HOW "MADE IN AMERICA" MAY HAVE HURT THE CHURCH

I enjoy America very much. I always have. If I were to live in another country I would miss mostly the areas of my roots; both in NE Missouri and those I've put down in Tulsa. Too, blessings have been so strong in the positive angles as life seems to turn.

There is one area I wonder if America has negatively developed; that of independence. While independence is our battle cry (Give me liberty or give me death), society may be suffering by allowing a spirit of detachment from our fellow man to be viewed as unharmful.

My concern is over very good people no longer getting along. Independence can sound so good that it can eventually lull us into believing we don't need each other. Does anyone recall a song, Take This Job and Shove It? It is that attitude which I discuss. The American church is a mess in places. Yes, yes it does a lot of good. I am happy to be a part of its mission. But we should and could be more. But we won't because we are too independent.

If churches could be one as He is One, we would put ourselves out of business. We would have a new business....our Father's. A spirit of defiance, disunity, and discouragement lives as a plague upon our land and in all of our communities. We groan for life; but we struggle for we are surely divided from one another and in the name of independence some believe we don't need each other.

Do you know how I consider this? Americans of both major political parties are so unhappy with Washington and Congress. Yet we can't do a thing about it because we are unorganized and ununited; we are splintered independently. What we could do as a unit!

That's how I see the church. Yes, we are many deeply involved in things that matter while the life of the world slips away through expressions of selfishness; acceptable selfishness called independence.

It is an irony that independence unites a nation; but when abused divides its families, it neighbors, and its religious groups with an attitude of we can do without you and get along just fine. Everyone counts. Every class is important. Every level is necessary to the whole. Dependence (needing one another) is not a bad thing.

We would do well to seek the unity God seems to desire from us. We are independently free to become dependent upon Him as we learn the value of being connected one to another.