Rev. Matt Smith (of Taylorville United Methodist Church fame) preached on the third chapter of Mark this morning. As usual, he gave me something to chew on for the rest of the day, and I don't mean a granola bar with the coffee in his office. Verses 24 and 25 are familiar:
24 If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. 25 If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand.
If you are not familiar with Jesus' words in Mark, you may remember the phrase from Abraham Lincoln's famous "House Divided" speech at the Illinois Republican Convention of 1858 as he kicked off his bid for the U. S. Senate, in which he intimated that the continuation of the institution of slavery in the United States pursuant to the Dred Scott decision was a Democratic Party conspiracy.
"A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot
endure, permanently, half slave and half free.
I think we all understand the basic message of Jesus as it applies to humanity, and the application of the message by Lincoln to the American institution of slavery and the future of the Union.
We should understand it more, here in the United States, than any time since the Civil War. We seem divided about everything.
Jesus and Abe (again, Lincoln, not Abraham) each made a point that is often missed as we get stuck on the issue of division. Jesus said that in order to get to the root of the problem, it would be necessary to "enter the strong man's house" and tie him up. In other words, we, like Jesus, must confront, face to face, hand to hand, heart to heart, that which divides us and struggle with it. Abe was not quite so cryptic, as he began his speech, "If we could first know where we are and whither we are tending, we could better
judge what to do and how to do it."
We cannot address or repair the division without attempting to understand what divides us. And perhaps it may be even more important to first search for and affirm that which unites us.
But it seems that we have almost gotten to the point where it is dangerous to admit unity in anything, other than in shallow platitudes, lest we lose some advantage to those who might disagree with us.
Jesus would have us admit unity in our humanity. Division was not mentioned in the story of creation, except for the waters from the land. Then there was that awful matter of separation of Adam and Eve from the garden. But that was the doing of man, not God. Biblically, division was generally used as a time-out for misbehaving children . . .a punishment.
Lincoln would have us remember our unity as Americans. The speech is amazingly technically wonky by today's standards at the State party level. But for purposes of this speech, freedom is that which unites us as countrymen.
We have lost our courage. We stand outside the house of the strong man that divides us, whether you wish to define that in spiritual, or metaphorical terms, and shout, shouting from all sides, north, south, east and west, louder and louder. Sometimes we even throw our pathetic rocks, doing nothing to the strong man in his strong house. We don't even care about that anymore. We are more intent in hitting the crowd that screams from the other side of the house. If we silence them, then maybe our voice alone will be heard. Maybe our voice will prevail.
But the strong man in the strong house is not disturbed.
The strong man is strengthened.
Because, his only threat is our unity.
.
Jesus never backed down from the strong man, he just didn't respond to him the same way we think we should.
ReplyDeleteLots of people like getting us angry against something. Only really feel like Jesus brings us together for someone.
I would agree Bob. I would be interested to know what you think the reason is for the division. There are arguments to be made that we were divided at our founding and the division has continued to get worse. Personally I don't necessarily agree with that assessment. We were divided at our founding over the type of governement i.e. strong central government or more dispersion of the power. We settled on the dispersion, but the disagreement continued, however we were always able to function as a government and a people.
ReplyDeleteAt our founding and even at the time of Lincoln, though we were divided on issues, we agreed on some basic principles. We had a common culture. That is no longer the case. As Russell Kirk describes it culture is based on the "cult" and when you remove the "cult" from the culture, it falls apart.
I am not trying to argue that the founders intended to form a "Christian Nation", because I think it is obvious they didn't, however they did base certain things which at the time were basic Christian principles that the vast majority of Americans agreed on. They took great pains to not create a theocracy, however they made the assumption that the citizens would always be a self-disciplined, self-governing group. Unfortunately that has not proven to be the case.
I believe most of our current division stems from our truly being divided. We no longer agree on basic principles such as the purpose of government. If we don't agree on the purpose of government I would predict it will be extremely difficult to get us to agree on what governemtn should or should not do.
I agree with most of what you said, with the exception of "they made the assumption that the citizens would always be a self disciplined, self governing group." I don't think the mistake of the Founding Fathers was based on that assumption. In fact, I don't even think that assumption is accurate.
DeleteThe Founding Fathers' fundamental faulty assumption (which was still pretty good, considering it held true for a couple of centuries) was much more elitist in nature, that the wealthy and educated few would have the means to dictate and control the conversation into perpetuity. They could not have foreseen a day when the dissemination and availability of information would be so democratic, as in today's age of technology. They weren't afraid of the other party assuming power, nearly as much as they were fearful of rule by the uneducated masses.
Much of the framework of the Constitution, as well as the rules of the Senate, and voting laws, are based on strong elitist sentiment.
It's pretty ironic that our Founding Fathers designed a bicameral republican Congress for the reason (among others) of controlling the pace of governance by that rabble rousing lower body, the House of Representatives, and that the same group of crazies in the HOR is now using those same rules and mechanisms of government to ground that body to a halt. The HOR's current unwillingness and/or inability to govern, stemming from their propensity for obstruction, is being viewed by many as a flaw in the design of our government, but in reality, it was very much by design. It could definitely by argued that a system so inflexible may not stand up to the challenges of a modern society.
We shall see.