The Illusion of Unity

Can unity exist among people that hold different opinions? I’m not talking about superficial opinions like which team will win the Super Bowl. I mean deeply held convictions. The prophet Amos asked, “Can two walk together, unless they are agreed?” (Amos 3:3 NKJV) It’s a valid question.

We use the word team, for example, to describe a group of individuals that work together in coordination. It’s a fascinating thing to watch a football team work together effectively to move a ball from one end of the field to the other. But how could a team ever win a game if each player ran a different play?

Did this mean that Amos is instructing Christians not to have differences, especially differences of opinion? Are we to be, as some characterize us, like a box of yellow pencils with no distinguishable differences from one pencil to the other?

To be effective a team must give up individual differences and follow a leader. But taken to the extreme such an idea leads to tyranny. It is simply impossible for two people to agree on everything. Winston Churchill once said “No two on earth in all things can agree. All have some daring singularity.” He is also quoted as saying that the only way two people can agree on everything is if one of them doesn’t have a brain.

Two thinking people will inevitably have differences of opinion. Can such people act in unison or must people with bright and reflective minds walk solitary paths?

It is an incredible irony that differences are a source of unity. The book of Genesis says that God created humans “…male and female” (Gen 1:27) and mankind says “vive la différence!” In fact it is the difference between the sexes that make oneness possible. The writer of Genesis goes on to quote God who commands a man to “leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.” (Gen. 2:24 KJV)

Four thousand years later the Apostle Paul wrote, “This is a great mystery:” (Ephesians 5:32 KJV).

What is so mysterious?

The mystery is how two people with such different perspectives can be unified as one. But marriage is a metaphor for something greater. Paul says “But I speak about Christ and the church.”

What if God had not created woman? I suppose He could have created some form of asexual reproduction to perpetuate the species but I for one am glad for the way He did it. The great sin of homosexuality is the failure to appreciate the differences between the sexes.

Marriage is a consensual union between two people of the opposite sex. Even the courts recognize that forced unity between a man and a woman is rape. It is the same between Christians. For unity to exist there must be a mutual appreciation for differences. Christians know that forced conformity is only an illusion of unity.

In the 1^st Century, when a conflict arose about circumcision, Luke writes that there was “no small dissention and disputation” (Acts 15:2) among the brethren. Translated: there was a huge disagreement. They resolved this problem just like a married couple. They talked it out, and the church grew.

One of the greatest gifts God has given man is the ability for two or more people to be unified as one. At his last Passover Jesus prayed “The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, (John 17:22 NRSV).

There is a mutual respect between the Father and the Son. God said he was “well pleased” (Matt. 3:17) with Jesus. Jesus said that the Father “is greater than I.” (John 14:28)

The great mystery of Christianity is how people with sincere differences can become one in spirit.

Until next time,