QUESTION #2: Explain the concept, “United we stand, Divided we Fall” in light of our current culture.
Answer:
Dave Kistler:
“…Church, family, government, different races, education system, media, all of those can be contributors to dividing us. They can fuel a fire that is already burning, but they’re not the one that started the fire. The one that is behind the division in America is none other than the devil himself. Now let me just use an illustration, if I could. We need to start teaching people, whether it’s in our homes, whether it’s within the context of the church, whether it’s in the business world, or whether it’s on the national stage, that everybody that’s part of that entity, be it home, church, business, or nation, we’re all on one boat. We’re all on one boat.
Take the name of the business, take the family name or take the name of the nation, the United States of America, put that down the side of the boat and you’ve got it. Here’s a scientific fact about a boat-you can’t sink half of one. You don’t sink the officers’ quarters of a boat and everybody else sail on as if there’s no problem. No, the boat either stays up with everybody on board or the boat goes down with everybody on board. I don’t know if you’ve ever had this experience, but I’ve managed a restaurant during my college days, and I’ve been in a lot of shopping centers and visited a lot of stores in my lifetime. Have you ever asked a question in a department store and had the clerk or the person that was on the sales floor say this, “Well, that’s not my department”?
Well, every time I hear that, I want to ask this question, “Do they pay you by departments here?” They’ll look at you funny if you ask that, and the point is this. Nobody in a department store is paid by department. If their department doesn’t make it one week, the employee still gets a paycheck. What I want to say is this, “So your pay this week came from all the other departments that made money while your department lost money, so in one sense, those other departments became your department this week.”
My point is this. A business, a department store is a business, one business. Everybody stays up together or they all go down together. The same is all the more true with a nation. If we don’t communicate … There are certain core, fundamental, non-negotiable things around which we rally that should be greater than the few things that may divide us. Until we start placing the emphasis there, the division is going to continue. If we place the emphasis there, then this division can cease.
If you think back to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 in Philadelphia, when controversy and division and debate reigned, and in the midst of that, the oldest member, Ben Franklin, 85 years of age, stood up in the middle of that and said, “If a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without God’s notice, is it probable a nation can rise without his aid? I move that we pray.” Of course, they did pray. Out of incredible disunity, strong opinions, strong, very opinionated men, came unity to craft this incredible document called the United States Constitution that has stood us well for 200-plus years.
Our country’s 200 and almost 42 years of age. The Constitution, of course, is a little bit younger than that, but it has stood us well for 200-plus years. It’s interesting to me that God, a pursuit of God, a seeking of him was what brought unity at the Constitutional Convention. I don’t think it’s an accident whatsoever that our President is repeatedly, every time he speaks, appealing to prayer, to God, because I think he gets it. He understands that is the one thing that can once again bring unity to this country, if we seek God.”
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