Strive For Unity

Over these next few posts, I will chunk up a short lesson I've written on covering unity.

Have you ever seen the movie Space Jam? The one where Michael Jordan has to help The Looney Tunes defeat a group of aliens in a basketball game. If you haven’t by now, I’ll assume you just don’t want to so I can speak about it without giving away any spoilers. There’s a scene near the end when the aliens realize that their boss was simply using them for his own interests and while they still had the powers of the basketball players, it suddenly dawned on them that they were now bigger and stronger than their leader as opposed to earlier when he was the more dominant one. The five of them then band together and ousted the cruel superior to send him packing.

There’s an old Bondei proverb that says, “sticks in a bundle are unbreakable.” Obviously, we can break one stick, but it’s a lot harder to do a bunch of sticks. The idea is that you may be able to break down one person, but not ones that are together. As the cliché goes, “there is strength in numbers.”

As we can see from Space Jam, and many other movies, when many people band together, there’s not much they can’t accomplish. If you’ve ever been in the military or played sports, you know a big part of what you’re taught is how to get along and be a team. A group of individuals who share a common goal can achieve great things.

When you’re on a team, your ego is supposed to be checked at the door. It’s not about you anymore. You ought to do everything in your power to help your team out. It’s that sense of togetherness and unity that helps each other get through the challenges you’ll face. The unit needs to be team oriented which will show in good times and bad.

You can tell who the bad teams are in sports when there is divisiveness throughout the organization. It’s fairly obvious. Players talking bad about the coaches, coaches having to squash quarreling and maybe even physical fights between players, owners having to answer about drama, and the list goes on. They seem to just attract all of the bad publicity.

I always have to shake my head too when someone requests to be paid more money, on top of maybe the millions they already are being given. Doesn’t that sound selfish? Someone who only thinks about themselves and feels they are better than everyone else is not a team player.

Then there are the good teams. They are the ones having fun and building each other up. Possibly even winning it all. The ‘big game’. And each player is always attributing the win to a “team effort.” See the contrast?

Everyone wants to be part of a team. We all want to feel included in something. It’s human nature. We need a strong support system to get through this game we can ‘life’. So many today don’t have that though and it shows when we see things like all of the mental health problems many are having. And this is exactly how Christians ought to be. God has given us His church because He knew couldn’t get through this life alone.

The church must be that for not only the family of God, but those outside of Christ. In fact, that’s exactly what the deciding factor is to the world to show we belong to Christ (John 13:35). This should be what naturally draws unbelievers to disciples of Christ and get them thinking that they should want to be a part of this “team”. It’s what the church is all about.

Sadly, this just isn’t the reality of it. Many Christians today get sucked right back into their old ways. As the apostle Peter describes it as “a dog returns to his own vomit.” (2 Peter 2:22) Once one does that, they go back into the chaos of the world and their seed never grows.

Or maybe they get caught up in some church drama and see the divisiveness that can cause all sorts of problems. After leaving a bad taste in their mouths, this has caused many to leave churches behind. Unfortunately, this abandons souls in peril.

What if we focused on how the church can be unified though? How much better would we be if we had the mind of God when it comes to our unity? Do you believe that more disciples of Christ would remain in Him (John 15:4)? I’m sure more would mature into fine fruit bearers and stay more connected with the church.

In this study, I want to take a look at how the Bible talks about unity; because it’s a lot. I pray you can develop more of an understanding on why unity is important, just like I did, not only to God, but each other.