What is the Ground of our Unity?

 

    On Pentecost we saw that the Holy Spirit united many believers from different ethnicities and nations as one. A major work of the Holy Spirit is uniting us across diversity, working towards that day when those from every nation and tribe and language will stand before the throne of God in worship (Revelation 7:9). The Spirit wants to open wide the doors of the church and welcome in people from all sorts of diverse backgrounds: diversity of age, of skin color, of nation, of gender, of socioeconomic status, of education level, of political affiliation, etc. We believe that God intentionally created His world with vast diversity because he knows that creation is more beautiful when it encompasses all the many colors of the rainbow. Diversity of mountains and valleys, land and sea, desert and rainforest, it all adds to the beauty of God's world. 

    Often when I preach from the Bible I have to talk about how what the Bible teaches is countercultural: it is often at odds with various prevailing values of our culture. But today, I must admit that this is a rare instance where what our culture is preaching and teaching actually overlaps with a lot of what the church believes and is working for. In fact, in some ways the secular culture is doing better than our churches at valuing diversity. Diversity is one of the highest values in our culture today. In many institutions there is no sin greater than to be against the goals of diversity. And in many ways we should rejoice over this. 100 years ago, for example, our culture was not as consistent in affirming these values of diversity. People were more likely to exclude or discriminate based on race or gender. We should be glad that our culture today wants unity in diversity, for that is a goal of the Holy Spirit. Now, to qualify this, I will note that when you get down to the nitty gritty of some of the different ways in which our culture wants to work towards diversity, some aspects of it are astounding and noble, others can be a little more questionable at times, but the main point I’m focusing on is that their basic goal of diversity is good. We should rejoice in that goal.

    But one thing I want to criticize our culture for is that though they share the same goal of diversity as we Christians do, they don’t have the necessary philosophical and theological truths and beliefs that are needed to ground and root that unity in. Paul, for example, he roots our unity in the fact that we have one Lord, one God (Ephesians 4:3-6). This is key to ground our unity in. For if we’re all trying to live in obedience to Christ’s teachings, what a source of unity that is. But in our culture, we do not have one agreed upon Lord. We have thousands of different lords people are trying to follow and obey; many want to be lords of their own life. And in the long term it is just impossible to tie ourselves together in unity when we do not have an agreed upon Lord. To imagine the division that springs up from us not sharing one Lord, imagine in America if I said my president is Joe Biden, but my neighbor said his president is Emmanuel Macron and my other neighbor said his president is Xi Jingping. It is difficult to have full unity without agreed upon laws, values, and rulers. Full unity will always escape our grasp when some are trying to follow the ways of living as if Caesar were lord and others are trying to live as if Christ were Lord. We need one Lord.

    So I applaud our culture that they value diversity, but I mourn that they do not have the underlying beliefs that are necessary to ground our unity in. Again, our goal is unity in diversity. But the only way we can have unity in diversity is if there is something that unites us that is stronger than the things that divide us and separate us. What do we have from a purely secular point of view that we all hold in common that is big enough to unite us across our vast differences? Sometimes our culture tries to ground our unity in the fact that we’re all Americans. But if that is the source of our unity, what grounds our mutual love and connection with those who live in other nations? Nations will still divide us. The closest unity that our culture can point us to is that we’re all humans. And that’s good, that’s a powerful unifying statement, we’re all human. But the fact that we’re all human loses some of its ethical force when it is absent from the Christian belief that every human is stamped with the image of God, and thus every human needs to be treated with love and respect. Right? Because from a purely secular, naturalistic view, our shared humanity need not bind us to each other. Scientists tell us that various spiders and other species are known to eat their own kind. If all we are is a collection of cells, it’s a kill or be killed world, every man and woman for themselves. 

    If we truly want unity in diversity we need something that grounds us in unity that soars far above all our other differences. And if we want to root our unity in the highest possible of things, we must root our unity in religious claims, for religion deals with the biggest, highest things imaginable. What could be a higher claim for unity than sharing Christ as Lord and sharing one Holy Spirit that dwells in all who believe? For example, when we realize that we are foremost citizens of God’s heavenly kingdom, then the divisions of earthly nations seem far less important. Our culture will never find unifying claims that are high enough to overcome all the things that seek to divide us if they are unable or unwilling to use religious claims.

    Now some might object and say that religion is in fact the cause of so much division in our world, that we’d get along better without it. They would argue that if true unity is dependent upon sharing Christ as Lord, what happens to those who worship other gods? Are they excluded? Those are good points. Well, I’ll try and respond. Consider the alternative to grounding our unity in a religion. The alternative is that we must ground our unity in irreligion. In the name of unity, we would have to act as if any religious differences between groups either don’t exist or that they’re entirely inconsequential. In other words, we'd have to give up our highest religious claims and submit them to the authority of the state; we'd have to alter whatever beliefs we have that are not conducive to the unity of the state. So any exclusive claims such as Christ is Lord or Allah is God or Joseph Smith was a prophet, these types of claims must be abolished. But notice how this type of secular unity too is not fully inclusive: it excludes any who are too religiously zealous. If the critique of religious unity is that it cannot include everyone, this critique is also true of irreligious unity: it cannot include everyone. This leads us to having to admit that any beliefs that are strong enough to unite are sadly also strong enough to divide. There simply is no ground for unity that is exempt from having to exclude some. A unity based in sharing Christ as Lord may exclude those who do not want to live in the ways of Christ, but, similarly, a unity based in something other than religion excludes any who prioritize the exclusive beliefs of their faith over the unity of the state. Every group, no matter how inclusive they try to be, finds exclusion at times necessary. No inclusive group can long retain within their ranks those who murder or steal, for example. 

    But Tim Keller wrote this. He said, “The gospel is an exclusive truth but it's the most inclusive exclusive truth in the world.” The gospel is not fully exempt from exclusion, but other truths are not either. Some may indeed be excluded from God’s kingdom, for we can only have harmony when everyone wants to live by the ways that make for a harmonious world. Those who wish to remain violent and oppressive cannot belong in God's kingdom. But the gospel is the most inclusive exclusive truth there is. The gospel is so inclusive because it welcomes anyone from anywhere in the world who wants in, and it doesn’t demand a background check, but freely forgives past faults; the church includes every race, every age, saints and sinners alike.

    So, if the true ground of unity is sharing Christ as Lord, what happens to those of other religions or no religion at all? Is there no room for them in this unity in diversity we are striving for? By no means! Because Christ is their Lord and God whether or not they yet know it. God has stamped them with his image, whether or not they know it. And Christ has called us to live in mutual forbearance and to love even our enemies. 

    So will our secular culture ever have full unity? Not until everyone confesses Christ as Lord and lives in obedience to Christ's way. Until then we will struggle with how to hold everyone together in the midst of many competing values trying to tug our country and our world in opposite directions. Knowing that full unity is as of yet out of our grasp, our culture settles for the next best thing to all of us living in one accord, they settle for mutual forbearance and love of enemies. And that has done much to help secure this fragile, partial unity we now hold. It has done much to unite us across diversity. But the question still lingers? By what undergirding philosophical or theological truth can a secular, materialistic culture tell us that we must live by the ways of mutual forbearance and love of enemies? As it now stands, the fact that our culture holds those values is mere fortunate happenstance, perhaps a holdover from lingering remnants of Christian theology, perhaps a mere matter of practicality and convenience that living in such ways will benefit all of us by preventing wars, but the culture lacks any true foundation from which to prop up these moral truths, and thus without a firm foundation, the entire structure holds up only shakily. 

    As it now stands, our culture ironically values unity amidst diversity as its highest of all possible values, and yet it has no firm foundation to root those beliefs in. Our unity is held shakily together as our citizens serve many different lords. And it is a miracle we are as united as we are when our culture is so torn on issues as important as abortion, immigration, sexuality, climate change, guns, etc. 

    In the end, if we do not look to religion and the highest possible things to unite us, then we will have to look to lower things to unite, we'll have to look to political leaders to unite us. And, in the end, we'll end up dividing still, just over smaller, pettier things than religion, we'll end up dividing over political allegiances. And, in the end, in the pursuit of unity, we'll find ourselves having to swear allegiance to lesser lords, to lesser men and women who are mortal and fallible, to sinful men and women who will never accomplish all we want or desire. If unity requires one Lord, let Christ be our Lord and let us settle for no lesser ruler.