|
About Jesus - Steve (Stephen) Sweetman Divided
We Fall I'm sure you recall what Jesus said as recorded in
Luke 11:17. "Jesus
knew their thoughts and said to them: 'Any kingdom
divided
against itself will be ruined, and a house
divided
against itself will fall.'" Jesus
said two specific things concerning a divided nation.
He said it "will be ruined" and "it will
fall." These two verbs
in the original Greek text suggest that the ruining of a divided nation
is self-inflicted and its fall is a certain inevitability.
In other words, a divided nation is committing national suicide. There
is nothing super-spiritual about what Jesus said.
It's just common sense, and common sense is a fleeting character
trait that has eluded humanity to some degree since the events we read
about in Genesis 3. There,
after hearing God's command to obey or die, Adam chose to disobey and
die. The
first recorded hint of death is seen in Adam and Eve's divided marriage
that was a result of their conflict over who was to be blamed for their
fall from the immediate presence of God.
The next recorded death is seen in Adam and Eve's divided family
that ended in Abel's physical death.
From then on, all forms of human relationships, to one degree or
another, are infected with a divisiveness that if not resolved, will
end in death, or as Jesus said, end in ruins.
Divisiveness
is foreign to God. His very
essence is what I call a "unified plurality" that exudes life.
Whether a friendship, a marriage, a family, a community, a
nation, or any form of human relationships, a unified plurality births
life while a divided plurality dies in ruins.
Understanding this, our western world is presently suffering from
a pandemic of social, political, and religious divisiveness for which
there is no pharmaceutical cure.
I
know that our western nations have survived divisiveness in the past.
|