House Divided

Are we letting our own anger destroy our country?

And he called them to him, and spoke to them in parables, How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come. But no one can enter a strong mans house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered. - Mark 3:23-27

In today's reading, Jesus was accused of being in league with the devil, and so he responded with examples to illustrate what he believed was happening. 

He said a divided house or kingdom cannot stand.  When a country finds itself battling with itself, the world sees it as an easy mark, a house whose strong man is tied up, busy with internal strife.

Then the enemies of that country take advantage, beginning with baby steps, small taunts to see if there will be a response, like capturing oil tankers or shooting down drones.

So long as we occupy our time with infighting, we weaken our defenses against the real evil in the world, and that makes us a target.

Throughout history, we have seen examples of mighty powers falling, not only from wars and conflicts form without, but from within, people rising up against each other, creating civil discord.

There comes a time when we have to band together and show the world we are unified and strong, so no one would dare enter our house and plunder it.

But we have to see the threat before we are willing to set aside our differences and join together.

We think of Jesus as a renegade, an opponent to the corruption of the faith, but he really did want to bring it all back together, not to fracture it. 

If we don't come together, he predicted, there will be nothing left here but rubble, and he was right.

So, what can we take away form this?

We need to put aside our anger and show the world we are one, able to work out our differences and rise above the bitterness and frustration, so no one would dare challenge us, and no attempt to undermine our processes and systems will thwart us from our vision and goals.

That's what we need to do, and we need to do it  now.

More to come...