Racism, division, and disunity threaten our strength as a people. But where can we find unity to bring us back together?
Many of us in the United States watch or participate in organized sports. Most of us have seen a team with less individual talent and superstars beat a more talent-heavy team. It happens on a regular basis.
How often have you heard the phrase, “If we are united, there is nothing we can’t do?” This is actually a paraphrase from a Bible passage in the 11th chapter of Genesis, verse 6, when God says of the people building the Tower of Babel:
“The people are united, and they all speak the same language. After this, nothing they set out to do will be impossible for them!” (NLT).
We repeat this because - in sports as in all aspects of life - there is tremendous power in unity.
Consider if the United States was not one country with 50 states, but 50 separate countries (or 51, including Puerto Rico). That could have been the case, or we could have been divided into multiple countries by region - if the delegates of the Continental Congress had not come together in unity to form one nation. Unity is a powerful force, especially when you combine it with diversity, as many scholars like Walter Parker have noted. The United States was founded on unity and is full of diversity.
The opposite of unity is not merely disunity; it is also chaos and disfunction. Any sports team with a high degree of disunity won’t play well. Any country with a high degree of disunity will be in constant turmoil where restfulness and peace are forever fleeting. I don’t know anyone who wants to live long-term in a place of turmoil... but that’s exactly what American society has become. Extremely divisive media and political actors pitting one group against the other have created a great degree of disunity.
One of the oldest diabolical plots operating in the unseen realm on planet earth today involves strategies to incite racial and ethnic hatred and violence. Whether you believe that evil is a real spiritual entity or not, most Americans believe there is good and evil at work in the world. When evil is not actively and vociferously opposed, the frightening results can lead to unrestrained bloodshed as we have witnessed over and over again throughout human history. The genocide nightmares of the 20th century, including the hundreds of millions of people who died under the totalitarian rulership of fascist and communist leaders, was vividly played out at both the beginning of the century by the Armenian genocide and end of the century by the Rwandan genocide. The genocides of the 20th century clearly demonstrate the sheer evil and destructive power of racism. Genocide is the fruition of evil that grows in times of disunity, chaos, division, and ethnic strife.
In my novel, Significant, an underlying premise is that evil will only be overcome when diverse ethnic groups band together to fight against the forces of racial and ethnic division. No one ethnic group and no single nation in my story can prevail against nefarious forces of darkness seeking to sink the world into another major military conflict.
We must always be mindful of the divide and conquer operating principle at work in the world that can plunge any nation into darkness. The unfolding story of Significant demonstrates that no group of people can designate any other group of people as less significant than themselves based on any reason if they seek to live in a just society.
During this time of intense divisiveness and soul-searching in the United States, when evil forces seek to pull us apart, may we come together with sincere hearts that leave no room for ethnic division and prejudice. Instead, we can build unity on the many principles and truths that we do agree on. This is why knowing and understanding the content of our founding documents is critically important to our long-term survival as a nation. Enshrined in our Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, and Constitution are our fundamental freedoms and values that guide our communities.
If we can build unity on the words that Jefferson penned so eloquently -“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” - then we will preserve the foundation for a free and just society and will overcome the divisiveness that seeks to pull us apart.
Let me conclude by citing one of Scott Stripling’s findings in his study on America’s founding documents:
Civic virtue, precisely because it is a virtue, demands excellence of both intellect and heart. Civic virtue cannot exist, for example, without the reasoned conviction that one's country is worthy of one's loyalty and respect. Since passion too may also attach one to one's country - more surely but less nobly than reason - the reasonableness of one's conviction must temper one's passionate loyalty to one's country: we love our country in part not merely because it is our own but also because it is good.
If we can unite around a civic virtue that considers American ideals to be worthy of being cherished and protected, then we can build a unity that can accomplish almost anything. The vision for America that I encourage through my novel, Significant, seeks to illuminate the power of American unity.
Sources:
Parker, Walter C. Teaching democracy: Unity and diversity in public life. Teachers College Press, 2003.
Baker, Joseph O. “Who believes in religious evil? An investigation of sociological patterns of belief in Satan, hell, and demons.” 2008. Review of Religious Research 50(2):206–20.
Stripling, Scott R. "Equality and excellence: Civic education and America's founding documents." Journal of Education 175, no. 1 (1993), p. 14.
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