Phony oneness – unity. I studied unity in its current context as well as what King Jimmy thought about it. There are some slight differences between the king’s understanding and what people understand unity to be today. Today unity has to do with gathering around a cause rather than a state of wholeness.
On a sports team, unity is for the cause of winning but there tends to be an understanding that the team must function as a whole unit in order to attain the goal. This isn’t necessarily the way the general public looks at unity. We make unity far more political in the general population. The TEA Party is a good example. They are united around a cause – conservative ideals about taxes. But they are not one. They are not likely to agree on much of anything else and they don’t seem to have a sense of dependency upon one another like a “sports team” does. They have no sense of wholeness or oneness. But they have a cause which unites them. Once the cause is realized and the goal is attained, the TEA party may ride off into oblivion unless they find another cause to unite around.
Christianity in America is like the TEA party. Most organized traditional churches in America have no sense of dependency upon each other (other than a marginal denominational unity) to be complete. They can be united around a cause for a time. But wholeness and oneness cannot be sustained by a cause. The power of one must be sourced in who we are, not what we do. As long as the American church preaches individual salvation and not a true “Kingdom of God” message we will fall short of realizing Jesus prayer in John 17:21 “Father, make them one.”
Tags: Kingdom of God, one, salvation, whole