world, so that each of us can stick together into one Kingdom despite our visible differences. But how much better, how much sweeter, how much less painful, if we don’t need to go through that fiery welding process to be joined together, and instead, we become one “on earth as in heaven”?

So the key here should be obvious: we’ve got to be following, or reproducing, the exact same model.

And there can only be one such model: Jesus.

Not a megachurch pastor. Not a local pastor. Not a charismatic online influencer. Not a politician. Not a creed, or any set of beliefs. The only model that will work will be a single, unique, person who perfectly represented God to the world: Jesus.

And I think that most people could look at Jesus, and then look closely at any person they’re inclined to follow, to be discipled by, and if they were honest and humble, could quickly spot the differences.

So this idea of building the Kingdom really requires exactly and only one thing for its ultimate success: individually, each one of us, becoming exactly like Jesus.

Well, actually, that plus one other thing: coming together. We cannot be joined to people from whom we stand apart. So we also have to overcome our fear of otherness.

But when we do each reproduce Jesus, and we do come together, the result will be, to paraphrase John 17, “Father, make them welded together into one being, one unit, one essence, separated by absolutely nothing, even as You and I are welded together into one entity.”

And it won’t require the fire of a welding torch or electric arc or Gehenna to make it happen. It’ll happen naturally, organically, by simply being intimately connected with someone else who’s also just like Jesus.

And by this, the Kingdom will naturally grow: not because more and more people join little units separately being welded together by common beliefs, but because more and more people become just exactly like Jesus, and when they touch, they stick and become one, permanently joined to the Body of Christ.

On earth as it is in heaven.