Jesus’s commandment to his followers is framed in two ways in the New Testament: “Love your neighbor as yourself” or “Love one another.” For the life of the church, both forms are vital, but the second is the more telling. We seldom succeed in loving one another very well. Most of the time we do not know one another and, if we do, we may not like the people we know. What does it even mean to love people one does not know or like?

It is impossible to specify in advance what the full dimensions of such love might be, since love is a creative force, a manifestation of the Spirit. It creates relationship even as it grows out of relationship. But we can specify a few minimum elements of it. One would be to offer respect to one another as human beings and creatures of God. If we keep people submerged into some clearly defined group of “others,” we are keeping them at arm’s length, assuming that we know everything about them we need to know. Those people over there are “western liberals”—end of story. Those people over there are “bigoted evangelicals”—end of story.

Another element of love would be to esteem one another as people of faith. This implies that we all have a story of faith that, however imperfect (and it is always imperfect), is worth hearing out. It means that we do not readily dismiss one another. It also means that we persist in telling our own story, even when we may be saying unpopular things. After all, God has often been known to speak through prophets who were rejected by the larger community. At the same time, loving one another requires us to entertain seriously the notion that any of us may, being human, also be wrong. Our disagreements have to be talked through. But love does not co-exist with arrogance; it only lives in the house of humility.

The opposite of love is withdrawal from relationship—in other words, to use its churchly name, schism. Schism has always been regarded, at least in theory, as a grave sin, precisely because it is the opposite of love. This hasn’t kept Christians from practicing it extensively over the course of our history. But it is still a sin and a serious one, given how specifically Jesus warned us against it.

But what can we do when faced with divisive issues? How were the two parts of the community at Rome to eat together? How are Christians today who disagree over ordination of women, blessing of same-sex marriages, or the authentic identity of transgendered people to love one another and remain in communion? Despite claims on all sides, there is no simple formula for determining in advance which side is right. Christian conservatives were wrong on the topic of slavery in the nineteenth century; liberals were right. On the other hand, in the time of Hitler, some who opposed him could be described as conservatives, while some liberals (at least in one definition of the term) were willing to accept his “German Christianity.” Historically, the course of the church’s future gets worked out through a complex process of interaction. Each age’s issues are subject to a process of discernment. It seldom happens overnight.

How, then, to proceed? The answer is a bit different, depending on where your starting point is. Paul held that those who were “weak in faith” were inclined to be judgmental, those who were “strong” to be dismissive. Having found myself, at different moments in my life and on different issues, on both sides of that divide, I think Paul’s critique is right.

I can’t say why I have the misfortune of living on both sides of the divide. I only know that, by temperament, I like things to be relatively predictable and well-formed. Take the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. I shall probably always miss the cadences of the older language. The late twentieth century may have been a high point in liturgical studies, but it was a low point in terms of English liturgical prose. At the same time, the revisions revealed in a much clearer way the basic form and meaning of the rites, and for that I am grateful. I don’t want things to change. But I do want them to make sense. And, often as not, those two desires are in conflict.

In that situation, my “weak in trust” side thinks that the changes are destroying my religion. Easy enough to think. Christianity has repeatedly been botched by Christians with devout intentions. But my “strong” side is saying, “Oh, but it’s so much clearer and more intelligible now.” The “weak in trust” says, “You’re losing the sense of the numinous.” The “strong” says, “Mystification is not the same as mystery.” And so they go at each other. The “weak in faith” side thinks the “strong” side is a wrecker and a barbarian. The “strong” side dismisses the “weak in faith” side as a prisoner of the past who will just have to get with the times.

How do these two co-exist without producing some kind of spiritual breakdown? The “weak in faith” side has to get reacquainted with the Spirit, the creative whirlwind that deals out destruction as well as new life—destruction, indeed, that makes new life possible. I have to learn that I cannot make an idol out of every detail of my received faith or I will soon have no room in my sanctuary for the real God who is always making all things new. It doesn’t mean that I treat the received tradition lightly—only that I remember that it has changed in the past and it will change again and each change must be judged on its own merits.

The “strong” side, on the other hand, which sees (eventually) the sense of ordaining women or of celebrating the desire of two men or two women to a stable, life-giving, socially-supported and -supporting marriage or of accepting transgender persons as the people they have come to recognize they truly are—this “strong” me is tempted to dismiss the “weak” for not seeing what is so obvious. (I encourage this arrogance when I conveniently forget that I didn’t “get it” right away myself.)

To put it another way, both sides agree in one respect—in their ability to forget that they are not perfect or omniscient—and so each insists on the partial mode of grasping truth that each enjoys. And they’re not forgiving of the people on the other side. They dismiss each other. They break communion. They shut out the possibility that those other people are also trying to be faithful.

What do I hope to see happen? Not that either side should simply give up, but that we remember that we are, all alike, imperfect people who are nonetheless people of faith, people touched by the love of God, people who may yet see things differently. The bad thing is if we ignore each other and pretend that those people on the other side of the church aisle don’t really exist. The worst thing is if we leave the building and pretend that there is no one on the other side of the aisle. “What people? What aisle? I don’t see anybody over there. We left them back at St. Bidulph’s when we organized this new, purer congregation. After all, they were traitors to the Bible or the tradition.”

Loving one another means hanging together somehow through the troubles. And that is possible only if we have the humility to hear one another out and to go on seeking ways to explain our faith to those who cannot yet see what we see. In the process, I think all sides will have to unpack and reexamine their basic assumptions. And we shall all have to learn how to look around us for signs of faith, hope, and love in our lives and in the lives of others. Love does not live in the house of arrogance. No one is infallible—no single Christian, no single group of Christians. That’s one reason why love is so important.