All the cool kids are telling me to make unity my top priority but I don’t WANT to be part of most groups, including the cool kids’. I don’t fit in with the unity crowd and that’s not likely to change unless I receive some kind of brain injury.
I like division, disconnection, and separation. Disunity gives me options that might save my life. When the united group decides to lie down on the train tracks, I can choose to disconnect. As the locomotive sends a shower of entrails through the air, I thank God for my exclusion from the group.
Even if I desperately wanted to unite with all mankind (which I don’t), pursuing that goal is a waste of time. It will never happen. If there was only one other person on planet Earth, the two of us would still be separated. That’s how we’d recognize each other. The differences are how I know I’m not looking at myself in a mirror.
It is true that religion and politics divide us. Philosophical divisions cannot be ‘healed.’ If I believe God exists and you are an atheist, there is no possible way to philosophically unite. There’s no happy, inclusive, middle-ground between theism and atheism. In order to be united, one of us must join the other group. (And I’m not joining your group because atheism is irrational.)
You cool kids don’t seem to understand that much of the divisiveness you’re seeing is caused by your relentless pursuit of ‘unity.’ I mean, shaming me for my ethnicity, religion, politics, and wealth doesn’t make me feel included. A big part of the reason we’re separated is because you’re kind of a jerk. I don’t want to join a group of people just like you.
Universal coexistence won’t ever happen but partial unity can be achieved at church. Specifically, it happens through Jesus Christ. He unites his disciples to Himself and to God. When Christ unites us, we are no longer separated by race, religion, politics, and wealth.
“I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”
(John 17:22)
