A little-known story is that once Scalia bought Ginsburg two dozen roses for her birthday. One of his clerks, knowing how divided they were on countless court cases, and how she had never given him a vote he needed on a 5-4 decision of any significance, asked him why he did it. Scalia simply said, “Some things are more important than votes.”
When Ginsburg was asked how they did it, this is what she said:
“We know that even though we have sharp disagreements on what the Constitution means, we have a trust. We revere the Constitution and the Court, and we want to make sure that when we leave it, it will be in as good a shape as it was when we joined the Court.”
What if we followed suit? What if we, as Christ followers, would say:
“We know that even though we have sharp disagreements on what the Constitution means, we have a trust. We revere the body of Christ and its witness before a watching world, and we want to make sure that when we leave it, it will be in as good a shape as it was when we joined it.”
If we could, we would flesh out the one, true, real mark of the Christian faith that Jesus said would be the one thing that would arrest the attention of the world and prove that what He came to establish was real. And that one mark of the Christian has been, and will always be love.
This article originally appeared here, and is used by permission.
