Can’t We All Just Get Along?

 

On March 3, 1991, Rodney Glen King was beaten by LAPD officers after a high-speed chase during his arrest for drunk driving and driving while intoxicated on I-210. The four officers involved in the arrest were charged with use of excessive force and tried. Of these, three were acquitted, and the jury failed to reach a verdict on one charge for the fourth.

The trial outcomes sparked six days of riots in the city of Los Angeles that resulted in 63 deaths and 2,383 more people injured.

On May 1, 1992, the third day of the riots, Rodney King himself asked the most poignant question of the hour, pleading with the public, I believe, for real change. “People, I just want to say, can’t we all get along? Can’t we all get along?”

Twenty-nine years later to the day, Mr. King, it appears that the answer to your question remains as it has for multiplied millennia: No, sadly, we cannot all get along. And our failure is not based solely in lack of interest on anyone’s part, though certainly that is a contributing factor, nor in lack of effort on the part of many well-intentioned, hardworking people. It is because we are not, any of us, by nature, able to succeed. We appear to be hardwired to conflict-producing self-centeredness.

You see, there is but one Source of the unity and peace we long for, but we are, for the most part, singularly unwilling to surrender our self-interest and self-determination and consider that Source. We are like toddlers facing a challenge beyond our natural ability who would rather fail repeatedly on our own than succeed with parental assistance. “No, mamma! I can do it myself!”

We call our efforts progressive, but they are, in fact, regressive. We’ve been here before. Our situation is just as Solomon the wise wrote some 3000 years ago, “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, ‘See, this is new’? It has been already in the ages before us” (Ecclesiastes 1:9-10, ESV).

Let me take you back to one of those historical moments that underlies our contemporary deja vu. When God created the world, he gave to human creation a mission. As their Creator, he assigned them their purpose. Theirs was more than a task to perform. It was a divine blessing to receive. Genesis 1:28 records the event: “And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’”

“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.” This was the living purpose God set for these he created in his own image. Astonishingly, tragically, they rejected their God-given purpose, their God-intended blessing. They decided to do their own thing, go their own way, take matters into their own hands, serve themselves as their own “gods.” They discounted and dismissed God, refused to consider that the One Who created them, a God of infinite love and wisdom, might actually have their best interests in mind.

The path humanity took descended into the depths of depravity and rebellion to the point God himself lamented he had ever created them. He flooded the whole earth, choosing to save only eight of those humans he had created. These he blessed with the same words, “And all of you, be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it” (Genesis 9:7).

You would think we would have learned our lesson. But we didn’t. The human population multiplied in numbers, yes. They moved around a bit, yes. But once again they decided they had a better idea of how to be successful than their Creator did. They found a flat plain of land and settled there. They all had one language and spoke the same words. They had just one culture and all together, in unity, they abandoned God and his blessing. They consulted together and said, “Come, let us build for ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth” (Genesis 11:4). Once again humanity acted in unity against their Creator’s sovereignty.

For those people it was a city and a tower that would enable them to reach God on their terms and prove to God they could fend for themselves without his help. The intent of their strategy was to prove human superiority over any “divine sovereignty.” This is not other than an act of rebellion, creature against Creator. So, God confounded their language and scattered them over the face of the whole earth, each group developing its own identity and culture base, and having to learn how to find God on his terms rather than their own.

The Old Testament narrative purposes to provide a perspective on human efforts to gain for ourselves, on our terms, blessings of joy and purpose and peace that can only come from God on his terms. If humanity could arrive at universal peace and justice on our own, we have had plenty of time to succeed and myriad evidences of our inability.

Why can’t we all get along? Because real peace, the peace with God and one another we seek, comes from a real change of heart and nature that can only be accomplished in us through the grace and power of God, which comes to any of us through faith in Jesus Christ, and no other. Those are the Creator’s terms. Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No man comes to the Father but by me.”

Humanity cannot hope to reach peace with God or permanent, global peace with one another by building yet another tower and calling it social justice, or attempting to make a name for themselves by forcing everyone into a single philosophical mold. The peace we seek is a product of faith in Christ. Those who believe will succeed in the search for ultimate peace. Those who choose to not believe will ultimately fail to find the peace they seek, no matter how hard they work. It is as it has been. There is nothing new under the sun.

We are left with two options. First, we can ignore the reality of the Creator and His plan for us and continue to attempt to create peace on our terms, choosing to accept perpetual disappointment at our inevitable failure. Or, we can come to God in faith, and by trusting Christ as our Savior, find peace with God for ourselves, thereby becoming genuine conduits of peace in the lives of others. The choice is yours.

Each month a member of the Cook County Ministerium will offer Spiritual Reflections. Pastor Dale McIntire has served as pastor of the Cornerstone Community Church in Grand Marais since April of 1995.