The American 'unum' has been lost since the Sixties. If this continues, there will soon be no unifying American identity and vision to balance the 'pluribus,' and the days of the Republic will be numbered.
Interpretation
This quote warns about the dangers of losing a shared American identity in favor of individualism and diversity.
Os Guinness emphasizes the importance of a unifying national identity in America, suggesting that as society becomes increasingly fragmented and diverse ('pluribus'), the core principles and values that once defined the nation ('unum') may be lost. He warns that without a common vision to bring people together, the stability of the Republic could be threatened.
In practice
In a speech about social cohesion, one might use this quote to highlight the importance of unity.
By our uncritical pursuit of relevance we have actually courted irrelevance; by our breathless chase after relevance without a matching committment to faithfulness, we have become not only unfaithful, but irrelevant; by our determined efforts to redefine outselves in ways that are more compelling to the modern world than are faithful to Christ, we have lost not only our identity but our authority and our relevance. Our crying need is to be faithful as well as relevant
The story of Christian reformation, revival, and renaissance underscores that the darkest hour is often just before the dawn, so we should always be people of hope and prayer, not gloom and defeatism. God the Holy Spirit can turn the situation around in five minutes.
In other words, we are never freer than when we become most ourselves, most human, most just, most excellent, and the like.
We betray our modern arrogance and forget the place of mystery in God's dealing with us.
The question the doubter does not ask is whether faith was really useless or simply not used. What would you think of a boy who gave up learning to ride a bicycle, complaining that he hurt himself because his bicycle stopped moving so he had no choice but to fall off? If he wanted to sit comfortably while remaining stationary, he should not have chosen a bicycle but a chair. Similarly faith must be put to use, or it will become useless.
Either we conform our desires to the truth or we conform the truth to our desires.
By all that is sacred in our hope for the human race, I conjure those who love happiness and truth to give a fair trial to the vegetable system!
That's what fantasies are for, to help us imagine that things are better than they are.
We may know ourselves, and yet even with all the efforts we make, we do not know ourselves. We know our fellowman, and yet we do not know him, because we are not a thing, and our fellowman is not a thing. The further we reach into the depths of our being, on someone else's being, the more the goal of knowledge eludes us.
Speech is a mirror of the soul: as a man speaks, so is he.
The mechanism she employs is much more powerful than ours, for all her levers move the human heart.
I go on the principle that a public debt is a public curse and in a republican government more than in any other.
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