Angry: In Defense of Division

"Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword."

                                                                                    --Matthew 10:34

This isn't (necessarily) unity. . . (Image courtesy of pond5 stock photography)*

I never liked that verse. It felt like Jesus let me down a little bit with that. I thought You are the Prince of Peace?  What about my peace I give unto you? And peace that passeth understanding? And didn't You tell Peter to put away his sword, that those who live by the sword die by the sword?  What's up?  And then "I came to set a man against his Father and Daughter against her Mother"?  What?

And then on Sunday I read it again during my daily devotions and the penny dropped.  For the first time that passage didn't bother me anymore.  Even though Jesus' application was strictly spiritual, I got it.  Peace at any price is not the goal. It never has been.

My friends, here's a phrase (and it's variations) you need to stop saying: "See when you get all angry like that it's so divisive!"  "You're causing division!"  "Why are we so divided?" "I don't like to talk about racial issues; it's so divisive!"

Yeah, we need to stop with all that. I'm sure it's not entirely true, but it feels to me that I hear concerns about division far more from my white friends then my black ones.  I get the feeling that for black people the kind of "unity" that people want when they say that word is one that isn't so great for us. It's like a cheating husband who says to his upset wife, "See babe when you get all worked up about this it just creates so much division in our marriage.  We need unity."  

See, sometimes the things that divide us are greater than what unites us.  And when that's the case we  don't need to press for unity.  We need to address the problem!

Unity that requires my silence in the face of injustice is not a unity worth having. A unity that subsumes my voice for the sake of your comfort is no unity at all.

I would argue that what we need now is division. We need you to take a stand, pick a side, get off the sidelines thinking that your silence frees you of accountability.  And when you stand up for what's right it's going bother some people. It will cause friction, even friction with people you love. True Christian love draws a line in the sand, a dividing line, and dares us to come across.

. . .this is.  Women form a human shield to protect protesters in Louisville, Kentucky. (Photo by Tim Druck)

*Okay so fascinating footnote about the stock photo at the top of this blog. I decided maybe I should buy the photo rather than grabbing one off a Google image search.  So I start browsing through stock photos on various sites using the search "multiracial group eating" and what I saw kinda blew my mind. In the world of stock photography, the vast majority of the time a multiracial group means a single black person and the rest of the people more or less white (unless it's a couple, as in my photo. A second black person is allowed then). I kind of already knew this--that when we want show "diversity" it means showing a group of white people with a few of other races tagged on. But to see it over and over again is stunning. This shows the extent to which white is the default or norm in our country. A group of black people and one or two white people wouldn't communicate "diversity."  Try it for yourself and see what you find!