Author Debie Thomas considers how the biblical metaphor of a vine and branches invites us to come to terms with our interconnectedness:
I can’t imagine a more counter-cultural and challenging vision of the Christian life than the one Jesus offers in this Gospel. “I am the vine, and you are the branches,” he tells his disciples. “Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me, you can do nothing” [John 15:4–5]. If those words aren’t blunt enough, he continues: “Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned” (v. 6). Burned? Gulp….
We are meant to be tangled up together. We are meant to live lives of profound interdependence, growing into, around, and out of each other. We cause pain and loss when we hold ourselves apart, because the fate of each individual branch affects the vine as a whole. In this metaphor, dependence is not a matter of personal morality or preference; it’s a matter of life and death.…
If God is the vine grower, Jesus is the vine, and we are the branches, what should we do? We have only one task: to abide. To tarry, to stay, to cling, to remain, to depend, to rely, to persevere, to commit. To hang in there for the long haul. To make ourselves at home.
But “abide” is a tricky word. Passive on the one hand, and active on the other. To abide is to stay rooted in place. But it is also to grow and change. It’s a vulnerable-making verb: if we abide, we’ll get pruned. It’s a risky verb: if we abide, we’ll bear fruit that others will see and taste. It’s a humbling verb: if we abide, we’ll have to accept nourishment that is not of our own making. It’s a communal verb; if we abide, we will have to coexist with our fellow branches.
Thomas emphasizes the reality of our shared life, even when messy and difficult:
I can’t imagine that there was ever a time when Jesus’s followers found the metaphor of the vine easy to apply in daily life. But it’s especially challenging to do so now. We live in bitterly divided times. We have good reasons to be cautious and self-protective, even within the church. It’s hard in our self-promoting culture to confess that we are lost and lifeless on our own. That our glory lies in surrender, not self-sufficiency….
If only we would consent to see reality as it truly is. “I am the vine,” Jesus tells his disciples. “You are the branches.” It’s a done deal. Whether we like it or not, our lives are bound up in God’s and in each other’s. The only true life we will live in this world is the life we consent to live in relationship, messy and entangled though it might be. The only fruit worth sharing with the world is the fruit we’ll produce together.
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| Ideas and Affections |
 Click Here for AudioA significant portion of contemporary Christianity is preoccupied with the mind and oblivious to the heart. This is the inheritance of the Protestant Reformation and the European Enlightenment which emphasized learning, reason, and ideas as the foundation of both individual and social behavior. As a result, many of us assume that our faith is strong so long as we affirm the right ideas about God, but we may give little attention to where the true loyalties of our hearts are directed.We also apply this standard to the spiritual leaders we follow. For example, the popular Rise & Fall of Mars Hill podcast produced by Christianity Today in 2021, profiled the ministry of Mark Driscoll. Before his downfall in 2015, Driscoll was a hot commodity, especially among young evangelical men. Many of my peers binged Driscoll’s sermons online, devoured his books, and traveled to conferences where he spoke. The pugnacious pastor from Seattle had built a brand by using anger, name-calling, and foul language while advocating for Reformed theology and patriarchal moral values. When I asked young men why they followed Mark Driscoll I often got the same answer—”Because he’s preaching the truth!”“Maybe,” I would reply, “but there’s a reason ‘truth’ isn’t listed among the fruit of the Spirit but love, peace, and kindness are.” The elevation of a leader like Driscoll is what happens when we care more about content than character, when we emphasize the mind and overlook the heart, and when we define spiritual fruit with book sales and weekend attendance rather than with flourishing relationships and self-control. The same error that led to great pain for the good people at Mars Hill Church, and thousands of others who followed Mark Driscoll, is also what makes us susceptible to idolatry.Don’t misunderstand me—ideas matter. Holding correct beliefs about God is important, and believing something incorrect about God is harmful, but we are called to something far more than intellectual agreement with a doctrinal statement. We are called to love God above all else and worship him only. A strong biblical case can be made that a person may hold correct beliefs and still be an idolater because at its core idolatry is about the affections of our heart not merely than the ideas in our mind. Richard Lints explains why idolatry has more in common with the sin of adultery than with the sin of heresy: “Idols are dangerous in the same way that outside love interests are dangerous to a marriage. Adulterous liaisons inevitably pull the marriage apart at the seams. As with adultery, so idolatry is about both wrong beliefs (e.g. a belief about where satisfaction can be found) but more importantly corrupted desires.”This is why the Apostle Paul instructed Timothy to keep watch over both his doctrine (ideas) and his life (affections). Likewise, we ought to fill our minds with the truth about God and cultivate practices of life that will turn our hearts toward him so that our hearts are not corrupted by ungodly desires for power, wealth, fame, influence, or any other idol that is common both in our culture and within the church. DAILY SCRIPTURE MATTHEW 6:19–21 1 TIMOTHY 4:11–16 WEEKLY PRAYER. Serapion, Bishop of Thmuis (c. 360) We ask for your help, Father of Christ, Lord of all that is, Creator of all the created, Maker of all that is made; we stretch out clean hands to you and lay bare our minds, Lord, before you. Have mercy, we pray to you; spare us, be kind to us, improve us; fill us with virtue, faith and knowledge.Look at us, Lord; we bring our weaknesses before you to see. Be kind and merciful to all of us here gathered together; have pity on this people of yours and show them your favor, make them equitable, temperate and pure; send out angelic powers to make this your people—all that compose it—holy and noble. Amen. |
