The Call to Divisive Unity

Pontius Pilate, Teddy Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Bilbo Baggins

“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.” – Winston Churchill

“There is little place in active life for the timid good man. The man who is saved by weakness from robust wickedness is likewise rendered immune from the robuster virtues.” – Theodore Roosevelt

Theme: Be divisively unifying.

By divisively unifying, I mean this: dare to speak or act in ways that may disrupt surface-level comfort or consensus in order to forge a deeper, truer unity—one built on what is right, not what is easy.

A biblical story that echoes this theme is the story of Pontius Pilate.

Pilate was the Roman governor who stood face to face with Jesus while the crowd screamed for crucifixion. He examined Jesus and said, “I find no fault in him.” And yet, he yielded to the power of the mob for political convenience.

Pilate may not have been wholly wicked—but as Roosevelt warned, he lacked “the manliness to strike and the courage to venture.” Despite having the authority to free an innocent man, he allowed the mob to decide, and then infamously tried to wash his hands of any guilt.

According to historical accounts outside of scripture, Pilate would go on to take his own life a few years after the crucifixion.

He stands as a tragic emblem of the timid good man—the one Roosevelt described as “saved by weakness from robust wickedness,” but also “rendered immune from the robuster virtues.”

This theme matters today more than ever.

The world seems divided into two kinds of people:

1. Those who spend their lives trying to get the mob to like them.

2. Those who stand for something greater than themselves—placing long-term truth above short-term approval.

Reflecting on my own life:

Have I always been the latter?

Not even close. But there’s always room for growth. Always room to become less timid, more grounded, more divisively unifying.

We’ll stumble up the stairs of truth, no doubt.

But stumbling upward is the only noble way to go.

I’ll leave you with a bit of insight from a little hobbit who managed to do big things:

“Go back?” he thought. “No good at all! Go sideways? Impossible! Go forward? The only thing to do! On we go!” – Bilbo Baggins

Bilbo Baggins - J.R.R Tolkien