January 14, Unity

We are all rightly distressed, and ashamed also, at the divisions of Christendom. But those who have always lived within the Christian fold may be too easily dispirited by them. They are bad, but such people do not know what it looks like from without. Seen from there, what is left intact, despite all the divisions, still appears (as it truly is) an immensely formidable unity.
-C.S. Lewis

Facebook seems to point out with the largest magnifying glass the divisions of Christendom. In that vein it points out our divisions on every level, political, cultural, ect; We are certainly divided. But our similarities, our unity (that we tend to not even notice) is present. If you look at the American political system in fact, often times a republican and democrat will argue with intense ferocity about an issue they wholly disagree on, but really they're only disagreeing on the means to reach the end. They will never acknowledge and probably never notice that they actually agree on a world of issues there are only details dividing them.

The details are what divide us. If we could take more time to just look at the bigger picture together we would be much better friends. I'm often frustrated beyond words while watching Christians indirectly attacking each other on social media, and for that matter friends of different political beliefs, when I know full well that beating each other down does no good for anyone. We should strive for unity, not run from it.

For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them. Matt 18:20

Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brethren to dwell together in unity! Ps. 133:1

If any man is tempted to think - as one might be tempted who read only contemporaries - that 'Christianity' is a word of so many meanings that it means nothing at all, he can learn beyond all doubt, by stepping out of his own century, that this is not so. Measured against the ages 'mere Christianity' turns out to be no insipid interdenominational transparency, but something positive, self-consistent, and inexhaustible. I know it, indeed, to my cost. In the days when I still hated Christianity, I learned to recognize, like some all too familiar smell, that almost unvarying something which met me, now in Puritan Bunyan, now in Anglican Hooker, now in Tomist Dante.... 

We are all rightly distressed, and ashamed also, at the divisions of Christendom. But those who have always lived within the Christian fold may be too easily dispirited by them. They are bad, but such people do not know what it looks like from without. Seen from there, what is left intact, despite all the divisions, still appears (as it truly is) an immensely formidable unity. I know, for I saw it; and well our enemies know it. That unity any of us can find by going out of his own age. It is not enough, but it is more than you had thought till then. Once you are well soaked in it, if you then venture to speak, you will have an amusing experience. You will be thought a Papist when you are actually reproducing Bunyan, a Pantheist when you are quoting Aquinas, and so forth. For you have now got on to the great level viaduct which crosses the ages and which looks so high from the valleys, so low from the mountains, so narrow compared with the swamps, and so broad compared with the sheeptracks.
-C.S. Lewis
The Business of Heaven