This means we interpret narrative through the lens of Scripture’s clear ethical teaching. The Bible provides abundant instruction about unity, forgiveness, patience, and reconciliation among believers. Those explicit commands become the standard by which we evaluate the behavior described in historical narratives.

My bold and confident assertion is that certainty provides structure and form while transcendence provides oxygen and life. In our modern context, life is saturated with casualness. People wear sweat suits to important events and flip flops to church, when only 100 years ago, day laborers commonly wore full suits, including jackets, vests, and ties, to work.

Scripture does not allow us to imagine covenantal relationships as disposable. Marriage, after all, is the great earthly icon of Christ’s unbreakable union with His Church (Eph. 5:31–32). God says plainly, “I hate divorce” (Mal. 2:16), not because every marriage is easy, but because covenant-breaking is violent.

The “ethnicity” produced by Christianity is not a matter of shared genetics, geography, or cultural heritage in the worldly sense. Instead, it is a new spiritual reality based on a shared spiritual birth and a common Lord. The New Testament consistently portrays the Church as a new humanity, a new people, a new family forged by the Holy Spirit.