Where Donald Trump’s administration blurred the lines between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world, Joe Biden’s administration is blurring the lines of division and unity.
Biden campaigned on uniting the country again, and made “unity” the central theme of his inaugural speech:
Today, on this January day, my whole soul is in this: Bringing America together. Uniting our people. And uniting our nation.
I ask every American to join me in this cause. Uniting to fight the common foes we face:
Anger, resentment, hatred. Extremism, lawlessness, violence. Disease, joblessness, hopelessness.
With unity we can do great things. Important things. We can right wrongs. We can put people to work in good jobs. We can teach our children in safe schools. We can overcome this deadly virus. We can reward work, rebuild the middle class, and make healthcare secure for all. We can deliver racial justice. We can make America, once again, the leading force for good in the world.
Biden went on to say,
For without unity, there is no peace, only bitterness and fury. No progress, only exhausting outrage. No nation, only a state of chaos. This is our historic moment of crisis and challenge, and unity is the path forward.
We have never, ever, ever failed in America when we have acted together. And so today, at this time and in this place, let us start afresh. All of us. Let us listen to one another. Hear one another. See one another. Show respect to one another. Politics need not be a raging fire destroying everything in its path. Every disagreement doesn’t have to be a cause for total war.
And concerning disagreements, Biden wasn’t naïve:
To all those who supported our campaign I am humbled by the faith you have placed in us. To all those who did not support us, let me say this: Hear me out as we move forward. Take a measure of me and my heart.
And if you still disagree, so be it. That’s democracy. That’s America. The right to dissent peaceably, within the guardrails of our Republic, is perhaps our nation’s greatest strength.
Yet hear me clearly: Disagreement must not lead to disunion.
And I pledge this to you: I will be a President for all Americans. I will fight as hard for those who did not support me as for those who did.
What is the way forward through disagreement?
The answer is not to turn inward, to retreat into competing factions, distrusting those who don’t look like you do, or worship the way you do, or don’t get their news from the same sources you do. We must end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural versus urban, conservative versus liberal.
We can do this if we open our souls instead of hardening our hearts. If we show a little tolerance and humility. If we’re willing to stand in the other person’s shoes just for a moment.
Because here is the thing about life: There is no accounting for what fate will deal you.
There are some days when we need a hand. There are other days when we’re called on to lend one. That is how we must be with one another.
I listened to the speech the day after the inauguration. To be honest, I found it refreshing, although I’m not sure if that is because the speech actually was that good or because we had four years of “fight the big bad boogeyman” rhetoric, that this one felt so much better.
Unlike Trump’s inaugural speech where he spoke of the need to fight back some ugly villain within our ranks when America was actually experiencing a generally peaceful period of history, Biden spoke of peace and unity even though we now find ourselves amidst one of the most divisive times of modern American history.
It didn’t take long, however, for Biden to demonstrate precisely what he envisions “unity” to be.
In the days leading up to inauguration, Biden emphasized his desire to work with both parties on various bills he anticipated putting into action. Yet, on day one of his presidency, he surpassed Trump’s single day-one-as-POTUS executive order with nine of his own. He followed it up with eight more the next day.
At the rate Biden has been going, he will surpass a thousand executive orders within his first year in office. Instead of working with both parties and passing his laws through the legislative branch, Biden is going around the “check-and-balance” process of legislation and forcing the Senate’s hand.
But bypassing a split senate isn’t the most concerning part Biden’s concept of unity, although perhaps the most obvious.
When it came to the Build Back Better recovery plan for the economic crisis brought on by COVID-19, Biden took the time to sit with Republicans and seek a “bipartisan bill.” He talked about working together. He went through the motions of working together. But in the end, Biden announced that “he will not move” on the price of the stimulus checks because he didn’t want to start his presidency by breaking promises.
Which promises? Fourteen hundred dollars to American adults, or uniting America?
Was “unity” not the very messaging that got him voted into office in an era of great disunity?
You see, unity is extremely enticing. It’s powerful. That’s why it is so enticing.
Biden’s not wrong: we can do great things when we come together. Think of the people of Shinar who had “all one language… And nothing that they proposed to do would be impossible for them” (Gen. 11:6). They made a name for themselves and were in the process of building a tower to the heavens, the place where God dwells. In their unity, the people of Shinar had begun to think of themselves as being like God.
Of course, this wasn’t new. Eight chapters earlier, we saw the inaugural human couple doing the same thing. Because humanity has chosen to pursue godlike status of its own whenever given the chance, a unified community of humans is actually quite dangerous…
Unless there is a moral compass guiding our definition of “unity.”
Unity is enticing because it is powerful, and because it is hopeful. It points to community, a place of belonging, and feeling noticed and wanted.
Everybody will always be attracted to the idea of unity. Division is ugly and leads to the spilling of blood, after all.
But most times when we define “unity” on our own, it looks more like “uniformity.” Once we all see things the same way, then we’ll be unified, right?
This sort of definition of “unity” actually only leads to exacerbated division.
We end up farther apart and more antagonized from one another than we were before. And this is why we need another definition of “unity,” we need a compass to guide our communities toward truly coming together.
You know what the Bible often says when addressing issues of “unity”? It does not say that those in the minority should change their way of thinking about and doing things to align with the group that is in power. Neither does it say those who are in power should change to align with those in the minority.
When the Bible talks about “unity,” it talks about each one letting go of his own preferences and deferring to their brother or sister. It appeals to the sacrificial imagery of God’s faithful pursuit of an unfaithful people, as in Malachi chapter two, or Christ becoming obedient to death even when being equal with God actually was within his grasp (Philippians 2:6-8).
When Paul says in Philippians 2 that we are to “be of the same mind,” he is not talking about thinking and believing exactly the same way as your brother who grew up in the middle of the Cincinnati hood or your sister who loves the freedom and beauty of the rural South. Paul is saying that we should “be of the same mind” and “of the same love” that was in Christ Jesus who “emptied himself” for the sake of humanity in obedience to God (see Phil. 2:1-8).
Here is our compass for defining “unity”: empty ourselves for the sake of others in obedience to God.
Unity isn’t about giving up a little bit of my share so you are satisfied with your share. Unity certainly isn’t about convincing you to give me all of your share. It’s actually not even about giving all of my share to you.
Unity is about each of us surrendering ourselves for the betterment of each other according to the principles and way of God.
We are each giving up our shares. We’re handing over all our chips. But not to the other person or side or party.
We’re handing all our chips over to God.
We are saying, “I trust You to have the wisdom and knowledge and morality that a good God truly has. I am willing to conform to Your standards of relating with others, doing business, dealing with issues, training families, doing justice—whatever the issue is, I will lay down what I deem to be good or evil for what You say is actually good and evil.”
While President Biden and company have a compelling desire for unity, what they are defining unity to be is nothing short of uniformity to their way of seeing the world. We should not be asking them to become uniform to our way of seeing the world, nor should we even be asking them to be willing to see at least a little bit of the way we see the world.
Instead, we should be demonstrating and calling for a surrendering of ourselves to the way of King Jesus.
Biden might not be able to do that, as it would pretty much be a conflict of interest. But if he could, or if you and I want to pursue biblical unity today, here are three starter takeaways Paul gives us for fleshing this out:
- Don’t do anything out of selfish ambition (Phil 2:3a)
- Consider others as more significant than yourself (Phil 2:3b)
- Look out not only for your own interests, but for the interests of others (Phil 2:4)
COVID-19 has inconveniently tested our level of unity on many fronts. And I must admit, there have been times where I did not like the decisions being made either in the government, church, or family because they contradicted something I wanted. They went against my preferences. It was easy to air my opinion about matters or demand certain measures from a place of selfishness more than anything.
And from the looks of my Facebook feed, I’d say I’m not the only one who struggles with this.
Is there any hint of selfishness in your position and opinions about COVID-19 regulations? How about in your thoughts on economic policies, church decisions, or family interactions?
If we want unity as a people, we will have to learn how to refuse to act out of selfishness first.
But it’s hard not to act out of selfishness if we see ourselves as more significant than our neighbors.
There have been several months in the last year where my wife and I were incredibly low financially. Ironically, it was often in those low months that we would find out different ones in our community were also low.
In late April of last year, after having most of March and the first two weeks of April’s work cancelled, one of the ladies we know expressed need for some financial help.
In October, after a client of mine cancelled several projects because of getting laid off, a friend who had been out of work most of the year landed a job but needed some money to buy proper clothes for it.
And then, in the beginning of December when I wasn’t sure how we were going to pay rent for the month, a friend overseas expressed the circumstances he was facing—which were far more difficult than our own.
Each of these challenged who I valued as important—me or the other person?
It goes beyond financial help, too. Does the way I interact on Facebook demonstrate that I value the other person? Or does it come across to them as if I alone am significant? Do I deride them, or do I speak respectfully to them? Do I trust them, or am I always suspicious of them?
Unless I can genuinely count others as more significant than myself, I will only look out for my own interests and not theirs.
The urban freelancer won’t care about how the rural farmers are doing in the middle of this economic crisis. Neither will the Midwest contractor care about the challenges of continued skyrocketing housing prices and the gentrification happening in the inner cities all the while its residents are getting laid off.
The conservatives will be more concerned about the slippery slope of liberalism than they are of the slippery slope of nationalism.
The liberals will be more involved in fighting against the injustice of exclusion than they are in fighting against injustice of sexual promiscuity.
Unity only comes when we have the capacity to look down the road and see for ourselves ahead of time what might be coming that will throw our brother for a loop.
That’s what it means to care about someone else’s interests.
Biden is good at messaging, but not so good at creating an environment that motivates selflessness.
The bigger question, though, is how are we—the church—doing? Are we creating environments that motivate selflessness? Or are we simply imaging what we are seeing as we gaze upon our politics?
Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below.
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