...but in expressing his own heart

     In the book of Philippians and several other places in scripture Paul calls for the church to be one,  one in the mind of Christ, one in purpose, one in love.  I have been struggling for some time reading many facebook posts of people who claim to be Christians because of this issue of unity in the church.  I don't just struggles with the posts I believe are so wrong that I can not imagine how someone who approaches the Bible honestly and humbly as The Word of God could believe such a thing, but I also struggle with some of the articles that I can see where the author has pulled his ideas directly from scripture.  I guess what I am saying is that it is not the content of the articles that I find so disturbing (though sometimes I find that disturbing too,) but it is the way in which the content is presented.
     There is room in unity for disagreement.  There is room in unity for discussion.  However many of the articles that trouble me are not aimed for discussion, and most of the conversations that flow out of them are generally not discussions either.  There is no room in unity for blatant attacks, which is what most of these articles are.  You may have seem some of the titles like "5 things that will burn a liberal" or "10 things to make a conservative cringe."  These articles, and I do not know if those are actual titles, are not aimed at informing people of the truth or bringing people to a point where they can agree with the author.  They in no way are designed to help bridge the gap and bring unity amongst people.  They are for the most part one author expressing themselves thinking they are clever and ignoring a very many facts to show how smart they are.  We read this fodder and agree with what the author says and it inspires us and we go yeah take that bad guys (I will let you choose who you are calling the bad guy when in fact we should not be seeing the other side as the bad guys. We may lie to ourselves and say that we don't see them as bad guys, but then we treat them that way when they point out the flaws in the post we posted.)
     I think the problem lies in our desire to express ourselves.  We hold that in such high regard, after all it is the first amendment in the bill of rights.  We don't always think about how our speech or our posts really affect one another.  We do not take the time to ask will this help bring my brothers to my side or create a greater divide.  Does this create communication or cause us to want to ignore each other.  Does this article accurately represent what the other side is saying or does it create a straw man to make its position seem stronger (as I more often than not read articles I am opposed to I will tell you most of the time the straw man is so far from the truth with most things taken out of context that it is sickening.)
     I want to leave you with a proverb which has been eating away at me causing me to think more and more about this issue.  Proverbs 18:2 "A fool has no delight in understanding, But in expressing his own heart."  I do not want to break this proverb down for you, because I think it is self explanatory, but I do wish that you would meditate on it.