Fragmented

Last week I was listening to talk radio as I was driving. I only caught part of the program but the host was expressing his opinion that our nation is more fragmented than ever before. He believes that the United States may ultimately be heading towards another civil war. Unlike the first civil war where there were two side, the north and the south, fighting for their causes. The next civil war will be more like the war in Lebanon where there are numerous factions fighting for a number of causes.

Now I don't know that I would agree about the US heading towards another civil war but he did bring up something that I have noticed. It may seem to many people that Americans seek dozens of different paths, that we have always been a fragmented society. Each of us out for ourselves or our own cause. But give us a big enough cause and we traditionally have pulled together to accomplish the impossible. When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor we left political differences, religious differences and with one mind one purpose pulled together to do the job that needed to be done. When given the right incentive we became of one mind and that made us powerful.

But perhaps twenty years ago I noticed that this nation was becoming divided and fragmented. It seemed to me that we were becoming a nation of special interest. Every one out for his own cause and it seemed that no cause was big enough to bring us together as one.

Terrorist attacked this nation the day we remember as 9/11. The death they inflicted that day was greater than what Japan inflicted on Pearl Harbor. Yet still today we're discussing what should have been the appropriate response. We did what we did but it certainly wasn't with any consensus or unity of purpose.

The recent faltering of the economy is a more recent example. The political parties stand behind their firmly entrenched beliefs neither side willing to compromise to get the economy going. Meanwhile millions are still unemployed unable to find work and millions more are underemployed. The poverty level in America has reached a level never seen since the days the “Great Society” was launched. The political parties, unable to work together, have just wasted fifty years of the war on poverty. The sequester cuts were meant to be so draconian that the political parties would be forced to come together to make reasonable budget cuts. But once again there was no unity, nothing was accomplished. The military and the poor are going to pay the price for our inability to find unity of purpose. Yes indeed we are a fragmented society and as I'm involved in charity I speak from experience that it's the poor who are paying the price.

The Christian church has been divided and fragmented even longer than our society. It could well be said that society has in fact learned about being divided and fragmented from the church. It seems every time someone has a different interpretation of a scripture a new denomination is formed. One church says that the book of Revelation, in the Bible, is about the ending of the Roman government. Another one says that they are heretics because Revelation is about the second coming of Christ.

Even something that is a basic as “How to be Saved” is disputed territory. Go look on the website of a dozen different churches and you will likely find a dozen different answers to that. I've studied the scriptures for many years but I've pretty much given up reading anything from Christian web sites because I always come away confused. If I come away confused how can we expect someone who has never read the bible to learn anything.

Of course if we separate over minor differences of opinion of scripture passages you know that we will not cooperate with each other on more mundane issues. The community I recently moved from had two different pastors organizations and held two different community Thanksgiving services because even the pastors and the churches were divided and fragmented. An ecumenical service that was held in the community for something like twenty years had ended because there could not be found enough people willing to come together to plan the service.

There was a song made popular by Sonny and Cher. United we stand, Divided we fall. There is a truth in that song that somehow seems even more appropriate today than it did back then. We are allowing our differences our special interests to drive us further apart, dividing us, fragmenting us making sure that we won't work together, assuring that nothing gets accomplished. When we once again find the will to become united, to work together we will once again become great. This applies especially so for the church. Our mission is too important to let those differences continue to separate and fragment us. O' what could be accomplished when the liberal churches, evangelical churches, the catholic churches, all the churches can unite together to accomplish God's work. It is what Jesus would want.