Who’s your mother?

“Are you my mother?” the young bird asks. Having fallen from its nest upon hatching, it encounters a kitten, hen, dog, and a cow, an old car, boat, plane, and finally, a power shovel. At first glance each appears to be a potential mother but alas each turns away from the seeking bird. It is a poignant and enduring children’s story.

It could be the story of the Mennonite Brethren. We were born into a nest that took 500 years to build, but we have fallen out of it. Now we are wandering around wondering who we are. And we’re not alone in this. There was a time when the Christian world had neatly defined boundaries. We may have been Catholics, Lutherans, Pentecostal, Orthodox, or Mennonites – but we were something. Now, who knows what we are?

At first we may be glad for this. After all, hasn’t sectarianism been the bane of Christianity since churches started splitting from each other nearly 2,000 years ago?

“Why are there so many different kinds of churches, anyway?” We’ve all heard the question and we have all walked away less than satisfied with our answers.

The new answer is simple. “The differences don’t matter anymore. We’re all really the same. Don’t worry about it!”

And so people drift between churches and denominations apparently seamlessly. It no longer matters if the latest, greatest church is Reformed, Baptist, or Anglican. Frankly the less links a church has to formal institutions the better. If the preacher is inspiring and the music is invigorating no one seems to care. They must be our mothers if they make us feel cozy, safe, and feed us something that touches the gnawing in our bellies. Isn’t that the essence of motherhood?

But all is not well in this new world without boundaries. While the various sects of Christendom made us answer vexing questions, there were also good things they gave their followers. They gave them structures to respond to the societies they lived in and they gave them a language to actually discuss the issues they faced.

The flaw of our new, non-sectarian world reveals itself in both areas. Western Christianity also blends seamlessly into culture at large and here it now struggles to define its own ethics. In fact a cigar, a glass of wine, and a generous salting of profanity is the new cool for the emerging Christian male. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course. But, how do we even talk about it?

As Alice discovered when she tried to debate the Red Queen, real discussions require more than just common words. They require a common language. And this is what we have lost. We have the same words but we no longer have the same implicit meanings and because of this we have lost the most elementary of meaningful debate.

It showed up in the Women In Ministry dialogue. We began with an important and extremely practical question and sat down together to search for an answer. But immediately we divided over our hermeneutics and understanding of Scripture and then wondered why the disagreement was so intransigent.

At the recent “Culture, Gospel, and Church” study conference last October, the keynote speaker was a respected Reformed theologian. The Anabaptist and Reformed views of the church in culture might as well come from different planets. He knew who he was – we didn’t know who we were. Is it any wonder that we’re left wondering what had been discussed?

Even informal debates such as our response to Remembrance Day and wearing poppies are confusing. We know we disagree and we have a sense that we should express ourselves passionately. But in the end all we really do is offend each other.

So who are we, and what is our “mother”? This is not a random search for meaning. The nest in which we were born has left deep marks in our beings. It has shaped us into who we are. We are a people with an identity. We have a mother!

The baby bird was not a cat, dog, airplane, or even a chicken, and when it finally saw its mother, it knew.

And who are we? I believe there are three deep marks that identify us. We are a “biblical” people, a “separated” people, and we are “a” people.

But what do those words mean? Next month – we are a “biblical” people.

James Toews is pastor at Neighbourhood Church, Nanaimo, B.C.